Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[Raiz]

I quit playing the dh tank aswell. Boring af. DK's tanks are really great for solo, be it lfr, group, m+ anything. You have 2 differents dps spec that are close enough dps-wise and a tank that can self sustain by quite a lot (don't be surprised if healers don't like us though, because I feel like DKs tank are likely to be the most spiky).

I have 4 tanks : DK, BrM, Warrior and DH in specific order for the most fun. But I'm probably biased. Tried pala, but couldn't really like it. I guess it has something to do with blizz and their love to the FOTM classes ? I'll never know.

One thing for sure though is that 20 ilvl make a lot of difference. You should probably redo your class quests to be sure to be able to get at least 3 relics for your paladin. Your DPS will definitely increase.
I don't have a paladin @ lvl 110, but for what it's worth, sco says that paladins are currently ranked very high, just behind druid while DKs are ranked last. But they're all close together really.

In the end, pick the one you're having the most fun with. I picked DK because it's simply my main and I know a lot about this class, and monk because it's a very dynamic one. Warrior with the current devastator's talent can do a lot of damage aswell but they suck at self sustain and if I recall correctly, their ignore pain doesn't scale well the further you go up in ilvl.

[Marrilaife]

I don't have a paladin @ lvl 110, but for what it's worth, sco says that paladins are currently ranked very high, just behind druid while DKs are ranked last. But they're all close together really.

What he said was Druids are best, followed by Monks then Paladins, but that's for mythic progression raiding. It's mostly measured by how much pounding a tank can take without dying (druids and monks are really good at that) and if they're able to cheese some mechanics (monks and paladins are fairly good at that).

If you're playing casual content, or dungeons mainly, could be that completely different class would be best for you because some strengths that are great for raiding aren't that necessary for other content, while some cool tricks you can use in dungeons or solo are useless while raiding. For example I think self-healing tanks are great for solo (DK, DH, Paladin), but in hardcore raiding it's better to have steady mitigation like druid or monk and let the healing be covered by your healers.

Things like mass grip is really great for dungeons, but in Legion we never had a raid fight where you'd say "I really want a blood DK here for mass grip", contrary to HFC raid that had at least 2 of these bosses.

[tanksin the enhance shamy]

so is the change to the artifact traits gonna be a buff? 10% dmg isnt bad at all

[Cobat]

There's a new animation for blood boil on the PTR right now. It feels....extreme. Maybe that's just me.

Part of me likes how visually explosive it is, but at the same time, it feels like a lot for a move that's basically just our filler spell lol
There was also an update to death and decay its area of effect very clear and noticeable; overall, I like the changes so far

[Marrilaife]

so is the change to the artifact traits gonna be a buff? 10% dmg isnt bad at all

I wouldn't read too much into it, Blizzard said something along the lines "during the questline to unlock your new traits you'll be refunded all the AP for the points beyond 35 empowering your artifact in the process", I presume this is some datamined part of that empowerment, basically baking in the 35-54 traits. Or rather the extras you get from mouse over your artifact level and you'll see "stamina and damage increased by x per trait, artifact knowledge level blah blah". Kinda everyone gets it. Those that don't yet I would count as a datamining error.

[Xeoshades]

Any way to show off this animation?

[Deleted]

so is the change to the artifact traits gonna be a buff? 10% dmg isnt bad at all

As Marrilaife said, this is for the 35-54th traits. Right now you get 29% armor, 10% Dmg and 15% Stamina for These traits. So we get less armor and more Stamina, damage is the same.

- - - Updated - - -

There's a new animation for blood boil on the PTR right now. It feels....extreme. Maybe that's just me.

Part of me likes how visually explosive it is, but at the same time, it feels like a lot for a move that's basically just our filler spell lol
There was also an update to death and decay its area of effect very clear and noticeable; overall, I like the changes so far

Have you tested how long the 20% leech buff from consumption or the increased max hp from overhealing are active?

[tanksin the enhance shamy]

i knew it was replacing it though i didnt realize we gained dmg bonus on live, thought we only got armor and health

[Deleted]

i knew it was replacing it though i didnt realize we gained dmg bonus on live, thought we only got armor and health

Funny note:
While every tank spec gets the 10% dmg, armor and 25% Stamina. DKs are the only ones that dont get ANY dmg from the new traits. Every other tank has at least one new trait which is a dps increase.

I really hope we will see some buffs to our dmg, if not we fall even more behind

[Atharaxie]

Hi,
I'm the lucky owner of 4 legendaries in the form of Bracers, Waist, Cloak and Sephuz's Ring.
I use Sephuz and Waist in M+ except during necrotic week when i take Cloak.
Raid wise, I only do NM/HM with Bracers and Waist.

Do you think there is fight where Cloak would be better (Star Augur maybe) ? Same thing for Sephuz, is there fight with enough interrupt to make use of it ?

[Deleted]

Hi,
I'm the lucky owner of 4 legendaries in the form of Bracers, Waist, Cloak and Sephuz's Ring.
I use Sephuz and Waist in M+ except during necrotic week when i take Cloak.
Raid wise, I only do NM/HM with Bracers and Waist.

Do you think there is fight where Cloak would be better (Star Augur maybe) ? Same thing for Sephuz, is there fight with enough interrupt to make use of it ?

Take Bracers over Belt for m+.

On Star Augur only the Impacts and melee hits from add in p4 are physical dmg, everything else is Magic dmg. So while you are "tanking" the Boss, you will have 100% Bloodshield uptime and therefore 25% leech via trait all the time, so you dont need the cloak.

More DS and higher VB uptime will always beat cloak. Only Encounter where you should be able to proc Sephuz on CD should be the Skorpyron. I would stick with belt/bracers for every Boss. Besides the shoulders, it doesnt get much better.

[Atharaxie]

Thanks a lot

[Snuffleupagus]

Take Bracers over Belt for m+.

Why?

Having that much VB uptime is ungodly.

[Deleted]

Why?

Having that much VB uptime is ungodly.

More DS > higher VB uptime. Also bracers is more deeps than belt.

[Tojara]

I have 7 legendary items, and pretty much run all of my guilds 12-18 every week. Available to me are bracers, belt, tank trinket, DPS trinket, blood ring, sephuz and prydaz.

Until I got the trinket I pretty much always used the belt and bracer combo, as there really wasn't a better combination at the time. The thing that sucks about both the items is they are itemized really poorly, and the belt especially offers nothing in regards to DPS. Lana'thels is actually good on two different fronts, and is also itemized pretty well.

Once I got the trinket I pretty much use bracers and the trinket for reasons listed above. Bracers give damage/healing through extra death strikes, and lower your VB CD with red thirst. Honestly the belt is still really good, but aside from a couple instances I've learned to live without it, and truthfully it doesn't reduce the CD by a massive amount in a lot of normal circumstances. I keep it handy in case I could really use the extra 2-3 VB it would offer me over an encounter, but truthfully if I can just pop them on CD without really thinking about it, then tank damage probably isn't an issue.

I kinda fucked up and got the DPS trinket as my 7th legendary because I didn't expect to get my 7th one 6 days after I got my 6th one. So a big oops there as I was still fishing for the shoulders. Honestly what I do in M+ is use the DPS trinket on big pulls/trash, and use the tanking trinket on bosses. You don't need to, nor should you, but if you aren't in danger with the tanking trinket you can always pop it at the tail end of your VB to get a giant shield. Said shield also blows up for a massive amount and will do more damage to 1-2 targets than you would be getting from using the DPS trinket. I use rune tap on Mythic Krosus so my health could be higher, but it's nearly a 2 million damage nuke every 75 seconds if you use the trinket at the end of VB (as it scales with health).

[Deleted]

Why RT for Krosus? The Slam does not hit that hard, ~70% of the damage we take is from the dot. It really hurts when sometimes it reaches a 5th stack.

[Spryte]

I have 7 legendary items, and pretty much run all of my guilds 12-18 every week. Available to me are bracers, belt, tank trinket, DPS trinket, blood ring, sephuz and prydaz.

Until I got the trinket I pretty much always used the belt and bracer combo, as there really wasn't a better combination at the time. The thing that sucks about both the items is they are itemized really poorly, and the belt especially offers nothing in regards to DPS. Lana'thels is actually good on two different fronts, and is also itemized pretty well.

Once I got the trinket I pretty much use bracers and the trinket for reasons listed above. Bracers give damage/healing through extra death strikes, and lower your VB CD with red thirst. Honestly the belt is still really good, but aside from a couple instances I've learned to live without it, and truthfully it doesn't reduce the CD by a massive amount in a lot of normal circumstances. I keep it handy in case I could really use the extra 2-3 VB it would offer me over an encounter, but truthfully if I can just pop them on CD without really thinking about it, then tank damage probably isn't an issue.

I kinda fucked up and got the DPS trinket as my 7th legendary because I didn't expect to get my 7th one 6 days after I got my 6th one. So a big oops there as I was still fishing for the shoulders. Honestly what I do in M+ is use the DPS trinket on big pulls/trash, and use the tanking trinket on bosses. You don't need to, nor should you, but if you aren't in danger with the tanking trinket you can always pop it at the tail end of your VB to get a giant shield. Said shield also blows up for a massive amount and will do more damage to 1-2 targets than you would be getting from using the DPS trinket. I use rune tap on Mythic Krosus so my health could be higher, but it's nearly a 2 million damage nuke every 75 seconds if you use the trinket at the end of VB (as it scales with health).

If the belt and bracers had good stats on them, they would be too op

Also in regards to legendaries, I've got the Belt and Bracers (Ring and Legs too but I dont use them, except for the ring during necrotic instead of the Bracers). Ive been in Frost loot spec since 7.1.5 trying to get the DPS trinket, but all I've gotten so far is the Rune Weapon ring (which I also kinda wanted so I could play breath), but I've been debating going back to Blood loot for the shoulders or the Tank trinket. 1st world problems.

[Tojara]

Mostly because the health really isn't relevant either? We only did two hours of attempts on it and nearly killed it (we did Tichondrius first, not Krosus) and compared to Tichondrius tank damage, at least for blood DKs the boss really didn't seem to ever be a threat to me.

RT probably doesn't matter, but it's what I rolled with after doing Tichondrius and I wasn't going to change it unless it was a problem. After half a night on it, I don't think it particularly mattered what talent I took. The only really dangerous damage on the boss was when I was tanking him near the end, soaking a slam, and the ball hitting in the back left/back right corner all in quick succession.

Outside of that the biggest use I found for it was using it while running with the dot on myself during a bridge collapse.

I'm not really arguing for one or the other, simply that it doesn't seem to matter either way. Blood DKs really don't have problems tanking Krosus.

[Deleted]

If the belt and bracers had good stats on them, they would be too op

The shoulders have haste/vers and are better than bracers and belt :O

...

kk, sounded like you run with RT on purpose cuz you mentioned it. FB should be better because dmg is pretty consistant and ramps up with dot stacks. esp if i had the trinket i would run with it. but never lucky :O

[Tojara]

I mean I'll probably do foul bulwark regardless, I just never had any problems with it. I honestly figured that RT would be helpful for slams, except even when I took slams without RT it barely did any damage to me. Like mentioned, RT only really felt useful when running from bridge collapse with a lot of dots.

I can understand why warriors don't like this boss, but the damage patterns on this boss, and how the damage goes out is actually favorable to DKs (although I'd still wager we aren't the best tank on this boss), but it doesn't feel like you're a burden on the raid.

Similarly at the end of Tichondrius when you're ignoring adds and just burning the boss, I explode near the end of the 30 second period with the 50% physical damage taken debuff. Our druid on the other hand, granted he had CDs left because of how we do the boss, tanked everything including the boss for the next 20 seconds. Brewmasters are even worse, considering most guilds can do 6 bloods on the Brewmaster with their health barely moving at all. When we tried that with me, I exploded or had to use so many CDs that it would be a burden later in the fight.