WoD Question: Regarding DKs selfheal and solo content performance

[DraCurse]

Hi.
So in the upcoming WoD expansion, how will DKs solo performance go? to the worse or to the better?
Will it be easier or harder for DKs to solo content?

Will their selfheals be nerfed? or just nerfed for a specific spec?

[Kraeth]

It's way too early to tell. We're not even in beta yet.

[Sinzaram]

It's way too early to tell.

Yeah the most recent tweet said they were still iterating the 6.0 blood design, because current design was too proactive and potentially ruining how reactive we are currently.

I asked if deathcoil was going to continue to give Rune Shield like Rune Strike was going to and I got this answer:

Still iterating on the general Blood design changes. Not satisfied with how 'proactive' it's making them. Want to stay reactive.
Source

So its safe to say we have no idea of what blood design changes they might go with now.
Time to play the wait and see game.

But actual questions:

Hi.
how will DKs solo performance go? to the worse or to the better?
Will it be easier or harder for DKs to solo content?
Will their selfheals be nerfed? or just nerfed for a specific spec?

I think the answers to all these questions would be the same as now, theres kinda no reason to think we'll be any worse or any better soloing.

Numbers balancing on any heals or damage hasn't been done yet, so theres no reason to think giant nerfs or buffs will happen to self heals.

The only two confirmed self healing changes are that Lichborne now gives X% Leech stat for its duration when you use it. Leech heals you whenever you damage or heal. So popping Lichborne and Deathstriking a few times should be fairly massive, since you'd get Leech heals from Death Strike damage and Death Strike healing.

Lichborne is not useless. It's going to grant X% Leech (not sure what X is yet, maybe 10%?)
Question: Does disease damage count as healing?
All damage you deal counts for Leech.
Question: The patch notes say 'all damage and healing', will healing done count as well?
Yes. (though obviously not the healing from Leech, it doesn't loop infinitely )
Source

The second change is to Death Pact since Blood and Frost can't summon temp ghouls anymore, Death Pact heals you for 50% hp but puts a Necrotic Strike style absorb on you for 25% of your HP.

Death Pact no longer requires an undead minion, and instead places a heal absorb on you for 50% of the amount healed.
Source

[Deleted]

Design intent says we're still going to be great at solo'ing. The remake of vengeance lets me believe that the dps requirements will be somewhat harder to meet, and as Mione said many times, for most encounters at the top of solo progression, the limiting factor is not survivability but DPS.

Again, that's a generic observation based on design "intent." As Kraeth said, way too early to give any solid opinion.

[Raugnaut]

Design intent says we're still going to be great at solo'ing. The remake of vengeance lets me believe that the dps requirements will be somewhat harder to meet, and as Mione said many times, for most encounters at the top of solo progression, the limiting factor is not survivability but DPS.

Again, that's a generic observation based on design "intent." As Kraeth said, way too early to give any solid opinion.

With the 5.4 vengeance changes, the buff to ALL tank dps next expansion when at low vengeance will only help us in soloing. Remember that we will be going to 75% of a dps's dps all the time, instead of 110% with high vengeance, and sub-50% with low vengeance. So for all pre-MoP raids, its a significant soloing boost to ALL tanks.

For MoP raids, we will be able to solo ADDITIONAL fights once 6.0 hits compared to what we can now, as we don't get anywhere near the amount of vengeance we used to pre-5.4 in ANY raid pretty much.

- - - Updated - - -

As for mechanics, Rune Tap has become more powerful (more healing), Death Strike will most likely act the same, we have double the HP compared to now but our self-healing isn't being nerfed 50% (HP-based self-healing seems to be nerfed anywhere from 20-35% for all cases, which results in a self-healing GAIN for most classes) so we will self-heal for even MORE compared to now, ect.

So more damage, more healing next expansion. The only change that seems to hurt us is the removal of Blood Parasite.

Well, Heart Strike got nerfed some, but who cares bout Heart Strike?

[Khiyone]

Hi.
So in the upcoming WoD expansion, how will DKs solo performance go? to the worse or to the better?
Will it be easier or harder for DKs to solo content?

Will their selfheals be nerfed? or just nerfed for a specific spec?

Self-healing (and damage) is being significantly buffed.

When soloing old content (even MoP raid content) one rarely goes over 50k-60k Vengeance, which makes for lackluster DPS. With the upcoming changes in WoD, we will be doing 75% of the damage of someone in a DPS specialization.

To help you better understand this, it'd be equivalent to doing 300k DPS in Blood specialization right now,
which would trivialize many bosses like Galleon, Jin'rokh, Protectors, Primordius, etc.

Now that we will actually scale with the defensive version of Vengeance (Resolve), not only will we become viable in tanking, we will no longer have to fear large amounts of AoE damage and even hard enrages, to some extent.

[scabobos]

Blood seems like its going to be really good next expansion which is exciting. Also stoked about lichborne changes, going to be amazing in PVP

[KronoTraveller]

I play a frost DK and recently I was farming zandalari warscouts/warbringers in LFR and flex gear. I have death pact and lichborne as talents but can never seem to have enough self heals. I main a paladin who has many ways to heal himself during a fight, and find not being able to self heal decently as a DK very annoying. Might I be doing anything wrong or is the DK class just severely lacking in self heals?

[Khiyone]

I play a frost DK and recently I was farming zandalari warscouts/warbringers in LFR and flex gear. I have death pact and lichborne as talents but can never seem to have enough self heals. I main a paladin who has many ways to heal himself during a fight, and find not being able to self heal decently as a DK very annoying. Might I be doing anything wrong or is the DK class just severely lacking in self heals?

You're playing Frost - the Paladin you encountered was likely Protection or Retribution with a much higher item level. Spec Blood, or spec Death Siphon if you want to use a DPS specialization for soloing. Blood DKs have the highest self-healing of any tank, but take more damage.

[Sinzaram]

Might I be doing anything wrong or is the DK class just severely lacking in self heals?

Yes the DPS DK class is indeed severely lacking in self heals.
You only have Dark Succor Death Strikes, when normal Death Strikes don't heal for enough and Death Siphon as spamable heals really.

[Deleted]

I play a frost DK and recently I was farming zandalari warscouts/warbringers in LFR and flex gear. I have death pact and lichborne as talents but can never seem to have enough self heals. I main a paladin who has many ways to heal himself during a fight, and find not being able to self heal decently as a DK very annoying. Might I be doing anything wrong or is the DK class just severely lacking in self heals?

Go Blood, use dps gear. Spec into chilblains and roiling blood. When spirit add spawns, blood boil to get him slowed and kite warbringer away slightly. If it has scarabs, blood boil and they should die very fast. If he has the fear, AMS it. Glyph of regenerative magic is nice to be able to catch all of them. Step out of the frontal cone attack and ignore meteors. Always a clean albeit slightly slow kill.

[bals]

if you have a decent ilvl you can just stand in everything without fear of dying (warbringers as blood)

[Raugnaut]

I play a frost DK and recently I was farming zandalari warscouts/warbringers in LFR and flex gear. I have death pact and lichborne as talents but can never seem to have enough self heals. I main a paladin who has many ways to heal himself during a fight, and find not being able to self heal decently as a DK very annoying. Might I be doing anything wrong or is the DK class just severely lacking in self heals?

Dark Succor (Procs on a killing blow, 20% heal. Not much, but if the warbringer has Scarabs, its enough to solo the Warbringer), T58 talents (Death Pact, Death Siphon, Conversion), and Fallen Crusader (3% on proc). Ret paladins have Flash of Light (semi-spammable heal, heals for about 80-150k), WoG (Can be used about once/10 seconds at the very least, heals for a bit more then Flash of Light), T90 talent (various self-heals), LoH (full-health heal), Divine Storm glyph (5% on use), and Seal of Insight (Multiple small heals, only used if all other tools can't get you to the healing required to solo something), as well as various CDs.

So yea, less healing OPTIONS then a paladin. However, your problem had nothing to do with DKs having a smaller amount of healing options,and more to do with the fact that you took the WRONG options. Go with Conversion (if frost) or Death Siphon (if unholy) instead of Death Pact (Death Pacts a raid thing. Death Siphon/Conversion easily beat Death Pact in terms of overall healing possible. Death Pact, 50% heal once per 120 seconds. Conversion beats Death Pact after 15 seconds. Death Siphon beats both with only a few uses. Also, Dark Succor is pretty much a must-have for non-raiding dps DKs, and should be baseline.

[Kraeth]

Go with Conversion (if frost) or Death Siphon (if unholy)

I'd go with Death Siphon with frost. Conversion is a bigger dps loss and it doesn't give on-demand healing.

[blackblade]

As for mechanics, Rune Tap has become more powerful (more healing), Death Strike will most likely act the same, we have double the HP compared to now but our self-healing isn't being nerfed 50% (HP-based self-healing seems to be nerfed anywhere from 20-35% for all cases, which results in a self-healing GAIN for most classes) so we will self-heal for even MORE compared to now, ect.

Just as a note (and other might've mentioned it), the patch notes suggest that Death Strike is being swiched from healing N% to a set amount based off attack power (and subsequently scaled by "Resolve", the new vengeance)

Healing overall will be more predictable and won't require an addon to try and figure out the best window to hit it, the result is that the massive 25% of your health pool heal + a massive absorb will be less common, (esp with doubled effective health) but there'll be fewer times where you're hovering at 30-40% and death strike heals for next to nothing.

Basically, it's going to work more or less like a monk's "Expel Harm" but likely on a higher coefficient as it's got a more restrictive cost (two runes instead of 40 energy)

[scabobos]

Can confirm that death syphon is an absolute must for warbringer soloing. Its insanely effective

[SlippyCheeze]

Just as a note (and other might've mentioned it), the patch notes suggest that Death Strike is being swiched from healing N% to a set amount based off attack power (and subsequently scaled by "Resolve", the new vengeance)

Healing overall will be more predictable and won't require an addon to try and figure out the best window to hit it, the result is that the massive 25% of your health pool heal + a massive absorb will be less common, (esp with doubled effective health) but there'll be fewer times where you're hovering at 30-40% and death strike heals for next to nothing.

With a ten second window, resolve should go up and down much more than vengeance did, so that there will still be some benefit to timing it well. Looking at a rolling ten second window on various logs I have definitely reflects that -- I expect other tanks to have a harder time adapting to it than blood DKs do, since they all had the relatively stable 20 second window, and we had a harsher version.