Current state of Blood

[cerebro]

Hello fellow Death Knights, so today I decided to replace my unholy spec with blood for the first time in over a year. I tanked 7 or 8 time walking dungeons and a few heroics.

I must say the spec has become completely trash.. basically I drop dnd and spam blood boil and death strike with the occasional death coil. I feel like I am missing a core ability.

Rotation
dnd
put disease up
spam bb, ds and dc
>35% soul reaper
Reapply diseases


Anyone else feel blood rotation is extremely underwhelming?

[Blur4stuff]

what would you rather the rotation be?

[cerebro]

More complexity, for ex bring back heart strike for single target encounters. I liked rune strike for melee and death coil for heals and hitting ranged mobs. Make blood boil interactive with necrotic plague, more damage the higher the disease idk something...

[Deleted]

when they removed heart strike and rune strike, the spec lost all interest for me. Standing in melee range randomly exploding with blood and throwing melee death coils just didn't do anything for the fun of playing the DK fantasy for me.

[Trimshadow]

Do some harder content and start using your mitigation abilities along with timing your death strikes to help healers when you're low - Tanking on any class that out-gears the content is going to be boring as - time-walking is not a good example to use as it's more of a cake walk than those dungeons used to be...

[Saiyendra]

More complexity, for ex bring back heart strike for single target encounters. I liked rune strike for melee and death coil for heals and hitting ranged mobs. Make blood boil interactive with necrotic plague, more damage the higher the disease idk something...

Because choosing a spell based on the number of targets is "complexity," yes?

[Hanzzy]

I have a DK Tank and Pally Tank, working on a Monk tank/healer; but I've found DK tank to be much more interesting then the pally tank. That's for sure. I always work on new ways to see if I can outheal my healers, or make it so they never have to heal me....etc. So that can help make it a bit more interesting on the DK side.... I haven't a clue how to make pally tanking interesting!

[Saybel]

DK is not fun anymore tbh

You get dicked by the mob, press Death Strike twice, you're no longer getting dicked and then you wait till you start getting dicked again. Most times you need to use CDs are choreographed. And make sure you don't cap runes, very hard, such complex.

WTB Chains of Sindragosa back for fun factor.

[Gornack]

I really don't understand the removal of Heart Strike in favor of BB spam. I can understand getting rid of RS for DC, but spamming an AoE ability to build up death strike damage/healing just feels clumsy.

Having said that, Blood AoE feels fairly satisfying.

[Hanzzy]

I felt it was awkward to have BB replace heart Strike at first as well... however, once you get used to it and get Death Runes rolling on a ST fight you really don't BB all that much - it's just death strike spam. It took me longer then it should have to learn that.

[Saiyendra]

DK is not fun anymore tbh

You get dicked by the mob, press Death Strike twice, you're no longer getting dicked and then you wait till you start getting dicked again. Most times you need to use CDs are choreographed. And make sure you don't cap runes, very hard, such complex.

WTB Chains of Sindragosa back for fun factor.

You forgot having to pray to the stars for those auto-attack multistrikes. Maybe that's where the fun lies?

[Gornack]

I felt it was awkward to have BB replace heart Strike at first as well... however, once you get used to it and get Death Runes rolling on a ST fight you really don't BB all that much - it's just death strike spam. It took me longer then it should have to learn that.

Does ignoring BB contribute more to survival or damage? It always seems like my overall dps is higher when I use DS with 3-5 stacks of SoB every time.

[Darsithis]

Does ignoring BB contribute more to survival or damage? It always seems like my overall dps is higher when I use DS with 3-5 stacks of SoB every time.

Both.

Survival in that it gives stacks for DS. Damage in that it...well, damages a lot of things if a lot of things are up. It also is the only way to use up those blood runes so they can be converted to death runes for more DS.

[Schizoide]

Remember, you can use Death Strike 3 times per cycle by converting the Blood runes to Death via Blood Tap/Plague Leech then using them to Death Strike.

His question was actually whether DS*3 was more damage than DS*2+BB*2. DS*3 should be more damage on a single target. It's also much more mitigation.

Also Soul Reaper costs a Blood Rune too, and can be used in close CC to spend that rune.

[Darsithis]

Remember, you can use Death Strike 3 times per cycle by converting the Blood runes to Death via Blood Tap/Plague Leech then using them to Death Strike.

His question was actually whether DS*3 was more damage than DS*2+BB*2. DS*3 should be more damage on a single target. It's also much more mitigation.

Also Soul Reaper costs a Blood Rune too, and can be used in close CC to spend that rune.

SR isn't used until late in the fight, and BT only works on a random, fully depleted rune; you still have to use the rune in the first place.

I was only speaking in a general way, not trying to get in-depth. Obviously if you want to do more damage in a big add fight, BB would be the way to go, though you'd sacrifice survivability if you used death runes on blood boil. In a single target fight against the boss, DS would be the way to go.

[Zethras]

I feel like i’m in a minority here, but I still love blood to pieces, wouldn’t trade it for any other tanking class/spec.

[Saybel]

6 Death Rune > 4 Death Rune and 2 Blood runes for single target surivivability and damage

I made a post on the official forums about how to create a scenario where you can spam DS with 6 Death Runes, so I'll copy it here in-case anyone is unaware of what Schizode is referring to

1) Deplete both Blood Runes
2) Blood Tap a Blood Rune into a Death Rune
3) Wait for both your Blood Rune and your Blood-Death Rune to recharge
4) Expend all your Unholy and Frost Runes
5) While still having 2 full Blood (1 Blood, 1 Blood-Death) Runes and 10 stacks of Blood Tap, Blood Tap once to restore what I believe will be an Unholy rune (doesn't really matter since both types should be empty).
6) Death Strike the Blood-Death and Unholy-Death rune away
7) Blood Boil or Rune Tap
8) Immediately Blood Tap the last 5 stacks before either of your Blood Runes gets the change to recharge

[Neycourt]

I was always of the opinion that Frost made the most sense for tanking (build up ice armor, slow enemy movements, etc) and blood dps should have stayed. Not a fan of the unholy pet thing, either. Overall, disappointed with the directions they chose for DKs mid/end Wrath.

I thought the same thing too when they unveiled the change in cata of blood being the tank spec. But when I played the new blood, I really fell in love with the self healing playstyle. Honestly I really loved the cata version of blood. Heart strike and rune strike were awesome. So were the blood worms, haha. I would really love to see a return of heart strike and rune strike though. Constantly spamming death coil into the boss feels weird doesnt really have that umph that rune strike had.