Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[Deleted]

Tojara is absolutely right. I'm currently 6/10 mythic and the last boss I killed (Tichondrius) really started to remind me again how weak tank we are. A monk tank for example could take 2x blood waves (Each wave gives u 50% more physical dmg taken debuff) and later in the fight 2 blood waves + 2 nightfallen adds. Meanwhile I was having hard time tanking 1 blood wave with major CDs (vamp blood included) and the boss hits like a truck too (although I had also debuff from soaking ticking like 1mil per second).
So when the boss is constantly doing millions of dmg we are to be honest quite shit tanks, death strike healing is weak ish. Dunno how it would be with the legendary shoulders. Krosus mythic was very easy because we aren't constantly taking huge amounts of dmg, we can pool resources into those parts. But there isn't really any other high damage fight where we are good. It's so easy to get almost 1 shot on this spec. Dmg wise we are definitely at bottom and can't really customize gameplay like other tanks to do high dps.
Monk was a good tank and got buffed to insanely op in survival & to really high dps. I guess the shitty players complained enough about the spec.
I just wish there was something for us to be good at. Can't even AMS almost any debuffs. Only one so far been comet impact on Augur. No real Aoe grip benefit too.

[Tojara]

Again. If you HAVE to critisize something, you will find something.

I can EASILY think of atleast 5 bosses, that will make it easier for the raid as blood(as like the best tank spec out of all). Your post says more of your experience:

Adds:
Skorp(mass grip).
Ticho(mass grip).
Kronos(mass grip).

Sqeezing mechanics with AMZ(we talk about completly ignoring crucial mechanics - I don't know what else should scream after a blood DK):
Augur(complete removal of dots you must place).
Spell Blade(massive reduction in all that magic dots/spell)
Elisande(the balls you can walk throu with zero damage taken).

Even me who have a blood as off-spec, can finish 15+ with zero itemization.

I think blood is doing just fine, just as they always been doing. Its all about this dumb casual community(i don't know what the hell you or other people are expecting).

What.

I mean I'm 3/10 mythic right now and working on our 4th boss (Tich) and the only thing mildly useful is mass grip during the bat phase on Tichondrius. It's not needed but it certainly helps. You know what's better than that? Being able to stack up multiple sets of adds to efficiently AoE them down at once, something blood DK can't reliable do.

This isn't about fucking Mythic+, I did my 15 as blood months ago fairly easily with whatever dropped from EN and M+ lol.

We don't have AMZ, I assume due to language barriers you meant AMS? Unless a mechanic is INCREDIBLY important, AMS is inferior in almost every way right now to LITERALLY every other tanks form of magic DR. Most bosses in NH or EN had bursts of magic damage that occur far more often than once a minute, to which we really have no answer too (I realize rune tap is strong, and in many cases we should be taking it). AMS cheesing mechanics that are important really don't exist. I mean in EN we could AMS application of Il'gynoth blood explosions, but that's not necessarily important. Not sure how any of the mechanics you listed are super important or relevant, sans resetting your debuffs on Star Augur or eating one of the debuffs (still things that don't necessarily make the encounter LOADS easier)? Even then if others can't do it, it's not like it really matters. You realize the reason Star Augur (on Mythic anyways) isn't because of tanks, or tank damage taken right?

Your experience just doesn't really translate to what I've experienced at all. If blood DKs made half of the encounters trivial or were indeed the best tank for them, you would see that reflected in guilds who are 7/10 running blood DKs, but you don't see that at all. Sure a few of them are there, but you're still seeing pretty high representation of other tanks (sans DH).

I think you just 'feel' blood would be the best on those encounters when in reality they aren't. Having mass grip on Mythic Skorp really doesn't matter considering they come out every 30 seconds, and while you can, you realistically aren't going to purposely gather a boatload of scorpions on Mythic. It's also the easiest boss in the instance lol.

I think you vastly overestimate how good AMS is because blood is your off spec. Having a giant ~2.5 million absorb every minute isn't really that useful. Sure it's useful for you when playing a DPS DK. What's more useful? Being a bear and being able to keep 30% magic DR up for eternity if you want, or being a monk and having half your stagger (which is passive) contribute to magic DR as well. Hope you realize that most of your examples prove exactly my point, any other tank can still do those better, lol.

Finally blood is okay, just like I stated, it's just simply not the best at anything. Being able to mass grip the bats twice during Mythic Tichondrius is useful, but that still doesn't make you the best tank for that fight. It would be much more useful to have a bear and monk for a bunch of other reasons. Not only can these tanks soak seeker swarms easier (blood can to, just not to the degree these tanks can), but bears take less damage from bloods, and monks take virtually zero damage from bloods. You know what that equates too? The possibility of face tanking 6 bloods (and 2 elves later) as a monk, with little damage taken, all of which increases raid damage as you can efficiently AoE down 2 sets of adds instead of 1.

I don't think anybody here, nor myself am saying blood DKs can't be used, it's the fact that when you compare us to other tanks there is absolutely nothing we excel at. You don't do amazing damage, your utility with grips isn't necessary, AMS isn't going to cheese anything, constant magic damage or burst magic damage is better handled by other tanks, and finally we are no where near the best at taking a lot of physical damage. Lets not forget we still have the worst mobility, which is kind of beating a dead horse that doesn't need to be beaten anymore.

The problem, again with blood is that they seem hesitant to make us good at any stand out aspect. They made some huge QoL changes in 7.1.5, buffed a couple talents that were bad to usefulness, but also at the same time curbed that by nerfing some of the talents we always took. Not sure why they nerfed the damage aspect of rapid decomposition for example when we weren't doing amazing damage anyways? With the current design blood is only going to be needed if mass grip is absolutely essential, or we can cheese something that no other tank can realistically do every minute with AMS (which would allow us to solo tank an encounter). So far in 20 raid encounters none of those things have occured. I just think it's bad design to hope for encounters like those to pop up, it's nice when they do.. but here we wait I guess?

[Deleted]

...

Just dont bother answering Strifeload. He has absolutley no idea how blood is working and is shitposting / trolling all over this Forum.

We just started progressing Krosus. My warri co-tank suffers a lot due to the high Magic damage and he cant block the slam

But besides that i agree with you and jouman, had no Problems so far with the first 3 boses but everything is easier if you just bring a druid or Monk.

Tojara is absolutely right. I'm currently 6/10 mythic and the last boss I killed (Tichondrius) really started to remind me again how weak tank we are. A monk tank for example could take 2x blood waves (Each wave gives u 50% more physical dmg taken debuff) and later in the fight 2 blood waves + 2 nightfallen adds. Meanwhile I was having hard time tanking 1 blood wave with major CDs (vamp blood included) and the boss hits like a truck too (although I had also debuff from soaking ticking like 1mil per second).
So when the boss is constantly doing millions of dmg we are to be honest quite shit tanks, death strike healing is weak ish. Dunno how it would be with the legendary shoulders. Krosus mythic was very easy because we aren't constantly taking huge amounts of dmg, we can pool resources into those parts. But there isn't really any other high damage fight where we are good. It's so easy to get almost 1 shot on this spec. Dmg wise we are definitely at bottom and can't really customize gameplay like other tanks to do high dps.
Monk was a good tank and got buffed to insanely op in survival & to really high dps. I guess the shitty players complained enough about the spec.
I just wish there was something for us to be good at. Can't even AMS almost any debuffs. Only one so far been comet impact on Augur. No real Aoe grip benefit too.

Maybe SD is an Option for the 50% physical debuff?

[Barael]

Anyone else having/had trouble with heroic Botanist? I haven't been smacked around like Botanist P3 in any Legion raid yet (no experience about M Guarm/Helya). Once I run out of cooldowns when having to tank Naturalist+Arcanist in P3, I just die. Maybe it's healers dropping the ball repeatedly but it's kinda telling that we finally got the kill on an attempt when I died particularly early in P3 (and got ressed) and our Guardian tank had all three bosses except when I taunted Arcanist off him for the rest of attempt.

TL;DR: I die when I try to tank Arcanist+Naturalist without cooldowns, our Guardian druid can tank Arcanist+Naturalist+Solarist (apparently) without cooldowns as long as I take Arcanist off him to drop Resonant Strikes.

[xpire]

Anyone else having/had trouble with heroic Botanist? I haven't been smacked around like Botanist P3 in any Legion raid yet (no experience about M Guarm/Helya). Once I run out of cooldowns when having to tank Naturalist+Arcanist in P3, I just die. Maybe it's healers dropping the ball repeatedly but it's kinda telling that we finally got the kill on an attempt when I died particularly early in P3 (and got ressed) and our Guardian tank had all three bosses except when I taunted Arcanist off him for the rest of attempt.

TL;DR: I die when I try to tank Arcanist+Naturalist without cooldowns, our Guardian druid can tank Arcanist+Naturalist+Solarist (apparently) without cooldowns as long as I take Arcanist off him to drop Resonant Strikes.

This is where linking logs is actually helpful (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...mmary&fight=16) For one you decided to blow all your RP before your death on Bonestorm while being sat at ~45% health instead of death striking? A single Death strike would have healed you for more than Bonestorm, especially given all the damage you had taken in that window of time. You could also have used Blood mirror instead of Bonestorm. You died to an overkill of 208660, proper use of death strike and blood mirror would easily have saved you from that. Also not seeing IBF used at all that attempt.

--
referencing the actual kill like Schlars pointed out below:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...false%24195181

Look at your bone shield uptime on the graph, then look at where and how you're spending your GCDs/runes(casts) and opting to cast bonestorm instead of DS with no shield up. In fact, I'm almost willing to bet blood mirror would have outperformed bonestorm in terms of "healing" AND damage done.

[Deleted]

Anyone else having/had trouble with heroic Botanist? I haven't been smacked around like Botanist P3 in any Legion raid yet (no experience about M Guarm/Helya). Once I run out of cooldowns when having to tank Naturalist+Arcanist in P3, I just die. Maybe it's healers dropping the ball repeatedly but it's kinda telling that we finally got the kill on an attempt when I died particularly early in P3 (and got ressed) and our Guardian tank had all three bosses except when I taunted Arcanist off him for the rest of attempt.

TL;DR: I die when I try to tank Arcanist+Naturalist without cooldowns, our Guardian druid can tank Arcanist+Naturalist+Solarist (apparently) without cooldowns as long as I take Arcanist off him to drop Resonant Strikes.

On top of what xpire said, you had no Boneshield up when you died.

00:05:31.840 Barael's Bone Shield (1) fades from Barael

00:05:35.864 Barael's Bone Shield fades from Barael

00:05:51.707 Barael gains Bone Shield from Barael

You died ad 5:38.

[Tojara]

The 50% physical debuff really isn't an issue. With decent CD coverage you can survive it just fine. I'd be worried about taking SD because the 3 blobs would eat my boneshield charges in seconds, and for a lot of strategies, you don't really want to kill the bloods immediately. You either allocate just enough DPS to kill them before the next set so you have more boss DPS, or you get 6 and just mass AoE them down.

[Barael]

A single Death strike would have healed you for more than Bonestorm, especially given all the damage you had taken in that window of time. You could also have used Blood mirror instead of Bonestorm. You died to an overkill of 208660, proper use of death strike and blood mirror would easily have saved you from that. Also not seeing IBF used at all that attempt.

Yeah I seem to have overestimated Bonestorm healing by quite a bit. It's just so much better on majority of NH fights that I haven't bothered to go and change to BM between bosses so far; gotta stop being so lazy I guess. I can't remember what exactly happened with IBF but generally I tried to avoid blowing two long cds during one Arcanist tank turn so I'd have something going into the next one.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...false%24195181

Look at your bone shield uptime on the graph, then look at where and how you're spending your GCDs/runes(casts) and opting to cast bonestorm instead of DS with no shield up. In fact, I'm almost willing to bet blood mirror would have outperformed bonestorm in terms of "healing" AND damage done.

Blood Shield running out must be why I died so early/suddenly into P3 on the kill. Didn't seem to be an issue on the earlier wipes so I'll chalk that up as a freak mishap/brainfart.

Bad talent choices (and careless usage) aside, does Botanist really not seem somewhat out of line to anyone else?

[Deleted]

Botanist seems quite a heavy dmg fight on mythic, at times I find myself at very low hp. But it has been manageable with my lege belt atleast, want to have vamp blood up especially when orbs are exploding. Overall its manageable when taunts are made at normal stacks, but we are spiky there. 7.1.5 was promising at first but as I can now see it offered so little.

[tanksin the enhance shamy]

so do people actually choose purgatory? i find it very rarely saves me if i dont have vamperic up, generally i go blood mirror as a defensive

[Tojara]

I use purgatory on Heroic Gul'dan, and presumably I'd likely use it on Mythic Gul'dan once I eye what the numbers are a bit more. I solo every single 100 energy fel scythes and my own own bonds. Occasionally I take an external, but I take purgatory as insurance. Gul'dan has a terrible habit of getting to 100 energy and casting abilities before actually using his scythe, which has unfortunate side effects with rune taps really short duration.

It's really not as bad as it once was. For one it for sure allows you to live for 3 seconds now. Finally, while it has a longer CD, if you actually die the CD resets when/if you get combat rezzed.

[Deleted]

I also use purgatory, its occasionally but very usefull.

[Deleted]

Haven't used purgatory in any legion encounter/dungeon yet

[Tehr]

Yeah I seem to have overestimated Bonestorm healing by quite a bit. It's just so much better on majority of NH fights that I haven't bothered to go and change to BM between bosses so far; gotta stop being so lazy I guess. I can't remember what exactly happened with IBF but generally I tried to avoid blowing two long cds during one Arcanist tank turn so I'd have something going into the next one.

Blood Shield running out must be why I died so early/suddenly into P3 on the kill. Didn't seem to be an issue on the earlier wipes so I'll chalk that up as a freak mishap/brainfart.

Bad talent choices (and careless usage) aside, does Botanist really not seem somewhat out of line to anyone else?

Botanist is fine for me. I hate to sound rude by saying this, but to be completely honest with you, you're playing BDK somewhat poorly.

• You're using Marrowrend at 9 and 10 stacks at some points during your kill
  
• You're letting Bone Shield fall off during periods of high damage
• You have a 77% uptime on Ossuary
• You used Vampiric Blood 4 times in a 6:21 fight (I used it 7 times during a 4:55 fight)
• You had a Sac available when you died
• You're overlapping your CDs, which means you won't have any CDs when you need them

so do people actually choose purgatory? i find it very rarely saves me if i dont have vamperic up, generally i go blood mirror as a defensive

It's a pretty poor ability. Encounters are designed in such a way that Purgatory should only ever pop if you make a catastrophic mistake or your healers die/outrange you, and you can never plan for those scenarios. In almost all circumstances you'd be better off researching mechanics timings more in-depth and then properly mitigating when they arise.

[figuratively]

It's a pretty poor ability. Encounters are designed in such a way that Purgatory should only ever pop if you make a catastrophic mistake or your healers die/outrange you, and you can never plan for those scenarios. In almost all circumstances you'd be better off researching mechanics timings more in-depth and then properly mitigating when they arise.

In a highly efficient group, I'd agree. But we don't all fill our raid from top tier players. One of my healers, who is ordinarily very active and reliable, can sometimes lose his head under certain circumstances. He won't be replaced any time soon. I've started to account for this with Purgatory, unless the mechanics really lend themselves to other choices. Once everybody is more familiar with all the encounters, and learn to adjust, I'll pick something else.

[rykon1459918]

Hi guys

I'm not really sure if this is the right place to ask or not.
I'm a frost DK main, I barely ever tank due to my guild having 2 really good tanks, however one of them is taking a few weeks off and my guild has asked me to stand in to tank for the normal NH runs (we are a small guild so still working on progression in N-NH)
I have my blood artifact finished (1/20 in bonus 20 traits)
I'm looking for an idea our rough generic build and guide on how to blood tank.

I'm currently running 2/1/1/2/1/3/2 for talents.
My stats are roughly 30% crit 24% haste 27% mastery and 4% vers (all kitted out for frost)
I don't have any tanking legendaries or any of the generic legendaries (I got lucky with the frost belt and frost bracers)

I understand the basic things like:
not letting bone shields stacks drop off.
pooling RP and DS when your actually hurt.
Standing in your own DnD for extra RP

But I guess I'm nervous as I haven't actually tanked a raid since BC.
So any hints or tips or anything i should mix around in my spec would be awesome.

Again let me know if i'm barking up the wrong tree here.

[figuratively]

Switch to Blooddrinker over Heartbreaker. If you can boost your haste while ditching mastery without sacrificing (too much) item level, see if that's an option. (Yes, a lot of our tier gear is poorly itemized, yes it feels bad, man.)

Marrowrend at 6 stacks of Bone Shield. Avoid capping your RP. Sounds like you got the basics.

You'll have to keep an eye on your surroundings, with respect to where you have to be for specific mechanics and how to position mobs that don't require the melee to stand in bad things to keep attacking, or to run all over needlessly moving mobs. (That said, mob pathing can be stupid, and they'll move regardless.) Coordinate with your partner tank to know which role you're taking, and/or when taunt swaps are appropriate. (DBM will often warn you, but on things like Krosus for example, you don't need to wait until the other tank has 5 stacks, just until yours fall off.)

[rykon1459918]

Switch to Blooddrinker over Heartbreaker. If you can boost your haste while ditching mastery without sacrificing (too much) item level, see if that's an option. (Yes, a lot of our tier gear is poorly itemized, yes it feels bad, man.)

Marrowrend at 6 stacks of Bone Shield. Avoid capping your RP. Sounds like you got the basics.

You'll have to keep an eye on your surroundings, with respect to where you have to be for specific mechanics and how to position mobs that don't require the melee to stand in bad things to keep attacking, or to run all over needlessly moving mobs. (That said, mob pathing can be stupid, and they'll move regardless.) Coordinate with your partner tank to know which role you're taking, and/or when taunt swaps are appropriate. (DBM will often warn you, but on things like Krosus for example, you don't need to wait until the other tank has 5 stacks, just until yours fall off.)

Thanks heaps man, sorry for the noob-ish questions i'm just sweating a lot for this Thursday, don't want to let people down.
Should I be using Blooddrinker or cooldown or sort of use it as a method to stop my RP from capping?

[Raiz]

Actually, i'm pretty sure blooddrinker will make it worse when it comes to rp overcap against 1 target, but you shouldn't worry too much about it (if you play correctly you may not be overcapping anything). Why don't you try tanking a lot of heroics / mythics before going in raids ? The playstyle is exactly the same with just a few more CDs for defensive purposes (thinking about icebound fortitude, more uptime of VB, dancing rune weapon, consumption which is better used against multiple ennemies, etc). Hell myself I still have troubles using everything at the right time, so I just use them whenever they're off CDs.

[Llarold]

Thanks heaps man, sorry for the noob-ish questions i'm just sweating a lot for this Thursday, don't want to let people down.
Should I be using Blooddrinker or cooldown or sort of use it as a method to stop my RP from capping?

You will see better results if you wait for Fallen Crusader to be up before casting Blooddrinker, but on cooldown works well enough.