Blood DK Warlords of Draenor Patch 6.2 Guide (Long but has TLDR Version)

[Milocow]

About those adds on Imperator/Koragh that deals Arcane damage on their autoattacks, can we dodge/parry those autoattacks?

[FurtyIRL]

There are plenty of situations where simply gaining an additional SoB stack is better mitigation than rune tap (pretty much anything that isn't group content, among others), not even considering the haste or the fact you kept an additional RT charge for later.

Besides, the haste buff nearly gives you the entire rune back. Going with my current stats for all of the following (keep in mind, the more haste you get, the more valuable the SR haste buff becomes, for the exact same reasons that led to RC inversely scaling to your haste):
- The haste buff itself generates 90% of the rune back
- I gain 82% of a melee swing, aka ~7.38 additional RP, which translates into 0.09% of a rune (at BT's rate).

So even discounting the fact I am effectively transforming a (supposedly pure) blood rune into B/F/U regeneration which is more valuable for both DPS and HPS, I'm not even losing out on anything besides a global and a SR opportunity, and just gaining extra damage/survivability. Scenarios where you are neither constrained by GCDs nor valuing add damage are extremely rare, but it's not like they don't exist. Of course if you value add damage then SR actually detonating will be superior for obvious reasons.

Note that I'm not saying it's worth fishing for. I'm merely saying it's not nearly as bad as you think and actually a pretty fair tradeoff, surely not a "waste" by any means.

Presumably to trigger the SR buff and still be hitting something there are multiple targets; from a DPS standpoint a blood boil is going to be worth significantly more on multiple targets starting from two (even one is still a gain). Also I think it's worth noting that pretty much everything at all relevant is group content and what I said was evidently made with that assumption. As you said, scenarios where a lost global combined with the fact that you lost a reasonable amount of damage are practically nonexistent, so I can think of no reason why I should feel that a wasted GCD is in fact a fair trade.

[Deleted]

There are plenty of situations where simply gaining an additional SoB stack is better mitigation than rune tap (pretty much anything that isn't group content, among others), not even considering the haste or the fact you kept an additional RT charge for later.

Why bother getting a slightly smaller chance for a CB proc when you can just ... you know, use the blood rune on blood boil?

[Ikrekot]

Using SR for getting 50% haste buff increase my rune speed regen from 8.22 to 5.48. It gives 2 more stack of SoB 5,48 second faster after recharging both blood runes. I can use DS with 4 stack of SoB 5,48 second faster. You won't tell me it's not much? 80% more healing from DS. You can generate bigger heal from single DS in shorter time after taking big hit.

If you have also F+U runes on cd first pair will regen 2.74 seconds faster and then second, so you can increase usage of DS between taking damage reducing spikes.

If I'm wrong correct me.

[FurtyIRL]

Using SR for getting 50% haste buff increase my rune speed regen from 8.22 to 5.48. It gives 2 more stack of SoB 5,48 second faster after recharging both blood runes. I can use DS with 4 stack of SoB 5,48 second faster. You won't tell me it's not much? 80% more healing from DS. You can generate bigger heal from single DS in shorter time after taking big hit.

If you have also F+U runes on cd first pair will regen 2.74 seconds faster and then second, so you can increase usage of DS between taking damage reducing spikes.

If I'm wrong correct me.

What I said was that a rune tap would be better in almost any situation that you need mitigation. This isn't burning crusade and your goal as a raid or dungeon tank isn't to take as little possible damage, else you would just DS at every opportunity. If you're a good tank you'll be proactively rotating cooldowns and/or externals during dangerous periods and doing as much damage as possible without risking death. You're not sitting there thinking, "Oh I just took a big hit, lucky I'm going to have a slightly buffed DS in 5.48s". If there is any reasonable amount of incoming damage the rune tap will always be worth more. I'm not saying rune tap is the answer to every situation - what I'm saying is you're fooling yourself if you think you're being clever by sniping the SR buff.

[Ikrekot]

Yes I agree with you about Rune Tap > 50% haste buff but you can't always have Rune Tap because of cd when you can have buffed DS always. I use it mostly on adds on Imperator to get my runes back faster between spawning adds. I didn't do any mythic boss but on Imperator HC I use Death Runes on BB getting 50% haste buff to recharge them faster.

[Dracodraco]

Just wondering, but you guys are discussing the SR as if the only thing you gain from it is the regen for the blood rune. Wouldn't the haste also regenerate your death and frost rune faster, thus giving you more overall death strikes? I don't see how the haste buff from soul reaper wouldn't be preferable to spending the rune on a blood boil if you want to mitigate damage - sure, a blood tap will end up being the strongest way to spend a rune to reduce damage, but you can only do that every so often due to a cooldown.

[Ikrekot]

Yeah it's 50 % haste buff so it increase attack speed and all runes regen.

[Deleted]

Im sitting at 1200 multistrike and 660 haste. There is 0 room to soul reaper an add on a fight like mythic margok JUST for the haste buff - both from an offensive and a defensive perspective. You can literally plague leech every time its up cause of the amount of adds all the time - same with AMS, theres almost always something to absorb, which leads to insane amounts of RP, runes, aswell as blood charges. The few SRs I use on that fight are on margok P3/chogall when theres no add wave up for the damage.

[Saybel]

Quick question.

655 BA/Mastery cloak vs 685 MS/Mastery cloak?

-72 armor
+39 Str
+57 Stamina
+52 Mastery
+89 Multistrike

It looks worth it to me, but I'm not really a guru with stats, I lose 33 AP and 72 Armor for 57 Stam, 52 Mastery and 89 MS

[Troxism]

Quick question.

655 BA/Mastery cloak vs 685 MS/Mastery cloak?

-72 armor
+39 Str
+57 Stamina
+52 Mastery
+89 Multistrike

It looks worth it to me, but I'm not really a guru with stats, I lose 33 AP and 72 Armor for 57 Stam, 52 Mastery and 89 MS

Tiny bit better for mitigation (but it's really close), much better for DPS.

[Saybel]

Tiny bit better for mitigation (but it's really close), much better for DPS.

Thought it would be that way. Highmaul Mythic Cache was not the most merciful god.

Thanks for clarification.

[Eetabee]

For those who have tanked mythic Tectus, do you end up tanking seven motes? We should be getting to him this week so we did a few pulls on heroic killing both shards at the same time. Every time I saved potion, twins trinket, and all my DPS cds. I always pulled all the mobs and our monk could only keep one off me if he taunted it. I was about ten ilvls higher than him (he took a week and a half off over holidays) and the motes died slower than they would on mythic because we had more healers than we would on mythic and were carrying a few bads who also won't be in later. I would always die once I ran out of CDs.

So do you guys blow everything at the start? Maybe wait 5-10 seconds to blow things up so the other tank can get more threat? Maybe he was doing something wrong (I don't know much about monk aoe) or his gear was just too low to compete with my threat? Or am I going to end up with seven Motes every time?

[brookllyn]

For those who have tanked mythic Tectus, do you end up tanking seven motes? We should be getting to him this week so we did a few pulls on heroic killing both shards at the same time. Every time I saved potion, twins trinket, and all my DPS cds. I always pulled all the mobs and our monk could only keep one off me if he taunted it. I was about ten ilvls higher than him (he took a week and a half off over holidays) and the motes died slower than they would on mythic because we had more healers than we would on mythic and were carrying a few bads who also won't be in later. I would always die once I ran out of CDs.

So do you guys blow everything at the start? Maybe wait 5-10 seconds to blow things up so the other tank can get more threat? Maybe he was doing something wrong (I don't know much about monk aoe) or his gear was just too low to compete with my threat? Or am I going to end up with seven Motes every time?

Check his talents, is he using Rushing Jade Wind and Chi Explosion for that fight? If not, there's your problem. If he is, then you can try some things to give him aggro, remind him that he has an AoE taunt if he targets his statue, and then plan to try taking a few off him after that. If you immediately get them back with a BB or two, then it's probably gear or he isn't keg smashing like ever(It hits really hard).

[Saiyendra]

This is kind of late, but did the 20% buff to DnD/Defile ever get applied?

[Troxism]

For those who have tanked mythic Tectus, do you end up tanking seven motes? We should be getting to him this week so we did a few pulls on heroic killing both shards at the same time. Every time I saved potion, twins trinket, and all my DPS cds. I always pulled all the mobs and our monk could only keep one off me if he taunted it. I was about ten ilvls higher than him (he took a week and a half off over holidays) and the motes died slower than they would on mythic because we had more healers than we would on mythic and were carrying a few bads who also won't be in later. I would always die once I ran out of CDs.

So do you guys blow everything at the start? Maybe wait 5-10 seconds to blow things up so the other tank can get more threat? Maybe he was doing something wrong (I don't know much about monk aoe) or his gear was just too low to compete with my threat? Or am I going to end up with seven Motes every time?

Tank every mote, there isn't any way to not do that without gimping your raid. Use externals, that phase only lasts about 30 seconds anyways so you can get a crazy CD chain.

I'd link my kill video, but I'm pretty sure thats not okay on this site, so if you want to see it PM me or something.

Trying to do that strat on Heroic doesn't represent Mythic well. The Motes on Mythic have only about 4.7 mill HP, while the Heroic ones have like 10 million (depends on player count ofc). So it lasts way longer then it would on Mythic. As for WHY they have so much less HP, no idea, considering my guild LITERALLY did that strat on Beta (pushing everything at once and aoeing), was the only guild to kill it on Mythic Testing, and they even asked how we did it (Blizzard), and they still didn't fix it.

- - - Updated - - -

This is kind of late, but did the 20% buff to DnD/Defile ever get applied?

I honestly don't know. I couldn't tell any difference from dummy damage, and I checked almost every day for a few weeks. However the fact is DnD still does only like 5-10% more damage then BB and has a ton of other problems, so you basically should never cast it, and Defile hasn't really changed.

[Deleted]

Blood DK Tanks should be always be at a high dps place at fights like the imperator right?
But somehow our tank only pulls 14k dps, if i take a look at other random logs i see everywhere blood dks with 30k+ dps. tried to look at different spell usage between our tank and theirs but couldnt fine anything special.

would you guys be so kind and tell me what we could improve ?

Log of our blood dk dmg done: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=5
vs.
some other bood dk: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=30

Thanks in advance

[Troxism]

Blood DK Tanks should be always be at a high dps place at fights like the imperator right?
But somehow our tank only pulls 14k dps, if i take a look at other random logs i see everywhere blood dks with 30k+ dps. tried to look at different spell usage between our tank and theirs but couldnt fine anything special.

would you guys be so kind and tell me what we could improve ?

Log of our blood dk dmg done: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=5
vs.
some other bood dk: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=30

Thanks in advance

Using DnD, Using Necrotic Plague (you pretty much do less damage with NP then if you had no talent at all), and low BB/DS casts (which indicates he is overcapping runes a lot). Not that I can see in the log, but I promise he isn't using PL nearly enough.

Both those DKs underuse Soul Reaper (even on Mar'gok, you definitely cast it more then 1 time per fight).

2nd DK casts Death Coil slightly too rarely, even for AoE (overcapping RP, but that is far less of a crime in WoD then it was in MoP).

Probably a stats issue too but honestly yeah... Every time someone says the rotation is easy I see a million people who fail at even the basics, so I don't even know what to think or believe anymore.

[Raiju]

Probably a stats issue too but honestly yeah... Every time someone says the rotation is easy I see a million people who fail at even the basics, so I don't even know what to think or believe anymore.

Ignoring that there are always people who call it easy because in truth they don't have a clue -

DK's rune system is a bit strange compared to every other class. Effectively all your abilities share between 3 double charge CD's. Every other class either uses a universal resource (holy power f.ex.) or individual cooldowns for most of their abilities (enhancement F.ex.). That means the play that you often tend to have these situations where you use a 'weaker' ability for the sake of not overcapping 1-2 types of runes is strange compared to other classes, at least in frequency.

Personally having switched to DK for WoD I've found blood fairly intuitive, but unholy much less so.

[Tojara]

Remember that blood boil stacks SoB, which boosts your next death strike. You don't always have to use every pair of death runes or blood tap charges on death strike exclusively, you can use them on blood boils to boost damage, especially in areas where you have more than 1 target. Death strike is still a priority, but there are bosses that do incredibly low damage to you where you could be blood boiling more than death striking. I rarely use death strike on Mythic Twin Ogron for example because there is hardly any damage.

The class despite requiring timing is incredibly spammy. I often see some blood DKs pulling lower numbers because I think they are just trying to time things way too precisely instead of just being efficient using GCDS (not over capping RP, using procs right, etc), in the end this costs them a lot of GCDs over the course of an encounter, which will not only lower HPS, but damage as well.

I do Mythic Tectus with a prot warrior and he pretty much accepts the fact that I will be tanking all the motes in the last phase, sans probably one. It's hard to compete if you pooled your CDs for the last phase with an armor potion, DRW, defile, ERW and plenty of blood runes pooled up. The last phase only lasts around 30 seconds anyway. You should still death strike here, but proper management of CDs and externals will allow you to live pretty much the entire time while using plenty of blood boils. I normally range between mid 45-50k here, but could do more if I just used more blood boils.

Also heroic to mythic tectus isn't great practice. IIRC the motes and shards have more health in heroic than they do on mythic, so the DPS correlation isn't the same.