Please help me fix our BLOOD death knight.

[Chevelle]

Dear MMO-Champion Mages,

My name is Chevelle and I'm guildmaster and main healer in my own 10 man guild. And every fight I've done with our blood DK so far ... I just feel he is underperforming and I've looked into the logs more then once and can't find out exactly what is causing this. This is mainly because I would probably like to believe our tanks are good but I just feel he isn't but cannot exactly pinpoint the issue. (Bad DK right here)

Could you please help me out and look into our logs and see where he is going wrong? <3

Logs: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=11058&e=11280 -- Wind Lord Mel'Jarak Wipe
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...n/?s=404&e=741 -- Stone Guard HEROIC kill (dk tanks 1 add not 2)
Armory link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...stion/advanced

P.s.
Feel free to pick any other fight you'd like to see him on though, all our logs are up on there.

Thanks a lot in advance, I am looking forward to your replies.


EDIT:

Allright, sorry to be a pain in the ass But we raided again this week and our Death Knight has checked out this thread and tried fixing everything that was pointed out now he requested me to post the logs from tonight and thursday night here and see if you guys could find an more flaws or anything he failed at fixing. So here goes.

Logs HoF first 4 bosses and MSV first 2 HC: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-9t0ks8jz14f6sveo/
Logs Ambershaper and MSV last 4 bosses normal: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-frf0wsztgq6yntn0/
Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...stion/advanced

Sorry to be troubling you all with these, but it is much appreciated. <3

[Nillo]

Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon : Useless² - all it does is reduce your dps.
His overall Death Strike usage on single target seems reasonable.
Vampiric Blood usage is awfully low on some fights (2 times in a 9 min fight) => this should be used pretty much on cd
Dancing Rune Weapon could be used more often. (especially on a fight like Mel'Jarak where this is a massive dps boost)

Judging from the logs he doesn't really seem to be doing much wrong.
Also Mel'Jarak is really hard to tell because the amount of adds on the tank, how well the tank and healer work together affect how you act on that fight (I use most of my runes for bb because I'm comfortable with the damage I receive, but my dps still varies a lot depending on how many adds the other tank has)

[Deleted]

Looking at the damage that is comming in, and the way he has reforged/gemmed his gear. I think he is getting to mutch demminishing returns with his dodge if his trinket procs. I think ( what i always do ) is stick with either mastery build or avoidance built, trying to split it up never rly works. He has reforged for mastery on his Axe for example, and since he aint aiming for a dps increase he might aswel reforge out of his accrucy stats. Getting the blue trinket with stam + on use dodge is mutch bether then the brewfest trinket. Also depending on his skill lvl, he shoud use blood tap its both a dps and survivability increase.

About the demminishing return on dodge he shoud use,

with swordshattering :

/run d=GetDodgeChance() n=3.22 if UnitRace("player")=="Gnome" then n=n-.01 end p=235.5*d/65.631440-((235.5/65.631440)*5.01-n)+4 DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Ideal parry for current dodge: "..string.format("%.2f",p))

without :

/run d=GetDodgeChance() n=3.22 if UnitRace("player")=="Gnome" then n=n-.01 end p=235.5*d/65.631440-((235.5/65.631440)*5.01-n) DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Ideal parry for current dodge: "..string.format("%.2f",p))

with these macro`s he can tell what the ideal percentage of parry to dodge is. ( if this is not outdated, i woudent rly know. If i find claims it is. Then ill remove it)

[Nillo]

His gear could indeed use some changes:
Reforge everything from avoidance to mastery.
I don't think you need that much stamina for the current content so he could change some of his stam/mastery gems in yellow slots to pure mastery
He's missing the bracers socket.
Chest enchant should be 300 stam.
Bracers enchant should be mastery.
Overall his gear level might be a little low.

But still I don't really see him performing that bad.

[Omertocracy]

I'm not the best, but I think I'm good enough to take a crack at this.

Start off easy
Not mentioning most actual gear since you (mostly) only get what drops. That said, Valor trinket is Liquid Awesome.
Lots of dodge on the gear he could reforge to parry for better DR.
Stacking stamina gems.
Wrists don't have a gem in his BS socket.
Wrists have dodge on them?
Needs to either go hit rating and reforge into that, or reforge the hit and expertise into parry/mastery.
Looks like he is going avoidance instead of Mastery. I hear that's less efficient but that may be just personal choice.
Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon lowers damage while providing threat, and if you have the RP to cast DRW you shouldn't need the threat.

I see issues with cooldown uptime and overlaps, as well as disease uptime.

[Sygil]

He pretty much just needs to look at guide, his secondary stats are all over the place. It is likely not a l2play issue.

Reforge dodge to mastery (or parry if it already has mastery) if going for a mastery build which is recommended (he gems for mastery but doesn't reforge to it).
Should also reforge hit/exp to mastery since it seems like he's having survivability issues.
Should change his runeforge to the parry one.
Replace his 442 ring and get the 450 stam leg armor (he only has the 250 one).


Thats just from a quick glance at his armory.

[Iso]

Alot of healers are put off by healing death knights compared to other tanks, due to spikyness mostly.

I told my healers to fix their UI so it added absorbs on my health bar, if not topped. And that alone made them feel alot more comfortable. I can drop to 20-30%, tap, DS, sit on 50% with a 250k shield, wich is effectivly full health. But to the healers it still looks like I'm in the danger zone, wich easily makes them toss out too many flash heals.

Also, as everyone else is saying, logs aren't too bad, but there's more too it than cd uptimes and DS overhealing. Alot of DK's just pop DS whenever they hit 80%, or take a swing or two, wich will quickly get you into trouble if you're ever caught in burst without runes avilable. Avoiding burst is what's going to save your life, 5% less damge taken over a 6 minute fight won't do you much good if you're stressing the healers and dying to random burst.

[Enosh]

he has 600 BS, should really go and craft the ancient steel gloves and chest imo ^^
hell he has the tillers on exalted so shouldn't take that long to get those 16 spirits
idk how the living steel prices are on your server

[Chevelle]

I told my healers to fix their UI so it added absorbs on my health bar, if not topped. And that alone made them feel alot more comfortable

I'd like to add something like this to my UI , but how

Other then that I do believe that is all we're going to find here. Unless someone pro with WoL manages to dig up some additional information, but I think we have all points covered.

Thank you all very much for your input and helpfullness (if that is even a word )

[Halland]

One thing I'm concerned with is his Icebound Fortitude usage. it looks like on windlord log he popped IBF in a panic after he procced Will of the Necropolis, and no other time on the fight. On Feng the Accursed he did not use IBF once on an 8.5 minute fight . Stone Guards- He didn't have Bone Shield up for the first two minutes and didn't even touch Dancing Rune Weapon (ya it's mostly used for dps, but 20% parry is still nice) and only used IBF once when it could've been used earlier when he had no procs or CDs going.

[Reniat]

I've circled each WotN proc.
He has absolutely no mitigation for any of them, meaning he didn't have blood shield, bone shield, IBF, VB, trinket. There are going to be times where you simply have no cooldowns available to bridge DS gaps if the dmg intake is high enough, but look at when he pops VB. Immediately after proccing will. This means he is using his cooldowns re-actively instead of pro-actively, which is a large factor to his being hard to heal. He could have (and should have) used the VB to bridge the gap in blood shields to help prevent the health dip in the first place. Not to mention bone shield was available at the time, so he could have also used that. Bone shield had pretty poor uptime in general.

The last two (marked in blue) are a double whammy. No mitigation (just like the first one) but he also runs into cobalt mines without cobalt petrification. That can really hurt without cobalt petrification out.

TL;DR it comes down to better cooldown management and not standing in fire (cobalt mines). Show him this image, so he can get an idea of what he should be aiming for with cooldowns. Cooldown management is huge for DKs, and i'd ask him what his UI looks like. My ui is built around making sure I am always aware of what cooldowns are available and the CDs on the ones that aren't. Figuring out the cooldown aspect of DK tanking is a very significant step towards good playing, and as you've noticed the Dks who neglect to do this stand out pretty heavily.

[Chevelle]

Hello Reniat,

Thanks for that ever so helpfull image, it'll make pointing things found in this thread out so much easier for me! <3

[Deleted]

Reniat,
I am still getting familiar with the world of logs. Can you tell me how you brought up the time table below the graph please? Thank you very much.

[Halland]

Reniat,
I am still getting familiar with the world of logs. Can you tell me how you brought up the time table below the graph please? Thank you very much.

You go to Buffs Cast and click the # under the uptime column on the ones you would like to see.

[Reniat]

^ that

I'd also point out that while I didn't use it in the image above, you can also see your tank debuff uptime. you use the same thing as Halland mentioned, but it's called weakened blows and it's in the buffs cast tab, under debuffs.

[Omians]

be sure for him to time his Death strikes with the stacks of scent of blood as well timming to being after some boss hits
try not to have as much stamina gems, you can have them but try and keep them to only the blue/purple sockets imo

if health is not an issue could try swordshattering for a rune on his weapon instead, the 4% parry could help, used that with my DK when tanking



some people dont like it but i like to use http://www.askmrrobot.com for reforging and such

feel free to correct me if im wrong

[Nillo]

1)be sure for him to time his Death strikes with the stacks of scent of blood as well timming to being after some boss hits
try not to have as much stamina gems, you can have them but try and keep them to only the blue/purple sockets imo

if health is not an issue could try swordshattering for a rune on his weapon instead, the 4% parry could help, used that with my DK when tanking



2) some people dont like it but i like to use http://www.askmrrobot.com for reforging and such

feel free to correct me if im wrong

1) SoB stacks shouldn't affect DS usage
2) People don't like it because the stat weightings are static and generally not well thought out. It tells blood dks to use the Mastery meta gem over the stam/armor one for example >_>

[Omians]

1) SoB stacks shouldn't affect DS usage
2) People don't like it because the stat weightings are static and generally not well thought out. It tells blood dks to use the Mastery meta gem over the stam/armor one for example >_>

it should be increasing the healing and increasing the blood shield from said heal
and it changes on the setting if you go mastery build or avoidance, but ya it still picks the strength or mastery meta gems

[Regen]

I might be way off topic - but did you start this with calling us mages?


On topic - pick a reforge strat to go with, and be more proactive - it's the key to success on an active mitigation tank.

[Deleted]

Thank you Halland,
Now I have some valuable info to start processing. Kinda sick, I know.