Official 3.1 DK notes

[Wrathonia]

That's probably one of the worst spec's I've seen in a long time. Hopefully the new raid content will weed out the bad DKs....

Christ almighty I concur. No HS, HB, FS or SS. A weak weak build. You would be as threatening as a wet kitten.

[Decrepit05]

Assuming we will have access to HB, KM, BCB, Necrosis and UB all in the same build, with our beefed up perma-ghoul, you can expect that 32/38+1 will still be quite viable in 3.1. I suspect everyone is scared about the upcoming changes to the positions in the frost tree more. I know I am.

Yea so am I, they don't want us using DW for some reason and IMO should just take it the hell away from DKs instead of nerfing it into the ground...but other than the obvious death of DW builds I hope they bring some more things to do because the game has gotten boring and there isnt much to do and nerfing people is just gonna make some people leave all together~

[Viskahn]

Yeah I am incredibly skeptical about blood boil. Really this will hurt my TPS more than anything if they don't scale it's dmg up. Having to burn a global cooldown and a rune on pestilence will be a steeper price to pay that it has been for sure.

as a Blood tank, i run a build with Might of Mograine and Outbreak in unholy, making a total of +45% BB damage and +45% BB crit damage. Combined, those two mean that my BB crits are doing 55% more damage than an untalented BB crit, and 45% more damage on a non-crit.
With these, along with D&D (which remains the bread and butter of our aoe tanking anyway), i dont struggle too much on aoe packs. Obviously, compared to when i was unholy spec, or our guild tankadin, im not as good there, but i more than make up for that on the bosses in my opinion. Cant be good at everything - if you are that concerned with being an AoE tank, just spec unholy and laugh at the puny mage aoe.


P.S anyone got or seen a talent calculator for the new frost tree (ie after the patch)? Would be interested to see that.

[Elektrik]

they don't want us using DW for some reason

That's not true at all. They just don't want it to be miles ahead of 2h builds.

[SemtexJack]

The only way bloodboil will EVER be useful, is if they make it cost runic power instead of a blood rune.

atm for aoe packs you have to use:

Death and Decay
Icy Touch
Plague Strike
Pestilence.

That's all runes gone. You need to refresh death and decay 15 seconds after aswell as using another pestilence, if youre lucky youll get 1 bloodboil in at the 10 second mark, but you could also use heart strike as a cleave and probably end up generating more threat unless its a massive pack.

The only thing you dont use when aoe'ing is runic power, so it makes sense to give an aoe use for it, even if it involves a small amount of damage it will be worth it.

Suppose you could use corpse explosion but of course that is reliant on a corpse actually being there.

[Viskahn]

The only way bloodboil will EVER be useful, is if they make it cost runic power instead of a blood rune.

atm for aoe packs you have to use:

Death and Decay
Icy Touch
Plague Strike
Pestilence.

That's all runes gone. You need to refresh death and decay 15 seconds after aswell as using another pestilence, if youre lucky youll get 1 bloodboil in at the 10 second mark, but you could also use heart strike as a cleave and probably end up generating more threat unless its a massive pack.

The only thing you dont use when aoe'ing is runic power, so it makes sense to give an aoe use for it, even if it involves a small amount of damage it will be worth it.

Remember Blood Tap. My normal AoE rotation as blood is D&D, IT, PS, Pest, Blood Tap, BB. That gives me enough initial aggro to hold out until some of my runes refresh, then spam BB and Death Strike/OB to get death runes, with which you can spam even more BB. Switch target and pestilence to keep diseases up, drop D&D when it isnt on cooldown

But as others have mentioned, it will now be feasible to get UB as a blood spec by dropping some points in toughness or similar - that will help the AoE threat endlessly.

[bloodmoon]

Pestilence was never meant to be the DK's primary aoe ability. The damage from blood boil was simply lack-luster and instead of boosting our already high aoe dps ability, they switched around the abilities a bit. If anything, on an aoe pack your damage should increase. IT - PS - Pest - BB and boom, your damage goes up significantly from what it was with just pestilence.

you wasted time and runes with it. Now instead of pressing just pestilence you have to press BB too. In general it will lower your dps (damage per second). Just because to get same results you have to use more abilities.

More likely BB will rarely be used, same as it is now. I didn't see BB included in any rotation of any build.

[wyzard]

That's not true at all. They just don't want it to be miles ahead of 2h builds.

Agreed, and even when I'm too lazy to use my gargoyle, I'm still pulling more DPS than I can with anything else.

[bloodmoon]

I might be missing something, but I'm thrilled about the switch of UB and gargoyle. Why is everybody saying that 32/39 will be dead?

Gargoyle is more of a gimmick imo, and UB will be constant damage. This alone should outweigh the pestilence nerf for AoE, and I think UB will do just as much (if not more) damage on bosses.

Prove me wrong please - seems I'm missing something. Janz, what do you think?

To be honest I suppose they want to kill 32/39 with changes to frost tree. At least make it less attractive. They said DK's are doing too much damage.

I would like situation when all classes have same dps possibilities. If some class is pure dps class I don't think they should do 5% more dps. I am dps dk so how tanking helps me ? What benefit I have from it? I never tanked using my dk and will never do. At this moment I am interested only in some 25 gear. I don't need any lower gear and most of 25 man instances gear. So how I benefit from possibility to tank to get that dps gear? I can't tank in my dps gear naxx 25. Btw I see moonkins doing topping dps.

[Gamehenge]

It seems as though the 51pt talents are all now non tank talents which i guess is ok since it means that all 3 trees are at least consistent with each other. UB as a 20 pointer will help blood a lot with aoe threat. I have mixed feeling on the UBA change, we'll have to see how it plays out. If it works against all damage it should be nice but we'll see how it works. From how i see it i take away from the post as since UBA gives about a 10% increase in physical mitigation does this mean it reduces all damage by 10%? If so while a buff for magic damage this will be a nerf against physical damage as right now the 10% is additive and works out to about a 20% reduction of physical dmg from the enemy, where a flat damage absorption will just be 10% and stays at that. We'll see how it develops.

[seventyfourmanx]

The only way bloodboil will EVER be useful, is if they make it cost runic power instead of a blood rune.

...

The only thing you dont use when aoe'ing is runic power, so it makes sense to give an aoe use for it, even if it involves a small amount of damage it will be worth it.

Suppose you could use corpse explosion but of course that is reliant on a corpse actually being there.

Actually the thing I would prefer would be for pest to cost 20 RP and have BB on the blood rune... rotation could still be IT -> PS -> Pest -> DnD. With pest using RP you can spread diseases at will, and the runes would be used for things that cost damage and could be evaluated based on how much damage they do. It also has the side benefit of being able to refresh diseases at the 17 or 12 second mark (slightly before 2 rune cycles) while they are still active instead of the 20 second mark when they expire (right at 2 rune cycles).

[Decrepit05]

That's not true at all. They just don't want it to be miles ahead of 2h builds.

well hopefully this is all they do, its already been nerfed down pretty hard but we still do good damage, and honestly thats the only reason why i get spots in raids. Once they buff the other classes DPS like they said they are, hopefully we will all be close to being on par with each other and there wont be nerfs that arent really needed

[taek]

If it still lasts 18 seconds and just mitigates all damage against, GG blizz, if it's like Power word: Shield and POPS after a set amount of damage, i'll be sadface.

Agreed...Frost DKs already have too much "squishy" time vs "actual tank" time because of the gap even when using both your 1 min CDs. If it's just a PW:S that pops after 3 hits, Deep Frost Tanking = dead. Blood will end up being the main physical/boss tanking tree, since most of the best Frost talents are lower tier (like Lichborne) and obtainable by the other specs.

I have a feeling the new UBA is going to be more like Essence of Gossamer on crack.

Equip: When struck in combat has a chance of shielding you in a protective barrier which will reduces damage from each attack by 140, up to a total of 4000 damage absorbed. Lasts 10 secs.

140 is a useless # for boss tanking, but this is only a trinket. If the talent had larger #s, the effect could be more useful than the current UBA.

[praide]

# Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.

IMO this is a decent nerf to non-Frost tanks. It will great decrease our ability to pull agro and react to bad situations with a minimal number of runes.


Example:
Fighting a group of 5 mobs.
I almost always have diseases up.
Somebody accidentally pulls a second group of 5
Pestilence...I get agro
or if my blood runes aren't up Blood Tap, Pestilence....I get agro

Pestilence causing damage gives DKs a great way to react to a situation which, imo, occurs fairly often, which a minimal number of runes.


Albeit if blood boil does a crap ton of damage maybe it will make up for it, but I doubt it. If I replace pest with blood boil I will get immediate agro but I'm not left with any sustained damage (or sustained agro), so I am likely going to be left scrambling to hold agro and rune-starved.

[Kerspoink]

Christ almighty I concur. No HS, HB, FS or SS. A weak weak build. You would be as threatening as a wet kitten.

Fail.

While it is true this spec is NOT made for threat generation, it is the single best Sartharion + 3 drakes tank spec around. You don't need threat gen on sarth + 3, since you have more than half the fight on sarth by yourself to build threat.

[Wrathonia]

Fail.

While it is true this spec is NOT made for threat generation, it is the single best Sartharion + 3 drakes tank spec around. You don't need threat gen on sarth + 3, since you have more than half the fight on sarth by yourself to build threat.

Yay for a spec for one boss that nobody attacks for several minutes?

[rathok]

I actually like the pestilence changes... hopefully this will fix the bug where if you kill something with the pestilence damage it doesnt spread the diseases and just wastes your runes instead. That combined with freeing up some of the bulky but maditory higher tier talents makes this patch something I'm really forward to. Not to mention the prospect of dual spec.... omg, i must spend 200g/week respeccing between PVP, Tank, and PVE dps.

[comablack]

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0E0qIhIcbRzhZZoghhx0oGh
is miles better for sarth3d tanking

the changes to blight and garg are good

blood gorged well depend on how much armor pen it provides

people need to stop crying about aoe tanking, as uldur will actually require CC

[Gomexus]

Agreed...Frost DKs already have too much "squishy" time vs "actual tank" time because of the gap even when using both your 1 min CDs. If it's just a PW:S that pops after 3 hits, Deep Frost Tanking = dead. Blood will end up being the main physical/boss tanking tree, since most of the best Frost talents are lower tier (like Lichborne) and obtainable by the other specs.

I have a feeling the new UBA is going to be more like Essence of Gossamer on crack.

140 is a useless # for boss tanking, but this is only a trinket. If the talent had larger #s, the effect could be more useful than the current UBA.

With the way Blizzard worded UBA as scaling with Armor I would assume it will absorb X dmg equal to Y% of your armor...effect lasts until X dmg is absorbed or 18seconds.

Imo that will make the talent pretty useless unless the % of armor is pretty big...Let's compare to Bone Shield:

Glyph'd Bone Shield= 6 charges, 5 min Duration, only absorbs when hit, absorbs 20% of damage dealt. At 10k per hit it will absorb 120k dmg total, and can usually be refreshed immediately.

UBA if it works as I described above..even at 100% of armor= 20sec duration absorbs 25-30k dmg and cannot be refreshed for a minimum of 40seconds.

UBA will basically be another avoidance type talent...it will avoid hits and not mitigate...but I could have sworn Blizzard wanted to move DK's more toward steady mitigation rather than RNG based avoidance

[DaShredda]

Fail.

While it is true this spec is NOT made for threat generation, it is the single best Sartharion + 3 drakes tank spec around. You don't need threat gen on sarth + 3, since you have more than half the fight on sarth by yourself to build threat.

This was already stated multiple times by the same people calling it an awful all around tanking spec, Nancy. Keep in mind, too, when these changes come around no one's gonna give a damn about Sarth 3d anymore.