7.1.5 PTR Notes Changes for Blood DKs

[styil]

Sorry if there already is a PTR discussion thread for Blood but after having a quick look I did not find one. Latest changes are underlined.

Level 56 Talents
1. Bloodworms
Your auto attack critical strikes have a chance to summon a Bloodworm. Bloodworms deal minor damage to your target for 15 sec and then burst, healing you for 5% 15% of your missing health. If you drop below 50% health, your Bloodworms will immediately burst and heal you. Blood Death Knight - Level 56 Talent. Approximately 5 procs per minute.
2. Heartbreaker
Heart Strike generates 3 2 additional Runic Power per target hit. Blood Death Knight - Level 56 Talent.

Level 57 Talents
1. Rapid Decomposition
Your Death and Decay deals damage 50% 15% more often, and while in your Death and Decay you generate 15% more Runic Power 1 Runic Power per sec. Blood Death Knight - Level 57 Talent.

Level 58 Talents
1. Blood Tap
Consume shadowy essence. Generates 1 Rune. Maximum 2 charges. Recharge time reduced by 1 2 sec whenever a Bone Shield charge is consumed. Blood Death Knight - Level 58 Talent. Instant.

Level 60 Talents
1. Tombstone
Consume all Consume up to 5 Bone Shield charges. For each charge consumed, you gain 3 6 Runic Power and absorb damage equal to 3% 6% of your maximum health for 8 sec. Blood Death Knight - Level 60 Talent. Instant. 60 sec cooldown.
2. Mark of Blood
Places a Mark of Blood on an enemy for 25 sec. The enemy's damaging auto attacks will also heal their victim for 2% of 3% of the victim's maximum health. Blood Death Knight - Level 60 Talent. 300 Runic Power. 15 yd range. Instant.

Level 75 Talents
1. Tightening Grasp
Reduces the cooldown on Gorefiend's Grasp by 60 30 sec, and your Death and Decay also reduces the movement speed of enemies within its radius by 70%. Blood Death Knight - Level 75 Talent.
2. March of the Damned
Wraith Walk lasts 50% 100% longer and breaks stun, snare, and root effects when cast. Blood Death Knight - Level 75 Talent.

Level 90 Talents
1. Will of the Necropolis
Damage taken below 35% Health is reduced by 20% 35%. Blood Death Knight - Level 90 Talent.
2. Rune Tap
Consume a Rune to reduce all damage taken by 25% 40% for 3 sec. Blood Death Knight - Level 90 Talent. 1 Runes. Instant. 1.5 sec cooldown.

Level 100 Talents
1. Bonestorm
A whirl of bone and gore batters nearby enemies every 1 sec, dealing [ 115.9% of AP ] Shadow damage every 1 sec, and healing you for 1% 2% of your maximum health every time it deals damage. Lasts 1 sec per 10 Runic Power spent. Blood Death Knight - Level 100 Talent. 100 Runic Power. Instant. 60 sec cooldown.
2. Purgatory
An unholy pact that prevents fatal damage, instead absorbing incoming healing equal to the damage prevented, lasting 3 sec. If any healing absorption remains when this effect expires, you will die. This effect may only occur every 3 4 min. Blood Death Knight - Level 100 Talent.

Other
1. Gorefiend's Grasp
Shadowy tendrils coil around all enemies within 20 yards of a hostile or friendly target, pulling them to the target's location. Death Knight - Blood Spec. 30 yd range. Instant. 3 min cooldown. 2 min cooldown.
2. Marrowrend
Smash the target, dealing (315% of weapon damage) Physical damage and generating 3 charges of Bone Shield. Bone Shield Surrounds you with a barrier of whirling bones, reducing all damage you take by 16% and increasing your Haste by 10%. Each damaging attack melee swing against you consumes a charge. Lasts 30 sec or until all charges are consumed. Death Knight - Blood Spec. 2 Runes. Melee range. Instant.

How does everybody feel about the talent adjustments for Blood in 7.1.5?

[Shoat]

I guess I finally can get away with taking bloodworms again, now that it's been casually buffed to triple it's previous effect and the previously superior talent in it's row was toned down.

Rest in peace rapid decomposition I guess? I prefer spectral deflection anyway.
Maybe it would still be good if D&D could overlap, but since that is mechanically forbidden (the thing that resets it's cooldown can't trigger while it is still active) I don't think it's worth it anymore just to get an extra 10 RP per d&d cast.

Will of the Necropolis sounds quite a bit tastier now, though I still have my reservations since it has to compare to foul bulwark.
Rune Tap buff will make top level players happy I guess. I don't consider myself good enough at the game to time using it well, though.

I wonder if tombstone (same effect for half the bone shield charges) is now good enough a cooldown to forgo red thirst's "you can now use vamp blood twice as often" passive.

Bonestorm getting buffed is nice, but I find it's a bit too situational as a separate 100RP 1min cd ability - I can't afford to spend 3 death strikes on it during hard-hitting singletarget fights, and it's high RP cost doesn't bode well for short bursty group tanking (where either I or the mobs are dead before I get enough RP) or for chainpulling in m+ dungeons (where it's simply not available often enough).
I'd honestly really like having it be a passive ability that modifies how death strike works (along the lines of "your death strike triggers bonestorm for X seconds, consumes up to Y extra runic power to extend the duration by 1 second per 10 RP" to get some more trickle-healing in after each death strike and to have some consistent thing to save us from group tanking.
I'll still give it a shot, though, why not?


Bone Shield Change:
I am very afraid that this means "well bone shield only reduces melee attacks now, fuck you", I'm hoping for "things that aren't melee attacks will get reduced but you won't constantly be robbed of your shield charges whenever there's a dot or regular aoe" instead.

[Deleted]

Bone Shield Change:
I am very afraid that this means "well bone shield only reduces melee attacks now, fuck you", I'm hoping for "things that aren't melee attacks will get reduced but you won't constantly be robbed of your shield charges whenever there's a dot or regular aoe" instead.

I'm 99.99% sure that it's just changing Bone Shield back to the way it was before. Reduces all damage taken, but only melee autos remove charges.

A huge QoL change, maybe I'll be able to press something other than Marrowrend, wow!

[Cobat]

There was also another change I noticed on the PTR when I logged in. Blood drinker (The lvl 56 talent) is hitting for nearly triple the damage and healing it's doing on live and it isn't noted in today's build notes.

(1293% AP > 3000% AP damage and healing) I'm not sure if it was noted somewhere else, but do you think it'll make blood drinker competitive with the other two choices on the tier?

[Deleted]

With Heartbreaker nerfed (and even moreso because of the Rapid Decom nerf) I can definitely see Blooddrinker being viable with those numbers.

[NightTrain32]

With the changes to rapid decomposition did they change it so spectral deflection no longer removes the internal cool down for taking stacks of bone shield because that will still suck and make the change to bone shield irrelevant?

[Rubim]

It's not a nerf on ST.


Blood Worms still shit.
Heart Breaker still win on 2 targets.

Rapid Decomp still superior.

Tombstone Wat
Mark of Blood healing was not the problem, too slow.
Red Thirst Still superior
See math: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...UnSOXXMk4/edit

Bonestorm ???? - Why?

[Shoat]

There was also another change I noticed on the PTR when I logged in. Blood drinker (The lvl 56 talent) is hitting for nearly triple the damage and healing it's doing on live and it isn't noted in today's build notes.

(1293% AP > 3000% AP damage and healing) I'm not sure if it was noted somewhere else, but do you think it'll make blood drinker competitive with the other two choices on the tier?

Wow, 3000% on a short-cooldown 30 range ability is a fuckton.
That would certainly put it on the table - alongside blood worms - as an occasional emergency heal on top of maybe becoming our biggest burst damage ability (I can see getting some fun out of it shredding people apart in world pvp).

[Saverem]

Wow, 3000% on a short-cooldown 30 range ability is a fuckton.
That would certainly put it on the table - alongside blood worms - as an occasional emergency heal on top of maybe becoming our biggest burst damage ability (I can see getting some fun out of it shredding people apart in world pvp).

Imagine that with VB up. Nice.

[TrueAbstract]

I'm not really happy with them, it seems like they think we are over-performing, when actually we are mostly underperforming... I think that with recent changes haste + crit pieces will be even more valuable, and mastery worse.

Couldn't they just implement class change like a faction change? I would buy it even for 100-200€ to swap for a druid/warrior (/s).

[rhapso]

I'm surprised by these changes. Most of them seem more like nerfs than anything else (Rune Tap and Bone Storm aside, but Bone Storm + VB was already a very strong combo in m+ and Rune Tap already had its uses).

I wonder how they intend us to use Blood Tap, should it be used in conjunction with Rune Tap as an emergency button? I'd much rather have RP instead of runes, so you could actually get an emergency DS out.

[Deleted]

What is going on, this whole process of nerfing top talents and buffing still medicore talents looks like substantial nerf to me. What happened to the promise of "we will bake the most often used talents into a a class and replace them"? Suddenly those talents are getting nerfed instead of baked into the class Oo. I hope that im just imagining things and reading it wrong.

Edit: also beware according to wowhead, base runic power generated for HS is beeing nerfed from 8 to 5. What the heck is going on Oo. Is it to compensate the amount of heartstrikes we will be getting off due to bone shield changes?

[Deleted]

I think these changes are fine to balance our talents a bit. The rapid decomposition nerf doesn't look that bad to me, at least on singletarget bossfights everything up to 4 heart strikes during death and decay is basically equal to what you get right now and if you think about how much you blood boil/death strike aswell it doesn't seem that bad, probably a loss of at most 5 RP during DnD so 1/8th of a death strike. The changes to the first row look alright and it might make me consider some other options for ST.

Rune tap getting buffed is nice, I don't really get the bonestorm buff because it was amazing in m+ already and only gets better now. Tombstone still looks bad, so does mark of blood. I'm not sure if wotn is worth considering now, I haven't tried it at all so far but can anyone confirm that it reduces damage that puts you below 35% even if you are above that before the attack (like it used to work when it was a passive)? If not then I still wouldn't consider it an option.

EDIT: Something I find a bit funny is that they put haste on the new legendary that looks to be the bis already. So they acknowledge that it is our best stat, but only add it on our best legendary which will make the gap between those that have it and those that don't even bigger.

[Deleted]

I think these changes are fine to balance our talents a bit. The rapid decomposition nerf doesn't look that bad to me, at least on singletarget bossfights everything up to 4 heart strikes during death and decay is basically equal to what you get right now and if you think about how much you blood boil/death strike aswell it doesn't seem that bad, probably a loss of at most 5 RP during DnD so 1/8th of a death strike. The changes to the first row look alright and it might make me consider some other options for ST.

Rune tap getting buffed is nice, I don't really get the bonestorm buff because it was amazing in m+ already and only gets better now. Tombstone still looks bad, so does mark of blood. I'm not sure if wotn is worth considering now, I haven't tried it at all so far but can anyone confirm that it reduces damage that puts you below 35% even if you are above that before the attack (like it used to work when it was a passive)? If not then I still wouldn't consider it an option.

EDIT: Something I find a bit funny is that they put haste on the new legendary that looks to be the bis already. So they acknowledge that it is our best stat, but only add it on our best legendary which will make the gap between those that have it and those that don't even bigger.

WotN only reduces the part which actually happens below 35%. Quoted from Trox:

Originally when it was first introduced in Alpha, WoTN would reduce all the damage of a hit that took you below 35% by 20%. For example, if you had 100 max HP, and you were hit for 80 damage, WoTN would reduce the 80 by 20% (-16) so you would only take 64 damage and end up at 36 HP (36% of total instead of 20% without WOTN). And this version was very strong, since it activated quite often on anything that did threatening levels of damage (aka the cases where what survival talent you pick actually makes a difference unlike trivial content). However later on it was changed to only reduce the portion of the hit that took you below 35%. So in the above example it now sees that 15 of the 80 damage is done ‘below 35%’, and reduces the 15 by 20%, which means you take 77 damage instead of 80, ending up at 23% HP instead of 20%.

For fights with high consistent damage it could still be an alternative now.

[Deleted]

Sorry if there already is a PTR discussion thread for Blood but after having a quick look I did not find one. Latest changes are underlined.

Level 56 Talents
1. Bloodworms
Your auto attack critical strikes have a chance to summon a Bloodworm. Bloodworms deal minor damage to your target for 15 sec and then burst, healing you for 5% 15% of your missing health. If you drop below 50% health, your Bloodworms will immediately burst and heal you. Blood Death Knight - Level 56 Talent. Approximately 5 procs per minute.
2. Heartbreaker
Heart Strike generates 3 2 additional Runic Power per target hit. Blood Death Knight - Level 56 Talent.

Level 57 Talents
1. Rapid Decomposition
Your Death and Decay deals damage 50% 15% more often, and while in your Death and Decay you generate 15% more Runic Power 1 Runic Power per sec. Blood Death Knight - Level 57 Talent.

Level 58 Talents
1. Blood Tap
Consume shadowy essence. Generates 1 Rune. Maximum 2 charges. Recharge time reduced by 1 2 sec whenever a Bone Shield charge is consumed. Blood Death Knight - Level 58 Talent. Instant.

Level 60 Talents
1. Tombstone
Consume all Consume up to 5 Bone Shield charges. For each charge consumed, you gain 3 6 Runic Power and absorb damage equal to 3% 6% of your maximum health for 8 sec. Blood Death Knight - Level 60 Talent. Instant. 60 sec cooldown.
2. Mark of Blood
Places a Mark of Blood on an enemy for 25 sec. The enemy's damaging auto attacks will also heal their victim for 2% of 3% of the victim's maximum health. Blood Death Knight - Level 60 Talent. 300 Runic Power. 15 yd range. Instant.

Level 75 Talents
1. Tightening Grasp
Reduces the cooldown on Gorefiend's Grasp by 60 30 sec, and your Death and Decay also reduces the movement speed of enemies within its radius by 70%. Blood Death Knight - Level 75 Talent.
2. March of the Damned
Wraith Walk lasts 50% 100% longer and breaks stun, snare, and root effects when cast. Blood Death Knight - Level 75 Talent.

Level 90 Talents
1. Will of the Necropolis
Damage taken below 35% Health is reduced by 20% 35%. Blood Death Knight - Level 90 Talent.
2. Rune Tap
Consume a Rune to reduce all damage taken by 25% 40% for 3 sec. Blood Death Knight - Level 90 Talent. 1 Runes. Instant. 1.5 sec cooldown.

Level 100 Talents
1. Bonestorm
A whirl of bone and gore batters nearby enemies every 1 sec, dealing [ 115.9% of AP ] Shadow damage every 1 sec, and healing you for 1% 2% of your maximum health every time it deals damage. Lasts 1 sec per 10 Runic Power spent. Blood Death Knight - Level 100 Talent. 100 Runic Power. Instant. 60 sec cooldown.
2. Purgatory
An unholy pact that prevents fatal damage, instead absorbing incoming healing equal to the damage prevented, lasting 3 sec. If any healing absorption remains when this effect expires, you will die. This effect may only occur every 3 4 min. Blood Death Knight - Level 100 Talent.

Other
1. Gorefiend's Grasp
Shadowy tendrils coil around all enemies within 20 yards of a hostile or friendly target, pulling them to the target's location. Death Knight - Blood Spec. 30 yd range. Instant. 3 min cooldown. 2 min cooldown.
2. Marrowrend
Smash the target, dealing (315% of weapon damage) Physical damage and generating 3 charges of Bone Shield. Bone Shield Surrounds you with a barrier of whirling bones, reducing all damage you take by 16% and increasing your Haste by 10%. Each damaging attack melee swing against you consumes a charge. Lasts 30 sec or until all charges are consumed. Death Knight - Blood Spec. 2 Runes. Melee range. Instant.

How does everybody feel about the talent adjustments for Blood in 7.1.5?

Heartbreaker #feelsbadman; fast buildup of RP in large trash packs was just about the only way to make up for how fast they depleted the bone shield.
Purgatory nerf looks like another tryhard attempt to promote Blood Mirror. There's only one response I can have to that and it involves a certain finger.
IIRC Bone Shield didn't grant haste so far, it can be some sort of second rate consolation for Heartbreaker nerf along with the extra stack from single Marrowrend.
In short, meh.

[BadguyNotBadGuy]

I think the RP generation is going to make us a bit more boring to play, and devalue Red Thirst a bit, though I still think its the best in that entire row, since even the buffed Tombstone, no matter how good its effect is, would take away from the effectiveness of Ossuary.
I guess you could use it in fights where you need lots of DR CDs available.

Otherwise, I quite like the buff to Bonestorm and Rune Tap. Not sure about how i feel about using Blooddrinker now, i guess it could be used in certain Mythics.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh forgot to mention, i actually quite like the March of the Damned change, especially with Tightening Grasp nerfed. Still gonna need that god damn glyph though...

[Spryte]

Edit: also beware according to wowhead, base runic power generated for HS is beeing nerfed from 8 to 5. What the heck is going on Oo. Is it to compensate the amount of heartstrikes we will be getting off due to bone shield changes?

Heart Strike already only generates 5 bonus runic power, so a total of 15 RP per HS on single target. With the Current Heartbreaker talent is generates 3 extra runic power per target hit, so with the talent the tooltip just read 8 bonus RP. Heartbreaker is being changed to 2 extra runic power per target, so HS tooltip will read 7 bonus RP with talent, and will generate 17 RP per HS on single target.

So far I don't mind the changes so long as the ICD for Boneshield remains, and imo it has too, otherwise boneshield will be completely useless on aoe pulls.

- - - Updated - - -

Also im pretty sure that Blood tap is still overall worse. Considering we will now lose boneshield charges much slower on most fights.

[Maggotpanda]

Heart Strike already only generates 5 bonus runic power, so a total of 15 RP per HS on single target. With the Current Heartbreaker talent is generates 3 extra runic power per target hit, so with the talent the tooltip just read 8 bonus RP. Heartbreaker is being changed to 2 extra runic power per target, so HS tooltip will read 7 bonus RP with talent, and will generate 17 RP per HS on single target.

So far I don't mind the changes so long as the ICD for Boneshield remains, and imo it has too, otherwise boneshield will be completely useless on aoe pulls.

- - - Updated - - -

Also im pretty sure that Blood tap is still overall worse. Considering we will now lose boneshield charges much slower on most fights.

From what I've looked at on beta notes it says 5 bonus runic power with 2 per additional target hit not per target hit with heartbreaker which would make for 15 runic power single target not 17.

( Heartbreaker:
Instantly strike the target and 1 other nearby enemy, causing (185% of weapon damage) Physical damage, and reducing enemies' movement speed by 50% for 8 sec.

Generates 5 bonus Runic Power, plus 2 Runic Power per additional enemy struck.)

[Chupathingy]

From what I've looked at on beta notes it says 5 bonus runic power with 2 per additional target hit not per target hit with heartbreaker which would make for 15 runic power single target not 17.

( Heartbreaker:
Instantly strike the target and 1 other nearby enemy, causing (185% of weapon damage) Physical damage, and reducing enemies' movement speed by 50% for 8 sec.

Generates 5 bonus Runic Power, plus 2 Runic Power per additional enemy struck.)

I'm more inclined to believe this is just bad wording from the data mine as the actual text of heartbreaker did not change (except the number).

[Maggotpanda]

I'm more inclined to believe this is just bad wording from the data mine as the actual text of heartbreaker did not change (except the number).

Just tested it to be sure and your right the wording is bad I tested it on PTR and it is currently 17 for single target heart strikes. Also blood drinker for me healed for 1 million over 3 seconds.