Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[Mokuna]

Buffing blood shield a bit wouldn't do much at all for the spec, you don't really ever die when you can use death strike especially when taking high damage (which is the case that would make blood shield relevant), you struggle when you've been forced to use death strike and you run out of rp (and when that happens you've to choose beetween rebuilding bone shields and building rp fast to even stay alive)

My experience has been way more frustrating on lowish damage content, you don't have control over your survivability at all because your death strike doesn't heal for shit, it just doesn't feel fair to death strike for 400-500k when getting meleed for 700k

Everything just feels undertuned unless you're taking an absurd amount of damage (which you will on Ursoc and Xavius) and then you'll just yoyo really hard, make your healers sweat and have to play flawlessly to get things done (when a warrior can accomplish the same by pressing devastate and shield slam, refresh shield block and ignore pain when needed)

Here are the changes i'd suggest to make Dks even relevant in raids:

-Revert bone shield back to 20%, fix dots removing blood shield charges (seriously)

-Make Death Strike heal for 20% of max hp minimum, 10% is just not enough, on lowish damage content not only dks have no mitigation, but their selfhealing is bad(if you don't believe me just get rid of bone shield/blood mirror in your healing logs because it's not actual healing and see how dks fare against warriors or dhs, classes that have actual mitigation on top of that), self sustainability was always a dk niche and now it's just gone
-Double Ams absorb, it's way undertuned, on Xavius it literally absorbs 1 and a half tick of the dot that ticks every second
-Give vampiric blood 2 charges, if you're not gonna give Dks dr because of "class fantasy", they still need more cds that actually work (dancing rune weapon is parry which is irrelevant for 99% of tank mechanics)
-Buff rune tap to be a 40% dr: it's a niche talent you're only taking when you really need it, and when you need it 25% dr just feels like a meme, it's not enough and you've to compensate the fact it's not enough by calling externals at the same time you're using rune tap, which is exactly the opposite of what the talent is supposed to accomplish

I don't even think these changes would make dks great tanks, just not a liability to their raids like they are right now.

[Snuffleupagus]

Bone Shield is fine at 16%, it just needs to be immune to either DoTs or immune to anything doing over x% of max HP.

Vampiric Blood with two charges would be the most overpowered thing in the game.

And I'm more convinced than ever that Blood Shield is a bad joke that must be removed.

What we need (outside of massive talent overhauls)
- Bone Shield fix per above
- New mastery (for example: Mastery increases Bone Shield absorb or ICD)
- Some form of DR as baseline for fights like Cenarius

[Philondra]

I think we're probably fine without having a DR cooldown baseline, as long as we're able to talent into it, but Rune Tap needs to have a little more oomph to make it worth taking, whether that be a slightly higher DR or some extra little bit on the side (maybe granting the same runic power as one heartstrike?) Remember that for all its weaknesses, it has the not-insignificant strength of having a tremendously low cooldown.

Our mastery also isn't out of line with the other tanks design wise (physical absorption shield based on health healed), but perhaps it could use a little sprucing up. Warriors, Demon Hunters, and Monks all have mastery that only works against physical attacks; Druids' mastery doesn't contain any form of DR; leaving paladins as the only tank spec with a mastery that works against magic damage. Mastery would definitely be more powerful if the absorb shield was based on all of our self-healing, but they'd probably have to tone down the percentage--and if you think a 25k hot from Blood Plague is a joke, imagine the 2.5k absorb shield you would get from it.

I'd say the Bone Shield consumption from auras/dots that barely tickle us is the major issue. Even if we don't actually lose *that* many Death Strikes from it (and I haven't calculated this and I don't feel comfortable throwing out a number I pulled out of my ass), it feels absolutely terrible to play with. Once this is addressed, we'll get a clearer picture of where we actually stand.

The second major issue is that we have some pretty trash talent choices. Probably the only spec with worse choices is survival.

56: Bloodworms and Blooddrinker would be made competitive through tuning.
57: Soulgorge is worse than having no talent at all. Spectral Deflection is a trap talent.
58: Blood Tap is undertuned. Anti-Magic Barrier probably needs a redesign (increase AMS absorption and RP generation by X% would be the direction i would go in)
60: Mark of Blood needs a little something extra. Tombstone is worse than having no talent at all.
90: WotN is undertuned. Rune Tap is pretty close to where it should be.
100: Relatively balanced tier design-wise, although when I look at DH's Last Resort, Purgatory makes me want to cry.

[Deleted]

Our mastery also isn't out of line with the other tanks design wise (physical absorption shield based on health healed), but perhaps it could use a little sprucing up. Warriors, Demon Hunters, and Monks all have mastery that only works against physical attacks; Druids' mastery doesn't contain any form of DR; leaving paladins as the only tank spec with a mastery that works against magic damage. Mastery would definitely be more powerful if the absorb shield was based on all of our self-healing, but they'd probably have to tone down the percentage--and if you think a 25k hot from Blood Plague is a joke, imagine the 2.5k absorb shield you would get from it.

You have to look at the whole picture, mastery alone means nothing.

Warrior mastery focus on physical damage because they have an innate way of reducing magical and physical damage in their kit (Ignore Pain), and to boost that they have several universal dr cooldowns at their disposal.
Druid mastery is a 100% uptime, but weaker, Vampiric Blood, because they are the only class that can decide to spend resources on physical dr or magical dr at all times. They too boost that with universal dr cooldowns and heals.
Dks on the other hand have a weak universal dr with 100% uptime in the form of Bone Shield, while missing any way to reduce physical damage outside of Blood Shield, which actually comes AFTER using DS, and thus damage. Our basic cds boost our health and healing, and AMS works against magic damage only.

I stand my point, blood shield is useless since Legion came out. Reworking mastery to something that interacts with DS heal or Bone Shield would be more appropriate.

[Philondra]

Dks on the other hand have a weak universal dr with 100% uptime in the form of Bone Shield, while missing any way to reduce physical damage outside of Blood Shield, which actually comes AFTER using DS, and thus damage. Our basic cds boost our health and healing, and AMS works against magic damage only.

I understand your perspective and appreciate the thought you put into it. I disagree that blood shield is useless, because it fills the role of smoothing out damage intake after a large damaging event, providing the healers with a bit of a buffer to top you off with. Just because you took a large damage hit doesn't mean you stop being damaged, and blood shield serves as a stabilizer.

What I don't understand is why they nerfed mastery by 25% late in the beta cycle.

In the end, though, the revamping of our mastery which people are clamoring for in this thread simply won't happen. Blizzard has consistently shown aversion to remaking mechanics in the middle of an expansion.

[Deleted]

I understand your perspective and appreciate the thought you put into it. I disagree that blood shield is useless, because it fills the role of smoothing out damage intake after a large damaging event, providing the healers with a bit of a buffer to top you off with. Just because you took a large damage hit doesn't mean you stop being damaged, and blood shield serves as a stabilizer.

What I don't understand is why they nerfed mastery by 25% late in the beta cycle.

In the end, though, the revamping of our mastery which people are clamoring for in this thread simply won't happen. Blizzard has consistently shown aversion to remaking mechanics in the middle of an expansion.

Apparently they nerfed it to 12% because they wanted Bone Shield + DS to be our mitigation tool, with blood shield being just a bonus. They definitely went too far with that. And yes, it's very unlikely they will change our mastery mid expansion (they did it with frost mages in MoP, but it was an execption), my suggestion was more of a wish than anything else.

[Deleted]

I really cant see why they havent reverted the boneshield to 20% and fix the aura/dot ticking eating our shield stacks yet.

They could just do that as a band-aid until they figure out what exactly they wanna do with our lower bottom golden trait, mastery and lackluster choices of talents.

[alex wolf]

blood doesn't need many mechanical reworks, it just needs a rather large tuning pass, deathstrike to 15-20% hp baseline and blood shield up to 50% or so of the amount healed, maybe take blood worms and make it baseline, adding a blood beast talent as an improved version of bloodworms in its place

[Questdk]

is there a path guide for maximizing blood artifact power ?

[Deleted]

I really cant see why they havent reverted the boneshield to 20% and fix the aura/dot ticking eating our shield stacks yet.

The fact that this has not been done and it's been almost 2 months since release is goddamn pathetic. I also enjoyed that the only tank they talked about during the Q/A session was prot warrior. The god tank right now with little to no issues at all. No mention of blood or BM great.

[Tehr]

is there a path guide for maximizing blood artifact power ?

Here you go, bro. That's the best path to maximize your blood tanking experience.

http://static.icy-veins.com/images/w...r-artifact.jpg

In all seriousness, a quick google of "blood dk artifact path" will pull up a link to Icy Veins, where you can find this:

http://static.icy-veins.com/images/w...vivability.jpg

[Deleted]

Anyone has experience with both Tanks using the Xavius Trinket? Some wired things seem to happen. My Druid Co-Tank applyed the Debuff on Ursoc, when i taunt and Ursoc attacks me the Debuff gets another stack AND its duration is refreshed!? Stacks cap at 15 and are refreshed after every tank swap. After ~1min into the fight he stays at 15 stacks for the rest of the fight
Im not sure if both tanks get the damage reduction or only the frist one who applyed the debuff benefit from it.

[Siyalib]

Anyone has experience with both Tanks using the Xavius Trinket? Some wired things seem to happen. My Druid Co-Tank applyed the Debuff on Ursoc, when i taunt and Ursoc attacks me the Debuff gets another stack AND its duration is refreshed!? Stacks cap at 15 and are refreshed after every tank swap. After ~1min into the fight he stays at 15 stacks for the rest of the fight
Im not sure if both tanks get the damage reduction or only the frist one who applyed the debuff benefit from it.

I'll test this tomorrow, my OT uses the trinket and I have one in my bags, I'll throw it on and report back

[Deleted]

Checked logs from last nights raid. It seems only the tank who applied the debuff in the first place benefits from the damage reduction while the 2nd tank gets no DR at all. There is a big drop in avg damage taken for my co-tank when i swapped the trinket while my damage taken is somewhat constant.
Since we both got a 875 Version of the trinket (1,67% DR per Stack) its a nearly permanent 25% DR for one of the tanks. Guess i should start tanking next time xD

Dont think this is working as intended

[redfella]

That's a known bug, only one tank should be using the trinket, unless the situation is such that the other tank is undergeared and the other one is overgeared, in which case you could make stuff easier for letting the less geared tank pull first.

The stacks do and can reset during certain boss mechanics though, so that cheesing might end up biting you in the ass as well. :P

[Deleted]

I´ll guess after the well deserved BDK Buffs in next weeks patch, we dont need to cheese anyway. kappa

[Saracens]

Here's hoping we see some love in the coming patches. To be frank, I'm not doing serious progression like I used to, but we finished Heroic EN last night and I feel like a baby back bitch next to a druid or paladin tank. I know warriors are in a great spot right now, so I won't compare myself to them, their moment to shine is now, but I feel so spiky compared even to my Pally OT. SO spiky.

[Snuffleupagus]

I´ll guess after the well deserved BDK Buffs in next weeks patch, we dont need to cheese anyway. kappa

You fuck.

Why would you get my hopes up like that? I thought I missed some new patch notes.

That's just mean.

[Grishnok]

New ptr build is live. Nothing was done for blood DKs. RIP. Fuck Blizzard. They havent a clue what they are doing.

[Deleted]

You fuck.

Why would you get my hopes up like that? I thought I missed some new patch notes.

That's just mean.

Im sorry bro Just saw the new ptr build, feels bad man. Im starting to lvl another Tank. RIP Blood

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Since i cant post on the US-Forums i startet a thread on the EU-Forum. Im really interested if the devs think blood is fine -_- feel free to join me.

http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17613723427