Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[Philondra]

This has probably been discussed somewhere in the thread but I really don't want to go through 150 pages.

How is Death's March for Blood? I just got it (trying to get Unholy shoulders), and immediately realized on testing that it reduces DnD cooldown for Blood, not just Unholy.

I'm going to tank for my guild in ToS, and I was fortunate enough to get Shoulders and Bracers as my two Blood legendaries earlier in the expansion. Is Death's March better than Shackles? 10% DS damage and the synergy with Rapid Decomposition seems pretty awesome.

EDIT: Blood Discord discussion says Bracers >> Death's March, which makes sense based on the number of DS casts you get giving both more healing and more damage than what helm offers.

The problem with Death's March is that not only is D&D a 15s cooldown for us vs. 30s. for unholy, but we have a reset mechanic on it that procs relatively often. The best case scenario for Death's March is that you have a 50% higher uptime on D&D, but that's small beans compared to the RP return from the bracers for single target and the double Blood Plague damage from the chest for AOE.

[TwentyTwelve]

Item - Death Knight T20 Blood 2P Bonus Blood Boil grants you Gravewarden for 10 sec, increasing your Versatility by 2500.

Item - Death Knight T20 Blood 4P Bonus While Gravewarden is active, the cost of your Death Strike is reduced by 5 Runic Power.

Not quite sure what people are on about, but having an extra 2500 vers and 35 RP costing Death Strike (that returns 7-8 RP with Bracers) seems insanely good to me. Why on earth would you not want that?

I'm pretty sure when i last checked the 2 set wasn't gaurenteed on BB but was actually a proc but this changes everything, having control over the buff makes it definitely worth taking ofc.

As for BDK progression wise.. Still a bit worried for early progress but this is the best time to progress with a BDK i.m.o. Feel the strongest I have in a long while, our dmg is actually awesome now and as usual so is our healing.

[Snuffleupagus]

Are you talking about fights like Krosus or Star Augur? Druids still feel buttery smooth to me on physical fights (although once we lose T19 it'll be worse), although I can feel the squish on high magic damage fights.

I do agree that BDK is more fun, and I definitely feel strong on my DK, but I think Druid is and probably will be top 3 with T20.

All of them.

I get low on fights like Spellblade, but to be perfectly honest, I never felt in danger of dying.

I run the belt and legs, and the retarded uptime on VB coupled with only needing about two Death Strikes to top myself up from annihilate, I just find it more fun.

I watched Sco's video on Tank balance, and I have to say I agree for the most part. Druids are probably marginally better, but DK just feels like I'm in more control, especially with the right haste levels.

I also think our T20 + Concordance (which I have to admit, I don't have since I practically abandoned my DK midway through NH) is just going to be crazy good. Vers doesn't have diminishing returns, does it?

[Deleted]

Why does he focus so much on the proactive vs. reactive style of tanking? I don't see how it matters that much and I feel like he is overrating Guardian Druids and to lesser extent Brewmaster because of it (if BrM is too strong it probably has to do with Elusive Brawler). Also I think the difference in tank damage should be mentioned since Vengeance and the Prots do a lot more damage than Blood or a BrM not focusing on damage.

[VooDsXo]

Why does he focus so much on the proactive vs. reactive style of tanking? I don't see how it matters that much and I feel like he is overrating Guardian Druids and to lesser extent Brewmaster because of it (if BrM is too strong it probably has to do with Elusive Brawler). Also I think the difference in tank damage should be mentioned since Vengeance and Prot Warrior do a lot more damage than Blood or a BrM not focusing on damage.

DH is being nerfed already spirit bomb is absolutely overpowered in almost any form of situation.

[Tehr]

Why does he focus so much on the proactive vs. reactive style of tanking? I don't see how it matters that much and I feel like he is overrating Guardian Druids and to lesser extent Brewmaster because of it (if BrM is too strong it probably has to do with Elusive Brawler). Also I think the difference in tank damage should be mentioned since Vengeance and the Prots do a lot more damage than Blood or a BrM not focusing on damage.

Proactive tanking is innately better, since it's almost directly tied to damage smoothing, which is more reliable and easier on your healers. Reactive tanks generally tend to be spikier (thus more overhealing from healers, more of a strain on healer mana because they're using their flash heals on you, etc.), and burst damage is their bane (the only reason BDKs can deal with burst damage is because we can get 15mil health or a 40% DR). Additionally, mechanics that depend on damage taken are very hard to deal with (think Cenarius or Elerethe). Ideally, tanks would have both proactive and reactive elements (think Pally or Druid, the latter with T20), and you can see that when a class with access to only one of those styles is not drastically overtuned, it is the bottom of the barrel, the obvious example being the difference between Warrior (100% proactive, very overtuned) and DK (100% reactive, very undertuned) in Emerald Nightmare. Like I said, however, BDKs have a lot of tools at their disposal now to solve the problems of reactive tanking, so it's less of an issue now than it was in the past. Warriors, on the other hand, have very few reactive tools in their kit, and that - coupled with the fact that they can only reliably mitigate melee-attack-based hits - means that they're the weakest tank going into NH.

If your healers are used to healing a BDK (and realize that we only need healing when our RP bar is low), then a lot of the problems of reactive tanking are mitigated, but even in those scenarios a proactive tank will perform better than a reactive tank in almost every scenario assuming equal balancing.

As a side note, BrM's ideal damage rotation is almost the same as its ideal mitigation rotation with the changes to BoC. He usually does make a big deal about tank damage, but honestly the disparity is at an all-time low right now (thank god).

- - - Updated - - -

Probably because there is no cd on it and does a huge amount of damage lol.

Also because DHs have an artifact trait that makes Fiery Brand increase their Fire damage done by 40% at 4/4.

[Deleted]

Aside from the case of mechanics like Elerethe and Cenarius those seem like general tuning issues rather than design issues. If a tank can't do anything to recover and must be triaged by healers then the tank spec is probably just undertuned, not "too reactive". From my observations DPS and tank players often vastly overvalue reducing damage vs. recovering from damage (Icy Veins is a perfect example where even weak means of reducing damage like Guardian Affinity were praised and strong means of recovery like Leeching Poison were and still probably are trashed) while healers typically have a much more realistic view. For example almost no Resto Druid takes Stonebark and no Disc seems to use Clarity of Will much, even though they are proactive and bursty ways to reduce damage and protect the group from one-shots.

[Tehr]

No Druid takes Stonebark because Flourish is busted OP. I don't know much about Discipline except that I think they care more about raid recovery and less about individual shields, but take that with a grain of salt.

Reactive tanks can *usually* recover, but because our reactive mitigation is based on resources and health pool, we have a limit on how much and how quickly we can recover (which is based upon our resource cap). Plus, shields and external healing are more effective on proactive tanks. In the end, your preference is all that matters (especially since BDK is pretty strong atm), but objectively speaking proactive mitigation trumps reactive mitigation in almost every context except maybe when you have no external healing stream, which is extremely rare.

I'm not saying reactive mitigation is awful by any means, just that proactive mitigation has more benefits.

[hasslehoof]

I feel like Feverish Carapace might be a better choice compared to DMF. Ok it's a proc, but when it does it offers higher armour and damage returns, on top of giving more strenght.

it's a rppm trinket which can proc whilst you aren't even tanking.

it's shit.

[Saybel]

@Tehr kind of helps that we have basically the best defensive CD in the game (Vamp). I feel that Vamp generally mitigates all the problems of reactive tanking - every mechanic becomes a joke when it's up and usually not enough happens to you in the times inbetween Vamp to ever kill you - it's just about your healers understanding to not waste mana.

Personally I ask for heals when I have gaps in my resource gen. I'm RL anyway so it works fine for me.

[Deleted]

it's a rppm trinket which can proc whilst you aren't even tanking.

it's shit.

I haven't tested it myself, but it procs from damage taken, so I highly doubt it can proc while not tanking.

[Skjaldborg]

I haven't tested it myself, but it procs from damage taken, so I highly doubt it can proc while not tanking.

Every "chance on taking damage" trinket is significantly devalued by raid-wide damage. I think every boss in Tomb does something that damages the whole raid, which could uselessly activate the trinket.

[Deleted]

Every "chance on taking damage" trinket is significantly devalued by raid-wide damage. I think every boss in Tomb does something that damages the whole raid, which could uselessly activate the trinket.

My bad then. I was under the impression it would proc with direct damage (like Bone Shield after the fix).

[Deleted]

Every "chance on taking damage" trinket is significantly devalued by raid-wide damage. I think every boss in Tomb does something that damages the whole raid, which could uselessly activate the trinket.

Depends. The Goblet of Nightmarish Ichor from EN (versatility proc on dmg taken) actually only procced from melee swings and did not care about raid wide dmg. If you were using Ichor as Offtank on guarm you had zero procs over the fight.

Havent tested any of the new trinkets, but if they work like ichor it should be ok.

[Tehr]

So N Kil'jaeden is melee'ing for a casual 4-5m with no Felclaws stacks. We did two full clears and I felt it a lot more on my DK than on my Monk. That boss hurts.

[Tojara]

I just pressed VB and it didn't really matter. Our bear druid died (not entirely his fault), and I proceeded to tank the next set up to 10 stacks (it caps at 10 stacks by the way). He refreshed the 10 stack once and thankfully transitioned soon after.

He hits really hard.

DKs feel incredibly strong throughout the entire instance. I did everything sans Heroic KJ yesterday and nothing was that threatening. The legendary tanking trinket is incredibly strong overall in this instance (well, half of the encounters) and essentially times out to work as a giant mitigation tool on every second giant magic attack on the bosses I'd say it's strong. For instance I always stood in during Avatars proximity based nuke, using VB and trinket for the first one and using VB and AMS for the next one. Health literally doesn't move.

I don't have the new ring yet, but the ring will be incredibly valuable on ability like Felclaws, numerous abilities on Avatar and Maidens.

Our bear druid picked up the stat stick trinket with the armor proc (that does damage when attacked), and while it will take a bit longer to figure out how well it fairs defensively, it's secondary function of damage (aside from the passive strength/agility) accounted for something like 1% of his damage lol. It might be better on encounters with a lot of adds, but only a couple of those exist in ToS.

[leorana]

just pointing the obvious:

we are great on demonic inquisition, especially with the legendery cape. ousr self heals are sufficient to handle the add (altough he does hit hard), and we can remove the debuff stacks completely if we AMS with 7-6 secs on the debuff timer.

[Tehr]

Even if it's manageable, it seems weird that Kil'jaeden will melee attack you for double what the Fallen Avatar will melee attack you for. I do agree that DK felt very strong for the first 8 (we decided to do split clears of Normal before we did Heroic, so that's just for Normal) and we'll have VB for every single dangerous mechanic in the entire raid, but I didn't enjoy getting melee'd for half of my health.

Note that I somehow put on the wrong equipment set for the last 4 bosses so I was using sub-optimal gear and legendaries for them, so YMMV.

[figuratively]

just pointing the obvious:

we are great on demonic inquisition, especially with the legendery cape. ousr self heals are sufficient to handle the add (altough he does hit hard), and we can remove the debuff stacks completely if we AMS with 7-6 secs on the debuff timer.

I was able to drop the stack if I timed it well when he decided to stand still.

That said, I had a lot of trouble tanking up top. I was getting chunked pretty badly until I changed my talent layout and gear. (After that it was much easier.) But early on I was getting hit by normal melee for 4-5 mil sometimes. It didn't seem predictable, either.

[leorana]

I was able to drop the stack if I timed it well when he decided to stand still.

That said, I had a lot of trouble tanking up top. I was getting chunked pretty badly until I changed my talent layout and gear. (After that it was much easier.) But early on I was getting hit by normal melee for 4-5 mil sometimes. It didn't seem predictable, either.

I know what you mean...

I'm 912 equipped (38% haste unbuffed, 26% crit, 9% vers), using the DMC trinket and I'm getting butchered upstairs. was thinking about changing to the extra marrowrend consumption on hits bigger than 25%. what did you change?