Blood DK Warlords of Draenor Patch 6.2 Guide (Long but has TLDR Version)

[Satori]

No that comment is wrong. LFR gear is ilvl 640 for Highmaul and 650 for Blackrock Foundry. Here's the BRF helm: http://www.wowhead.com/item=116245&bonus=40

[Gemini Soul]

It's a tool-tip error, when they gave them set bonuses not to long ago they were designed to be class neutral which is why for ex...

The plate set:
Tanks get 2-Passive BA and 4- Proc dmg reduction
Holy get 2-Passive Spirit and 4-Proc heal on injured player
DPS get 2-Passive Strength and 4-Proc dmg increase.

LFR sets are the WoD version of dungeon sets now, we had them before in Vanilla/TBC

Progression wise, i wouldn't want to have some one in my raid group helping on progression on Heroic/Mythic who wasn't trying to get LFR items to replace the blues/lesser gear they currently have.

[Drunkenvalley]

Really hope this won't be a repeat of WLK. "DKs sim great, but healers don't like healing them because they're yo-yos," that stuff.

[Numiro]

Really hope this won't be a repeat of WLK. "DKs sim great, but healers don't like healing them because they're yo-yos," that stuff.

Where are you seeing things like that? I feel the exact opposite with proper cooldown management.

[Deleted]

Where are you seeing things like that? I feel the exact opposite with proper cooldown management.

Yeah, "Proper" is the fault in that. There are so many tanks out there that dont know that they have cooldowns that they should use all the time. And right after an expansion, getting right into the hcs they will think "I will use my cd's when i get low" and so they do, and there we have the yo-yo. It's not because dks are bad, it's because some people that play dks are bad. The problem is that healers always remember the bad tanks.

In the beginning of my hcfarm I forgot what I stated above, that cd's are used to help me not take dmg, not be the "Oh shit" buttons of my class. I would say to myself, no, not this bounce up and down again, I cant stand it. Let me stack my shield and pull all the mobs and just run with it. But, after a few runs I started using the cd's like you should. Bam, much more stable in the hp and smoother runs. But still, we will have the yo-yo's, thats just how it will be for a while ^^

[Drunkenvalley]

Where are you seeing things like that? I feel the exact opposite with proper cooldown management.

It was particularly noticeable on some fights in Icecrown if I recall where healers were having to stay on you constantly 'cause you'd get 3-shot without a heal. Without good CD management you'd drop down noticeably lower, which would predictably cause even more panic-healing, only for you to abruptly heal up a huge portion of your health from Death Strike. Net result? Scaring healers for no good reason.

And I'll really have to get better at CD management again. Being gone for almost two entire expansions has left me very confused coming back since I plain don't remember enough stuff.

[Numiro]

It was particularly noticeable on some fights in Icecrown if I recall where healers were having to stay on you constantly 'cause you'd get 3-shot without a heal. Without good CD management you'd drop down noticeably lower, which would predictably cause even more panic-healing, only for you to abruptly heal up a huge portion of your health from Death Strike. Net result? Scaring healers for no good reason.

And I'll really have to get better at CD management again. Being gone for almost two entire expansions has left me very confused coming back since I plain don't remember enough stuff.

Kind of pointless bringing up 4-5(?) year old stuff in a thread about the new stuff don't you think? Yo-yoing won't be an issue for a decent DK, I have no problem with it at the moment and if I put more effort in to not overhealing with my DS it'd be even more stable.

[Drunkenvalley]

Kind of pointless bringing up 4-5(?) year old stuff in a thread about the new stuff don't you think? Yo-yoing won't be an issue for a decent DK, I have no problem with it at the moment and if I put more effort in to not overhealing with my DS it'd be even more stable.

I'm just saying I hope we don't turn out like we did back then, where we sim fine, but get a bad rep as being harder to deal with as a healer.

[Numiro]

I'm just saying I hope we don't turn out like we did back then, where we sim fine, but get a bad rep as being harder to deal with as a healer.

Right now our rep is: OP as **** in my guild. Not sure if all of our healers just been lucky with blood tanks, but we're basically taking super low amounts of dmg compared to everyone else, I think our sim isn't reflecting that because death strike tends to be a lot of overhealing there. For some reason I can't figure out how to see overhealing, but it should in theory be a lot of overhealing due to how the sim is set up.

[khalltusk]

I am enjoying the tanking we have currently, only a few things really annoy me. Downtime, I was expecting this though especially with the low gear I have so sometimes I have a bit of downtime.

Rune tap being blood can be annoying as sometimes I tend to use up a blood rune when I should have it ready for a tank cooldown instead =[

[Milocow]

with ilvl 517 and 28% multistrike at level 92 i find it difficult to squeeze in plague leech already
i feel no downtime :/

[Troxism]

with ilvl 517 and 28% multistrike at level 92 i find it difficult to squeeze in plague leech already
i feel no downtime :/

Wait till 100. Also i never had issues getting PL off even at 90 with tons of haste; you probably aren't chaining your GCDs perfectly (having open caps between GCDs, or thinking too long about your next spell). It's a really common problem that I see with tons of specs that are GCD based.

[Drunkenvalley]

Oh come on, Truesteel Greaves of Fireflash? Of all the combos I could get lol. (That's haste+crit.)

[Delekii]

Right now our rep is: OP as **** in my guild. Not sure if all of our healers just been lucky with blood tanks, but we're basically taking super low amounts of dmg compared to everyone else, I think our sim isn't reflecting that because death strike tends to be a lot of overhealing there. For some reason I can't figure out how to see overhealing, but it should in theory be a lot of overhealing due to how the sim is set up.

It's not so much that we are taking super low damage but that we have super high healing. I would expect to see a nerf to the DS heal with a relative buff to the shield to keep shield at parity while reducing the heal.

I was saying in a thread on the official forums - I died in a heroic the other day and my healer said to me "that is the first time I've had to heal you in a dungeon since 90... what happened?"

[FurtyIRL]

I'm just saying I hope we don't turn out like we did back then, where we sim fine, but get a bad rep as being harder to deal with as a healer.

To be fair DK was literally the only tank viable throughout all of Ulduar.

It's not so much that we are taking super low damage but that we have super high healing. I would expect to see a nerf to the DS heal with a relative buff to the shield to keep shield at parity while reducing the heal.

I was saying in a thread on the official forums - I died in a heroic the other day and my healer said to me "that is the first time I've had to heal you in a dungeon since 90... what happened?"

High healing and lots of control over damage intake in the short-term, relatively speaking. If you fall behind it's really easy to stabilize with new rune tap etc.

[Troxism]

Sooo they nerfed half the trinkets in the game (hotfixed today). I'll have to look at it more later, but at first glance, the double passive stat ones are probably best now.

[Resurgo]

wow, you're totally on top of this.

I actually popped over just to see if you've noted this yet.

[Numiro]

Sooo they nerfed half the trinkets in the game (hotfixed today). I'll have to look at it more later, but at first glance, the double passive stat ones are probably best now.

Oh wow, just checked my heroic warforged trinket that I was sure was going to stick a while, it lost 24 bonus armor and about 100 on use versatility... Damn.

Has anyone gotten close to something that can be considered a BiS list? I'm simming and simming but it keeps changing values depending on what gear I'm simming. (for progression content, so fairly DPS / TMI focused only)

[Wolfbear]

Really appreciate this guide, very helpful.

[Troxism]

Oh wow, just checked my heroic warforged trinket that I was sure was going to stick a while, it lost 24 bonus armor and about 100 on use versatility... Damn.

Has anyone gotten close to something that can be considered a BiS list? I'm simming and simming but it keeps changing values depending on what gear I'm simming. (for progression content, so fairly DPS / TMI focused only)

I have gear lists in the OP now, although due to only SOME trinkets being nerfed yesterday, the trinket suggestions probably aren't 100% accurate anymore. Like I said, for 5 mans, I would use the double passive stat trinkets like Mote of Corruption/Fires of the Sun/Toria's Unseeing Eye, since they avoided any nerfs from what I can see. I'll look at raid trinkets more later.

Having said that, picking the 'right' gear is even less important then it ever was before (basically, ilvl matters more then stats, unless it's a very small ilvl difference, since base armour on gear scales so much faster with ilvl then in any other expansion). And since you probably won't have the luxury of picking the ideal item in raids (and in Highmaul, there is like 1 plate item per slot, so good luck being picky). As I went over in the stats section, pretty much Blood DK stats are all over the place, and almost every stat at least does SOMETHING; they just all do completely different things for you.

To put it another way, I tried like 5 gear sets that had completely different focuses. Honestly it was really hard to tell the difference; only real outliers were the fact that a Crit gear set just sucked in every single way, and a MS gear set had low survivability and (slightly) higher damage.

- - - Updated - - -

Really appreciate this guide, very helpful.

Thanks for the support :0