Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[Deleted]

Mirroring my post from the Alpha forums:

Our rotation is the biggest issue left and mainly unchanged from last patch. There are three main issues with our rotation:
1) There are too many baseline Rune regen buffs which devalues Haste and resource providing talents.
2) Bone Shield is too easy to keep up which gives us a very simplified list of abilities to use.
3) Non-Marrowrend abilities are ineffective which feels unrewarding if you manage to keep up Bone Shield and want to use the other abilities instead.

Talents affected and devalued by these issues: Consume Vitality (5 sec channel is hard to fit in), Red Thirst (more Rune regen buffs), Ossuary (more Bone Shield generation even if you should never use Marrowrend on AoE anyway), Exhume (more Bone Shield generation), Soulgorge (more Rune regen buffs)

We had a pretty abnormal rotation in early phase that consisted of Heart Strike over everything else on single target because Marrowrend wasn't worth using - which I think everyone agrees was neither intended nor fun to play.

Unfortunately, the current rotation is not that far off from this due to how easy Bone Shield is to keep up. A single Marrowrend with Rattling Bones nets you 8 seconds worth of Bone Shield before avoidance or absorbs. In reality, this number is closer to 11+ secs assuming 30% avoidance without even counting full absorbs, bosses stopping to attack you or the artifact trait that generates a charge at random so even that number is conservative.
So you end up using Marrowrend approx. 5 times per minute which is certainly a step up from never using it, but not by much, and it shows.

Secondly, once you are done stacking Bone Shield your list of rotational abilities shrink down to: Blood Strike, Consume Vitality if talented, DnD procs and Blood Boil. Blood Boil is a filler and DnD will be used once every ~15 secs give or take a few seconds so I want to focus on the core of what constitutes most of our GCDs: Blood Strike.
Blood Strike offers very little over Marrowrend in terms of survival since you currently need 8 Blood Strikes to show a difference between someone only using Marrowrend and someone actually doing the rotation correctly. This is extremely underwhelming and Blood Strike needs to be changed from providing RP to something else entirely (Again, one extra Death Strike every minute or so might sound OK from a theory crafting/dev PoV but from a player PoV we prefer using abilities that have immediate effects because they are the most obvious and gratifying. That's in addition to not wanting to dilute the power of each individual Death Strike by handing out more.)

A note on Consume Vitality: This is a great idea of an ability if adjusted properly that would fit into our currention extremely well. Right now it seems like wasted potential to have it be the niche talent to use for attacking mobs from range due to how constrictive it is at a 5 second cast and while disabling all our other abilities, including auto attack. If this had a lower CD at 15-20 seconds and a 3 sec cast it would be the perfect alternative to 2x Blood Strike.
(I really, really want this ability to work out because the idea of it is just so good! )

And finally, due to the abundance of baseline Rune regen buffs we are able to do so with a meager 5% Haste from gear and 10% Rune regen from Bone Shield (video proof from last thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLs49AyxOSw). No Soulgorge, no Haste stacking, no Red Thirst necessary.
Or even desired because why would you want faster Rune regen/Haste when it barely affects your rotation and only adds more Blood Strikes which have only a small effect on survival? You'd be better off with secondaries that have a bigger impact like Crit and Mastery, or talents that are immediately useful on their own like Anti-Magic Barrier. Soulgorge is problematic because it might be phased out the better our gear/artifact becomes over the expansion but want to use in starter gear still.

So as a result of all this, we have a very simple rotation that is easy to play but also easy to master while being unrewarding if you do so.

Suggestions:
Slow down the rotation so keeping up Bone Shield is harder but not so hard that you only have a few opportunities to use non-Marrowrend abilities. In return, make those abilities be a lot more rewarding so you notice it immediately when you use them and feel good about it.

For example:
Remove Rattling Bones altogether, lower the CD on Consume Vitality to be used semi-rotationally (15-20 secs, possibly with multiple charges) while making it more user friendly to use (3 sec channel and allowing auto attacks and survival CDs but not other abilities) and have Blood Strike either heal you for a portion of the damage dealt/max health or even empower your next Death Strike (i.e. Scent of Blood).

All in all, this should give us a better variance of buttons to press and add some sorely needed depth while doing so.

A note on Death Strike:
It's great to see a buff here and I hope the healing window drops down to somewhere around 3.5 - 4.0 secs. Why these particular numbers? Mobs swing every 1.5 seconds so if you have a healing window that is a product of x * 1.5 you will never be able to get in more than x-1 swings into the healing window regardless of how good you are at timing which essentially plateaus the skill required to use it more efficiently.

Or in more simplified terms: If you have a 3.5 sec window, you can fit in three boss swings (0s, 1.5s, 3.0s) into it with room to spare for latency if you time it well and only two if you don't time it properly (0.6s, 2.1s). If the window was exactly 3.0 seconds you would always only get in two swings which flattens the skill curve.
(Yes, special attacks exist but auto attacks are is still the lion share of damage we need to deal with.)


Talents
Blood Worms: I like the idea but due to the healing paradigm shift this talent has become pretty weak. Instead of being burst damage protection or a (justifiedly inefficient) way to convert over healing into effective healing, it doesn't do much of that anymore.
I'd like to keep the theme of that going and suggest that Blood Worms spawn on every heal and not just overheals but at a much lower rate. For example, BW could store 5% of all your healing done with Death Strike and keep them until you drop below 30% health.

Consume Vitality: I think I made it clear what I would like to see happen with the talent but just to be sure: 3 sec channel that allows auto attacks and defensive cooldowns, lowered CD to be used semi rotational in place of Marrowrend/Blood Strike. Really great potential here.

Heart Strike: Whatever Blood Strike ends up doing, but better at it.

Rapid Decomposition: Have it generate RP per mob hit with diminishing returns. Cement it as the go to AoE talent. Otherwise same issue with what I mentioned earlier: One extra Death Strike over a minute might be OK from a TC/Dev PoV but doesn't feel as exciting or immediate as a player.

Soulgorge: Fine for single target for now but likely to be phased out once we acquire better gear/artifact levels.

Ossuary: Needs a total redesign, a buff to Bone Shield generation is not necessary nor is it recommended to use Marrowrend on AoE. Blood Strike deals more damage - and more importantly - only costs 1 Rune; missing mobs due to positioning even within DnD is still an issue and with Blood Strike you get a second chance to reposition and hit the mobs you might have missed on the first go. With Marrowrend this option simply does not exist.
Would like an alternate talent here to pick for single target when I don't want to use Soulgorge.

Red Thirst: Needs to do something else altogether, we don't need more Rune regen buffs. I suggested Leech before and I still like that idea so there you go.

Mark of Blood: Still problematic due to both having charges and a duration, it should be one or the other (and if it's charges, it should have an ICD or another way to prevent it from being consumed immediately on a raid wide low damage aura); possibly also undertuned number wise. Good idea though.

Rune Tap: Love it. It compliments the rotation well and in an ideal world I would use it along with Consume Vitality on Runes I "won" by keeping up Bone Shield efficiently.
The reality of it is though is that within the current rotation it is much too strong. It should be capped at 3 subsequent uses at most so you end up with an ability that rewards players who have the foresight to bank Runes which adds even more depths/skill to the rotation but without breaking things completely like I did here to show the issue: https://youtu.be/1cZqLMx4y5U?t=23s (Yes, that's 8 Rune Taps in a row without dropping Bone Shield. On single target that would likely have been 10 or more for a 200%+ max health heal on a 2 min CD which is insane.)

Tightening Grasp: Still not found of this (feels like a filler) and would like to see it replaced with a talent that improves our mobilty or snare capabilities. The tier it's in fits this suggestion, too.

Exhume: Not worth it due to how easy Bone Shield is to keep up as I mentioned earlier.

Foul Bulwark: This might need a slight change to how it works. Right now it rewards keeping Bone Shield charges as close to 10 as possible but if/when there is a change to our rotation, would it make sense to cap the bonus you get from it to 5 stacks and increase the health per charge appropriately? Would give some wiggle room as to how far we can gamble and let Bone Shield fall off without losing the health so it stays competitive with Will of the Necropolis for effective health points.

Mobility and Snares
Happy to see Wraith Walk's CD lowered and even happier to know that the animation is just a placeholder because you can actually get stuck on stairs using it since you cannot jump during it. Also, a big thanks for allowing defensive actions during it.

That said, a 60 second CD still makes us one of the least if not the least mobile tanking class though. It all depends on how good our new snare will be and if it can compensate for it.

For example, Prot Warriors have better mobility and an extremely strong snare so we'd have to get one at least that good in my opinion since neither Prot Warriors nor DKs have other strong utility to make up for it (unlike Prot Paladins who have roughly equal mobility to us, an AoE snare and extremely strong raid utility) so I am expecting something like a 10 sec debuff for a 50-60% snare.
To put things into perspective: Thunder Clap has a 6 sec CD, is AoE and provides a 10 sec 50% snare at 8 yards. With a talent it can be improved to 16 (!) yards which is insanely good (see http://i.imgur.com/autmN8y.jpg for the talent range).

I'll reserve judgment until I can see it in the next build though.


Misc
Dancing Rune Weapon: Can we expect some improvements in it's damage or CD here? It's a pretty long CD at 3 minutes but it cannot even replicate our damage 1:1. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit jealous of Ravager (1 min CD, 11 sec, 30% parry and AoEs on its own even if it is a talent).

Artifact - Consumption ability: Mostly a minor thing, but could we cement the CD status of Consumption by moving it off the GCD like most proper CDs please?

Artifact - Unending Thirst: This is pretty amazing because it's AoE damage. This should help a ton for initial snap threat when you can run into a pack, Death Strike it and have Blood Shield break for AoE damage. Super!

[mmimzie]

Good post tyvi.

On mobility I'll sy the short wool down on wraith walk is chill. I think it really depends on the blood strike snare. If it's really strong than there are no mobility issues.

As for how simple our rotation is. Did I feel were never overly complicated maybe just clunif you mess up th syncing of your runes. That said it could be made more rewarding to good play. As was said making bone shields harder to keep up would rock, when combined with making consume vitality shorter CD and channel. That way you feel kind of naughty that you got to sneak something in.

Another alternative would be give us another route for completixity. Soulgorge could be replaced with something that makes us work harder. Maybe a breath of syndragosa style thing, but have it eating into your bine charges.maybe bone storm eats charges of bone shield ever second.

Either way, they are moving in a good direction and they have enough time to fix any issues I have.

[Zorish]

more Blues on our thread

Zugsworth
Game Designer
It is not a design goal for Bone Shield to be difficult to keep up. Blood, percentage-wise, is intended to have the strongest reactive tanking mechanic (Death Strike) and the lowest preventative damage reduction (Bone Shield) of all of the tanks. That means that the focus of the player's attention needs to be on using Death Strike well to be a good tank. Having Bone Shield be relatively easy to keep afloat frees up mental space and class resources to improve Death Strike usage in an effective manner. When using Death Strike isn't the right thing to do in the next GCD, the choices of pooling resources, making sure Bone Shield stays afloat, properly utilizing Death & Decay, Blood Strike, and Blood Boil plus all of the other things tanks are expected to do is a large space to display player skill.

Haste is only devauled as described here when you achieve global cooldown saturation. Given the recent secondary stat changes and how many times we have adjusted the rotation to increase GCD utilization so far this year I will be very surprised if GCD lock is an issue outside of Heroism/Bloodlust.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20742715227#10

[Deleted]

I so like the direction blood is going.

I've got a bit of a sunk cost with my bear though... such a shame. If I was starting a new character in Legion it'd probably be Blood.

[Resurgo]

Tyvi, You've been pretty quiet for most of this expansion. What happened to you? (if you don't mind me asking)

I recall you being a very knowledgeable contributor back in MoP.

[Murderdoll]

Someone who has been able to log into Alpha. Is the Absorb issue still affecting Death Strike?

If they were serious about Death Strike, they would revert this Cataclysm issue immediately.

[Deleted]

Tyvi, You've been pretty quiet for most of this expansion. What happened to you? (if you don't mind me asking)

I recall you being a very knowledgeable contributor back in MoP.

Been around here and there, just been posting less on these forums. I usually do try and give Alpha/Beta feedback though!

[Boneshatter]

Somebody had an idea (sorry, I don't remember who to give credit) to make Tightening Grasp baseline and add back Chillblains in its place. I think that would be an excellent idea. It would give us control when we want or need it, but allow it to be turned off when we don't.

[Coffeh]

Blood artifact trait:

Unending Thirst
Rank 1/1 Artifact Trait
Requires Death Knight (Blood)
Requires Maw of the Damned
When your Blood Shield expires, deal damage equal to half your missing health to your enemy target. Gain health equal to the damage you deal.


Is this trait really as amazing as it seems? Unless I'm misreading it seems every time your blood shield expires (which is very frequently) you'll heal for 50% of your missing health. Is this for real?

[cujoe]

Blood artifact trait:

Unending Thirst
Rank 1/1 Artifact Trait
Requires Death Knight (Blood)
Requires Maw of the Damned
When your Blood Shield expires, deal damage equal to half your missing health to your enemy target. Gain health equal to the damage you deal.


Is this trait really as amazing as it seems? Unless I'm misreading it seems every time your blood shield expires (which is very frequently) you'll heal for 50% of your missing health. Is this for real?

It reads like that, but I can't imagine it going live like this. It will basically promote a playstyle where you want to stay as low on HP as possible to maximize the effect of this talent. It's similar to the prot pally class trinket right now where people even cancelaura absorbs and use sit macros to make it proc. That's really not what a tank should do imo.

[Deleted]

Someone who has been able to log into Alpha. Is the Absorb issue still affecting Death Strike?

If they were serious about Death Strike, they would revert this Cataclysm issue immediately.

I am pretty sure that absorbs and avoidance do not count as damage taken for Death Strike's heal window.

It reads like that, but I can't imagine it going live like this. It will basically promote a playstyle where you want to stay as low on HP as possible to maximize the effect of this talent. It's similar to the prot pally class trinket right now where people even cancelaura absorbs and use sit macros to make it proc. That's really not what a tank should do imo.

The trait is probably overtuned but why would it promote abnormal behavior? Blood is set up as the most reactive tank of all them (with the higher health pool to go with it) so that trait fits the overall theme.
Just like you would try to get as much damage into your Death Strike healing window by dropping down as safely as possible before using it, this trait works the same way.

The only time you would game it is to deliberately get min Blood Shields at low health - but this might actually require more skill than just timing Death Strikes more properly since you would need to a) communicate with your healers to keep you as low as possible yet without dying and b) where did all the damage go that put you that low so that it is outside the Death Strike heal window?

Lets look at it with an example and assume a 4 sec Death Strike window and 40% healed back (they talked about a buff to DS but didn't tell us the new numbers so these are just guesses):

You have 50% max health, boss hits you 3 times for 10% each so you are at 20%. Death Striking now would heal back 12% of your health but you don't want to do that to milk more out of the trait: Now your healers need to shield you to prevent anything more than a single strike because a second hit will kill you and you need to survive another 4 secs to get the 7% min heal (=3 boss swings).
If you somehow manage to do this with healer coordination or RNG avoidance, congratulations, your trait now deals (100%-20+7%)*0.5=36.5% of your health as damage and you gain 36.5% back.
If you had played as intended and Death Strike immediately afterwards, you would have dealt dmg for (100%-20+12%)*0.5=34% of your health and you gain 34% health back.

With that said, is that 2.5% really worth risking death or healer stress for? But maybe that number is only so small because I picked a low damage scenario. Lets look at one where we start at 100% and the boss hits for 3x30% leaving us at 10%. (Note that I do not think this is a common scenario considering this is close to a 3 shot and that goes against the new healing paradigm but lets go with that for the best case exploit scenario anyway)
Waiting for min shield: 41.5%
Death Striking immediately: 27%
Difference of 14.5% max health gained. A bigger number, isn't it? But then again do note that you are literally close to getting one shot on the very next swing like this and playing like this is, if you don't mind me saying, incredibly stupid from a survival PoV. Most damage mitigated != least likely way to die. This was true back when people were throwing out "Hey man, look at my DS/mins." without looking at timing or size and it is still true now.


Now with that said, lets go back to how it might be overtuned. I say might only because I do not how often they want us to Death Strike; if it's not that often, the trait could be stronger than it otherwise should be but even then, I do expect the heal to drop by 50% again.
So something like: When Blood Shield expires, deal damage equal to half your missing health. Gain health equal to half of the damage you deal. (For a net of 25% of missing health).

An alternative nerf that would not affect legit play could be to have Unending Thirst scale from the size of the Blood Shield. You time well, you get rewarded for it.

[Deleted]

Sadly I'm not on the alpha, so correct me if I'm wrong on any of my assumptions, or feel free to post them to the official forums if you like them.

Currently it seems our rotation is pretty bland, and talents don't offer much variation to that.
Blood is supposed to be the most reactive tanking spec, but in Legion there isn't much left of that. Of course DS is still reactive, but it costs RP now, and it has literally nothing it competes for resources with, so it's trivial having 1-2 DS stored. There's no gameplay involved in that.
There's also Marrowrend, but Bone Shield is so predictable and easy to keep up that you simply have to use MR once every 8 seconds, so nothing reactive about that either. The remaining runes you simply use for BS since there is nothing else you need them for now that CS makes DnD free again.

Talentwise it seems there are only four talents that somewhat change that:
Consume Vitality and Bonestorm also cost runes, which causes them to compete with MR and BS, but because of their long CD it's extremely easy to plan around them and have the necessary runes when they come off cd, so no real impact on our rotation either.
Then there's Foul Bulwark, which in theory adds more depth to MR, but in practice probably will be either ignored in our rotation or cause us to simply use MR more frequently, depending on tuning.
Lastly there's Soulgorge, which actually impacts our rotation, but apparently is horrible to play with and actually detrimental in any scenario with multiple adds.

Now, I REALLY want this new 1-Rune, DS costing RP to work, because I think it has great potential, and could be vastly superior to how it was previously.
but for that there need to be a few core changes.
Bone Shield as a maintenance buff could work, but it needs to be a bit more interactive, I think adding a little bit of RNG to would do a lot. Change Boneshield to a lower internal cooldown, but give it a chance not to be consumed when hit. That way we would have to keep a few runes stored in case we get unlucky and our Boneshield gets eaten away quickly, similar to how we currently keep a few runes for DS. That alone could improve our rotation tremendously.
Besides that, a few more impactful talent choices would be nice:
A bit more rotational competition for runes, perhaps something that causes us to weave in Death's Caress in our ST rotation (to keep up a buff/debuff or something).
Some more interaction with DS, which is severely lacking in our current talent options considering it's THE core spell of the blood DK.
Some way to game Bone Shield charges would also be nice, perhaps a benefit you get from having few charges, rather than many.

Also a very minor thing that irks me a bit is Blood Mirror. I think it would be a way better talent (and closer to its original form) if it caused you to split a portion of your damage taken with an ally (and vice versa) rather than an enemy. Besides fixing the problem of actively trying to take more damage it would also give us a very thematic and useful utility tool.

[Blur4stuff]

still waiting for options to have DnD land under target or self. glyph, separate spell, item, whatever i don't care how.

[Zorish]

still waiting for options to have DnD land under target or self. glyph, separate spell, item, whatever i don't care how.

what do you mean by that? You can land it under target O_o or you want it cast ON target? well... for pvp you have talent wich spawn dnd under up 3 enemies...
Or it's too much for you pressing button 3 times? (i remember how paladins cry about telepirting to sword that "it have too many presses!!!111oneoneone")

[Boneshatter]

A quick couple questions for those in the alpha if you don't mind-

Does Boneshield count as active mitigation for AM or die mechanics or are we going back to deathstriking and hoping for good rng so our bloodshield doesn't get knocked off .2 seconds before the attack?

Can multiple Death and Decays overlap? I mean if you drop one with a rune then proc a free one and drop it will they both do damage?

Thanks in advance.

[Murderdoll]

I am pretty sure that absorbs and avoidance do not count as damage taken for Death Strike's heal window.

Yup, so the same issue we had in Cata where absorbs diminish the effect of the heal.

Terrible. Hopefully, that gets reverted.

[Deleted]

Yup, so the same issue we had in Cata where absorbs diminish the effect of the heal.

Terrible. Hopefully, that gets reverted.

Doubt it. They already "fixed" it by changing it to a smaller time-window of damage taken. They're going to stick to their horrible idea no matter what. Hello /cancelaura-macros...

[Leblue]

Does Boneshield count as active mitigation for AM or die mechanics or are we going back to deathstriking and hoping for good rng so our bloodshield doesn't get knocked off .2 seconds before the attack?

It'll probably still be Death Strike, but they'll probably still have the "you just recently Death Striked" buff that triggers the "AM is active" flag on AM check abilities.

[Murderdoll]

Doubt it. They already "fixed" it by changing it to a smaller time-window of damage taken. They're going to stick to their horrible idea no matter what. Hello /cancelaura-macros...

Was kinda hoping it wouldve been fixed when they changed the window.

Not sure why they changed the window and didnt just revert absorbs mucking around with the heal.

[Zorish]

I think (not sure, but think and hope people will give feedback to blizzard about it if i am wrong) that they know about interaction between absorbs/-dmg cds with our blood shield. Cause if they not - that will mean that our second main def mechanic (bones) won't "cooperate" with our main - Blood shield. Or maybe they plan to reduce our bone shield generation and actually make it "active mitigation" so we always have resources for our defense? (no RP - use runes, no runes - use rp, have nothing? use exume - like paladins who have talent for refilling their SotR charges asap)