Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[gegalfo]

They're not finished yet, so I acknowledge that this isn't a final plan. However, this becomes a quality of life issue for us. We aim for certain levels of haste because that's when we're able to feel functional. I don't worry about being a less competitive tank, I worry about being a stick in the mud.

Also, my condolences for those of you lucky enough to have Aggramar's Stride. You'll be less less shitty than the rest of us.

as it is now i have 31.02% haste (10081 rating) (no boneshield) which equals 123.3% move speed

on PTR i have 28.21% haste (10579 rating) (no boneshield) (same gear) which equals 121.2% move speed so it doesnt screw aggramars too hard

[Deleted]

Remember that they're also increasing the amount of stats on items (not just secondary items, although those are increasing even more) to account for this nerf.

My problem is that the specc will likely feel more clunky once again, its not about *power* its about fun. Right now im at ~36% haste with Food and without boneshield and i still have downtimes. So nerfing the rp generation per rune via heatbreaker and rapid decomp and then nerfing the rune generation via haste on top is pretty bad at glance.

Goal 3: Don’t lower player power. This is a key part of the overall strategy that isn’t yet complete. Right now, on the PTR, player power is definitely down a few percent compared to live. The next build will have changes that increase the total amount of stats given by all items above level 800 to account for this gap, such that the overall power of your equipped items should be about the same (if not slightly higher) than it is currently in 7.1.

As you might expect, these changes will affect some classes more strongly than others. More overall character power will come from your primary stats than it did before, so all of your abilities will hit harder, even if they crit less or happen less frequently. Additionally, as we continue tuning for Patch 7.1.5, we’ll make adjustments as necessary on a spec-by-spec basis.

this might be true for dps. my goal is to generate as much rp as possible. more Stamina or strength wont help me. heartstrike for e.g. will still hit like a wet noodle. and the healing coming from direct damage can never compete with DS healing in hard content.

tl; dr
giev haste, screw the rest.

[BadguyNotBadGuy]

Bone Shield stacks only gets consumed by melee swings.

Thank you very much man

[Grishnok]

thoughts on vampiric blood getting buffed like mad? I mean ill take it but it wasnt even necessary on that skill. I dont get this dev team man at all.

[Deleted]

Not needed at all. With VB active we were already unkillable.

They changed stats on the Tier sets. 3 out 6 items (Hands, head, cloak) now have versa / mastery, feels bad man. legs, chest and shoulders haste / crit. since we want to have the legendary shoulders we have to take 2 versa mastery items. yeah 8(

[bogate]

thoughts on vampiric blood getting buffed like mad? I mean ill take it but it wasnt even necessary on that skill. I dont get this dev team man at all.

what buff are you talking about?

[Deleted]

now vampiric blood work on absorb too not only healing

[Casterbridge]

Blood Dks are going to be all but unkillable with vampric blood up, between that, the rune tap, and bone shield charges, I mean blood dks seem like they are going to be ridiculously strong, with the only real weakness being mobility, which honestly might be a fair exchange.

[TrueAbstract]

now vampiric blood work on absorb too not only healing

Isn't it only a tooltip fix?

[Casterbridge]

Isn't it only a tooltip fix?

I don't think so? Honestly can't even keep track of these things anymore lol.

[Deleted]

Blood Shields did not increase with VB up and they dont scale with the higher DS heal while VB is up, should be a buff and not a tooltip update.

[bhcmoney]

The latest change doesn't seem to be all that amazing. If you were dying with VB up you were already doing something wrong or your healers were majorly lacking. Buffing a talent that is already the pinnacle of the Blood DK and a lot of our spec revolves around this ability.

Definitely no complaints, a buff is a buff just doesn't seem necessary to buff a talent that essentially already makes you unkillable when there are other aspects of the spec that could be tweaked to improve the overall feel and playstyle

The biggest thing I see with this change is really using VB now as a DR for extremely hard hitting abilities. Tying it to other abilities like a life cocoon, or disc shields, or the last second DS before a hard hitting ability.

[Casterbridge]

The latest change doesn't seem to be all that amazing. If you were dying with VB up you were already doing something wrong or your healers were majorly lacking. Buffing a talent that is already the pinnacle of the Blood DK and a lot of our spec revolves around this ability.

Definitely no complaints, a buff is a buff just doesn't seem necessary to buff a talent that essentially already makes you unkillable when there are other aspects of the spec that could be tweaked to improve the overall feel and playstyle

The biggest thing I see with this change is really using VB now as a DR for extremely hard hitting abilities. Tying it to other abilities like a life cocoon, or disc shields, or the last second DS before a hard hitting ability.

I agree that VB is an odd choice to buff, it certainly wasn't weak before, but it could lead to some interesting scenarios.

I'm curious what would happen you start throwing in RT, BM and even IBF in the mix, that seems like a decent amount of mitigation.

[Deleted]

No guys you've got it all wrong. They buff Vampiric to insanity so Dk's are strong. Then they can't figure out why Dk's are strong so they nerf every ability besides Vampiric then just before the patch rolls out they nerf Vampiric and leave all the other abilities in their still nerfed state.

[Deleted]

Sounds familiar :X

[Deleted]

That's the Death Knight class fantasy.

[Philondra]

Why is everyone saying the VB got buffed like mad? What the buff almost certainly means is the external buffs like PW:S and on-use trinkets are now affected by VB.

It almost certainly won't improve the strength of our Blood Shields (because that would be double-dipping, which doesn't happen with things like Disc priest atonement) or Bone Shields.

[gegalfo]

Why is everyone saying the VB got buffed like mad? What the buff almost certainly means is the external buffs like PW:S and on-use trinkets are now affected by VB.

It almost certainly won't improve the strength of our Blood Shields (because that would be double-dipping, which doesn't happen with things like Disc priest atonement) or Bone Shields.

it does affect blood shield, on live i got 117k~ shield no vamp blood, 150k~ with vamp blood

on ptr i got 111k~ no vamp blood, 222k~ with vamp blood


doesnt seem to work with umbillicus eternus though

[Deleted]

Why is everyone saying the VB got buffed like mad? What the buff almost certainly means is the external buffs like PW:S and on-use trinkets are now affected by VB.

It almost certainly won't improve the strength of our Blood Shields (because that would be double-dipping, which doesn't happen with things like Disc priest atonement) or Bone Shields.

Blood Shield is currently unaffected by VB, there would be no double dipping. For e.g.: you have 20% Mastery, VB active and heal yourself with DS for 1.450.000.

Blood Shield is calculated from the base amount healed. so Blood shield will be:

1.450.000 / 145 * 100 = 1.000.000 -> Base amount without the 45% buff from VB.
-> 1.000.000 * 20% = 200k Blood Shield.

The interesting question is if all of our absorbs, especially Boneshield will now be affected by VB. Maybe someone on the PTR could test this.

[Tehr]

Man, all Blizzard needs to do to make Mastery and Crit viable secondary stats for BDKs is make Mastery increase all of our self-applied absorbs (in addition or, or instead of Blood Shield) and add back in Runic Strikes for Crit (the thing with Multistrikes where you got 10 RP per multistrike, or 20 if you got a double multistrike hit).

If Mastery increased all self-absorbs it would scale the effect of Bone Shield, Umbilicus Eternus, and absorb trinkets (which are less effective for us because we cannot mitigate the damage and increase the effectiveness of said trinkets like other tanks can), and wouldn't need to be buffed in any other way. It would still have mediocre effect per point of Mastery, but it would scale well with damage taken as well as damage dealt.

If Crit gave RP for every critical auto attack, we would be able to care about crit more than a damage stat, even though it would only indirectly buff our damage/mitigation. One "negative" side of it is that it would also scale with Haste, which would place even more value on Haste than before.

Now in regards to other changes; I think they should remove IBF from Blood and make the 25% Rune Tap a baseline ability for us, and then replace its spot in the talent tree with a much improved version that 1) reduced damage taken by 40% (same on PTR), 2) counted as an absorb (so it didn't reduce our self-healing), and 3) didn't cost a rune. If that is too weak (considering its competition in Foul Bulwark, and considering you would have the base ability without the talent), then you can simply increase the duration 5-6 seconds as well.

ALSO, I am disappointed in Blizzard regarding the changes to Rapid Decomposition. Currently, there is an element of min-maxing with RD since you can sit on runes and wait for a Crimson Scourge proc, then dump runes into DnD and get quite a bit more RP than if you just used DnD on CD (regardless of Crimson Scourge procs and regardless of how many runes you had). With the changes to RD now, they're removing this min-maxing and instead turning DnD into Paladin's Consecration; use it on CD, no arguments. I think it would be much better to remove the damage portion of the talent (DnD ticks faster), write the 1 RP/s into our basic kit (maybe at 1 RP/3s instead) and leave the 15% extra RP in. Min-maxing is very important to this game, and I can't believe that such an effective design is being changed to be a no-brain "choice".