My 2 copper on the blood pruning

[Larsadius Rex]

I realized what I said at first was pretty harsh hehe. But yeah, I was mocking blizzard, not anyone here xD

[Kiqjaq]

I thought Pestilence would be annoying until I saw that they'd kept the Blood Boil animation in.
So it just looks like you're sending a blast wave of blood at your foes. Doesn't feel too bad at all for Blood DKs.

Death Coil, on the other hand...

[skiddrow]

Having been a heroic top 25-50 US Raider for years now and since wotlk as a DK, these changes are the first instance in which i doubt my excitement about my class. Spamming pestilence for ST & AoE feels just weird. They could of easily taken pes off and just kept BB. And losing rune strike and now spamming death coil as our only dump seems like a loss of theme and character power. Rune strike was iconic as your threat maintenance and damage as a 2H tank.

-583 DK now thinking about class switching

[valliant13]

Having been a heroic top 25-50 US Raider for years now and since wotlk as a DK, these changes are the first instance in which i doubt my excitement about my class. Spamming pestilence for ST & AoE feels just weird. They could of easily taken pes off and just kept BB. And losing rune strike and now spamming death coil as our only dump seems like a loss of theme and character power. Rune strike was iconic as your threat maintenance and damage as a 2H tank.

-583 DK now thinking about class switching

Rune Strike only became iconic in Cata when they needed to force a tank spec. It was only usable after a dodge or parry I believe in wotlk. Bloods main RP dump was Death Coil. However my issue with the pruning isn't with Rune Strike, I'm glad that went personally as I feel DC is more iconic to the class and one of them had to go so I like that they kept the iconic class ability. Even in the end of wotlk icy touch became your big threat maintenance spell when they increased the threat of it for blood.

My issue however matches yours with using pest in aoe and st for blood runes. Yes we can use SR above 35%...but why? Heart Strike should have been changed to attack one target or removed and blood strike kept in it's place. I cannot play blood currently on the beta simply because it quite honestly sucks to play. My biggest gripe is, blood is supposed to be the most physical damage dealing spec, and now it has one physical strike left...It's basically unholy 0.75.

[Edds]

been playing a bit of blood deathknight on the beta. i cant find a way to spend runic power. only death coil and a runic power = health talent. i really miss rune strike

just waiting around for my rune cooldowns to finish. doesnt help that i dont even know how to activate tier5 talents without having to spam death coil

[Kiqjaq]

Blood DK's are boring and overpowered in the beta... so... sooo... boring. Not to mention one can walk into a major city and walk out with a trail of guard, npc, and player bodies behind them because they are literally invincible with conversion. Part of that is the way things were squished. We deal pitiful damage in proportion to our health to make up for the lack of resilience. I would rather they have kept resilience and let our health pools stay relatively low. With death strike heals and absorbsion along with conversion healing 2% a second of 300k+ at 100 when dps is probably no higher than 10k is about as OP as it gets.

Those lazies at Blizz!
If only they spent some time before each patch/expansion to test and tune the changes they want to make. I dunno, something between the Alpha and the actual release to the public.

[Wrathonia]

Yep, you guys summed it up. If this shit keeps up, I will definitely not be coming back for WoD. My only glimmer of hope was to play my DK, but they have wrecked blood and I don't even want to know what happened to frost. I almost feel like someone at Blizzard personally knows me and went out of their way to design WoD to remove everything I enjoyed. It's truly mind boggling.

[Larsadius Rex]

Yep, you guys summed it up. If this shit keeps up, I will definitely not be coming back for WoD. My only glimmer of hope was to play my DK, but they have wrecked blood and I don't even want to know what happened to frost. I almost feel like someone at Blizzard personally knows me and went out of their way to design WoD to remove everything I enjoyed. It's truly mind boggling.

Just regarding your part about frost: from what I've seen, frost is exactly the same on beta as it is on live, so I don't know what you're talking about

[Deleted]

Blizz's main arguement for Death coil is that it's a ranged ability, which is just better than rune strike. I really hope they see otherwise on this one. I wont be playing a blood dk in WoD, not because of these changes entirely, but they were a big part of my decision.

Merging blood boil and pestilence is fine, who cares. Removing our cleave and melee filler however, changes the entire feel of the class. Our top damage, most used spell will now be a ranged bolt of shadow. Feels like we're becoming unholy without a pet personally. (What I imagine UH to be, last time I tried it was wrath).

Also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAmclSjxN-4 Pretty damn boring atm. Sure we use blood boil single target now, but that's for a proc that makes it free and will refresh our diseases. Just feels weird using our AoE for single target, similar to how DW frosties feel now.

[Soisoisoi]

Played it for a bit, my thoughts:

Heart Strike was removed - not bothered, Blood Boil was mostly better anyway.
Rune Strike & Death Coil merged - One less bind, it does the same thing but from ranged, which makes life easier.
Blood Boil & Pestilence merged - Roiling Blood for free.

Rune Tap can be used more, along with Pestilence & Soul Reaper for spending Blood Runes. There's not much difference in ability usage tbh, the only problem I had was Blood Tap not actually working atm - there wasn't really any pruning.

Frost is basically the same, besides Blood Tap not working as above, and didn't bother checking Unholy.

[Deleted]

The problem isn't about balance or power, we all know that death coil is going to be far more useful than rune strike, the issue is about how the class feels.

[valliant13]

Just regarding your part about frost: from what I've seen, frost is exactly the same on beta as it is on live, so I don't know what you're talking about

That's exactly the problem...

[Lumei]

Blood death knight is extremely boring on beta atm
And yes we nearly no longer hit whit or weapon but spam death coil ans pestilence 80%of time

the remove of heart strike has make the spec really poor and boring to play I hope bliz reconsider about Somme of the ability pruning that has was remove and find something to break that aspect of casting most of the time

[fredsterr]

I too feel like if they wanted to go the route it looks like they want to go...they should have made unholy the tanking spec. IMO and it's just that an opinion, I think frost felt better as a tanking spec than blood...but just didn't fit with their active mitigation and blood strike.

[Revi]

Yeah, I have no problem with Rune Strike disappearing tbh, it's thematically fitting but a ranged rune dump seems super useful. I really dislike having pestilence as a bloodrune spender/AoE though, I'd much prefer it if they just removed Heart Strike target cap, or kept it as an alternative to pestillence for single-target/2-3 mob cleave.

[fredsterr]

Yeah, I have no problem with Rune Strike disappearing tbh, it's thematically fitting but a ranged rune dump seems super useful. I really dislike having pestilence as a bloodrune spender/AoE though, I'd much prefer it if they just removed Heart Strike target cap, or kept it as an alternative to pestillence for single-target/2-3 mob cleave.

This...take the cap off Heart Strike and make it spread like pestillence...hell rename Heart Strike if they want, but keep it a weapon/melee ability.

[axi0m]

My DK (Blood) was my main up to MoP; I'd been craving blood shenanigans so had finally brushed the dust off him to collect some blood gear for our alt raid and to maybe switch back for WoD (I love my monk but it doesn't feel like it "fits" in Warlords thematically) played blood on beta for a bit and so.... slow.... so... much.... waiting. I just wish we had decent single target filler for Blood Runes.

Like most people have said, I think just bringing back Heart Strike will fix a lot of the "look and feel" of the spec.

[Mercidos]

Like most people have said, I think just bringing back Heart Strike will fix a lot of the "look and feel" of the spec.

So basically if they had a minor glyph that turned the Pestilence animation into the HS one that'd fix 90% of your guys' "theme" problem with the WoD changes?

[Scabior]

So basically if they had a minor glyph that turned the Pestilence animation into the HS one that'd fix 90% of your guys' "theme" problem with the WoD changes?

Infinitely. I love Death Coil, but Pestilence spam is boring and looking silly.

[chibichibiko]

Concerned about:
-I use my weapon for so little that I wonder if there's even a reason I'm wielding a two-handed sword.
-I'm immortal and bored. I wait a lot, but i'm in no danger of dying. That just means I'll probably get a bit nerfed.
-I played some blood pvp in ashran--its toolkit is poorly suited to packfighting and I don't think that will change.
-Mobility still a concern--we're the slowest tank and that means that fights that demand mobility will always challenge us in ways that other tanks are not challenged. Rocket boots are more reliable now, though, so it might be enough.
-Breath of sindragosa feels undertuned. The tanking benefit in particular needs a boost (the damage is fine) I'd rather get 5% leech while it's active and for 6 seconds after cancelation.

Excited about:
-I foresee the rune tap change as a great addition to the spec. We get short little on-demand shield walls to preempt big boss strikes/spells and I feel like it'll give us a niche where we're ideal for certain types of fights.
Deathcoil instead of rune strike feels fine. It mostly plays the same with even a bit more freedom in fights where bosses monologue in the middle of the air. The new +health on DC mechanic offers interesting choices when I'm on deck to tank and it makes us the smoothest tanks to transition towards from a healer perspective. We're still going to be mostly bad at mitigating hordes of adds, but we'll be among the best at tanks and dragons.
The tier 100 talent set took me a bit to figure out and now that I'm used to it, I love the choice between gaining RP with add packs, having a fairly steady AoE damage reducer, the third choice that's never taken.

Wishlist:
-More than anything, I want a cooldown strike... something usable every 15 or so seconds that just hits HARD on a single target--and does proportionally more damage if the target has higher % health. That's all I need to make the spec feel a bit more dynamic. It'd be one more button that I hit fairly often in a fight, would ideally use my orphan blood runes that I don't really have to spend more often than every 30 seconds, and it would help to make me feel that my weapon upgrades mattered a lot because I'd see a huge number every now and then.
-I'd like to see death's advance make us immune to forced movement while it's active.