Blood struggling with time walking dungeons..

[Xasrai]

Am I the only person who maintains a set of armour for timewalking? Seriously, just trade in your dragon soul tokens for necrotic boneplate armour and fill it with red gems. Get the exalted ashen band from ICC and Gurthalak or Shin'ka if you have access to the sha-touched gems.

I I have little trouble keeping myself alive and topping the dps meters by large margins.

[Extremities]

Without a doubt, tanks are taking more damage than before the update. Healers have to be on their toes more, react quicker, etc. I've tanked the TW dungeons with every tank and all of them are dropping quicker. Adapt or die.

On another note, does getting gear that is more attuned for the level range of the dungeons(someone's mentioned necrotic armor for the DK, sorry for not remembering your name). I've never tried it but does getting year that's more in line with the level range of the dungeon actually help? If so, why?

[Darklurker]

On another note, does getting gear that is more attuned for the level range of the dungeons(someone's mentioned necrotic armor for the DK, sorry for not remembering your name). I've never tried it but does getting year that's more in line with the level range of the dungeon actually help? If so, why?

The gear scales more or less the same, but gear from previous expansions can have a lot of sockets, and there are more enchants available. It makes a lot of difference.

[Stagedive]

Timewalking dungeons are definitely harder than Mythics at the moment, so there's nothing to be ashamed about if you're struggling more than you did pre-patch. I have no gems and no enchants on my character, yet I'm able to get along just fine, so it's certainly doable. So instead of offering you gearing advice, I'd instead like to give some playstyle thoughts. Maybe you're already doing some of this stuff and maybe not--just consider it food for thought.

1. Start off each dungeon with the following: Death and Decay at the very edge of the pack to grab aggro, make them run through the slow field (with Tremble Before Me), and pop Dancing Rune Weapon as you run towards them. Marrowrends with Dancing Rune Weapon active will grant you 6 charges instead of 3, so spending 4 runes on 2 Marrowrends will bring you to 10 charges right off the bat. You'll have one rune left for a Heart Strike, giving you enough Runic Power for about 1.5 Death Strikes. You'll have started the dungeon off on the right foot.

2. When you go from one pack to another, do your best to ensure that Bone Shield charges don't fall off. This can get a little tricky after bosses, but I generally find that if I save 2 runes for a Marrowrend right as the pack is about to die, I can keep up Bone Shield charges from start to finish--with the exception of Black Morass, where nothing hits hard enough to be worried about anyway, and certain areas of Arcatraz, where for the most part the huge gaps between pulls are filled by those corpses that explode into non-threatening worms that you can replenish charges on. This goes hand in hand with number 1 above: you've started the dungeon off with capped Bone Shield charges, so the only Marrowrends you will need to use will be for maintaining charges rather than building yourself up from zero. This might seem very small, but it is critical in helping you not fall behind in a five man.

3. Be careful about dropping Death and Decay in the middle of a pull. You ALWAYS want to be able to have it available for the start of a new pack. There are two reasons for this: a. You want to be able to generate Runic Power quickly, and Death and Decay facilitates that, and b. If you're not confident about a pull, you can kite them around a little bit if it looks like you're about to struggle. There's nothing wrong with admitting that you need to kite--your job is to hold aggro and survive, and kiting is one tool you have in your kit.

4. Don't burn all your Runic Power at the end of a pull. The most dangerous time in a five man--be it timewalking, mythic, or otherwise--is the beginning of the pull, when all the mobs are present. If you have some Runic Power saved up from the previous pull, you have a head start on keeping yourself alive in the next one.

5. In timewalking dungeons, the hard part is the trash, not the bosses. Therefore, your personal cooldowns should be used on trash, not on bosses. With Red Thirst, Vampiric Blood will be up every 2-4 pulls, depending on the speed of your group. Dancing Rune Weapon will be available less often, but it's even stronger than Vampiric Blood on pulls with high numbers of mobs. Most dungeons have pulls where you can use Anti-Magic Shell. Note that even the hardest of trash will not 100-0 you in one global; you will generally be hit for ~30% of your life every couple seconds until some of the mobs have fallen. As such, don't use your cooldowns *on the pull*--wait until you have taken the first batch of hits and are sitting at around ~70% so that you can get the most use out of them.

6. Ask for interrupts on casters, and also interrupt casters yourself. You are the only tank that can interrupt from 15 yards away, so use that to your advantage if there's a caster that's not cooperating with pulls and Death Grip is on cooldown.

7. This is more general tanking advice than anything specific to Blood, but in timewalking dungeons it's crucial that you know the dungeon well. Which mobs can fear unsuspecting DPS into another pack? Where is the hunter's Barrage 100% going to pull the next pack, and how can I position this current pull to prevent it? How can I use line of sight to gather the mobs up properly? In WoD heroics, these things basically don't matter, but in timewalking, you have to think about them.

There is so much good info in this post, thanks!

[Cerus]

Without a doubt, tanks are taking more damage than before the update. Healers have to be on their toes more, react quicker, etc. I've tanked the TW dungeons with every tank and all of them are dropping quicker. Adapt or die.

On another note, does getting gear that is more attuned for the level range of the dungeons(someone's mentioned necrotic armor for the DK, sorry for not remembering your name). I've never tried it but does getting year that's more in line with the level range of the dungeon actually help? If so, why?

Prior to the patch it made a huge difference because you could stack the old set bonuses. Those are now disabled but old gear still has the option of more sockets and more enchants. The old tier pieces may or may not be the best post patch depending on the number of sockets. If there's a piece with more sockets and better socket bonuses then use that instead of a tier piece.

Legendaries all work as well so the old cloak, shadowmourne, uld mace, firelands staff, glaives etc. The ilvl difference between Cata TW and LK TW is so minimal that using WOTLK level gear is just as good if not better than Cata gear as well even though it doesn't scale up.

[Adlian]

How do you guys survive in Pit of Saron, especially last boss.

[Greevir]

How do you guys survive in Pit of Saron, especially last boss.

By paying attention to debuffs. You don't attack the boss when you have that debuff on you. Any damage you do with that debuff on will damage the boss's target. Any heals the person with the debuff receives is transferred to the boss. Just gotta pay attention to stuff for that one. Seen a lot of tanks get bitched at for taking too much damage in that fight when it tends to not be their fault.