Blood Death Knight DPS Tips (WIP)

[simetrik]

Hello, forum-readers. I am Simetrik, former death knight tank for End Result (on Bleeding Hollow) and now tank for Vex (Gorefiend). In this tier, I've grown increasingly interested in the dps output of blood death knights in raiding content. This topic is frequently discussed, yet I cannot find a singular thread summarizing it, so I thought I'd try my hand at assembling what I do know, and rely on the contributions of others to create the ULTIMATE BLOOD DEATH KNIGHT DPS THREAD.

First, I would like to discuss the differences in maximizing dps in 10 man versus 25 man raids. Having recently transferred from 10 to 25 man heroic raiding, I can now empathize with those who say tank damage on 10 man is a joke, because they're exactly right. A decent blood death knight not at the forefront of progression can wear full dps gear, and even in the forefront of progression, it can frequently be beneficial to wear dps trinkets, or use fallen crusader, etc. etc. In contrast, 25 heroic progression consists of eking out every bit of survivability possible. For that reason, I will divide the things I know into two sections - general gameplay tips that apply to any blood death knight, and then the more adventurous gear choices that may not be useful for those in 25h progression.

General Gameplay Tips:

Obviously, the most important factor in tank dps, especially if one is a main tank, is vengeance. The benefit of this in 5.4 may be slightly nullified in extreme situations, but this will not change so long as the fundamental concept of vengeance remains in the game. I use the addon Vengeance Status to track this crucial buff (would link but I'm a new member, just search Vengeance Status on Curse). When you start hitting for hundreds of thousands of damage for each death strike due to the stupidly high AP that vengeance can grant, that is when to concentrate any dps cooldowns you might have available (DRW, racial, or profession-based cooldowns) and further boost your own damage. Many tanks ignore the exact value of their vengeance to their own peril. Sit down while tanking to get crit, and thus increase your vengeance (this is more of a risky tactic then a gameplay tactic, so be careful).

The next most important factor in blood death knight dps is the prevention of wasting of resources. Ideally, runic power should never cap, and rune pairs should not be left at full. This isn't always possible, especially with runic power/ams, but trying to never cap resources is ultimately, I feel, a major advantage over the average death knight. Of course, true mastery comes when one never caps yet keep the necessary resources around for emergency situations requiring a sudden death strike.

Third comes Dancing Rune Weapon. Proper use of this skill can boost dps by thousands. The duplication of most abilities (except talents) is a huge damage boost, and as such, DRW should be used at high vengeance, stacked with any other damage cooldowns available. An excellent move is to use outbreak while DRW is active to create two sets of diseases. These two sets can both be spread to any adds with the use of pestilence (sadly, roiling blood will not be duplicated by DRW). So, to put it simply, pool resources and cooldowns to maximize damage done during that crucial window in which DRW is active.

Soul Reaper is self-explanatory, yet is not used on cooldown by many blood death knights. Use it as soon as you think the boss will fall below 35% health when the debuff runs out from your first SR. Repeat until boss is dead. Using SR while DRW is up is awesome for damage as well.

For the sake of dps, I would recommend being an Orc Engineer Blood Death Knight, simply for the reason that Blood Fury and Synapse Springs are incredibly useful cooldowns to stack with high vengeance and/or DRW.

Gear/Stat Choice Tips:

One of the easier ways to significantly boost dps is to cap hit/exp. This can actually be justified from a survivability standpoint if you really like scent of blood procs (read: negligible benefit that only someone obsessed with beating everyone on meters would pick over extra dodge/parry). With that said, I cap hit/exp and perform well in my 6/13h 25 man guild, so it's not the worst thing one could do.

Another easy way to boost damage is to use the fallen crusader enchant. There's still a healing portion, and the 15% strength increase can be immensely beneficial at the right time. I use this enchant as well.

I should note that right now, I have a 525 average ilevel - I'm not exactly geared to the teeth. Yet these damage-boosting modifications do not seriously affect my survivability to the point of hindering progression. Unless you're a madman trying to solo tank Ra-den as a blood death knight, I would recommend these small changes no matter your raid size.

The more extreme changes can be found in replacing trinkets, then gear. Trinkets with second stats like haste and crit are preferred over those that provide strength, or more importantly, mastery. Mastery is a phenomenal survival stat, but does absolutely nothing for dps. For that reason, the Primo trinket, the Horridon trinket, and potentially Ji'kun's trinket are all very helpful for boosting dps.

If you're super crazy, and in a 10 man guild (I don't think this is possible in any meaningful 25H context), just wear your frost offset. Be smart about chaining cooldowns, because blood shield no longer helps survivability at all, which is a major hindrance if unprepared.



Thank you to those that have read this far. Obviously, this list is incomplete and deserves additions/corrections that only you, readers, can provide. Please help me out.

look me up on wow-heroes on gorefiend or bleeding hollow to see my assorted parses. My raiding has unfortunately been sporadic while moving between guilds, but I should be able to put up some decent parses in the next few weeks.

[Mormolyce]

This post is interesting and handy for playing my Blood DK, though it's kind of absurd to me that the current game mechanics incentivise tanks deliberately eating damage to produce ridiculous DPS. Tanks going out of their way to take damage and tanks topping meters is just so back to front. Can't understand their thinking with Vengeance... why doesn't it just affect your threat multiplier? GC came out and said that they want tank DPS to matter... personally I don't see why but even if they do it shouldn't matter this much and taking damage shouldn't be the way to optimise it.