[Guide] Active Mitigation Hipsters - 5.4 DK Tanking

[Deleted]

From what I know and I could be wrong, from a purely tanking survival perspective Tauren is the best way to go for the HP boost.

[Deleted]

Just remember that for STRICTLY survival, the stat priority is stam>mastery>avoidance>accuracy>haste

Soooo.

What's so big about stamina ? Is it worth it to gem it and use stam trinkets ?

[Hellkung]

Soooo.

What's so big about stamina ? Is it worth it to gem it and use stam trinkets ?

He's saying strictly for survival, stamina provides EH so that's pretty self-explanatory.

And as far as I know or remember, just wearing a stam trinket or two beats gemming it as the return for gemming mastery is greater, it being a secondary stat.

[Deleted]

From what I know and I could be wrong, from a purely tanking survival perspective Tauren is the best way to go for the HP boost.

Ye as far as i know Tauren is the best race for tanking, though i've always read this on stuff for my main which is a paladin, so i'm restricted to Belf and Tauren, which is an easy choice.

I was wondering how good the Undead racial was, and i'm wondering about Orc and Troll as well, though Troll is mostly dps racials. So i'm thinking Undead, Orc or Tauren.

[Milocow]

1 : Does AskMrRobot account for Dodge/Parry ratio balancing or the reforging is just random?

2 : Aside from Soul Barrier, what other good trinkets are there on a physical-damaging fight? (Ji-kun, Delicate Vial of Sanguine Blood, Fortitude of the Zandalari, the Spark(lightning shield icon thing), Lao-chin, etc)

3 : Do you get more Scent of Blood procs if you stack haste? Or is Scent of Blood capped at a certain proc-per-minute?

[Shadowsunder]

Considering the new procs from the 5.4 cloaks, I am wondering if using the "tanking" cloak via dodge/parry/mastery may be more advantageous then the Haste/Crit/Master cloak.

[rhapso]

out of curiosity... wowhead lists this belt from jinrokh (hc): http://www.wowhead.com/item=96373#same-model-as with the tag that Blood, Frost and Unholy DKs can win this item using bonus rolls.
Is this really true for Blood? I want the ring as well as this belt from jinrokh, which leads me to either stick to blood or switch to unholy for the bonus roll

EDIT: same with http://www.wowhead.com/item=96375#comments listed as only lootable with bonus roll as Blood, not Frost/Unholy.

[Nillo]

Well the bracers can only get tank enchants (including mastery,exp,hit).
About the belt - idk but I wouldn't try to roll for blood on him anyway.

[Squishei]

Considering the new procs from the 5.4 cloaks, I am wondering if using the "tanking" cloak via dodge/parry/mastery may be more advantageous then the Haste/Crit/Master cloak.

I doubt it. Really the proc can be used for two things: 1) cheese a fight mechanic (so far on PTR we have seen none) or 2) a safety net which probably could have been prevented through better cooldown management or death strike timing. Note that this enchant unlike purgatory only prevents the one hit that would kill you. So if you're already low health and you "die" you remain at low health.

Usually I find that a tank death is not the cause of a wipe. This could change in SoO but usually it is a mechanic problem or a dps/healer dying first.

[Guzrud]

Few pretty large false statements in your guide here that ill point out about your rune regeneration talent selection.

In terms of survivability it is best to have the control of Blood Tap, as you will be able to place regained Death Strikes where you need them most. Runic Corruption is similar to BT in terms of survivability benefits, but instead of flexibility provides consistency. They both serve to lessen gaps between death strikes, but they do it in different ways. BT has some build up, but is more potent when used. RC takes no build up, but doesn't give as much benefit. You are basically choosing control (BT) vs consistency (RC). Generally the control of BT will outweigh the consistency of RC but RC does do more dps, which makes it a very strong option for progression tanking.

Summary: BT and RC are both "optimal". RC will yield a higher DPS, but BT can be used a bit more flexibly.

Ok lets start with this first statement you make in the tier talent section and we will look at how completely incorrect this is.

You say that Blood Tap has great control over your survival which is spot on Blood tap lets you pool 2 death strikes that you can take advantage of when you think its needed to boost your survival, basically letting you Death Strike 4 times in a row if you were pooling resources for a large bit of incoming damage.

Unfortunately this is about the only accurate thing you said in this entire paragraph about the tier choices in this tier.

You said Runic corruption is similar to Blood tap in terms of Survivability but accomplishes this in a different way and that Runic corruption is more dps. In this section you dont even compare Runic empowerment so we will leave that for now and just compare the resource gain from Runic Empowerment and Blood Tap.

Now in any fight you are going to have "x" number of Rune strikes and based upon the % chance to proc your Rune Regeneration talent it will yield "y" runes of which depending on your talent choice will be a variety of different things. Lets look at each talent individually.

For this discussion we are going to use "x" as 100 rune strikes now this is a completely arbitrary number that just makes the math easy but you will see the results speak from themselves and it works for any amount of rune strikes.

Blood Tap: Now if you rune strike 100 times you earn 200 blood charges it takes 5 blood charges to make 1 death run thus you get 40 death runes or 20 death strikes. Very simple math here no tricks at all for every 100 rune strikes you will get 20 Death strikes 100% of the time if you do not ever cap and have overflow blood charges.

Runic Corruption: 45 procs out of 100 rune strikes and the uptime is 2.5 seconds which would yeild 112.5 seconds of 100% haste uptime on my rune regen. Standard Rune regen time is 8.33 seconds and 4.17 seconds with the buff procced. So if the buff is up for 112.5 seconds that yields 26.97 runes times 3 since all of the runes regen at once for 80.93 runes but the value is only half of that since we are already regening and we are just doubling our regen rate not saying that our regen rate is 0 while the buff is active thus yielding approx 40.46 runes per 100 Rune Strikes. So you can see that per 100 rune strikes the rune return is very very similar and perhaps a bit higher than blood tap however you are missing the HUGE ALARMING PROBLEM. You can only use 66.66% of any one of these procs for survival since it will regen all 3 runes at the same rate the blood rune regen is basically useless in terms of anything other than some dps form more Heart Strikes, Blood Boils, Soul Reapers ect. So in reality you are able to use only approx 26.96 of returned runes for Deathstrikes which will give you approx 13.5 Death Strikes for every 100 rune strikes.

So if you look at the return and the math in terms of survival and dps its pretty clear

Blood Tap 40 Runes and 20 Deathstrikes per 100 Rune strikes
Runic Corruption Approx 40.5 Runes and 13.5 Deathstrikes per 100 Rune strikes

In terms of Dps they are almost identical and will yield negligible variances. In terms of Survivability they arent even close with Blood Tap giving you approx 48.14% more death strikes per rune strike than runic corruption.

Now lets move on to your Runic Empowerment statement:

Runic Empowerment:
This will provide a significant increase in DPS, but at a significant survivability cost. The reason RE is generally a bad choice for survivability is that it provides the least consistent return of Death Strikes. It still provides the highest overall rune return though, and can be gamed to return the most B runes, which can would be used for heart strike.

RE gaming:
RE procs return a fully depleted rune, which means both runes are on CD. If your runes looked like this: xxxxUx (BBFFUU) and you procced RE you would get a B or a F rune, since you have 1 U rune available, meaning your unholy runes aren't fully depleted. When gaming RE for survival you try to proc RE on F and U runes (for death strikes) by using rune strike only when you have xBxxxx (F and U are fully depleted), however you can game for B runes by only using Rune Strike when you have xxFxUx, which will guarantee a B rune on an RE proc, which will lead to more Heart Strikes (more DPS) and fewer Death Strikes (significantly less survivability).

Ok so you contend that Empowerment will Give you a significant amount more dps yet be a significant loss to your survival. Then you outline the exact way to play the talent correctly by only every rune striking on xBxxxx. Which is actually quite easy to learn to do properly and always game it for survival. Again lets take a look at the math behind the ability.

45% chance per rune strike to give you a completely depleted rune. So lets just say that a mildly skilled DK learns to game his ability to always give him Unholy/Frost runes.

100 Rune strike = 45 Runes = 22.5 Death Strikes(Again this is played at the perfect level now as we are theory crafting as to what would be the theoretical maximum ability)

Now that we have looked at all of the math behind each ability lets compare

These are results per 100 Rune Strikes again but the math will be the same regardless of how many you want to use in your statistical analysis.
Blood Tap 40 Runes 20 Death Strikes
Runic Corruption 40.5 Runes 13.5 Death Strikes
Runic Empowerment 45 Runes 22.5 Death Strikes

You can see that in terms of Pure survival Runic Empowerment is even 12.5% ahead of Blood Tap in terms of resources generated for survival however that could be trumped by the ability to actually bank more Death strikes with Blood Tap so I would say that these two choices are similar in use. But can we really suggest people use Runic Corruption for anything other than the easiest rotation because you dont ever have to think about it?

There is no room in true theorycrafting for statements like this:

The reason RE is generally a bad choice for survivability is that it provides the least consistent return of Death Strikes. It still provides the highest overall rune return though, and can be gamed to return the most B runes, which can would be used for heart strike.

You have no empirical data to support this and it is obviously a bad opinion based upon nothing but how you feel about the talent. You could content that Blood tap is much better for heroic raiding and even more so in heroic 25 man raiding where tank damage is far more intense than in 10 man. However when you look at the vast majority of the player base who actually raid most of them dont do 25 man raiding and almost non of them do 25 man heroic progression at all. Even if you look at the stats only 32.37% of all guilds tracked by wow progress have killed Heroic Jinrokh and of those only 1150 were 25 mans and about 9000 were 10 man and most decent guilds were killing that boss in the first couple of weeks of ToT. So of the raiding people 90% are in 10 man approx 68% of those people are doing normal ToT progression or farming normal raids. So is this really good advice to the average player who is playing a DK tank in his 10 man and wants to learn how to get better for his team? As a member and leader of this community you have a responsibility to back up your statements with data and real theory crafting that is sound mathematically.

Your section on this tier of Talent choices should read something like this.

Blood Tap - Very easy to play, Great ability to pool Deathstrikes. Lowest DPS. Second best Survival talent could be the best in situations where burst DSs needed.
Runic Corruption - Easiest to play, Impossible to mess up, Worst Survival talent by far. Second best rune return for slightly more dps than BT.
Runic Empowerment - Hardest to play by far. Played Correctly however is the best Survival Talent and highest DPS talent. Can only RS on xBxxxx.

Now that would be a semi accurate representation of the tier choices. However it isnt even completely accurate and Im not going to go all beautiful mind and start doing cyclical math but if you really think about it.......

The talent that yields the most runes will actually yield more RP because you are regeneration more per your Rune Strike thus make you get even more Rune strikes thus weighting the talent that returns the most runes......Runic Empowerment even more powerful in reality.

If anyone would have some contradictory ideas or math in regards to this please let me know I would love to have an intelligent theorycrafting discussion about it.

Jadawin

[Nillo]

Pretty simple - RE will never even get close to 100% effectiveness for blood unless you're playing horribly wrong (yes wrong not right).
But ey here are some reasons why it sucks.
1) It requires 2 procs to have any effect, which considering it has such a huge chance not to proc for quite a while already makes it a bad choice due to inconsistency
2) Now here's the real problem with needing 2 procs: If you only get 1 and don't get another before your runes come off cd - every fraction of a second you spend on not using DS reduces that runes effective regeneration gain which means you're forced to doing it wrong (=use DS the moment it lights up) and even if you do so you still lose some of the RE proc due to delay/gcd.
3) Especially on low haste levels gaming runes is kind of ehhh. It feels more fluent if you can use both Blood Runes.
4) RE's inconsistency and requiring bad play makes it by far the worst survivability option on most fights (it does have some value on fights that allow the use of Death Siphon too bad there are none this tier)


Whatever RC - consitency ; BT - control ; RE - compost.

[Ikrekot]

RE was great in cata with old blood tap when you proc 1 rune f/u and then use bt for 1 d rune and use ds. Now it's really bad because you need 2 proc for 1 ds and you can use only 1 b rune evry 8 sec. You will lost a lot dps in execute phase if you can't use sr on cd + bb for refresh your dots. You lost small portion of survivality because you can't use rune tap for heal when you need it, with 1m hp it heal me for 100k, because if you use rune tap when your first blood rune is on cd then there is small chance that your blood rune will regen and then you will need 3 procs for 1 free ds from rs.

RE is worst talent in every aoe fight because you can't use bb on cd. Blood tap choose dps if you can't die and normal ds or use bb on cd and bt for ds. RC gives every more bb and ds.

I love using rc in haste build and bt in tanking build.

It's really difrent when you test all 3 rune talents on dummie or dungeon than heroic raid. You need to watch on a lot things and then you need to know don't press that hs/bb/sr to fast.

[Sunnydee]

Il be getting me legend meta next reset and curious (since my current main is a tankadin). should i use the dps meta or stamina one? il most likely switch to DK again as main since stacking haste and trying to pew pew harder isnt what tanking is for me so it'll be for 10man heroics

[Omertocracy]

Wall of Incorrectness

BT: Lets you pool 1 additional DS, so you can get 3 back to back. .4 Runes per RS, guaranteed, .2 DS per RS.
RC: Provides 1/3 of each rune per proc. Its haste scales inversely to always make that true. Keeps runes synchronized so you can hold onto a DS, up to 2, without losing its effect. 45% of 1 full rune (1/3 of each) = .45 Runes per RS, procced, .3 DS per RS and 10 additional RP.
RE: Procs one fully depleted rune. The key there is you must have ALL of your Frost and Unholy runes down for it to even work at all. Which means you are just shotgunning DS without regard to mechanics. 45% of one proc on fully depleted = .45 Runes per RS but only if you are swinging constantly, .225 DS per RS*.

BT: Calculate and hold for the burst.
RC: Smooth the rotation and get 5 or so extra DS per fight over BT, and a whooooole lotta HS, which yields more RP, which yields more RS, which recursive...
RE: Spam DS and hope you line up with any hard-hitting ability while also hoping no rune caps for so much as a quarter second from shitty procs.

The key difference between RE and the other two is, with the other two you can hang onto a DS without losing their effect, with RE, you are fucked.

[Revenantparadigm]

Snip

Both your critique of Runic Corruption and your analysis of Runic Empowerment are flawed.

I’ll start with Runic Empowerment. As others have pointed out one of the problems with RE as a survival talent is that it only returns a single rune per proc, thus lessening the chance you’ll have an FU pair available to DS in response (or in anticipation of) damage. What has not been mentioned, however, is that RC allows you to sit on an FU pair while still being able to receive further RC procs. In effect this means that you can always have a DS up your sleeve – giving yourself more ability to time your DS for maximum mitigation and/or healing. In contrast RE requires that runes are fully depleted, meaning it is impossible to have a reserve DS on hand. If you get an unlucky streak with RE procs you have no option but to wait for your runes to recharge at the standard pace, pop a CD or rely on the mercy of your healers.

Now, on to Runic Corruption. In your critique you have failed to take time into consideration. If you model a standard set of attacks (DS, RS, HS) over a set period you’ll find that RC in fact provides more DS per minute than BT. This is why Reniat has identified RC as an optimal talent along with BT. BT provides less DPS and slightly less DS per minute, but gives you the ability to time your DS for maximum effect. RC provides more DPS and slightly more DS per minute, but is not quite as flexible when it comes to timing DS.

Whether it was you intent or not I also felt that your post came across as somewhat aggressive. Reniat has put a lot of time in effort into this guide and towards Blood DK theory-crafting in general. If you think he’s made an error let your argument and supporting evidence speak for itself – please leave the condescension out.

[Guzrud]

Im not sure why i need to explain how to accomplish this but I guess for the peanut gallery I will.

Here is the rune setup UUFFBB obviously for Unholyx2 Frostx2 Bloodx2

So in your perfect world of DK tanking you pretty much run with xUxFxx most of the time spamming your blood runs as much as possible for Dps or aoe threat/dot management ect.

So in this situation you would runestrike pretty much whenever you had 30 RP and if you were at xUxFxx and got a RC proc you could safely use the banked DS pretty quickly because your next one would fill up in approx 4 seconds or less so you could wait until just before it filled to pop that DS to keep your banked DS for spike damage. And you say that being able to keep this constant state of 1 Death Strike on Deck basically makes you able to react to damage to heal yourself effectively. So basically you are mostly using this Death strike from the proc to not cap your resource as obviously that would be really bad because ultimately you want to have 1 of every rune regeneration at all times in almost all situations. And you contend that you cant do anything similar to this with RE because it requires you to have xxxxBx in order for the ability to work.

Ok so the scenario with RE. Ok so since you need xxxxBx for it to be effective everyone assumes that you need to spam your DS as fast as humanly possible and always be sitting there waiting for runes so that your RE can actually proc. However lets look at the real way to play this.

Lets say we are at UxFxBx and we are 4 seconds from the second UF filling up so in effect I have basically 1.5 UF runes currently. Now I pop a DS then Hit Runestrike 2 or 3 times before the rune fills up depending on my current level of RP and It will sometimes proc and sometimes it wont. Now the situation that would really kind of be crap would be the situation where you only got 1 rune to proc thus leaving you at something like UUFxBx, however lets look at how that would play out

Combat starts

DS to Start generates 20 RP UxFxBB 20 Total Rp
UxFxBB
Auto attack Generates 10 RP 30 Total Rp
Heartstrike Generates 10 RP UxFxBx 40 Total Rp
UxFxBx
Auto Attack Generates 10 RP 50 Total Rp
Pooling Resources
Auto Attacks x ~2 Generates 20 RP 70 Total Rp
DS to not cap Generates 20 RP 90 Total Rp
xxxxBx--------This is your money zone right before they fill up if timed correctly
Runestrike x 3 0 Total Rp Now there are only 3 different scenarios here which I will outline further down
Heartstrike to not cap 10 Total Rp
UxFxBx approx 2-3 Autos 30 total Rp

Ok so there are only a couple scenarios at this point as to what happened with your RE procs.

1. Received no procs at all the rng gods crapped on your head. Result? Nothing really you just line it up and try again and you still have a DS on deck ready to go for reactive healing.

2. Receive 2 procs out of 3 Rune Strikes. Yatzhee this will put you at pretty much UUFFxB letting you burn another Deathstrike while still keeping your banked Deathstrike thus increasing your current overhealing shield and even helping with that spike damage even more. Now getting 3 out of 3 procs also goes into this category however obviously if you proced on the first 2 you wouldnt hit the third and save it for the next time you were looking to execute this.

3. Receive 1 out of 3 procs thus putting you at something like UDFxBx (D for death run of course) Now in this situation which is the worst possible its still an amazing situation for us. Because in this situation you are forced into a DS leaving you at something like UxxxBx but leaving you with ~60-70 RP letting you rip off another couple Runestrikes. Now while im not statistical probability buff who knows how to crunch this equation i am pretty sure that the probability of getting 2 procs out of 5 runestrikes with a 45% chance is really really high.over a large portion of scenarios.

If we look at this basically what we are all saying is having a DS ready at just about all times is really important for us. However if you could always have that Deathstrike ready for that spike damage and be laying extra preemptive shields that are of course going to be overhealing with the DS and only put a 7% of your life shield up modified by your mastery of course so prob in the realm of 14% of max health with say a 522 IL blood dk will have around 800-900k Health depending on trinkets and gems so approx 120k ish per extra Deathstrike even if it is 100% overheal with just normal gear and maybe a bit more the hit/exp gear setup on Mr robot has approx 220% mastery in just 522 gear with the legendary cloak. Wouldnt those extra shields only serve to smooth out other damage while letting you keep the death strike on deck or really close 1-2 seconds in most scenarios.

Is it a vastly more complicated and involved way to play?....of course it is but lets be clear. If we are going to play this deathstrike on deck playstyle then most of this talent becomes about extra overhealing shields anyway with any talent because you dont want to resource cap so even with RC if you get a proc when you are at UxFxxx you are going to have to burn a DS regardless even if you dont see any damage spike so that you dont cap resources. Played correctly you can game RE to do almost the exact same thing only generate 50% more of these overhealing shields to further decrease the amount of spike damage we take in the first place while still having those Death strikes really close to put up the big shields and heals.

Also in any situation where every Death strike counts like in progression horridon in the last phase or fights with really heavy melee damage that is steady and basically every Deathstrike is a great one RE will vastly outshine RC in terms of survival.

Im not sure why anyone doesnt see this. Its really involved way to play and really requires a lot of practice and perfect play to make it work the right way but isnt that what we are looking for? As theory crafters and minmaxers I would think that we could be honest about the difference in the 2 abilities if they are played 100% to the maximum perfection.

Runic Corruption - Faceroll basically save your Deathstrike spam runestrikes and blood runes get 50 extra shielding deathstrikes

Runic Empowerment - Hard to game correctly and play 100% perfectly have to watch your usage and timing of DS, RS, and BS/BB but if played 100% will yeild approx 75 extra shielding Deathstrikes to Runic Corruptions 50. While letting you maintain the DS ready to respond to damage spikes just like RC.

[Omertocracy]

Since you don't seem to grasp the issue, let us explain this (yet again):

Im not sure why i need to explain how to accomplish this but I guess for the peanut gallery I will.

Here is the rune setup UUFFBB obviously for Unholyx2 Frostx2 Bloodx2

So in your perfect world of DK tanking you pretty much run with xUxFxx most of the time spamming your blood runs as much as possible for Dps or aoe threat/dot management ect.

So in this situation you would runestrike pretty much whenever you had 30 RP and if you were at xUxFxx and got a RC proc you could safely use the banked DS pretty quickly because your next one would fill up in approx 4 seconds or less so you could wait until just before it filled to pop that DS to keep your banked DS for spike damage. And you say that being able to keep this constant state of 1 Death Strike on Deck basically makes you able to react to damage to heal yourself effectively. So basically you are mostly using this Death strike from the proc to not cap your resource as obviously that would be really bad because ultimately you want to have 1 of every rune regeneration at all times in almost all situations. And you contend that you cant do anything similar to this with RE because it requires you to have xxxxBx in order for the ability to work.

Ok so the scenario with RE. Ok so since you need xxxxBx for it to be effective everyone assumes that you need to spam your DS as fast as humanly possible and always be sitting there waiting for runes so that your RE can actually proc. However lets look at the real way to play this.

The problem there is, you need that DS now, not in 3 gcd.

Lets say we are at UxFxBx and we are 4 seconds from the second UF filling up so in effect I have basically 1.5 UF runes currently. Now I pop a DS then Hit Runestrike 2 or 3 times before the rune fills up depending on my current level of RP and It will sometimes proc and sometimes it wont. Now the situation that would really kind of be crap would be the situation where you only got 1 rune to proc thus leaving you at something like UUFxBx, however lets look at how that would play out

This situation is Blood Tap. xUxFxx with recharge in 4sec becomes DS DS DS 3 in a row because you use the bank, BT to get both back, use them again, get your recharge.
Or if you mean RC, just one RS can get you those next ones at your next gcd, a space of one, not four. We live and die in four gcd.

Combat starts

We aren't talking start of combat. This is 45 seconds in, two minutes in, seven minutes in.

Ok so there are only a couple scenarios at this point as to what happened with your RE procs.

1. Received no procs at all the rng gods crapped on your head. Result? Nothing really you just line it up and try again and you still have a DS on deck ready to go for reactive healing.

2. Receive 2 procs out of 3 Rune Strikes. Yatzhee this will put you at pretty much UUFFxB letting you burn another Deathstrike while still keeping your banked Deathstrike thus increasing your current overhealing shield and even helping with that spike damage even more. Now getting 3 out of 3 procs also goes into this category however obviously if you proced on the first 2 you wouldnt hit the third and save it for the next time you were looking to execute this.

3. Receive 1 out of 3 procs thus putting you at something like UDFxBx (D for death run of course) Now in this situation which is the worst possible its still an amazing situation for us. Because in this situation you are forced into a DS leaving you at something like UxxxBx but leaving you with ~60-70 RP letting you rip off another couple Runestrikes. Now while im not statistical probability buff who knows how to crunch this equation i am pretty sure that the probability of getting 2 procs out of 5 runestrikes with a 45% chance is really really high.over a large portion of scenarios.

1. This is part of why RE is bad. Because this anecdotally happens more frequently than the other two.
2. You can't get 3 out of 3 procs, since you only have two empty runes. And you would be burning all your DS.
3. UDFxBx means you are wasting resources, and worse: desynching your runes. You effectively lose the time on both runes since you only want to use them together.
4: In any of these situations, the boss has killed you while you were rolling RS dice for 3 gcd to get DS while being unmitigated.

If we look at this basically what we are all saying is having a DS ready at just about all times is really important for us. However if you could always have that Deathstrike ready for that spike damage and be laying extra preemptive shields that are of course going to be overhealing with the DS and only put a 7% of your life shield up modified by your mastery of course so prob in the realm of 14% of max health with say a 522 IL blood dk will have around 800-900k Health depending on trinkets and gems so approx 120k ish per extra Deathstrike even if it is 100% overheal with just normal gear and maybe a bit more the hit/exp gear setup on Mr robot has approx 220% mastery in just 522 gear with the legendary cloak. Wouldnt those extra shields only serve to smooth out other damage while letting you keep the death strike on deck or really close 1-2 seconds in most scenarios.

I had to read these runon sentences a couple times to understand them, but that's neither here nor there.
The problem is, smoothing boss white hits isn't really our problem. Our problem is Impale. Triple Puncture (stack 11). Talon Rake (stack 5).

Is it a vastly more complicated and involved way to play?....of course it is but lets be clear. If we are going to play this deathstrike on deck playstyle then most of this talent becomes about extra overhealing shields anyway with any talent because you dont want to resource cap so even with RC if you get a proc when you are at UxFxxx you are going to have to burn a DS regardless even if you dont see any damage spike so that you dont cap resources. Played correctly you can game RE to do almost the exact same thing only generate 50% more of these overhealing shields to further decrease the amount of spike damage we take in the first place while still having those Death strikes really close to put up the big shields and heals.

You don't want to resource cap. That is correct. RE gives you the highest probability of resource capping.

Also in any situation where every Death strike counts like in progression horridon in the last phase or fights with really heavy melee damage that is steady and basically every Deathstrike is a great one RE will vastly outshine RC in terms of survival.

In the Max DS Possible situation, RC still comes out ahead because it regens the Blood runes too, giving you more RP to get more RS to get more DS.

Im not sure why anyone doesnt see this. Its really involved way to play and really requires a lot of practice and perfect play to make it work the right way but isnt that what we are looking for? As theory crafters and minmaxers I would think that we could be honest about the difference in the 2 abilities if they are played 100% to the maximum perfection.

The theory crafters and minmaxers (SSHA and Reniat, the writer of the lovely guide you are disparaging) spent virtually all of Mists beta on calculating which was best for what situation. Played to perfection, RE comes out under 5% ahead or something like that. So much as one instance of runes overlapping negates the benefit. Two makes it less efficient. And you will get those two in your first minute because RNG is a spiteful, hateful mistress.

Runic Corruption - Faceroll basically save your Deathstrike spam runestrikes and blood runes get 50 extra shielding deathstrikes

Runic Empowerment - Hard to game correctly and play 100% perfectly have to watch your usage and timing of DS, RS, and BS/BB but if played 100% will yeild approx 75 extra shielding Deathstrikes to Runic Corruptions 50. While letting you maintain the DS ready to respond to damage spikes just like RC.

Runic Corruption yields 25% more RP, whigh gives 25% more RS, which gives 25% more procs, compared to RE. RE yields the same number of extra shielding Deathstrikes as RC, give or take rng issues. It is not 50 vs 75. It is closer to 51 vs 52, and that is before accounting in the extra resources.

Reniat can you come lay some numbers on this guy and put him back in his tomb?

[Guzrud]

Both your critique of Runic Corruption and your analysis of Runic Empowerment are flawed.

I’ll start with Runic Empowerment. As others have pointed out one of the problems with RE as a survival talent is that it only returns a single rune per proc, thus lessening the chance you’ll have an FU pair available to DS in response (or in anticipation of) damage. What has not been mentioned, however, is that RC allows you to sit on an FU pair while still being able to receive further RC procs. In effect this means that you can always have a DS up your sleeve – giving yourself more ability to time your DS for maximum mitigation and/or healing. In contrast RE requires that runes are fully depleted, meaning it is impossible to have a reserve DS on hand. If you get an unlucky streak with RE procs you have no option but to wait for your runes to recharge at the standard pace, pop a CD or rely on the mercy of your healers.

Now, on to Runic Corruption. In your critique you have failed to take time into consideration. If you model a standard set of attacks (DS, RS, HS) over a set period you’ll find that RC in fact provides more DS per minute than BT. This is why Reniat has identified RC as an optimal talent along with BT. BT provides less DPS and slightly less DS per minute, but gives you the ability to time your DS for maximum effect. RC provides more DPS and slightly more DS per minute, but is not quite as flexible when it comes to timing DS.

Whether it was you intent or not I also felt that your post came across as somewhat aggressive. Reniat has put a lot of time in effort into this guide and towards Blood DK theory-crafting in general. If you think he’s made an error let your argument and supporting evidence speak for itself – please leave the condescension out.

Ok I will point out that a depleted run could in fact be a rune at 99.99% and the other rune empty so saying that you cant game it to have a DS on hand isnt really accurate is it? I outlined this in the previous post.

Im going to have to ask you to explain this whole time scenario because I just dont see it or understand it. Your rotation is exactly the same with RC and BT there is no variation you would DS when applicable to not cap resources and basically use your blood runes for dps as needed for heart strike and blood boil. There is no contention there its the same due to you not having to watch how and when you runestrike or use blood runes. The procs dont cost you time you are basically telling me that a talent that yields 40 Deathstrike runes is the same as a talent that yields ~27 Deathstrike runes per 100 rune strikes is going to actually yield more Deathstrikes per minute due to the fact of what?.......

The only way to accomplish this would be to actually get approx 59 rune strikes for every 40 rune strikes generated from having the BT talent and considering that we generate RP from melee attacks which is going to be 100% static and the usage of runes how are you thinking that you can generate ~50% more RP by simply taking the RC talent because if that is the case im sure the entire Blood Dk community would love to hear about that math and theory crafting. Because where im standing Im seeing the two talents almost identical in rune generation and thus RP generation but if you have some amazing data that pulls ~50% more RP from RC we would really be interested.

The math doesnt lie

BT 1 Rune strike yields ~ .400 Runes
RC 1 Rune strike yeilds ~ .405 Runes of which only 66.66% can be used for DS

If you have some math to illustrate to me how by taking RC you actually gain time and thus gain enough RP to actually give you more DS per minute I welcome it I just dont see you pulling 50% more RP generation out of thin air. And to be quite honest any contention of this without any real data is so terribly wrong im going to pull 1 statement and ask you to really clear it up for me because again im really super confused here.

Now, on to Runic Corruption. In your critique you have failed to take time into consideration. If you model a standard set of attacks (DS, RS, HS) over a set period you’ll find that RC in fact provides more DS per minute than BT

Again with the two abilities your rotation doesnt change drastically does it? I mean a model of standard attacks is going to look almost identical for the two talent selections and thus the RP gain from each will be almost identical and if the RP gain is almost identical it stands to reason that the usage of Rune strike will be almost identical.

Lets do an example of a 5 minute fight or something close(now this isnt the end all be all this is just an example of how baseless your statement was)

worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-bwt8vczbdz2cls4t/details/4/?s=2748&e=3040

Ok in this fight the blood DK got 83 rune strikes off in the fight and thus had an uptime of RC of 94.9 Seconds in the 292 second fight so he proced about 38 times in the fight with ~2.5 second uptime per proc about 38 procs for a proc % chance of 45.7% which is right where it should be even a bit high but still .7% is a pretty solid variance. Now with those 38 Procs we can estimate that he generated ~33.615 total runes for the fight with RC or about 11.2 Unholy 11.2 Frost 11.2 Blood. So we can say pretty solidly that in this fight with RC he would have gotten about 11 death strikes from RC and 11 blood runes to dps with. Thus yeilding him ~2.26 DS/minute over the course of this fight. Stop me if my math is in any way wrong here.

Now we are going to flip the script and say the guy was actually using BT instead now. Again his rotation in reality shouldnt change at all still using his blood charges to not cap resources to always have that DS on deck ready to go. He is still going to generate almost the exact same amount of RP due to the rotation being the same. Now with 83 Rune strikes you are going to get 166 blood charges which will return 33.2 Death runes 83 x 2 / 5 = 33.2 Death runes = 16.6 Death Strikes which would equate to 3.41 DS/Min over the course of the fight.

So please tell me how you are going to get from 2.25 DS/Min to more than 3.41 DS/Min you can see that the rune return on the two abilities is very similar yet the fact that 1/3 of all the RC runes are put into blood makes your statement incorrect.

I understand the missunderstanding of the time differential because you think that because RC procs you generate those runes faster thus you actually are generating more but you are not taking into account that the blood charges or the RE procs dont require time and if you think that generating the runes from RC faster isnt the same as generating a complete rune with blood charges or RE procs then you arent really looking at it properly lets just look at 10 rune strikes with each talent.

1 proc
2 no proc
3 no proc
4 proc
5 no proc
6 no proc
7 no proc
8 proc
9 proc
10 no proc

In the case of BT obviously its 20 blood charges or 4 runes or 2 Death strikes
In the case of RE its 4 Death runes or 2 Death Strikes due to only getting 40% procs instead of 45% procs
In the case of RC its 4.05 runes or 1.33 Blood Unholy Frost Runes so 1.33 Death Strikes again not optimal because of 40% proc chance instead of 45%

There is no Delorean that is going to make you get there faster with any talent the RP gain will be very similar with all talents due to all of them returning very similar amounts of overall runes.

And lastly if you think that im being aggressive I so apologize I mean no disrespect to anyone I do however value math and actual data over half truths and sloppy opinions that have no basis in theory crafting and statistical data. There are people who would love to find the easiest way to play and there are those like myself who searches for the completely optimal path of playstyle. Coming into this forum and spouting about something you obviously havent really put in a good deal of time or effort in studying or analyzing only serves to muddy up the water of the true data and the people who are really trying to get to the bottom of things and really discuss math and min-maxing at its core not just rehashing what someone else said or stated and passing it off as your own opinion or data in some attempt to look knowledgeable.

- - - Updated - - -

Since you don't seem to grasp the issue, let us explain this (yet again):

The problem there is, you need that DS now, not in 3 gcd.


This situation is Blood Tap. xUxFxx with recharge in 4sec becomes DS DS DS 3 in a row because you use the bank, BT to get both back, use them again, get your recharge.
Or if you mean RC, just one RS can get you those next ones at your next gcd, a space of one, not four. We live and die in four gcd.


We aren't talking start of combat. This is 45 seconds in, two minutes in, seven minutes in.



1. This is part of why RE is bad. Because this anecdotally happens more frequently than the other two.
2. You can't get 3 out of 3 procs, since you only have two empty runes. And you would be burning all your DS.
3. UDFxBx means you are wasting resources, and worse: desynching your runes. You effectively lose the time on both runes since you only want to use them together.
4: In any of these situations, the boss has killed you while you were rolling RS dice for 3 gcd to get DS while being unmitigated.


I had to read these runon sentences a couple times to understand them, but that's neither here nor there.
The problem is, smoothing boss white hits isn't really our problem. Our problem is Impale. Triple Puncture (stack 11). Talon Rake (stack 5).

You don't want to resource cap. That is correct. RE gives you the highest probability of resource capping.

In the Max DS Possible situation, RC still comes out ahead because it regens the Blood runes too, giving you more RP to get more RS to get more DS.

The theory crafters and minmaxers (SSHA and Reniat, the writer of the lovely guide you are disparaging) spent virtually all of Mists beta on calculating which was best for what situation. Played to perfection, RE comes out under 5% ahead or something like that. So much as one instance of runes overlapping negates the benefit. Two makes it less efficient. And you will get those two in your first minute because RNG is a spiteful, hateful mistress.

Runic Corruption yields 25% more RP, whigh gives 25% more RS, which gives 25% more procs, compared to RE. RE yields the same number of extra shielding Deathstrikes as RC, give or take rng issues. It is not 50 vs 75. It is closer to 51 vs 52, and that is before accounting in the extra resources.

Reniat can you come lay some numbers on this guy and put him back in his tomb?

Judging by your responses its pretty apparent that you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about even as sad as begging Reniat to come back you up. Where is your data? Do you have anything but opinions or math/theory crafting to add to the discussion or are you content just repeating someone elses thoughts and passing them off as your own? Lets not start with your entire post because I dont want you to get all crazy just please with statistical data back up this 1 statement.

Runic Corruption yields 25% more RP, whigh gives 25% more RS, which gives 25% more procs, compared to RE. RE yields the same number of extra shielding Deathstrikes as RC, give or take rng issues. It is not 50 vs 75. It is closer to 51 vs 52, and that is before accounting in the extra resources.

If that statement were true in any manner of speaking I am waiting for some kind of formula to show me how something with the exact same probability of happening like a 45% chance to proc RE or RC. And the one that generates .405 runes per rune strike is going to generate 25% more RP than the one that generates .450 runes per rune strike when everything else is exactly the same.

So again on the average out of 100 rune strikes you will get
45 Procs of RC
45 Procs of RE

Yes somehow you are saying that the RC generates 25% more RP.

Please enlighten me with your math because im really interested to see how you can make that work

[Ikrekot]

RC give more rp because you can use both blood runes on cd and rc proc regenerate it too. When you have re you aleays have 1 blood rune on cd for rp and you can't use second blood rune. Try to match time 100 rs with rc and re. You will get more re procs but in you need wait a lot more because you wasting resource from 1 blood rune that gives you 10 rp. Rc proc stack up if you get more procs time is added to prevoius one and you can't waste resource never. Re you need have always used both f/u runes to use rs. If your f/u runes are't on cd you can't use rs because you can waste proc. You will get proc but your rune wont regen because it can't.

[Nillo]

Please enlighten me with your math because im really interested to see how you can make that work

The thing is you're trying to prove something with math that clearly can't be solved with it.
I'll just state it again:
Spamming DS to gain the maximum benefit out of RE is bad.... because you always want to have a backup DS - RC and BT on the other hand go well with holding onto a pair of FU runes.
RE is extremely inconsistent - the intervals at which it provides an extra DS vary so wildly that you absolutely can't rely on it - both RC and BT are much much more reliable. It's the same reason most tanks don't stack avoidance because consistency >>>>> random burst of mitigation.