Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[Alihu]

Yeah, I did some mythic+ after having the belt, what a huge difference it feels like it makes. I have been trying to get better upgrades for that chest/shoulders and ring with haste, hard for me to finally break the habit of looking at ilvl over looking at secondary stats lol.

[tanksin the enhance shamy]

so reading through some stuff in this thread, is the fallen crusader really a better rune than gargoyle? gargoyle still lowers my physical dmg reduction by 2% from the armor buff and slightly better blood shields from the higher max health, wouldnt the physical dmg reduction out weigh the 6% heals over an extended duration such as a boss fight? not to mention the fact that crusader can proc while you are at max health and therefore wasting the heal?

[Deleted]

so reading through some stuff in this thread, is the fallen crusader really a better rune than gargoyle? gargoyle still lowers my physical dmg reduction by 2% from the armor buff and slightly better blood shields from the higher max health, wouldnt the physical dmg reduction out weigh the 6% heals over an extended duration such as a boss fight? not to mention the fact that crusader can proc while you are at max health and therefore wasting the heal?

Simple: You want the +str, +str grants you:
+Damage=+Healing=More survival
-Fight time=+More survival (dead enemy is best)

Someone did the math back there.

[Deleted]

so reading through some stuff in this thread, is the fallen crusader really a better rune than gargoyle? gargoyle still lowers my physical dmg reduction by 2% from the armor buff and slightly better blood shields from the higher max health, wouldnt the physical dmg reduction out weigh the 6% heals over an extended duration such as a boss fight? not to mention the fact that crusader can proc while you are at max health and therefore wasting the heal?

In Content where survivability matters your DS Heal and so your Bloodshield will always depend on damage taken in the last 5 secs. the 10% Minimum treshhold is irrelevant while actively tanking. Crusader has an 70-80% uptime and although there is a lot of overheal depending on the fight it still contributes 5-10% to my overall healing.

[Deleted]

Fallen Crusader is the best choice in every situation since it has a high uptime, and while it overheals often (at least looking at my logs) the additional str is simply too good to pass.
We've been telling this for a while, but it won't hurt repeating this once more: increased damage IS a good choice for every tank, more over for blood dks. More damage means increased leech effects, as small as they may be, and shorter fight duration.

[tanksin the enhance shamy]

guess ill give it a try then, its been awhile since i used it for tanking

[Blade Wolf]

Bring back mastery so we can get to 80-100% range without a ton of mastery, make Blood tap baseline again and bring back the WoD version of it, same with Rune Tap, make it baseline and beef it up to 40%. we have 0 o shit damage reduction and the WoD rune tap would help alot.

[Raiz]

Your HPS seems quite low in comparison to your healers. Use Vampiric Blood more often, don't cast Marrowrend as much when you're at 6+ stacks, stand in DND more often if you can afford to, use Deathstrike more often from the extra RP you have from more HS and RP generated via DND standing.

I would get your haste up a bid and drop the Ichor as a trinket, you'd be much better off with something different. Crit/Parry seem OK, but the Haste is low.

So, I decided to emphasize on HS a lot while in DnD. I knew that you could've gotten more RP but thing is I always ended up with wasting either Runes, RP or Deathstrikes.
My question was this : don't you think it's better to have the BoneStorm's talent in order to save 1 or 2 Deathstrikes in order to have time to cast the others spells while in DnD ?

I'm asking that because I felt losing Bone shield's stacks weren't worth it. I mean, everytime I casted DnD > HS > DS my bone shields would always drop quickly and I'm not sure if losing a lot of stamina was worth it because you were also losing the potential of DS's heal aswell (I'm running Foul Bulwark's talent)...

Thoughts ? :/

[Tehr]

So, I decided to emphasize on HS a lot while in DnD. I knew that you could've gotten more RP but thing is I always ended up with wasting either Runes, RP or Deathstrikes.
My question was this : don't you think it's better to have the BoneStorm's talent in order to save 1 or 2 Deathstrikes in order to have time to cast the others spells while in DnD ?

I'm asking that because I felt losing Bone shield's stacks weren't worth it. I mean, everytime I casted DnD > HS > DS my bone shields would always drop quickly and I'm not sure if losing a lot of stamina was worth it because you were also losing the potential of DS's heal aswell (I'm running Foul Bulwark's talent)...

Thoughts ? :/

Bonestorm is a waste of RP compared to Death Strike in almost all high end content, unfortunately. It's a healing loss in single target (or even in AoE when faced with lots of damage, since BS doesn't scale with damage taken as DS does) and it's only a minor damage increase in either scenario, and can be considered overly risky. Unless you're running trivial content with AoE damage (such as low dungeons), Blood Mirror is arguably the only viable T100 talent.

Logically, Runic Power is a direct conversion to healing through Death Strike; thus, overcapping RP is the same as overhealing, except it's also a DPS loss (because DS deals damage AND heals). Because any RP gained above cap is a waste of DPS and Healing, it's more efficient to "waste" a Death Strike by overhealing to prevent a cap than to Heart Strike and gain more RP than you can hold. ALSO, the major reason you're emphasizing HS when in Death and Decay is because of Heartbreaker (as Heart Strike damage is pitiful), and if you're overcapping RP, you're wasting the benefit of Heartbreaker. In any scenario, you should only Marrowrend when at or below 6 stacks (assuming you have the 1 point trait in your artifact), regardless of health lost due to Foul Bulwark.

There are a lot more factors that come into it, of course. Because DKs don't lose DPS (or at least not much) when they have at least three runes recharging, you can safely sit at <125 RP, 1 Blood Boil, and 3 runes for ~5 seconds (dependent on your Haste) to wait for damage to come in (obviously there is an opportunity cost associated with reduced casts equating to reduced procs, but for simplicity's sake let's ignore that), then cast DS to get off cap before casting any more HS. In general, your rule of thumb should be "keep RP between 40 and 105" (165 with pants), as this will prevent you from overcapping RP and from overdumping RP. As always, this won't be a perfect representation (because it's sometimes worth it to cap RP to ensure you'll have 120 RP for a high damage phase), but until you get comfortable at not wasting any resources, that rule should be fine.

[Llarold]

Bonestorm really only has value for quickly crushing trivial content, so it's not really worth considering for anything that's remotely challenging.

[Raiz]

Bonestorm is a waste of RP compared to Death Strike in almost all high end content, unfortunately. It's a healing loss in single target (or even in AoE when faced with lots of damage, since BS doesn't scale with damage taken as DS does) and it's only a minor damage increase in either scenario, and can be considered overly risky. Unless you're running trivial content with AoE damage (such as low dungeons), Blood Mirror is arguably the only viable T100 talent.

Logically, Runic Power is a direct conversion to healing through Death Strike; thus, overcapping RP is the same as overhealing, except it's also a DPS loss (because DS deals damage AND heals). Because any RP gained above cap is a waste of DPS and Healing, it's more efficient to "waste" a Death Strike by overhealing to prevent a cap than to Heart Strike and gain more RP than you can hold. ALSO, the major reason you're emphasizing HS when in Death and Decay is because of Heartbreaker (as Heart Strike damage is pitiful), and if you're overcapping RP, you're wasting the benefit of Heartbreaker. In any scenario, you should only Marrowrend when at or below 6 stacks (assuming you have the 1 point trait in your artifact), regardless of health lost due to Foul Bulwark.

There are a lot more factors that come into it, of course. Because DKs don't lose DPS (or at least not much) when they have at least three runes recharging, you can safely sit at <125 RP, 1 Blood Boil, and 3 runes for ~5 seconds (dependent on your Haste) to wait for damage to come in (obviously there is an opportunity cost associated with reduced casts equating to reduced procs, but for simplicity's sake let's ignore that), then cast DS to get off cap before casting any more HS. In general, your rule of thumb should be "keep RP between 40 and 105" (165 with pants), as this will prevent you from overcapping RP and from overdumping RP. As always, this won't be a perfect representation (because it's sometimes worth it to cap RP to ensure you'll have 120 RP for a high damage phase), but until you get comfortable at not wasting any resources, that rule should be fine.

Don't get me wrong, I pretty much agree with everything you say. It's just that, when you're playing M+ with lots of adds, you get a lot of RP, which in turn you need to cast DS. It's pretty much like 1 DS for every HS against 3+ targets (roughly, I don't know the number for sure, just talking from my experience). Basically, it takes a lot of GCDs. If you try to spend all your RP on DS for every HS, chances are you're capping on Blood Boil. If not, you're capping on Runes. If neither of the above, well, I guess you can consider that you're playing perfectly

This was the whole reason why I'd use Bonestorm talent assuming I'm comfortable enough with my HP or my healer. Either that or Blood mirror.

Edit : It gets even worse when you have the DnD proc + consumption available (that's another 2 GCD)

[NightTrain32]

Bring back mastery so we can get to 80-100% range without a ton of mastery, make Blood tap baseline again and bring back the WoD version of it, same with Rune Tap, make it baseline and beef it up to 40%. we have 0 o shit damage reduction and the WoD rune tap would help alot.

I honestly cannot tell if you are trolling or not. We have IBF baseline and if your doing raiding you most likely have blood mirror. Which makes two DR cool downs and then you have VB. We would be crazy op if we had rune tap baseline now at 40% DR...

[Tehr]

Don't get me wrong, I pretty much agree with everything you say. It's just that, when you're playing M+ with lots of adds, you get a lot of RP, which in turn you need to cast DS. It's pretty much like 1 DS for every HS against 3+ targets (roughly, I don't know the number for sure, just talking from my experience). Basically, it takes a lot of GCDs. If you try to spend all your RP on DS for every HS, chances are you're capping on Blood Boil. If not, you're capping on Runes. If neither of the above, well, I guess you can consider that you're playing perfectly

This was the whole reason why I'd use Bonestorm talent assuming I'm comfortable enough with my HP or my healer. Either that or Blood mirror.

Edit : It gets even worse when you have the DnD proc + consumption available (that's another 2 GCD)

You can gain a maximum of 35 RP from a single Heart Strike with Heartbreaker and Rapid Decomposition (15 base + 15 Heartbreaker = 30, and 30*1.15 RapidDecomp= 35).

You definitely can find yourself with a lot of resources in an ideal AoE scenario; that being said, in all but trivial AoE scenarios you're most likely going to be focused on keeping your ass alive, first and foremost. Being able to avoid wasting all of those resources you're getting is nice, but being able to spend them EFFICIENTLY is much nicer. If your healer is capable of keeping you alive (keeping in consideration mana and GCD investments on you that may be better spent elsewhere) regardless of your own input, then Bonestorm is a good offensive use of RP. However, in any scenario where your own healing actually matters, Death Strike will be a much superior way to spend Runic Power than Bonestorm.

Perhaps I am being too firm when I say the "only viable T100 talent" is Blood Mirror. Bonestorm (and even Purgatory, assuming there's a lot of burst damage that you can heal back, e.g. with Consumption in AoE) can be used in certain scenarios to good effect. I recognize the fact that you agree that you're only taking Bonestorm in content where you're comfortable with the healing requirements, but the fact remains that Bonestorm is mathematically a poor way to spend Runic Power compared to Death Strike in challenging content.

Anyway, the main point of my reply (and the root of your argument behind taking Bonestorm to spend RP quickly) is that you shouldn't emphasize HS in DnD to the point where you're wasting the resources that you would be gaining. Again, remember that the main purpose of prioritizing HS in DnD is to make use of the extra RP gained from Heartbreaker (heal from Blood Feast and damage from HS are trivial), and that RP is your greatest HPS and DPS resource (far above runes). Assuming both of those arguments are true (which they are), then the act of overcapping RP removes the main purpose of prioritizing HS in DnD, thus meaning that your GCDs would be better spent elsewhere.

Now, I'm sure we can all agree that nobody is perfect, and that everyone will waste some resources here and there. The important thing is knowing the implications of wasting each different resource (health by overhealing, RP, BB, etc.) and which resource is the LEAST valuable in any given scenario and thus which resource you're willing to waste. The answer will change depending on every scenario, but being able to identify on the fly what your best options are is the first step to mastery.

All that being said, take Blood Mirror to some content that has enormous amounts of damage and you will shit your pants as to how much damage it will deal. I don't have any logs, unfortunately, but this week we did a BRH+12 (maybe it was 11, I can't remember) and the damage it dealt in that hallway with all of the small dudes that breathe fire and grow huge was fucking tremendous, FAR exceeding any damage Bonestorm would do (not to mention the fact that I was Death Striking for 1.5m+ every time due to damage taken). It also did a metric fuckton of damage on Smashspite during his Brutal Haymaker debuff.

I honestly cannot tell if you are trolling or not. We have IBF baseline and if your doing raiding you most likely have blood mirror. Which makes two DR cool downs and then you have VB. We would be crazy op if we had rune tap baseline now at 40% DR...

His suggestions ARE excessive, of course (although I'd love to be the far and away strongest tank), but to be fair, I think all Blood DKs would prefer Rune Tap over IBF, and it's hard to argue that our Mastery is in a strong place by any metric.

[Deleted]

Depending on affixes Bonestorm is fine for m+, trash dps matters. This week in EU we have sanguine and overflowing i run with bonestorm even in 12-14.
Macroed it with the Seed Pod and pop VB too for huge pulls, its a really nice CD

[Tojara]

I don't know, I pretty much exclusively use bonestorm in M+ and the week I did +15 was sanguine/volcanic/fortified. 12 and 13 BRH, 14 arcway and 15 court of stars.

As far as blood mirror damage goes, looking at a Mythic Xavius kill I would get about 2.7 million damage from it on average, and I typically only use it during a high period of damage (when I have 4 stacks of the debuff before going to 5). Not sure if I'd be taking that amount of damage in a M+ dungeon on average considering the frequency of stuns, casts and potentially kiting. Bonestorm for me is about 65k damage per target, or 650k damage per target over 10 seconds, which is a pretty safe assumption in high M+ as most trash packs aren't going to die in 10 seconds. Of course you have to take the loss of 2.5 death strikes in RP, or for me, roughly 650k.

Strictly from a damage perspective bonestorm is going to win in most circumstances as you can literally use it twice as often. Keep in mind that there are instances where you pull packs of 3 or less consistently, in which case blood mirror is probably the better option damage wise (also keep in mind, in some of those instances with smaller packs you might not be taking as much damage, or the mobs aren't actually targeting the tank, like Neltharion's Lair).

Trash DPS matters a lot, and honestly, save a few bosses on Tyrannical I've never thought to myself that I actually needed blood mirror to make it doable. Bosses are rarely a problem, and personally, blood mirror has never felt like it would have made the difference between me living and dying on a trash pack. The hardest dungeons I've done trash wise were BRH 13 and Arcway 14, both with fortified, and even then I could still make full use of bonestorm before having to duck out. You kite a lot once you run out of CDs and stuns at those levels, and thankfully we are good at kiting.

The above is mostly from my experience with M+. Raids I will use blood mirror if I remember to change it lol. I actually don't mind blood mirror and do wish I could have it on bosses, but generally I wouldn't give it up over bonestorm.

Personally I feel our last talent row could be buffed universally. Bonestorm should absolutely do more healing per mob and probably more damage and blood mirror should have a bigger effect/lower CD.

[Tehr]

Strictly from a damage perspective bonestorm is going to win in most circumstances as you can literally use it twice as often.

That would be true if Bonestorm did not cost RP, but since it does I think that it's not as strong as you might expect. It does strong damage at the cost of 2.5 DS, as you mentioned, whereas Blood Mirror has no cost and functions as a defensive to boot.

The fact that Bonestorm has the same CD as Seed Pod is nice, though I would say this synergy isn't enough to justify either.

Another thing to note (that I've mentioned before) is that Blood Mirror can crit, and if you're hit for a very large amount, you can retaliate a stupid amount of damage back. This is a screenshot of one of our Il'gynoth kills, where I took Blood Mirror and ONLY used it on the Nightmare Horrors (I could have used it on the Dominators too but I wasn't sure of the timing when this log was recorded).

[Deleted]

I was just talking about m+. In current Raid szenarios / single target fights Blood Mirror is the clear winner. In m+ even with some tyranical bosses hitting like trucks (hi smashpite) im better off with bonestorm.

[Snuffleupagus]

I'd say as a general rule, unless a Boss fight is very add heavy, take Blood Mirror for raids, and Bonestorm for Mythic+.

Your mileage may vary, but most raid encounters benefit much more from Blood Mirror unless you can hit multiple targets to stack the 1% heal. Even then, remember that Death Strike is a minimum of 10% health recovered, and in practice should be much more.

Purgatory is a nice talent, but if you're proccing it, there's something else wrong in the raid that needs to be addressed.

[Tehr]

I think that we're just going to go back and forth. To that end, the last thing I'll say is that I recommend everyone bring Blood Mirror to a high M+ and use it as if it was a DPS cooldown (to be used when taking a lot of damage) instead of saving it for when you need it. I think many of you will be surprised at the damage output.

[Highwhale]

I think that we're just going to go back and forth. To that end, the last thing I'll say is that I recommend everyone bring Blood Mirror to a high M+ and use it as if it was a DPS cooldown (to be used when taking a lot of damage) instead of saving it for when you need it. I think many of you will be surprised at the damage output.

BM is dps CD. And always was. When Bonestorm is def CD. VB+Seedpod+Bonestorm the best healing thing you can get as tank. The trick is you get 1% per tick for every enemy its hits. So example you get 7 mobs and VM buff (Normally with 50% from AW traits). Each tick will heal your for 10.5% of your HP. For all Bonestorm duration you will get like 105% HP heal. And plus aoe damage. Shadow Damage.