Battle for Azeroth - Discussion/Changes ALPHA

[Baddok21]

I have to say, having now leveled two more tanks to 120 (DH and warrior), if the current state of Blood goes live the way it is, this might make me change my main for the first time since WotLK. Even with 340.3 gear that has some good haste + the trinket from Mythic Rezan the playstyle is abyssmal. It's slow, clunky, boring. If anything more than 2 enemies is on you then it's a 3-button rotation of trying to keep Boneshield up as you wait (yes, literally waiting for 3-4 seconds with absolutely nothing to press) for your runes to come back. I did Kings' Rest again last night and was just about ready to break my keyboard as a died to a boss simply because there was nothing I could do.

It would be alot more helpful if people could state what there secondary stat values were (Mainly there haste) when talking about there spec being slow.

I dont know how to gauge the experience of a 340.3 ilvl but 9% haste Blood DK (im not saying these are your stats but thats for context) like if someone playing Blood DK in legion said the spec felt slow and there 970 ilvl with only crit/mastery/vers pcs it would be the same dilemma.

[Deleted]

It would be alot more helpful if people could state what there secondary stat values were (Mainly there haste) when talking about there spec being slow.

I dont know how to gauge the experience of a 340.3 ilvl but 9% haste Blood DK (im not saying these are your stats but thats for context) like if someone playing Blood DK in legion said the spec felt slow and there 970 ilvl with only crit/mastery/vers pcs it would be the same dilemma.

I have ~23% haste with Boneshield up. Last time I looked it was my second highest stat, just behind versatility. The thing is, even if I had haste on every single piece of gear, it wouldn't make a difference.

My point is, a tank shouldn't feel so crappy while being essentially pre-Raid BiS equipped. Compared to my ~310 Vengeance DH it's like a whole different game. You constantly have options and abilities to use, your AM is even off the GCD, as well as your Flame-Crash leap. And she still has some green quest-pieces and barely any haste.

[Baddok21]

I have ~23% haste with Boneshield up. Last time I looked it was my second highest stat, just behind versatility. The thing is, even if I had haste on every single piece of gear, it wouldn't make a difference.

My point is, a tank shouldn't feel so crappy while being essentially pre-Raid BiS equipped. Compared to my ~310 Vengeance DH it's like a whole different game. You constantly have options and abilities to use, your AM is even off the GCD, as well as your Flame-Crash leap. And she still has some green quest-pieces and barely any haste.

going off legion blood is/was unbearable to play sub 29-30% haste (pre-boneshield), and Bloods artifact weapon doesnt have any traits that boost resource generation so its not like loosing the weapon hurt that aspect of blood in anyway (outside of DRW giving instant 10 BS stacks).

but thank you for presenting your Beta stats it helps paint a clear picture your essentially running 10-11% haste? there abouts... that would be unbearable to play as blood with. my issue would more or less be with blizz stat scaling from 120 heroic dungeons.

keep in mind blood basically has no resources generation traits on there artifact and the smoothness of its playstyle comes 100% from pretty much every single BDk having 32-35% haste (pre-boneshield) at a minimum.

- - - Updated - - -

the Dilemma is that

1) Blood is extremely reliant on haste, for blood Haste trumps ilvl until you establish a workable base value (this was also the case in legion)
2) Respectable haste values are not achieveable pre-raid? (this would mean theres not enough haste gear in the release dungeons)
3) Respectable haste values are not achieveable under the current squish (this would mean with 80% of your gear perfectly optimized Blood still cannot reach a respectable haste lvl)
4) in response to #2-3 blood needs some baseline haste or for rune and blood boil regen to be dropped from 10 secs to 8.5

this is how im parsing the BFA early blood experience, now doing #4 could/would lead to some imbalance once appropriately geared, but making a tanking that basically needs to be shelved until Tier 2 raid release does not seem fair either.

in Legion rings/necks account for 55% of your secondary stats barring all your gear was equal item lvl, now if this is still true in BFA then blood might be still workable in early BFA but be the most difficult to gear. theres also the issue that Boneshield is being eaten faster than the ICD of 2seconds should permit which is a commonly reported issue according to BDK testers? so that would also hurt the current fluidity of blood as well.

[Deleted]

[...] in Legion rings/necks account for 55% of your secondary stats [...]

In BfA head, chest and shoulder armor will have 0 secondary stats, in return for boosted stamina/primary. Secondary stats on rings appear to have been reduced as well. The fact hat every tank's AM now scales off their primary stat makes it likely that this is all they'll focus on in terms of design.

[Yhcti]

Havent noticed anything negative with Blood since Legion, still an amazing spec, and now Unholy looks very strong.. be interesting to see what they do with Frost.

[Acidbaron]

Lol, this is just ridiculous.
"Are you an Unholy fanboy? Did you even study Unholy? Are you even a part of the Unholy frat separate from the Deakth Knight cool kids club?"

Do try to read what is actually said there, this discord contains all theorycrafters surrounding the spec. But don't let me get in the way of you white knighting ignorance you are after all from a nation that glorifies said behavior.

Feel free to actually correct me where i said anything wrong, if you are capable of that.

[msdos]

Do try to read what is actually said there, this discord contains all theorycrafters surrounding the spec. But don't let me get in the way of you white knighting ignorance you are after all from a nation that glorifies said behavior.

Feel free to actually correct me where i said anything wrong, if you are capable of that.

Don't be so defensive and insecure, I just laughed at your fanaticism, I don't care if that Discord has the Lead DK dev in it and president Trump as his advisor.
It's not "whiteknighting ignorance" (whatever that means) and I never implied anything you said was wrong. Eat a chill pill, kiddo!

1) Blood is extremely reliant on haste, for blood Haste trumps ilvl until you establish a workable base value (this was also the case in legion)

Let's face it, they backpedaled on primary stats being more meaningful. The primary stats still don't mean jack.

[Acidbaron]

Don't be so defensive and insecure, I just laughed at your fanaticism, I don't care if that Discord has the Lead DK dev in it and president Trump as his advisor.
It's not "whiteknighting ignorance" (whatever that means) and I never implied anything you said was wrong. Eat a chill pill, kiddo!

Seems your ignorance is matched by your arrogance. I'll let continue making a fool of yourself you clearly need no help with that

[Stacie]

Keep it Civil please guys.

[Faradin]

Let's face it, they backpedaled on primary stats being more meaningful. The primary stats still don't mean jack.

Strength contributing to armor through Bone Shield is a step in the direction of making Strength more important. But I haven't ran the numbers on it yet, so I can't speak for how much of an impact it makes right now.

[Deleted]

Havent noticed anything negative with Blood since Legion, still an amazing spec, and now Unholy looks very strong.. be interesting to see what they do with Frost.

Try tanking some lvl120 content, especially Mythic dungeons. Any sub-120 content is way undertuned, while the jump from 119 to 120 hits like a truck. Of course the DK doesn't have a problem tanking trivial content.

[Bisque]

Dear lord, I hope frost gets something more than what was revealed today. I am not looking for an overhaul on frost but there has to be something more... It's still early in the week, so we never know.

[Baddok21]

Dear lord, I hope frost gets something more than what was revealed today. I am not looking for an overhaul on frost but there has to be something more... It's still early in the week, so we never know.

I dont know, the Frost player base was pretty vocal they didnt want a more nuanced spec/playstyle like they had in Nighthold and complained and complained till set-and-forget Obliteration was made king.

Outside of a stronger defensive cooldown and abit more mobility (if specced for) to help in high lvl M+ i think the Frost playerbase atleast on the official forums would be just fine, and possibly blizzard does not want to upset the apple cart in that way.

[msdos]

Seems your ignorance is matched by your arrogance. I'll let continue making a fool of yourself you clearly need no help with that

Blah blah blah, added to blocklist.

I dont know, the Frost player base was pretty vocal they didnt want a more nuanced spec/playstyle like they had in Nighthold and complained and complained till set-and-forget Obliteration was made king.

I don't get why you can't have both. I think that's why I see a lot of people ask for breath baseline, I dunno.

Try tanking some lvl120 content, especially Mythic dungeons. Any sub-120 content is way undertuned, while the jump from 119 to 120 hits like a truck. Of course the DK doesn't have a problem tanking trivial content.

I keep seeing mixed opinions on this. Some people are saying Blood is "barely any different from live and great" and then some people are saying "you don't do anything for 5 seconds and Boneshield falls off, it's bad".

[Ashaeron]

I don't get why you can't have both. I think that's why I see a lot of people ask for breath baseline, I dunno.

You can't have both because one will be superior and that will be the played style. In Nighthold MG/Obliterate build was still there, it was just monstrously worse than the cleave monster Breath became, so everyone played Breath (to varying effectiveness). Breath still exists in Antorus, it's just bad and isn't sustainable for long durations, so it's not played.

I keep seeing mixed opinions on this. Some people are saying Blood is "barely any different from live and great" and then some people are saying "you don't do anything for 5 seconds and Boneshield falls off, it's bad".

From what I've seen (still installing Beta -.-) Blood's playstyle hasn't changed, it's just slow as a sloth caked in taffy because there's no haste due to crushed secondaries. This means you can't Heart Strike because you have to maintain Bone Shield constantly, lowering DS values even further. Not sure why they ruined our resource generation talents even further (Rapid Decomp, 1min cd lol on Rune Strike etc.) though.

[Vassago]

From what I've seen (still installing Beta -.-) Blood's playstyle hasn't changed, it's just slow as a sloth caked in taffy because there's no haste due to crushed secondaries. This means you can't Heart Strike because you have to maintain Bone Shield constantly, lowering DS values even further. Not sure why they ruined our resource generation talents even further (Rapid Decomp, 1min cd lol on Rune Strike etc.) though.

It is mostly like it was at the beginning of the Legion (I'm looking at you Cenarius). You spend all of your runes just to maintain bone shield up, use blood boil and hope for proc for DnD. Heart Strike is usable in ST time to time.

As for "I can't do anything for 5 sec" - it happened to me playing with blooddrinker as well. Changing to Rune Strike quite helps. If I don't spend all runes at once and plan a bit ahead, I have to wait at most 2 - 3 sec to be able to cast anything. I'm not saying that the "anything to cast" is always what I really want / need to cast

Anyway as fresh 120 lvl BDK my feelings are:
solo content is slow, as dmg output is very limited with maintaining bone shield, which drops really fast with 3+ melee mobs. With 5+ mobs I had some hard times to even survive. Magic damage and DoTs hit like truck at 4+ mobs and I have use defensive CD just to kill few mobs. This is maybe my fault, as I comparing this with live

In dungeon (just normal, don't have gear for HC yet) it seems a bit better, at least it feels better. Once you don't need to take care about dmg, but purely for survive, it isn't that bad.
Imba healer with BDK is disco priest, never have any issue with him in group. Paladin seems a bit undertuned, or maybe I had bad luck on player

[Baddok21]

It is mostly like it was at the beginning of the Legion (I'm looking at you Cenarius). You spend all of your runes just to maintain bone shield up, use blood boil and hope for proc for DnD. Heart Strike is usable in ST time to time.

As for "I can't do anything for 5 sec" - it happened to me playing with blooddrinker as well. Changing to Rune Strike quite helps. If I don't spend all runes at once and plan a bit ahead, I have to wait at most 2 - 3 sec to be able to cast anything. I'm not saying that the "anything to cast" is always what I really want / need to cast

Anyway as fresh 120 lvl BDK my feelings are:
solo content is slow, as dmg output is very limited with maintaining bone shield, which drops really fast with 3+ melee mobs. With 5+ mobs I had some hard times to even survive. Magic damage and DoTs hit like truck at 4+ mobs and I have use defensive CD just to kill few mobs. This is maybe my fault, as I comparing this with live

In dungeon (just normal, don't have gear for HC yet) it seems a bit better, at least it feels better. Once you don't need to take care about dmg, but purely for survive, it isn't that bad.
Imba healer with BDK is disco priest, never have any issue with him in group. Paladin seems a bit undertuned, or maybe I had bad luck on player

for the time Being Disc plays better with blood because it can help (through absorbs) keep your Bone shield stacks up, and your able to generate more RP and therefore dmg from using something other than marrowrend every 3rd global.

[Hoeth]

I keep seeing mixed opinions on this. Some people are saying Blood is "barely any different from live and great" and then some people are saying "you don't do anything for 5 seconds and Boneshield falls off, it's bad".

I've seen similar comments from players regarding several other specs as well, but once they elaborate it becomes clear that they are comparing leveling/fresh 110 Legion specs to those in the beta. Of course there isn't going to be much difference there.

Note that there has always been a big difference between a mythic geared character from the previous expansion and a dungeon-geared character from the new expansion, so that isn't unexpected, but the difference this time is the removal of the artifact and legendary pieces has drastically altered several specs and in those cases Blizzard has done nothing to correct how awful the specs feel without those pieces/abilities/talents. Blood is definitely one of them, as is fury.

But I have yet to see anyone who has played blood at a high end-game level in Legion say that the BfA version feels good. SOME of the shitty feeling may in fact be due to miserably low secondary stats, but Blizzard seems to think that is going to be transient and isn't a problem.