Heroic Klaxxi Blood DK - Rikkal Tanking

[Eklypto]

I could not find information on this in the active mitigation thread.

I never had to tank Rik'kal before until last night as Blood, normally it was always our warrior tank instead. But I was having a hell of a time dealing with injection.

It seemed at times I would make sure I had a Blood Shield up before injection cast finished, but would still have parasites get out. It also seemed that if I didn't have a "big enough" shield, that they would still get out, at one point I had only a 100k shield and parasites still spawned.

Anyone have some general advice on what worked for others on this fight would be deeply appreciated. I know Blood is not ideal on this fight from what I have seen/heard/read. Added note that this is not a progression fight for the guild, we are 14/14H but I am wanting to make sure I can cover tanking Rik'kal when called upon. Thanks!

[Deleted]

The amount of the blood shield is not relevant, as long as it's up when Injection is being applied. Keep an eye on the cast time and DS when its halfway in. If you consider the time in between casts, you should always have a DS available. (4-set helps a great deal here)

[Nezia]

Well... just don't do it, ask the other tank to.

Seriously, DKs are the worst tanks for rikkal, if we dont hit him with a big blood shield, so a single hit or even parasites damage can drop off your shield. Other tanks have Mitigation that give them a buff for a few secs, which won't drop by damage, only by time.

But... if you still will tank the dissector, so i would recomend you to run a full mastery build, it will help you with bigger blood shields.

Another hint, if you end up getting hit by injection, so you can manage to get hit by all other injections until the boss is dead. Additional injections will sttack the debuff, increasing the damage you take,but since you manage to not allow the debuff to fall off so no parasites will spawn, also if the injection falls once the boss is already dead no parasites will spawn. But it may end up hitting you pretty hard so try popping cds once it starts to hurt.

[Tojara]

I wouldn't do it as a DK. It's like Ra-den but not as bad as Ra-Den.

Other physical damage can occur during that 1.0 second injection cast no matter how well you time your DS, and in turn cause parasites to start pooping out of you like crazy. Every other tank can handle injection properly with relative easy, and no matter how good you are at timing your DS, there are going to be times where it gets eaten up.

Yes you can keep getting hit by injection if you mess up, but depending on how early that happens you're going to be in for a world of pain as several stacks of the debuff does a considerable amount of damage. Considering you've already messed up, chances are any death strikes you use to help your healers will coincide with an avoidance streak or no physical damage being taken.. which means the debuff will fall off and parasites will be everywhere!

If you're really concerned with tanking Rikkal as a DK it's probably one of the few fights were mashing as much mastery as possible is probably ideal.

[Cryopathy]

I do it every week with about 155% Mastery buffed. It is annoying, and I have messed it up a couple times, but it's still doable.

Remember that you have a lot of emergency buttons to give yourself an extra Death Strike. Plague Leech, Dancing Rune Weapon + 4-set bonus, and Empower Rune Weapon give you three extra chances in case you screw up. Remember to use your other defensive CDs as well. Don't worry about doing good DPS while Rikkal is up. Just focus completely on saving your runes to do the mechanic properly.

[Lumei]

the ideal here to play safe is to keep one set of runes (2 death runes, or 1 frost,unholy runes ) up as long as you are tanking rikkal and death strike when he caste is injection timing here is very important by doing this you will never get by melee attack form rikkal since he his casting and the parasite wont do Enough damage to break your blood shield . do not try to have high dps unless you get very comfortable whit the mechanic

and like said up there keep emergency buttons like Dancing Rune Weapon + 4-set bonus, and Empower Rune Weapon i wont recommend plague leech tough since it cost 1 gcd :\ but still good to take

[Krisppo]

The few times I've had to do it I made sure to run BT and save up enough to always be able to 2xBT and DS during the injection cast. In case I ever screwed up, I just kept on letting it stack (use CDs if taking too much dmg) until I was meant to release the parasites, as getting more stacks of injection resets the duration.

[Eklypto]

Appreciate all the feedback, I went back through and dug through logs to line things up as well. Appears that I had parasites on me a couple of the times that would eat through the shield and cause issues, other times were my own fault through timing issues etc.

Admittingly I did not reforge to go full mastery for that fight while I was on Rik'Kal and was still heavy into parry/dodge instead. Hopefully I won't be called up to handle Rik'kal again anytime soon and I can continue being the punching bag for Ka'roz instead (1mil+ hits unmitigated late in the fight suck)