Blood may outdamage Unholy/Frost now

[Deleted]

*snip*
5) Glyph Icy Runes so Chains of Ice generates 20RP from each Frost rune, and spend most Frost and Death runes on Chains of Ice
Well, you can keep Breath of Sindragosa up forever, performing like Simetrik and substantially outdamaging DPS DKs. You're a crappy tank, true. But you can replace a DPS so who cares?
*snip*

Just remove both. Screw this... how long shall these two be mentioned in any "uhhhh I've got some cheese!" threads? Really. No matter what this isn't dk. I will not play it. Just end it.

[Deleted]

Just remove both. Screw this... how long shall these two be mentioned in any "uhhhh I've got some cheese!" threads? Really. No matter what this isn't dk. I will not play it. Just end it.

bisquits?
seriously, they screw us just because they dosen't listen to us

[Deleted]

bisquits?
seriously, they screw us just because they dosen't listen to us

Thanks for the bisquites, I like.
But really... I don't know how many personas you are but at least they haven't listed to me either.

[Deleted]

sorry for not being an english lord

[Aleksej89]

I am not sure this is as big of a problem as you claim.

If you are doing hard progression content, you can not afford to be a "crappy tank that does DPS" - you need your maximum tankiness for progression raiding.

If you are doing farm content that is not challenging to your raid, who cares if you can do good DPS while being a crappy tank?
The boss is on farm, no one is in a neck-break rush where your small bit of extra DPS is needed during boss farming.

I do agree it should be fixed, but i don't see how it can currently (or in near future) impact raiding in a serious manner.

[Saybel]

I am not sure this is as big of a problem as you claim. If you are doing hard progression content, you can not afford to be a "crappy tank that does DPS" - you need your maximum tankiness for progression raiding

Not strictly true, if you run with enough externals or with certain specs (Disc/HPala) this kind of behavior can certainly occur, it's not like you need to SPAM CoI to keep a high-ish uptime on BoS, you just need to use it when you're bleeding dry of MS procs/runes/ect. Dropping half your healing to double your damage can certainly be worth it in a lot of cases. You can still Death Strike and keep the uptime of BoS.

And it impacts raiding because a DPS should never be beaten by a tank, especially within the same class. It's fine if a 90th percentile tank beats a 50th percentile DPS but 99th percentile DPS should never be beaten by tanks, otherwise what's the point of even being a DPS?

It might a subjective feeling rather than objective fact, but tanks are tanks. Having damage is a good thing, but it should be capped at 75-80% of a DPS's damage.

[Tojara]

I am not sure this is as big of a problem as you claim.

If you are doing hard progression content, you can not afford to be a "crappy tank that does DPS" - you need your maximum tankiness for progression raiding.

If you are doing farm content that is not challenging to your raid, who cares if you can do good DPS while being a crappy tank?
The boss is on farm, no one is in a neck-break rush where your small bit of extra DPS is needed during boss farming.

I do agree it should be fixed, but i don't see how it can currently (or in near future) impact raiding in a serious manner.

That's not always true by the way. That's the difference between good and bad tanks, and many on this board are going to tell you the same thing. The difference between good and bad ones is knowing when you can get away with sacrificing mitigation for DPS, and when it's simply not worth it. The name of the game is maximizing output, and that includes tanks. There is absolutely no reason to maximize mitigation on encounters that aren't tuned to be brutal for tanks. I'm sure many can echo the experience I had with ~655 iLvL the first week of Mythic Highmaul, where it was entirely possibly and not detrimental to your raid nor your survival to pretty much ignore death strike for the majority of Twin Ogron.

Keep in mind we aren't talking measly numbers either. On these specific encounters you can gain a huge amount of damage for what I view as a moderate/heavy mitigation trade-off. Again, the levels of trade off depends entirely on the gear available to you (MS/Haste/Trinkets) and how demanding timely mitigation is on said encounters.

Not every encounters fits in this same mold. There are encounters that aren't super reliant on tank mitigation and are going to require the same amount of healers regardless. On those encounters, if you care about progressing at all, you should care about trade-offs between damage and mitigation.

Again read the thread. It's not entirely about blood DKs as main tanks either, although the logs that are shown are people who actually tank. You can perform similar numbers, or higher numbers than the ACTUAL DK DPS SPECS on a couple encounters by simply switching from UH/Frost to blood. Granted it's not an enormous amount of encounters, but there isn't anything particular dangerous from doing it.

What downside is there to have 2 of your regular UH/Frost DKs swap to blood on say Iron Maidens to which they perform the same or superior DPS to their actual DPS specs? The answer is none. You basically remove two people from your raid group that will need any attention for the entire encounter. This is why you see funny videos with all blood DK groups when content is over geared later on in expansions. I'm not saying you would see groups with mass blood DKs (encounter requires, etc prevent this when content is relevant), but the emergence of DPS DKs playing blood as DPS specialization on a handful of encounters could very well be a thing when content is CURRENT. We already saw this a bit in Highmaul with some guilds opting to use 3 tanks on encounters that really only required 2 because DK AoE was strong and the loss to overall raid DPS from gaining a tank and losing a dedicated DPS wasn't that large. The benefits outweighed the downsides basically.

I fully expect a knee jerk reaction as well, much like the emergence of people 3 tanking several encounters in Mythic Highmaul because tank balance was all over the place.

[Deleted]

It's not like DK is -that- bad of a tank.

Tanks should never outdamage DPS like that, it should be fixed. They did it to Paladin already.

[Troxism]

I love how people think this wasn't played before this week. You guys sit here and only look at public logs, thinking you actually know how much DPS X spec does. Protip; most 'rank 1' public logs are shit for almost every spec in the game, most of the good players still have private logs today as progression isn't over yet. So looking at them as your only source of information about any spec is just stupid. To give an example of a spec where there are bad public logs but the best players actually do crazy damage in private logs: Windwalker Monk. But I digress from the topic.

The fundamental fact is the whole system is broken from the start; I alluded to this in my guide thread, but basically Blood has huge systemic problems (which I explained to the devs in beta, but they don't give a shit about what articulate people have to say).

Let me lay a few things out:

A: Doing this is a huge mitigation loss. And you can't simply 'not tank', as you would be pulling threat for much of the fight.

B: Simply the fundamental nature of using BoS forces you to dump resources ASAP, which is a HUGE survivability loss on a difficult fight, because you will often use DS at full HP to gain RP, then take a lot of damage 1-2 seconds later. So this applies to even just the most basic BoS usage, and is why I constantly hammer in that point to people, as it really does matter if doing content before you outgear it.

C: Because of this, it's difficult to play BoS/'Chains of Cancer' (My nickname for it as it's a really stupid rotation, but it's actually kind of hard to do perfectly) without outgearing content (ie heroic BRF in 685)

D: This actually doesn't work nearly as well if not tanking, as the parry haste from being attacked by mobs (esp DW mobs like Iron Maidens) is actually fairly important.

I've known about this for months, like some others, and frankly have experimented with it a lot. I won't discuss the details on how to optimize this here, as it isn't the point of the thread. But I will address some statements by others here:

Some are asking for Runic Strikes/BoS to be changed. Well here would be the result of that change:

Currently, if not using Breath of Sindragosa, Multistrike is an insanely weak mitigation stat for Blood. I mean literally 2-3 times worse then the next worst (which is about 2 times worse then Mastery itself, so MS is just a joke stat for that). All of it's mitigation value comes from the RP gains, as DS healing cannot multistrike (and even if it did, would often just lead to overhealing).

As a DPS stat it is above the others due to the resource gen provided. However it is quickly becoming worse then Crit for DPS, because of the issue of complete GCD lock. BoS is therefore used as a resource dump valve, like I was talking about late in beta.

So what would happen if Runic Strikes only gave for example 10 instead of 15 RP, or BoS cost 20/s instead of 15/s?

1: BoS would almost instantly not be viable; because of the way the ability works and the low RP cap, you can't really bank much RP, and lowering resource generation by that much would lead to very short 15-20 second uptimes. Why? Because BoS is a maintenance ability. It's not about having tons of resource gen at any given moment, it's about having every for every given second. So the first time you have insufficient resource gen, it ends that second, even if in the next 10 seconds you would have had excess. So even increasing the cost slightly is a MASSIVE increase to the odds of it ending early. While you can generate 20 RP/s with Chains of Ice, the fact is that would be a massive DPS loss by itself after this change (the way the rotation works is far more complicated then that, but like I said I won't go into it on this thread). The other problem is that honestly BoS just doesn't do much damage for Blood per second (and to some extent for DPS specs as well tbh, although at least their masteries have a much bigger effect on it's damage). 100% AP/sec not affected by a multiplier mastery (affected by the AP from it ofc, but still). It NEEDS to have a huge uptime to actually be a gain, since it only does a little more then other abilities per hit. It is intended as a burst spell, but honestly, it doesn't actually do any burst damage. 11k a tick is not exactly a lot of damage.

2: Due to BoS becoming not viable, and the nerf to it's effect, MS would instantly become a complete trash tier stat for Blood. Note that it is Blood's attunement, and is intended to be the best stat. Even today I can only recommend it as a pure DPS stat. After this change, it will become much worse even at that, and even worse (if that is possible) for mitigation.

The fact is if you increase BoS cost/nerf runic strikes for Blood, it just breaks aspects of the spec; MS is already on the edge of actually being completely terrible if it was not for BoS. The talent will be dead for Blood. And NP is already dead for Blood (yes post 6.1), because frankly it just sucks for about 5 different reasons, #1 being that it just doesn't do enough damage even in the best case scenario. Leading you to use the stupid talent of Defile, which is literally the same thing as Death and Decay in MoP for Blood (used the same way).

Why is MS being shit a problem (other then it being the attunement)? Because for other tanks, often the best mitigation stat is also the best DPS stat. DKs have this weird situation where one stat is shit for mitigation and one is shit for DPS, and they are respectively the best in the opposite, meaning you always have to pick one or the other. Even for other tanks who the best for both isn't the same stat, at least they are far closer; you don't get 6 times less mitigation from your best DPS stat as another tank, and half the DPS from your best mitigation stat.

So you have here a situation created by Blizzard's complete refusal to listen to ANYTHING anyone said during Beta, and then people actually complain when the broken system is gamed correctly by the same people who tried to help the developers. And yes I am upset about that. Because I tried my best to help, got rebuffed by the devs, and now they are just going to massively knee-jerk overnerf something that makes the spec's horrible ST damage actually viable. And if they had even bothered to listen in the first place, the whole situation could have been COMPLETELY avoided.

[simetrik]

Yeah, pretty much what Troxism said. I did this because I was observant when watching streams - I was not the first person to implement this strategy.

Edit: Just to reiterate the point I most agree with, I think one of the best potential solutions is making BoS do significant damage, but perhaps have a slightly increasing cost. Maybe every 10 seconds, it costs 5 rp more per tick? It doesn't really solve the overall issues with excessive resource generation, but it does make BoS more balanced. I think it's safe to say it's not currently balanced, at least in cleave situations.

[sunbrother]

Curious about two things:

1. Am I missing something important - is this doable without being in blood presence? Seems like all those passives can be active during frost presence?
2. Anyone play around with this and know the multi/haste cutoffs needed? The HM gear isn't particularly well itemized, so is this doable only in full mythic?

[Troxism]

Curious about two things:

1. Am I missing something important - is this doable without being in blood presence? Seems like all those passives can be active during frost presence?
2. Anyone play around with this and know the multi/haste cutoffs needed? The HM gear isn't particularly well itemized, so is this doable only in full mythic?

Lose 15% damage from Blood Pres so it's just not worth it (BoS isn't all of your damage).

I'll talk about the other stuff later.

[Schizoide]

I agree that the WoD beta in particular was hugely frustrating. Trying to avoid dwelling on that too much, as thinking about it it just gets me upset.

My preferred solution to Blood's RP generation problem isn't to nerf Blood Rites to (for example) 10RP/proc, but to completely change it to directly provide mitigation. For example, Death Strike multistrikes could heal and generate Blood Shield, or generate 1 charge of Bone Shield/reduce the Bone Shield cooldown by X seconds, or cause Y% of healing for the next Z seconds to add a shield to your next Rune Tap. Or heck, they could give a RP gain to spending Blood runes and switch Blood's attunement to haste, at least that wouldn't over-scale with two stats. Tons of ways to make that work. Please don't criticize specific examples in this paragraph, as I have not spent any time at all thinking through them, just saying that it's not difficult to come up with ideas.

Without Blood Rites, Blood would have a crapton of free GCDs; they could easily be filled by increasing the Crimson Scourge procrate.

My preferred solution to BoS would be to remove the cooldown, give it a flat 60 RP cost and 3 second duration (duration stacking with repeated use and scaling with haste), and change it to deal 100% damage on your primary target and 50% on all secondaries just like Howling Blast. It would then effectively replace Death Coil and provide a real AE RP dump.

And finally, please don't get caught up into thinking I (or any other DK) wants to nerf a playstyle you enjoy. What we all want is the spec fixed. We've all been saying it since beta-- the Blood Rites RP gain has gotta go.

@Simetrik: Cool to see you in the thread. People have been toying around with BoS and RP for some time now, with the PvP glove bonus most recently. Yours was just the first public log to actually prove it giving us more to talk about than "Geez this could be really powerful...".

[simetrik]

I think it's safe to say this will be addressed somehow within the next week. Given that assumption, it is a mistake to nerf blood RP generation right now. It's functional, and a poorly thought out change will potentially have ramifications that prevent the functionality of the spec. A BoS nerf may make blood's damage irrelevant, but it won't change blood's survivability. For that reason I hope they either nerf the glyph or nerf the ability. Personally, I think Rites changes should be saved for 6.2.

[Schizoide]

Oh they will almost certainly nerf the glyph and then walk away.

It's a shame that we're afraid to talk about real problems due to concerns that the devs will do a "poorly thought out change". But I agree, I share that concern.

[Troxism]

I think it's safe to say this will be addressed somehow within the next week. Given that assumption, it is a mistake to nerf blood RP generation right now. It's functional, and a poorly thought out change will potentially have ramifications that prevent the functionality of the spec. A BoS nerf may make blood's damage irrelevant, but it won't change blood's survivability. For that reason I hope they either nerf the glyph or nerf the ability. Personally, I think Rites changes should be saved for 6.2.

Problem is making Blood's damage irrelevant is making Blood irrelevant. The way tanks specs are distinguished is by either DPS or gimmicks to trivialize specific fights, as survivability is almost completely a non-factor for tanks in high end play. And the biggest gimmick Blood had was soaking Inferno Slice, except that is A: On an easy boss, and B: fixed anyways. Tank DPS balance is actually quite important in reality, as there is no reason to play Blood if you can just play a Warrior/Monk, do more damage and have abilities that trivialize certain mechanics for the raid. And without BoS, Blood does less damage then other tanks, except on AoE where it's roughly equal (and if you really think Blood AoE is so amazing still, you should see a Prot Paladin on 4-6 targets it's actually hilarious), in a few situations better, in a few others worse. Why would you pick an immobile, low damage tank with no gimmicks? The advantages DKs have atm are mainly in making some survival mechanics easier via AMS or RT, except all that really happens is you just save some externals in your raid and end up never using them instead.

[Schizoide]

survivability is almost completely a non-factor for tanks in high end play.

Are you saying that you're still a viable progression tank after cutting Death Strike counts by half to power up BoS? If so that's... surprising. I assumed it was only a real thing for easy/overgeared content or when offtanking or (where it works well) just plain DPSing. If survivability is that trivial, that's a much bigger problem for the game overall, IMO.

[Troxism]

Are you saying that you're still a viable progression tank after cutting Death Strike counts by half to power up BoS? If so that's... surprising. I assumed it was only a real thing for easy/overgeared content or when offtanking or (where it works well) just plain DPSing. If survivability is that trivial, that's a much bigger problem for the game overall, IMO.

I mean using BoS normally, not cutting DS by that much via CoI usage (which is a much smaller sacrifice, although still existant). But yes generally staying alive isn't very hard for most tanks. The problem is if they make survival really hard a lot of guilds will have to replace their tanks, so it will just never happen.

[Saybel]

Are you saying that you're still a viable progression tank after cutting Death Strike counts by half to power up BoS? If so that's... surprising. I assumed it was only a real thing for easy/overgeared content or when offtanking or (where it works well) just plain DPSing. If survivability is that trivial, that's a much bigger problem for the game overall, IMO.

I assume he meant distinguishing between tanks for their defensive capabilities is a pointless exercise. It's a none-factor because survivability is sufficient enough that even the worst tank can main-tank the hardest content, and the difference between the 5 specs is that you might have to throw 1 more external per fight on say, a DK or a Guardian than you would a Protection Warrior.

Either way, Holy Paladins and Disc Priests seem to have the mana to be able to heal us quite hard for quite a length of time, so on sub-10 minute fights I would argue that tank sustain isn't really important and mobility/utility/damage are far more important than any perceived lack of mitigation.

Of course, I'm not raiding at the same level as Troxism, that's simply my observation from playing multiple tanks in the same level of content, I'm capable with all of them so it's pretty telling for me that I would rather pick a tank based on damage and utility rather than survivability.

Edit: Also, other tanks have the similar ability to play offensively on progress and sacrifice an arbitrary number (let's say 40-50%) of their active mitigation, because passive mitigation is sufficient enough to see you through the fight.

Example being Simetrek managed a nice 20k HPS while using CoI to generate RP. Healing that the other healers would have done anyway was sufficient to keep him alive. It doesn't seem like the raid was built around him being able to have 100% uptime on BoS, rather that he could do it because he had the right conditions to.

[Schizoide]

Ahh. I had no idea surviving was so trivial these days. Looking forward to seeing parses showing what you mean, once the races are over.

Anyway, the defining point of this thread is that it's not really about the chains of ice glyph, that this will happen anyway due to Blood Rites. It'll just take a little bit longer after they (inevitably, very shortly) nerf that glyph.