1. #1
    Deleted

    Advice on our Blood DK!

    Hi all - Hope I'm doing this right!

    In the past few weeks as we have progressed through SoO normal, it has become apparant to me as a healer that one of our tanks is going from 100% to dead or near death way too often to be an unfortunate coincidence.

    I've never had a DK, and that is why I require your expertise, please!

    Any advice on both reasons for the sudden drops in health of gear suggestions would be brilliant!

    I have WoL for our last nights raiding: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m9xs9u8e5x5e5dua/

    And character page for gear: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Kaskala/simple

    --

    Any help would be amazing. Thanks!

  2. #2
    Sheesh, where to start. o.o

    Gear needs sorting for a start, pick either Mastery or avoidance. Tell him to take a look at AskMrRobot for a simple view of it.
    For his gearing, he looks like he's going for the general route of: enough HP to survive > Hit/Exp (to 7.5%) > Mastery. Which is fine, so use "PVE: Hit/Exp Build". I normally change Parry/Dodge to a lower value so it gems stre/Mastery as well, but not really looked into that since the Riposte change so I'd wait for another opinion. Blood is only my OS.

    Needs to change his glyphs as well, Pestilence is fairly meh and Outbreak... Well I've personally never found a need for it but each to their own. For the most part AMS and Regenerative Magic are pretty awesome for the majority of fights and IBF glyph should be changed depending on the fight too.

    From the Logs:

    CD use alongside stacks from Haromm


    Didn't use Raise Dead at all (which also means no Death Pact for a heal)
    Didn't use Bone Shield at all
    Used Vampiric Blood, Icebound Fortitude, AMS and DRW only once
    Blood Boil was top damage, I don't even think the oozes should have let that happen

    Also a look at Nazgrim.

    Didn't use Vampiric Blood
    Only used Raise Dead once, and the Death Pact he used was 100% overheal.
    Last edited by Soisoisoi; 2013-10-27 at 03:14 PM. Reason: Merged/edited to save space.

  3. #3
    Deleted
    I was looking at AskMrRobot, and the available builds there didn't match his gear at all, which I found odd! Didn't want to confront him before I got some advice though, so I appreciate that!

    *Aye Tree, that makes it a lot easier to see why the damage was a bit stupid at points. I think I personally healed him for twice that of our other tank the Shamans fight.

    **Appreciate all your help, all very useful information!
    Last edited by mmoc84c47c103a; 2013-10-27 at 03:09 PM.

  4. #4
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    I dont know exact rune regeneration rates off the top of my head(haven't DK'd in a long while) However, that said, 19 uses of death strike, in a 5:55 encounter, is a bit low. Works out to being 1 deathstrike every 18.68, seconds.

    Here is a link to a top DK, on shamans. The fight lasted 3:39, and he had 15 Deathstrikes in that time period. That gives me a result of one DS every 14.6s. Comparing their armory to your DK, there is a 7% haste difference. However, I doubt that 7% haste will increase rune generation enough to drop 4 seconds off(about 30%) of the time between Deathstrikes. If I had to wager a guess, they may be trying to hold out for perfect shields or heals through DS, while making it take too long to use the DS afterwards.

    Add that on top of what Treelife pointed out(lack of CD use) and you'll see whats showing up as wrong. If I had to take a guess, they need to spend some time running 5mans or other trivialized content, while making sure to follow a priority system and being used to using CDs well...on CD

    355/14.6 = 24.315 or 24 deathsrikes is what they could have done, possibly more with usage of bloodtap
    Last edited by Nafrayu; 2013-10-27 at 03:14 PM. Reason: Added number of Deathstrikes, based on Snikabar rune generation

  5. #5
    Ah knew I was forgetting something; I completely forgot about Blood Tap! His use of that is also very low as Nafrayu pointed out.

    Comparison to me tanking Nazgrim on an 8min fight I used Death Strike 77 times where he used Death Strike 51 times on a 10minute fight. I'm by no means perfect, so it's easily something to improve upon, especially with two minutes extra.

  6. #6
    Deleted
    Also a good point.

    This is massively useful, so thanks again!

  7. #7
    Here is my own "recent" parse from last night on DSHamans (clean up night)

    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/i...?s=1626&e=1859

    Something I would advise for him to change is going from Runic Empowerment to Runic Corruption, Empowerment leads to RNG issues and is less smooth. If he can manage Blood Tap, obviously he can use that also that way he can decide when he wants those runes/death strikes. I had right around 1 Death Strike/9secs.

    He needs to lose the Strength/Mastery gems and do Parry/Mastery or Expertise/Mastery. Gemming for strength is almost completely pointless. Normally I would suggest for him to reduce how much mastery he has period and going deeper into parry/dodge, but if survivability is a concern then its not a huge issue.

    He has his 2pc tank set, he should really have 75%+ uptime on boneshield, this is a passive 20% damage reduction on its own. (which on my own fault I am bad with as well, but I still had a 50% uptime on DShaman.)

    He only used Dancing Rune Weapon 1 time in a 5min fight, this is a very low CD ability and is a great dps and tank cooldown that should be used anytime it is available.

    These are just the small things I noticed, obviously I have a big gear advantage on him, but a lot of these small things can be corrected and should help him and your healers out. Feel free to look through any of my other parses if you would like, though I tank primarily in 25's which makes a difference on its own.
    Last edited by Eklypto; 2013-10-28 at 01:16 PM.

  8. #8
    For normal mode his gear should be fine, to be honest. He could be using the Parry + Mastery gems instead of the strength ones in orange slots, but really, it doesnt make THAT much of a difference. You said your real issue was this:

    Any advice on both reasons for the sudden drops in health of gear suggestions would be brilliant!
    Dying suddenly as a blood DK means he took a fully unmitigated melee attack from the boss. (Aka no blood shield, probably missing boneshield, and purgatory was probably already procd by an earlier near death hit). I think more important than gear in this case is making sure your DK understands and is tracking INFORMATION.



    Here's a crop of my UI which shows the key things I need to know. The main thing is the combat log (built into the game by default). He needs to know what kind of damage is incoming (magic or physical). All the mastery in the world won't save you if the boss is dealing pure magic damage. The other thing is making sure he's maintaining a healthy blood shield. Timing a death strike is more important than just spamming it. Usually a 1 shot on a DK tank means his shield expired just before a massive hit came in.

    I've been strugging a bit in SoO as a DK tank, and its definetly one of the weaker if not the weakest tank class for it. There are a few fights where you get stunned and are left completely defenseless - thats when you call for healer externals. It's a bit more work for us, but not impossible.

    Short version: he needs to play better by monitoring incoming damage versus his cooldown usage.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Treelife View Post
    Sheesh, where to start. o.o

    -trim-
    Sorry to go off topic, but how did you get the two screenshots in your post? It looks like World of Logs, but I've never seen anything that looks like that. Probably just missing an obscure area, but if you could point me to it I would appreciate it!

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Malvision View Post

    What Blood Shield tracker is that?

  11. #11

  12. #12
    Deleted
    Hi there!

    I just wanted to add a few thoughts concerning his single target rotation. From viewing his Malkorok logs I gather that he is using Heart Strike way too often and he seems to almost ignore his Crimson Scourge aka Free Blood Boil. That's why he has a disease uptime of just 50%.

    Normally I would suggest timing your Death Strikes, but in his case I would be a huge improvement if he just started to only use Heart Strike with a Blood Rune up and spam Death Strike otherwise. This should boost his survivability and his damage quite a bit.

    His gear looks fine. As long as his mastery doesn't drop below 150% any mix of defensive stats are fine (given his DS usage he might even consider running a avoidance build).

    Talentwise he could switch to Blood Tap and macro it into his Rune Strike (again not ideal but easy to manage and more DS).

  13. #13
    Deleted
    More Death Strikes. Bone Shield up as much as possible. Runic Corruption or Blood Tap; first one easier to use and offers more deeps.

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