An alternative build for blood dk's

[Mayden]

In beta they pruned Heart Strike. Because its still beta I want to present an alternative with a reworked Heart Strike and see if there is support for such a build.

For this alternative build I changed a few spells:
Heart Strike: hits two targets. First target takes 100% damage, second target takes 50% damage. This will be your strongest attack.
Outbreak: cooldown 25 seconds. This will be the go-to button to put up your diseases.
Icy touch / Plague Strike: removed.


The introduction to the most important spells of a blood deathknight would then look like this:

Death Strike: your most important tanking spell. Use whenever possible. Does good damage, heals you and gives you a blood shield that absorbs incoming melee damage.
Heart Strike: your strongest attack on single targets. Hits a second target for half damage.
Outbreak: Use to put up diseases on your enemy.
Blood Boil: spreads and refreshes your diseases on enemies and does a fair amount of damage. Does the most damage when tanking groups of enemies.
Death Coil: a ranged attack spell that does a fair amount of damage. Use this spell to spend your runic power.
Rune Tap: Reduces damage taken for 3 seconds. Use this spell when you are on low health or expect a lot of incoming damage.


Pruned spells: Pestilence, Raise Dead, Necrotic Strike, Rune Strike, Icy touch and Plague Strike.


Question: wich build you like more? The build on beta with the removal of Heart Strike or this build?

[Nayami]

I wish we could have Outbreak instead of IT and PS for Blood, they take up two of my main rotation keybinds, and with 2 spells gone we could easily get Heart Strike back since we'll even be 1 less spell than before.

[Cryopathy]

Getting rid of a way to put diseases up without Outbreak is too punishing, even with a lower CD. If you have a situation like adds spawning every 10-20 seconds, you can't put diseases on the new group unless there's an already-diseased mob nearby.

Heart Strike is pretty pointless. People forget that if you want to use a Blood rune on a single target, you can always use Soul Reaper even above 35%. It does very close to as much damage as HS right now on one target. The only niche that HS has right now is when hitting exactly two targets, which is a fairly uncommon scenario.

[zorkuus]

People forget that if you want to use a Blood rune on a single target, you can always use Soul Reaper even above 35%.

SR has a 6 sec cd.

[Skarssen]

All this uproar over ability pruning and they leave 2 buttons that NO ONE likes to hit intact. Both are so weak and worthless aside from applying the respective disease (icy touch glyph can be moved to CoI or something like that), seems like it would have been much better to roll the disease application onto other strikes that have a purpose.

[Mayden]

Heart Strike is pretty pointless. People forget that if you want to use a Blood rune on a single target, you can always use Soul Reaper even above 35%. It does very close to as much damage as HS right now on one target. The only niche that HS has right now is when hitting exactly two targets, which is a fairly uncommon scenario.

I think Soul Reaper should be the go-to button when mobs are under 35% health, but its becoming less interesting if this spell is also good above 35%. I would tune Heart Strike to be our biggest damage dealer on single targets above 35%. Then you would get the interesting choice between Death Strike for survivability or Heart Strike for damage.

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All this uproar over ability pruning and they leave 2 buttons that NO ONE likes to hit intact. Both are so weak and worthless aside from applying the respective disease (icy touch glyph can be moved to CoI or something like that), seems like it would have been much better to roll the disease application onto other strikes that have a purpose.

A clear stand and totally agree. Well spoken!