Blood in 6.2, Icy Runes, Breath of Sindragosa, and Tanking in General

[Troxism]

I've been working on this 7000 word document for about a week. If you care about tanking at all (even other classes, although it has a heavy DK focus in the latter half), it's probably worth your time despite the length as it touches a lot on the subject of WHY tanks should care about/should have decent DPS (and no that doesn't mean outdpsing DPS players so don't even start assuming that before you read it).


I mean I could say more about it, but honestly you should just read this document, you'll probably at least learn something, and it is definitely food for thought.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

[Jellospally]

It was pretty obvious, but I bet some people don't realize it. Breath is the only reason we aren't last place on dps out of all the tanks atm.

We on average are below prot paladins(who are last atm) on single target if we had to use defile.

PTR iteration of Breath is frustrating as you said. The amount of AMS soaking does help with the rng a little, but its quite annoying having it fall randomly when you can't do shit about it and just rely on auto attacks and no other rune spender.

I really hope people fully read it to understand everything better it was a good read.

[Raiju]

Good read, I felt the same about CoI build when it first came up (slight comment is that it was also brought up on these forums at the beginning of highmaul from someones theorycraft - that was also using the pvp gloves to give you 30 rp and make it 'viable' with the ridiculously low ms you were likely to have at the time) but it grew on me as well as I tried it a little, then a little more, then found I really didn't want to go back to the dull play without it.

[TrollShaman]

I don't play a Blood DK, but this is an interesting and nice read considering my CM realm best team has a blood DK who recently started keeping a BoS spec and a Defile spec. Currently his dps is pretty mad with it and self healing becomes even more mad, giving our druid some leeway to throw wraths for a faster boss kill. Initially he was reluctant but when I linked him top Blood DK dps logs, he tried it and seems to enjoy its playstyle (and dps too) to the point that he always respecs before a boss pull.

[Accurate]

Hopefully a lot of people read this and blizzard can look into making tanking more fun overall for each class. Making stuff super RNG is pretty annoying to deal with at times. Ideally I would like more mechanics for tanks to do also that don't just hold you unable to do anything for a few seconds or require you to run away (not the most fun things in the world). But I suppose you can't ask for too much and just hope for the best and that they'll actually listen to the tanking community for something.

[Saybel]

3 Cheers for Blood DK damage without BoS.

[Deleted]

Viva la Troxism! Viva la Revolution! Engaging gameplay for all tanks, TODAY!

[Khiyone]

Viva la Troxism! Viva la Revolution! Engaging gameplay for all tanks, TODAY!

It's a nice dream, yes. I'm fairly sure they're content with trade-offs like ChiEx or Seraphim (as meager as these are); hopefully they revert the removal of Icy Runes.

[Saybel]

Have you posted this on US official forums Trox? It might generate some discussion there, which could be helpful. I believe somewhere inside me that the devs are still open to dialogue.

[Schizoide]

I agree with everything you say except your conclusion, that Blood should keep the tanking/DPS tradeoff in 6.2. My reason for this is very simple-- other tanks don't have that choice. Blood damage should be balanced in 6.2 with other tanks assuming much lower BoS uptime.

Your argument convinced me that tanks should have a tanking/DPS tradeoff, though. That should be a 7.0 tanking design goal, not a 6.2 one.

Another major 7.0 tanking design goal should be to make worrying about surviving necessary during incoming burst damage phases and when undergeared for the encounter. Otherwise every tank would go balls-out DPS all the time, like now, and the tradeoff is meaningless.

[Saiyendra]

Have you posted this on US official forums Trox? It might generate some discussion there, which could be helpful. I believe somewhere inside me that the devs are still open to dialogue.

I'm not entirely sure it would get too much feedback there to be honest.

Another major 7.0 tanking design goal should be to make worrying about surviving necessary during incoming burst damage phases and when undergeared for the encounter. Otherwise every tank would go balls-out DPS all the time, like now, and the tradeoff is meaningless.

As was said in the document they cannot do that as most guilds would be unable to progress.

[Raiju]

Another major 7.0 tanking design goal should be to make worrying about surviving necessary during incoming burst damage phases and when undergeared for the encounter. Otherwise every tank would go balls-out DPS all the time, like now, and the tradeoff is meaningless.

They do. If a tank fails to use cooldowns they will die to trivial things such as the second breath from a dog on HEROIC flamebender, or crippling suplex, etc. The difference is that this doesn't really reduce dps in any noticeable manner.

The issue there is that it's a trivially easy mechanic for most. Hit X just before Y happens.

[Schizoide]

They do. If a tank fails to use cooldowns they will die to trivial things such as the second breath from a dog on HEROIC flamebender, or crippling suplex, etc. The difference is that this doesn't really reduce dps in any noticeable manner.

Right, I'm specifically talking about the tradeoff.

Regarding the blizzard forums, the devs don't read there. They read twitter, supposedly. The signal/noise is much better here, so might as well link your tweets here.

[Schizoide]

Exactly right-- the devs deliberately made tank survival the healer's job in WoD. They had a blog about it and everything.

Tank players want to be responsible for their own survival, that's why they aren't DPS specs. The devs believed that limiting self-survival to cooldowns on incoming burst damage was sufficient to meet that need, but it led to unintended consequences, where tanks now only really care about DPS. And while that can be fun, if you do it all the time it just plain kills the fantasy of being a tank.

[Deleted]

Exactly right-- the devs deliberately made tank survival the healer's job in WoD. They had a blog about it and everything.

Tank players want to be responsible for their own survival, that's why they aren't DPS specs. The devs believed that limiting self-survival to cooldowns on incoming burst damage was sufficient to meet that need, but it led to unintended consequences, where tanks now only really care about DPS. And while that can be fun, if you do it all the time it just plain kills the fantasy of being a tank.

To further iterate on this, and why it's such a big issue - tank survival is essentially trivial in the sense that outside of coordinating CDs and basic things like timing Death Strike as a Blood DK, you are completely reliant on your healers to keep you alive. You cannot truly control whether or not you die (although you can buy your healers a slightly larger margin for error), but you can control whether or not you do any DPS. Now, this would be fine, I suppose, were it not for the fact that tank damage outside the fringe case of BoS (which is the sort of tool every tank needs, really), tank damage has been neutered to such a degree that it isn't really particularly relevant even on progress. Tanks have gone from being demi-gods in MoP that did everything (which was bad design, if fun in some cases) to being these useless things that are brought along because raid design demands them, and honestly you generally want your least competent players playing tanks outside of maybe Mythic Blackhand this tier because it's the hardest role to fuck up - it has such a low skill ceiling that any halfway competent player can pull it off.

[Saybel]

A lot of the problem among lesser skilled players is that they don't understand about damage patterns. I was told today by a friend I spike a lot on my DK and I need spam healing, to which I replied "I can more or less keep myself alive without you spam healing me". To which the general reply was that we could drop a healer without a tank taking damage, though we would never drop the healer anyway because the DPS need it. Upon looking through my logs, I did find out that the only hardcasted heals I get on me are generally from procs - Our disc never flash heals me or my co tank, and the druid and holy priest just tend to use procced heals on us (Regrowth/Flash Heal procs). Even then, my TMI, DTPS and HPS are either virtually the same as tanks around my level of progress playing defensively.

I'm not sure if that's due to superior play or that the difference is really that small, but all I know is that if heals I would be getting anyway (HoTs, procs, instants, shields) are enough to keep me alive when I play with healers I am actually communicating with - as I always say if I need externals or actually need heals hardcasted on me, then I don't need to try to live anyway. At that point the only metrics that really matter are 1) Damage, 2) Mobility. Obviously I just spend my time padding because we're farming heroic, I wouldn't be where I am on allstars right now if I didn't. I suspect that the largest discrepancies in damage come from gear and RNG though. If I get a good 3-3:30 Gruul I can do 40k. That's sort of okay, because for example our Warrior can pull 47-48k with good RNG too.

Comparing rank 1 DK to random 90th percentile of an average class and saying "Tank damage OP" is a really bad idea because that is literally where the "25% less dps" that tanks are supposed to do come in. The other tank classes just do fucking abysmal damage all around, to the point where if I'm not playing DK I don't even try - My DPS won't impact single target in the slightest and I don't give a fuck about AoE unless logs are on.

It's a non-trivial problem. My off-the-cuff solution would be to nerf external tank cooldowns, nudge healing downwards X% and tank active mitigation up a compensatory X%, and give all 4 tank specs much more impactful DPS/healing tradeoffs, where they are tuned to do 100% of a DPS spec's damage while actively tanking in damage mode but lose enough survivability such that it can only be done when over-geared or during low damage periods.

One of the problems with changes to tanks is when you reduce the power of externals you essentially have to start making the mechanics hit less and less, to the point where they don't become threatening anymore. Mechanics that just require you to put up AM to survive them are trivial to deal with, mechanics that require externals are extremely dangerous for less coordinated groups and create deltas in gameplay between communicative and none-communicative tanks.

I think the best way to deal with it is to have less externals. Why the fuck do warriors have vigilance, for example?

[Schizoide]

Tanks have gone from being demi-gods in MoP that did everything (which was bad design, if fun in some cases) to being these useless things that are brought along because raid design demands them, and honestly you generally want your least competent players playing tanks outside of maybe Mythic Blackhand this tier because it's the hardest role to fuck up - it has such a low skill ceiling that any halfway competent player can pull it off.

Well that's a bit of an exaggeration, tanks still need to handle positioning and know the fight more than DPS without encounter-specific roles.

The problem is that the devs' blog actually made a heck of a lot of sense at the time. Remember back in MoP healers spammed smart AE heals all day long and many raids didn't even need to designate tank healers. Their gameplay was just awful. So you don't want to take that away from healers-- they need to save the day too. It's a delicate balance, where both tanks and healers need to have direct impact on tank survival.

It's a non-trivial problem. My off-the-cuff solution would be to nerf external tank cooldowns, nudge healing downwards X% and tank active mitigation up a compensatory X%, and give all 4 tank specs much more impactful DPS/healing tradeoffs, where they are tuned to do 100% of a DPS spec's damage while actively tanking in damage mode but lose enough survivability such that it can only be done when over-geared or during low damage periods.

I think my solution above is in the right ballpark, but I'm sure I missed important points. It really is a non-trivial problem with tons of moving parts. That's why Blizzard pays the big bucks! Heh.

[Deleted]

Well that's a bit of an exaggeration, tanks still need to handle positioning and know the fight more than DPS without encounter-specific roles.

The problem is that the devs' blog actually made a heck of a lot of sense at the time. Remember back in MoP healers spammed smart AE heals all day long and many raids didn't even need to designate tank healers. Their gameplay was just awful. So you don't want to take that away from healers-- they need to save the day too. It's a delicate balance, where both tanks and healers need to have direct impact on tank survival.

It's a non-trivial problem. My off-the-cuff solution would be to nerf external tank cooldowns, nudge healing downwards X% and tank active mitigation up a compensatory X%, and give all 4 tank specs much more impactful DPS/healing tradeoffs, where they are tuned to do 100% of a DPS spec's damage while actively tanking in damage mode but lose enough survivability such that it can only be done when over-geared or during low damage periods.

I think my solution above is in the right ballpark, but I'm sure I missed important points. It really is a non-trivial problem with tons of moving parts. That's why Blizzard pays the big bucks! Heh.

The dev blog at the time made sense from the perspective of tuning down the input speed of damage as a whole. The concept of nerfing tank self-sustainability is something most tanks I know have always been adamantly against because we KNEW where it'd end up, while the nerf to the input speed of raid damage NEEDED to be changed because existence in HC raids in MoP was binary - you were either at full HP with a fat shield or you were dead, and likewise as a tank you either had SotR up and you were immortal or you had nothing up and any melee hit could be the one to kill you. The rate at which damage went out needed to be slowed down, but the fundamental mechanics in terms of tank healing in MoP were perfectly healthy.

[Resurgo]

Totally agree with this. Just wish there was a more effective way to communicate this to the devs, since most of the time, they don't seem to listen to, or see the whole picture.

[Schizoide]

There is no real way for us to communicate with the devs about anything. It's all just pissing in the wind. They didn't even respond in the beta forums.

They respond to a select few community class leaders on twitter, and supposedly there's a private forum, but it's not like those people made progress on their agendas this expansion either.