Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[Deleted]

Doesn't sound very fun.

^ I second this.

[Deleted]

What is fun as blood this expansion? Nothing. Not since they removed BoS.

[Tojara]

Well, I don't see how it's not "fun". Bears are OP for sure and they don't have to change a whole lot, but even they are essentially sitting staring at a green energy bar with the sole purpose of eating the 100 fel scythe. It's a pretty niche job and I was pretty sure blood DK would be able to do it just glancing at the math. Again, it largely depends on the legendary items available to you. With the timing I was able to do it without the belt, but like mentioned above, in actual practice it's not a good idea.

I'd be curious if it was available to you if you would run belt and the legendary trinket. It would be available for every third fel scythe and is essentially AMS. Never mentioned anything about blood mirror or purgatory. In such a scenario it might be better to run purgatory as it's simply 'safe', and you aren't incorporating the DR from blood mirror anyway, so it's not like you need it. How many vamp fang relics are you running?

I'm glad that it's possible as a blood DK in actual practice. Still doesn't make us optimal for it but nice none the less. My only reservations about doing it when we arrive there is how P3 pans out, as the whole inability to heal for several seconds every so often, along with how hard the boss hits doesn't necessarily spell out "blood DK".

[Deleted]

I run purgatory for it because it has very good saving you potential in the fight, if for example you dont time your cds well for scythe. When purg procced for me on guldan it always saved me because of having vamp blood for scythe. I got 2 vamp blood relics. 6.6m hp in raid with flask. Imo its most fun boss for me.

[Orbs]

Definitely worth the read Schlars. I posted it again on the US forums (I'm Chainfire), hopefully it will get some attention. Thanks for your hard work putting it together!

Post is in the "Blood DK Feedback (long, concise, insight?)" if you're looking for it.

[Deleted]

Definitely worth the read Schlars. I posted it again on the US forums (I'm Chainfire), hopefully it will get some attention. Thanks for your hard work putting it together!

Post is in the "Blood DK Feedback (long, concise, insight?)" if you're looking for it.

Thanks

Hopefully Blizzard will at least acknowledge one of all the Feedback Threads. This Radio silence is really frustrating.

[Deleted]

As long as I've been playing, I remember Blizzard actively ignoring all dks feedback and going silent for months.
I think they know, at this point in the expansion, that blood can be really fixed only with a revamp of both base abilites and talents, as well as artifact traits and spell, and is something that they'll never do now. I have no doubt they are reading feedback, but I also believe they are simply looking for an easy way to bring up blood without wasting time and effort on the spec.

Blood CAN play at every level of content, but imho it feels extremely clunky and "inefficient" compared to the top tanks. We're heavily haste addicted, healing is all over the place with all those useless mini-leech effect, mitagtion is low and has to be compensated with talents, mobility is almost a taboo, and damage is overall low. Also having a mastery so weak that we want to avoid that stat feels so frustrating.

I hope they can at least fix something of the above before ToS hits.

[Raiz]

Nice thread. But I wish not every Blood DK focused too much on Raid because I'm not sure it's where we're spending all of our time tanking. The 0,5% blood plague's trait for example may not be great for Raid, but it'd be insanely good for M+.

[Deleted]

As long as I've been playing, I remember Blizzard actively ignoring all dks feedback and going silent for months.
I think they know, at this point in the expansion, that blood can be really fixed only with a revamp of both base abilites and talents, as well as artifact traits and spell, and is something that they'll never do now. I have no doubt they are reading feedback, but I also believe they are simply looking for an easy way to bring up blood without wasting time and effort on the spec.

Blood CAN play at every level of content, but imho it feels extremely clunky and "inefficient" compared to the top tanks. We're heavily haste addicted, healing is all over the place with all those useless mini-leech effect, mitagtion is low and has to be compensated with talents, mobility is almost a taboo, and damage is overall low. Also having a mastery so weak that we want to avoid that stat feels so frustrating.

I hope they can at least fix something of the above before ToS hits.

With the BS Change in 7.1.5 and 4p Blood actually Plays pretty well. It was massivly clunky in EN. Our main Problem is burst damage, which Forces us to use RT, like Jouman described the Guldan fight. Then it seems to get clunky again. But i think Souldrinker Trait will help a lot.

Nice thread. But I wish not every Blood DK focused too much on Raid because I'm not sure it's where we're spending all of our time tanking. The 0,5% blood plague's trait for example may not be great for Raid, but it'd be insanely good for M+.

I dont get your Point. Do you mean the Blood Plague Trait? Its 4% more Damage via Plague. Im not 100% sure, but iirc after 7.1.5 Veinrender is the best trait for DPS.

Or are you referring to the T20 2p Bonus and the 0,5% heal per target hit? Latter is weak for m+ too (you would Need 20 Targets to heal for the same as a Minimum DS) and a Raid Tier Set should be good for the raid^^

And overall we are in way better spot for m+ than we are for raiding.

[Deleted]

With the BS Change in 7.1.5 and 4p Blood actually Plays pretty well. It was massivly clunky in EN. Our main Problem is burst damage, which Forces us to use RT, like Jouman described the Guldan fight. Then it seems to get clunky again. But i think Souldrinker Trait will help a lot.

Bone Shield change in 7.1 was a god-send, it's true, and T19 helps a lot. When I refer to "clunky", I'm pointing at all those things that are in our kit and effectively do nothing, or the questionable talent balance. From my point of view, it's extremely frustrating to know that Consumption is a hit-and-forget dps button in the majority of raids encounter, just like I hate with all my heart things like Blood Feast trait (I can barely stand Unending Hunger too). The fact that they stripped us from many of our abilites and put them on talents and legendaries is simply mindboggling. T20 bonus set is another thing that makes me think even a dog could think of something better.

Imho blood is a spec with a strong and funciontal core, but with a kit that needs to be heavily polished.

[Philondra]

The Blood Feast trait is pretty damn strong in Mythic+ content. Even if you only hit two mobs, it still heals for more than one rejuv/renew tick, and no one would ask druids to please stop applying rejuv to the tanks...

[Deleted]

The Blood Feast trait is pretty damn strong in Mythic+ content. Even if you only hit two mobs, it still heals for more than one rejuv/renew tick, and no one would ask druids to please stop applying rejuv to the tanks...

In my current Gear the avg. heal from Blood Feast is slightly lower than the avg. heal from a Blood Plague tick. ~0.5-0.6% max HP per Target. (with 1 Blood Plague Relict) Should be about equal with no relict.
If you hit two Targets with HS you heal for ~1% of your max HP. I would not consider this 'damn strong'.

Blood Feast has the same issue as Consumption. The less Targets you have, the worse it gets.

[Philondra]

Okay, "damn strong" was a bit hyperbolic of me, but you're getting more than one rejuv--scaling up to what can be as much as 3 rejuvs--worth of healing for something you would be doing anyway. If the threat you're facing is more "war of attrition" then getting burst to death, then that's not negligible.

[Tojara]

A lot of my issues with a bunch of these leech talents and set bonuses they throw at us, is that they generally don't work in raids. They work fairly 'well' in trivial dungeon content where you pull a massive amount of things. I'm not calling M+ trivial, but if you're pulling a massive amount to where these talents are beneficial, you likely aren't doing a range that is appropriate for you gear or your groups level.

I think foul bulwark and red thirst being baseline would probably be the best changes. Red thirst especially because I can't see in any world, where you would take anything besides that talent. If the cost of foul bulwark being baseline causes it to be slightly less powerful, so be it. Personally think that blood DKs should have giant health pools, which would make sense with the design goal of having us heal back the damage that we are taking. This post can easily devolve into complaining about guardian druids, but druids current mastery and model of having a lot of health, really doesn't make sense with how they are currently being played.

What bothers me is they attach something nice to consumption (you can argue otherwise), but make it a talent. Honestly if they just gave us that baseline, and attached something else to it's effect it still wouldn't be overpowered, but might end up being balanced.

Consumption, traits and a couple talent points are all that really need to be fixed. I wouldn't expect giant changes, and besides, we really don't need them. We are 'okay', but risk potentially being bad if we just get ignored. Wish they would make AMS better, or at least make it better through traits/talents.

[Raiz]

I dont get your Point. Do you mean the Blood Plague Trait? Its 4% more Damage via Plague. Im not 100% sure, but iirc after 7.1.5 Veinrender is the best trait for DPS.

Or are you referring to the T20 2p Bonus and the 0,5% heal per target hit? Latter is weak for m+ too (you would Need 20 Targets to heal for the same as a Minimum DS) and a Raid Tier Set should be good for the raid^^

And overall we are in way better spot for m+ than we are for raiding.

My bad, yes i'm talking about the 0,5% heal per target hit. We seriously need more mitigations against trash mobs. 0,5% may not be enough, but keep in mind Blood boil is our primary DPS. If you convert it to 0,5% for our heal, it's quite significant. It sucks in raid simply because blood boil isn't really a Single Target spell.

Blizz is adressing the survivability issue in m+ with that T20. Not Raid. Now if we can get another spell to have more mitigation specifically for ST, I'd be happy aswell.

[Deleted]

My bad, yes i'm talking about the 0,5% heal per target hit. We seriously need more mitigations against trash mobs. 0,5% may not be enough, but keep in mind Blood boil is our primary DPS. If you convert it to 0,5% for our heal, it's quite significant. It sucks in raid simply because blood boil isn't really a Single Target spell.

Blizz is adressing the survivability issue in m+ with that T20. Not Raid. Now if we can get another spell to have more mitigation specifically for ST, I'd be happy aswell.

The 2p is bad for m+ aswell. Its like Tojara said. If you hit so many Targets with BB that the healing from the 2p would be relevant the content is most likely trivial. Again 20 Targets would be equal healing to a 10% Minimum DS. This shifts further away with Souldrinker.

And honestly. Doing something for m+ via a Raid-Tier-Set would be very terrible design. The Primary design intend of Tier set should be its best used for the Raid.

If you want to do a lot of m+ you are far better of with T19, giving both more Survivability and more Damage.

[Philondra]

Consumption, traits and a couple talent points are all that really need to be fixed. I wouldn't expect giant changes, and besides, we really don't need them. We are 'okay', but risk potentially being bad if we just get ignored. Wish they would make AMS better, or at least make it better through traits/talents.

This part of your post really resonated with me. One of my biggest concerns about 7.2 and the new artifact traits is that we get nothing to help our DPS, unlike all other tanks but prot warriors--and our DPS was nothing to write home about to begin with. We're not in BC any more--tank DPS is far from negligible, and when i look at prot paladins getting a trait that boosts their already unfairly strong single target damage, I just want to shake my head.

We're in an okay-ish spot at the moment, but we are definitely at risk of falling behind. Thankfully it's looking likely that Tomb of Sargeras will be in 7.2.5 with an accompanying balance patch like we had just before Nighthold.

[Tojara]

They would have to do a pretty big overhaul to add more "DPS" to our talents. The best place to buff blood DK damage is essentially through traits. Our burst damage really isn't that awful, but it only comes once every 3 minutes at the cost of using DRW.

I mean talent wise, the only way you get any meaningful amount of damage is by taking blood drinker, and then by taking blood mirror. Blood mirror I'd put an * next to because in order to get the most damage out of it, you have to play like you have vengeance (which is fine, but no other tank has to do that).

Soulgorger was likely created to make it 'harder' to play blood, but the pay off was probably going to be more resources, which equated to more damage. Unfortunately none of that really happens, and we are left with a talent that nobody would take, because it's a trap talent with basically no positives. Unless we get a massive change in our talent tree, the only real place to boost our damage is in traits, which seems pretty simple to do.

I was annoyed they nerfed blood drinker, but it was too strong. Honestly if they shifted it's 7.1.5 power somehow into our other DPS talents (which don't exist) or our traits, and lifted us just a bit higher we likely wouldn't be having a discussion about blood DK DPS.

M+ is indeed a valuable part of the discussion, but I don't think they should be designing raid sets in order to make our lives easier in M+. Truthfully blood DK is pretty good in M+, it's raiding where we need some help. I'm fine with these mini leech talents and traits, if they are actually potent enough to matter, and don't require an obscene amount of targets. Aside from a couple encounters, think about how many encounters in NH benefit from the new 2 piece or the heart strike leech talent? Negligible at best, but generally worthless.

[Ikrekot]

I not big fan of m+ but I wanted to do few in this week and it had Necrotic. I suppose DK is worst for it. If our AM is about self healing we are in shitty position. Does any other tank have problems with other affixes? I suppose not.

[Tojara]

You would think that, but DK is probably the best, or one of the best for necrotic. I'd argue prot paladins are better simply because of spell warding and bubble, allowing for some really aggressive pulls, but DK is really good at necrotic for reasons that aren't really apparent to people who just simply glance at the class. I'd put DK down a little bit further in necrotic, but since the 7.1.5 changes that makes it so boneshield doesn't get chewed through on ICD it's a pretty easy affix. That and the further fix of it being dropped once you leave combat make it a way better affix than it was on launch.

To explain there are a couple ways to get around necrotic. AMS blocks application, which means it can be used on pull to ensure you have 0 stacks for the first 5 seconds. It can also be used in tandem with stuns and snares, which get necrotics duration to the magic number of 5, which means as long as you don't have a crazy amount of spell damage going out (most dungeons don't, and if they do it can be interrupted), it will fall off. DKs are strong at necrotic because of AMS and our ability to kite. Aside from a couple instances with mobs you can't CC (Maw of Souls comes to mind) you simply face tank shit for awhile, throw DnD down and run around in circles. Despite being the least mobile tank, we have the best kiting tools by quite a large margin.

The legendary cape which is a topic for discussion is only really seen as valuable on necrotic weeks. It ensures you drop stacks, as necrotics duration is only 9 seconds and the cape lasts 10 seconds.

So yeah, contrary to what a lot of people think, blood DK is one of the best at necrotic. While it's true we probably get punished the most for having it on us, we just have superior kiting skills and AMS, which allows us to shed it pretty easy. Honestly aside from MoS and a couple of problematic bosses (which can be solved by having somebody with a taunt ping pong the boss for a few seconds), necrotic isn't a terrible affix, at least for DKs.

Only affix I don't like is universal for every tank, and that's skittish. Fuck skittish.