Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[afate]

So I just wanted to throw this out here in the hopes of getting some useful feedback. I'm doing Mythic+ with a DK tank and I heal it as resto shaman. On most pulls the tank keeps dropping dangerously low, to the point where she sometimes dies before I can get a heal off (this is all around M+3-6). For this reason I asked her to take the Purgatory talent, but it's still touch and go a lot of times during pulls (Purg doesn't proc often, but usually at least once every dungeon). As a result, we pull carefully and feel like we're doing something terribly wrong.

Now my main question is: is this usual for blood DKs, or is there anything she can do to prevent dropping so low on pulls? Do you feel DKs are in a good place for M+ or do you feel you're rather weak? I know DKs have basically no cooldowns anymore, but I can't shake the feeling pulls should be less dangerous.

For the record, the DK in question has a lot of experience tanking from Cata onward and her artifact is fine (roughly around rank 25). However, she already mentioned that her stats are far from perfect: she has low haste and vers due to bad drops and instead has quite a lot of crit/mastery. She was able to improve it a bit over the last few days, but she still only has roughly 17% haste and a tiny bit of versatility (+/- 2K).

Purgatory is unnecessary in Mythic+. She is far better off running Bonestorm because, especially on bigger pulls, it's a fantastic CD for both healing and damage. Also, depending on when/how purgatory procs, it's not even guaranteed that you'll be able to rescue her from the proc.

Are blood DKs in a good place for M+? I mean, we're far from being the optimal choice, but they are doable. I'll cite the usual here...bone shield stacks being removed on the ICD due to inconsequential dot ticks is annoying, and the lack of a decent DR cooldown also sucks (need baseline Rune Tap or IBF back), and our mastery is incredibly weak. I ran DHT +10 the other night, and we were only 2 minutes off from finishing in time. We had 2 silly wipes early on in the dungeon that if we clean those up, we'll make it in time. There's A LOT of kiting involved, and it's basically mandatory when the mobs reach 30% and/or when your necrotic stacks get high. Also, AMS must be used to help Necrotic stacks drop, or to prevent super high stacks on larger AOE pulls. The small blood globs in DHT where there are like 10 or so in a pack will give you about 15-20 stacks of the debuff within about 5 seconds if you don't pop AMS.

Priority #1 is to improve her haste rating. That is a HUGE problem. She will notice a MASSIVE difference in survivability and damage once she gets around 30% haste unbuffed. I'm currently at 38% haste unbuffed (865ilvl), and I can tell you that even going from 30% - 38% there is a big difference. Her 17% haste is insanely low. Fix that and she'll be in much better shape. Basically she should prioritize haste over everything else. For example, I have a pair of 855ilvl boots that are haste/crit. I got a pair of 870 boots that are crit/mastery, but due to the amount of haste on the 855 boots, they are better. I suggest gearing for Haste > vers, or haste > crit. Mastery is largely garbage, so I would try to avoid it.

Hope that helps.

[Alihu]

I am sure this has been asked alot, but are blood DKs are bad as i read. I was considering swapping from my DH tank into a blood DK, always liked them since wotlk, but now I feel I will just hurt my guild if i do that for raids/mythics.

[Dahti]

In mythic dungeons they can be really good, especially if you have the belt and cape. My friend does and with red thirst the uptime on vampiric blood is absurd.

Raids DKs can be a liability depending on the boss mechanics, spears for cenaruis being the biggest hurdle.

[Highwhale]

Raids DKs can be a liability depending on the boss mechanics, spears for cenaruis being the biggest hurdle.

Not at all. You cover 1st spear with Blood Mirror + Rune Tap. Second with DR buff from heal (or double absorb trinkets) + Rune Tap. Did it yesterday - mine pools was like 10 yards.

[redfella]

On Mythic I can see Cenarius spears be annoying, but you can still keep them small with Rune Tap, absorb trinkets, armor pot, external cds etc.

[Deleted]

On Mythic I can see Cenarius spears be annoying, but you can still keep them small with Rune Tap, absorb trinkets, armor pot, external cds etc.

I agree.
Then I remember how druid just need to iornfur + barskin, or war just need to IP + demoralzing/shield wall, and I suddenly feel like an idiot for playing a class that needs to take talents to handle and external cds to handle such a simple mechanic.

[xpire]

Rune tape+Mirror+Iron bark+intervene(safeguard)+trinket(I'm not"fortunate" enough to have one of those afaik) ought to be enough... but yea druid can literally SI/Ironbark+ironfur every single one they have to take while the warrior will just IP and go afk, maybe throw in a random DR if they cba

[tanksin the enhance shamy]

how well does running spectral deflection and runetap work on cenaius?

[Gwogobo]

Why would you take Spectral Deflection on a fight that already eats your stacks on cooldown, though? That's just asking to never HS again.

[redfella]

SD on Cenarius is not necessary for just 2-3 spears, no need to gimp yourself for the majority of the fight.

Yup, Warr/Druid have it easy vs. Spears, but imho it's fine to have some classes excel vs certain mechanics. It's not like we lack the tools to handle that situation still DH is in a similar boat, only "built in" mitigation they have for the 2nd spear is Demon Spikes, but you can still work around that with armor pot and trinkets.

[tanksin the enhance shamy]

well it only works when the hit does 25% of your health in one hit, atleast in normal during that fight i have found most things dont hit that hard and controling the growth of spears is pretty important, heroic+that might be different though

[Tojara]

I didn't think absorbs worked on the spear. Regardless, blood mirror and rune tap sort of remedy it to a degree. Worst case scenario you jump into a previous pool anyway to make them overlap, but that's pretty common knowledge anyway.

At least on mythic, mass grip is sort of useful for a single wave of wisps. You still don't want to nuke them all down instantaneously but it's useful to prevent them from running all over the place.

On DKs in general they feel fine in M+ although there are some major problems with them. Raging and necrotic are probably the worst affixes for us, but you can USUALLY get around them with proper AMS usage and proper kiting. The problems with necrotic is that it oftentimes makes you weak on the next pack, as your shield is likely ticking away due to the fucking dot. Also there are plenty of mobs that physically can't be kited nor can they be stunned, which poses a major problem once they enrage sub 30% on higher M+ difficulties.

The more I used purgatory the more shit you start to realize it is. Bonestorm is largely superior and actually serves as a proper defensive CD (at least in M+). Nothing is more frustrating than purgatory saving you for 0.1 seconds only for you to die instantly 0.1 seconds later. Bonestorm not only heals a decent amount on moderate trash packs, it makes things like skittish a little bit easier to handle (although well geared, over zealous DHs who know how to play well can still pose a problem). Provides healing, and great damage, amazing to open a pack up with.

[alex wolf]

does anyone else feel like our golden trait that gives the leech + damage bonus to DS during blood shield should just be a buff we get for 10 seconds after blood shield is applied? I feel that'd help smooth out a lot of issues blood has at the moment

I'd also really like a talent that gives passive leech + a bonus to leech healing during VB, helping build the spec as a more san'layn focused way

[gegalfo]

stam or str flask?

[Tehr]

does anyone else feel like our golden trait that gives the leech + damage bonus to DS during blood shield should just be a buff we get for 10 seconds after blood shield is applied? I feel that'd help smooth out a lot of issues blood has at the moment

I'd also really like a talent that gives passive leech + a bonus to leech healing during VB, helping build the spec as a more san'layn focused way

For a while during Beta, Blood Shield applied before the damage of Death Strike, which meant that every Death Strike had 25% (50% at that time iirc) damage and leech.

It was around that point that Blizzard found that DKs were potentially viable, and fixed the bug before release.

What I would like to see with that talent is something that ties in to how big the Blood Shield is so something scales with Mastery. Umbilicus Eternus and Skeletal Shattering both scale off Crit (UE because critting BP increases shield strength, and SS because duh), UE scales off Haste because of Red Thirst increasing uptime, but Unending Thirst (the trait in question) only scales with Mastery because a larger Blood Shield is harder to break and thus the buff would potentially last longer. HOWEVER, because even a full Mastery-stacking DK would have pitifully small Blood Shields that are broken before the GCD is ready (especially with no Haste), that doesn't really matter.

My suggestion would be something similar to yours, but I would say that you get a 5 second buff (same as Death Strike window) where you gain Leech equal to 5% of your Blood Shield. If I Death Strike and gain a 150k Blood Shield, I would gain 7.5% Leech for 5 seconds, and if I somehow manage to Death Strike again and stack the Blood Shield to 300k, I would gain 15% Leech for 5 seconds. Conversely, if my Death Strike is consumed within the GCD, I would still keep the 7.5% Leech buff for the full 5 seconds, or until I apply a bigger Blood Shield.

I think that this would not only be a balanced way to address an otherwise shit trait that ONLY affects us when we're not actively tanking, but it would actually reward players for having a respectable amount of Mastery (an otherwise worthless stat).

[Deleted]

I guess my opinion will be hated by many, but I firmly believe that Blood Shield has no more place in our kit.
Considering Legion tanking model, where most of the damage is constant with few spiky moments, and considering the shift of blood gameplay to a purely reactive one, blood shield is put in a weird place where it's not really needed.
In fact, every decent blood is avoiding mastery like the plague and can still tank.

As I already said once, I would rework mastery completely to something that strenghten our reactive tanking. My suggestion would be to remove all the leech and secondary heals (Unending Thrirst, Blood Feast) and put more emphasis on death strike. Something like: Death Strike also heals for X% of your missing health. This way, mastery would be a decent stat and would put more weight and power into our reactive style.

[Highwhale]

Nah. Make Blood Shield scales from max hp and instead attack power mastery should give +% parry.

[Deleted]

Here is how to fix mastery:

All your overheals become a damage shield based on %.

It's so stupid and lazy that blizz might even implement it.

[Snuffleupagus]

Make mastery Bone Shield instead of Blood Shield and add dimishing returns to cap it. Or make it give a chance to not lose a charge of Bone Shield.

The more I think about it, Blood Shield is useless if we have a passive absorb.

[alex wolf]

blood shield should just be bigger, like starting at 50-60% of death strikes heal, I also like the idea of leech based off a % of death strike heals

I still think blood presence should be a talent, perhaps taking the place of soulgorge offering an increase to heart strike damage and like 10% leech