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

[Troxism]

I have a very stupid question: does bonus armor mitigate all damage taken (magic, physical, etc) or just physical damage like normal armor? Thanks in advance.

Its the same as normal armour.

- - - Updated - - -

Should have mentioned this btw, but DnD is actually worth casting now (yay) since BB is pretty bad now. Pretty much like MoP in that sense (only cast with CS procs on Single target, on AoE cast on CD, assuming in both cases targets will stay in for most of the duration).

[Saiyendra]

With the haste changes, are your DPS stat weights on the first page out of date?

[Ikrekot]

Did they change something other or only BB for Blood? My co-tank druid can easly overagrro me on pull. I use taunt on pull and he not. It didn't happend before.

[Jellospally]

No our damage single target is hardly changed Blood boil maybe lost 300-400k overall damage onbutcher for me.

[Troxism]

No our damage single target is hardly changed Blood boil maybe lost 300-400k overall damage onbutcher for me.

Yeah it's not a big nerf, but ST was already very low outside of abusing a few things. The bigger issue was just Prot Paladin being like 20% higher already. They get a 10% nerf and the sky is already falling RIP paladin (welcome our protection warrior overlords now, and yes I am half-joking so don't take this seriously). Also keep in mind that if you look at damage this week, you have to increase BB damage by 50% to get pre nerf damage, but either way it's not really about the exact size; outside factors play a bigger role.

- - - Updated - - -

With the haste changes, are your DPS stat weights on the first page out of date?

Yes. Will make some tweaks later (to a bunch of stuff, some of which I don't want to do but have to).

- - - Updated - - -

Did they change something other or only BB for Blood? My co-tank druid can easly overagrro me on pull. I use taunt on pull and he not. It didn't happend before.

Nope, but be careful that you aren't overusing BB, you pretty much don't ever want to hit that button except on AoE anymore, unless it's your only choice (using CS procs, or Blood runes above 35%). All Death Runes to DS in 1 target.

[Jellospally]

Dk single target isn't that bad... I feel worse on 2 target now by an assload now that DS is better than BB on 2 target.

Breath is op on butcher lol carries the deeps

[Troxism]

Dk single target isn't that bad... I feel worse on 2 target now by an assload now that DS is better than BB on 2 target.

Breath is op on butcher lol carries the deeps

Yeah it (Breath) is good, not as good as Prot Paladin sadly, even post nerf probably T_T. Probably worse the Prot War too now. Really RNG dependant. So far I haven't broken 33k on butcher, definitely seen other tanks noticeably above that, and less RNG dependant to boot. Can't just count on luck on a progression pull, the average is what matters there, which is the reason for my annoyance at the whole situation. BoS can also be more risky survival wise, which can suck too on real content.

[Jellospally]

True. Looks like SoR isn't getting nerfed so they still have a seal doing 6% for pally. From what Theck is saying something is gonna still be changed with prot pally. With potential Seals being removed or changed even more, but SoR not getting nerf is a thing I guess.

I really don't know whats happening with them since I still tank in another run on my pally. That class is becoming less fun everyday now. Not even the fact we are losing dps, but making us use a healing seal instead of having a choice to use a dps one instead and making the only "fun" 100 talent worse instead of making the rest not awful.

[Troxism]

***Updates January 15th***

Made some minor updates to the guide to reflect hotfixes and other things:

-Tweaked stat priorities slightly.

-Tweaked BRF BiS trinkets (they changed the values on one a lot)

-Some rewriting of stat breakdowns due to various changes

-Slight changes to rotation to reflect DnD/DS changing in priority

-Clarified talent recommendations a little more

-Clarified some talent sections slightly to be more current/helpful (BoS/NP/Defile sections should be more specific now).

Planning to add fight guides soon, way overdue, but just been busy.

- - - Updated - - -

True. Looks like SoR isn't getting nerfed so they still have a seal doing 6% for pally. From what Theck is saying something is gonna still be changed with prot pally. With potential Seals being removed or changed even more, but SoR not getting nerf is a thing I guess.

I really don't know whats happening with them since I still tank in another run on my pally. That class is becoming less fun everyday now. Not even the fact we are losing dps, but making us use a healing seal instead of having a choice to use a dps one instead and making the only "fun" 100 talent worse instead of making the rest not awful.

Yeah well my fear is similar for DK. (Edited rest of it because it sounded too whiny and not relevant).

[Milocow]

"Highmaul Trinkets

Before Blackrock Foundry is open, you should be looking to pick up Evergaze Arcane Eidolon (Imperator Mar'gok) and Pol's Blinded Eye (Twin Ogron) for general play.

If you happen to need EHP for a specific fight, Pillar of the Earth (Tectus) is your best bet, although I do not recommend it for general usage as it pretty much JUST gives you EHP; it doesn't help you sustain yourself or deal damage very much.

The other trinkets are not that great, due to most of the others having Crit on them, especially as a proc (and like with the Knight's Badge, crit procs do not give parry)."

the last part : crit proc now gives parry
just a minor error

[Troxism]

"Highmaul Trinkets

Before Blackrock Foundry is open, you should be looking to pick up Evergaze Arcane Eidolon (Imperator Mar'gok) and Pol's Blinded Eye (Twin Ogron) for general play.

If you happen to need EHP for a specific fight, Pillar of the Earth (Tectus) is your best bet, although I do not recommend it for general usage as it pretty much JUST gives you EHP; it doesn't help you sustain yourself or deal damage very much.

The other trinkets are not that great, due to most of the others having Crit on them, especially as a proc (and like with the Knight's Badge, crit procs do not give parry)."

the last part : crit proc now gives parry
just a minor error

Ill fix it later thanks. Doesn't actually change their value, but yeah it's a mistake.

[dr_AllCOM3]

My aoe threat is noticably worse now. Other tanks often steal my mobs.
Our single target damage is also really bad now.

[Saiyendra]

My aoe threat is noticably worse now. Other tanks often steal my mobs.
Our single target damage is also really bad now.

It's always been bad. The Blood Boil nerf is quite small as far as single-target damage goes.

[Troxism]

It's always been bad. The Blood Boil nerf is quite small as far as single-target damage goes.

It's not a big nerf, but it was already really bad so it hurts more. Also not having something else to be strong at makes it worse; it didn't really matter before due to AoE being so strong.

[Deleted]

I did some sims on my character with most trinket combos, looking for both the highest dps aswell as the highest def combo.

Ranks (every trinket is mythic together with full mythic gear except for the margok trinket, mythic hasnt dropped yet):

Top damage: Twins + Tectus, 2nd least dtps, 3rd highest hps, 2nd least TMI
2nd dmg: Pretty much Tectus + any trinket does the same dps

Best def: Twins + Margok HC, least damage, best dtps/hps/tmi
2nd def: Twins + Tectus or Bracken


edit: This is unfortunately done with the standard APL which seems kinda fishy atm (it says I have almost 30% wait time which seems ridiculous)...

[Cryopathy]

I did some sims on my character with most trinket combos, looking for both the highest dps aswell as the highest def combo.

Ranks (every trinket is mythic together with full mythic gear except for the margok trinket, mythic hasnt dropped yet):

Top damage: Twins + Tectus, 2nd least dtps, 3rd highest hps, 2nd least TMI
2nd dmg: Pretty much Tectus + any trinket does the same dps

Best def: Twins + Margok HC, least damage, best dtps/hps/tmi
2nd def: Twins + Tectus or Bracken


edit: This is unfortunately done with the standard APL which seems kinda fishy atm (it says I have almost 30% wait time which seems ridiculous)...

The standard APL for Blood is pretty bad. It doesn't use Plague Leech, it uses runes on reapplying diseases, and it doesn't Death Strike often enough.

You could try using the APL that I posted earlier in the thread. It is not perfect, but it is much better than the default one. Please note that mine only supports Plague Leech/Blood Tap/Defile at the moment: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post30895882

[Milocow]

The standard APL for Blood is pretty bad. It doesn't use Plague Leech, it uses runes on reapplying diseases, and it doesn't Death Strike often enough.

You could try using the APL that I posted earlier in the thread. It is not perfect, but it is much better than the default one. Please note that mine only supports Plague Leech/Blood Tap/Defile at the moment: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post30895882

is that why blood DTPS is so high and HPS is so low on simcraft?

[dementedlogic]

is that why blood DTPS is so high and HPS is so low on simcraft?

Yes. With a 630 ilvl APL list I did myself I was doing nearly 18k dps and 30k hps compared to the sim's default 12.1k / 21.2k. It's not perfect yet (has 86% uptime on diseases no matter what I try), but once I get it right I'll post it up. It doesn't use defile on CD currently either (it only uses it if it's available during a crimson scourge proc) which is something I'll need to fix.

I haven't tried the above posters APL to see how it compares with mine, but may run a sim later to test it out.

edit: Mine also gives some semi-odd weights (haste > multi > vers > mastery > crit for TMI and multi > crit > haste > vers > mastery for dps). This could be for any number of reasons though, just requires further testing.

[Troxism]

Mine also gives some semi-odd weights (haste > multi > vers > mastery > crit for TMI and multi > crit > haste > vers > mastery for dps). This could be for any number of reasons though, just requires further testing.

The DPS weights are pretty much right; they will differ with exact gear, but that doesn't vary significantly from what I have.

As for TMI, well those are actually probably correct too, but TMI is almost utterly useless to Blood DKs and you should never gear around it.

Not that is is a serious argument against it, but to give an example why gearing for TMI is silly: if you want to gear for TMI you should start by using all stamina trinkets/gems, because that will give you way more TMI then anything else possibly could. And that is clearly wrong if you actually try it out in practice, as you will find that everything else will suffer way too much, and your survivability actually won't even go up.

The following will pretty much explain why I think TMI is garbage, why I value Defensive active/proc trinkets so highly even over more DPS oriented trinkets even when I actually think DPS is 90% of what matters for a tank, why I think Stamina trinkets are literally useless outside of VERY specific cases, and why I think DPS/survival are not mutually exclusive, leading to my statement that honestly DPS is all that matters for tanks (which isn't actually 100% true, but it's easier to say something simple then something complicated like I will here).

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND READING THIS WHILE THING IF YOU ARE WONDERING ABOUT ANY OF THE ABOVE.

I often see people value TMI very high because they seem to think it is a metric of your odds of surviving a fight. On paper this sounds right; what TMI approximately is, is a measurement of the average spike as a % of your HP that you take over the course of the simulated fight. Now that kind of sounds like your odds of living, right? Well, while in theory this might hold up, in reality simcraft is just not capable of giving an accurate measurement of this for Blood DKs (Other tanks, it's probably closer to the truth, but while I do play other tanks, I don't claim to have in-depth enough knowledge to argue this point for other classes).

Why? Well think about what Simcraft is actually simulating. The default profile is a boss autoattacking you for about 6 minutes straight, with a DoT/special attack thrown in. Then think about how many bosses this actually even remotely resembles just in Highmaul:

Kargath: You only tank the boss about half the time, where he does basically 0 melee damage, then an Impale where you are stunned and healers just heal you through it. Then you go up onto stands where if you pull both sides with MDs, the mobs actually hurt like hell. So you just CD through that part, then take 0 damage for the rest of the fight. So explain to me where TMI or even survivability comes into play on a fight like this? While you need survivability/smoothness to not die on the stands, it is provided by either personal or external cds when you need it, which is about 1-2 times per fight. But okay, Kargath is just easy, so let's look at a 'harder' boss.


Brackenspore: This boss is often 3 tanked (I really have no idea why, but that isn't what i'm debating here) because people claim it is hard to tank. Anecdotally this is obviously not true, as the first time I tanked this boss I used 0 external cds, and was ilvl 667 (raid was about the same) and we definitely did not 3 tank. But screw anecdotes, because who really gives a shit right? Lets look at the damage profile of this fight for a tank. You take 0 real damage when the boss is just hitting you. The danger while tanking the boss comes from Breath, during which you take a tiny amount of magic damage from the breath + dot, and then get destroyed by the melee swings he does during it. The obvious solution is to cd that part. The FAR bigger danger to tanks in this fight however, comes from when the add has many stacks, you are tanking it with 3-4 boss dot stacks, AND the boss is casting Infesting Spores, which does EVEN MORE magical damage to you at the same time. If you see my video of my first kill, I go from 100% to 20% to 100% to 20% during this time (because I don't CD it) in about 3 seconds. Otherwise, again the damage is very tame outside of high add stacks.

What this means is in reality Brackenspore also doesn't line up with this sim: you are not taking consistent damage for 6 minutes. You take very little damage for about half the fight, then slightly more for 25%, then a TON for the last 25%. So even a fight where you tank nearly 100% of the time, you still don't take the same amount of damage all fight. Instead, you combat the high damage periods with CDs/Banked DS (which is exactly what I did since I had to give the externals to the other tank), the rest of the time you just coast by.


The Butcher: Okay well maybe this fight is like the sim? It has a DOT, Special attack, and you are always taking damage right? Except that also isn't true. The damage during the 30% enrage is WAY higher, and the fight is only 4 minutes meaning in reality you can pretty much blanket externals for much of it, and the damage is just not consistent anyways; you can dodge/parry the DoT stacks, sub 30% damage goes way up into actually dangerous levels, and there is the bounding cleave to give you a breather to top off/refresh runes/cds. Sub 30% is scary on paper, but in reality since he speeds up his bounding cleaves during it, half the time he is 'stunned' or running back to you. And the whole phase only lasts about 1 min, meaning you just coast by on an armour pot and 1-2 externals.

Now, it is true that on Butcher there is some concrete value to HPS, and stats like Mastery do shine more then normal, but honestly even then, you have to consider healer overhealing (will be talked about later too).

For the sake of brevity, I'll also mention some other fights in less detail:


Tectus: While you do tank for most of it, the adds add a lot of burst (external for this), then the end is just a mess of double external chains. And p1 is just laughably low damage.


Imperator: Literally no danger until 2nd intermission/3rd phase, then no danger again in p4. And even in the danger periods, it's on and off how much damage you take (boss + 8 split adds is a 1 shot if they just hit you in the face for example, but that isn't the entirely of p3, and you can kite them/stun them for a large part of the time they are up). And even during the other phases, you are only tanking him part of the time, giving you time to refresh runes for the next round.

So what have I 'proven'? That real fights literally have no relation to sim results. What does that actually prove? Well very little. But what I also touched on on many of these fights, is that all of them have 'danger periods' where you are at risk of dying and 'easy periods' where you aren't. And I also explained how to deal with it: bank resources/cds for the danger periods, then coast by the easy periods.

This is why TMI is a silly metric, and this is why focusing too much on survival is silly, IF AND ONLY IF (and most people admittedly can't, which is why I don't just say survivability is useless in this guide as that would be wrong for most players), you know how to survive the danger periods. You SIMPLY do not NEED that survivability on most of the fight. It is useless/overkill. When people focus on survival (in terms of gearing/play), what they are really doing is over-preparing for the 'easy' parts, just so they don't die on the hard part. But a really good player knows exactly the bare minimum they need for the hard parts, and does not get any more then that. And the best way to get what you need for just a small part of a fight? Smart CD usage. Resource banking. Externals/personals/trinket actives or even procs. They are more efficient because either they are 'free' (don't cost you DPS), or while they may cost you something, they are really efficient (trinkets) because you can focus their effect on exactly the right period of time rather then spreading it out over the whole fight but having a much weaker effect.

Fundamentally, TMI measures your AVERAGE survivability, instead of your survivability WHEN IT ACTUALLY MATTERS. And for when it actually matters, smart play will make 5-10x the difference as 'gearing right' will, as having a CD up at the right time is worth WAY more EHP then even stacking stamina, much less getting for example Mastery over Crit on a few items/enchants or whatever.

Another way to put it/think about it: People often ask me what their HPS should be as a Blood DK on X fight. I usually tell them it doesn't matter, and that it's the wrong question to ask. Why? Because unless your healers are literally just asleep, you always have Hots/random shields/beacon heals on you as a tank. Usually because of this, during easy parts any DS healing you do, even if it's not strictly overhealing, it causes the healers to overheal instead. Another example is Death Pacting, then getting Lay on Hands. You technically didn't overheal, but you wasted the Lay on Hands, and this is the same thing as overhealing. In general, 'background healing' is usually enough to carry you through the easy parts of the fight, and on the hard parts it's YOUR job to stay alive. People often say 'I have shitty healers so I have to focus on living' but they fail to understand that healers have reacting/casting times, and it's actually the tank's job to stay alive through the hard parts. While sometimes healers are to blame for tank deaths, usually the only time healers are to blame is if you literally go 100% to 80%, healed to 90%, then down to 70%, healed to 80%, ect and so on until you die over an EXTENDED period of time, not 3-5 seconds. So in that boss dot + add + infesting spores case? Healers can't save you there. It's 100% your job to stay alive however you have to. They can't top you from 20% to 100% in a GCD, unless they use long cds like Lay on Hands.

To summarize the above paragraph a little: basically most of the time any extra HPS you do as a result of gearing for survival, actually just ends up either making YOU overheal, or your healers overheal, which is the exactly the same thing regardless. And during the danger periods, a CD in the right place is, once again, worth 10x more by giving your healers sufficient TIME to help heal you.

So how does this tie into what I said before about trinkets? Well think about it. If I have a strong active trinket (Pol's, Tablet, ect), then I can use it during the danger periods, then have it be on CD during the easy parts, where I don't need it anyways. Even with a 'random' proc trinket like Evergaze, while obviously sometimes procs will be 'wasted' (at least defensively), sometimes you get a proc when you need it, which then lets you SAVE a cooldown instead of using it there (because you see you have a strong proc up), letting you either double up CDs later, or just give you a trump card incase of a freak accident during a normally easy phase.

And how does it tie into survivability vs DPS? Well, basically you only need something like proc/active trinkets + externals + personal CDs for about 99% of danger periods on almost every fight. There will always be an exception to the rule, but it is rare. Having Evergaze Arcane Eidolon procced, gives you about 30% more healing from DS, and 30% damage reduction from physical. You can NEVER match that by 'gearing for survival'; the amount of burst survivability offered is just insane. This is why stacking mastery or whatever doesn't actually matter, and why when I don't stack mastery I still die less then other tanks; because I understand when the danger periods are and I focus on countering them, rather then overpreparing. This leaves me free to stack DPS in almost everything (except trinkets where I prefer survival for the exact reasons mentioned).

And what about stamina gems/flask/trinkets? Again same argument. Stamina sounds good if you always take a ton of damage, but in reality you only 'need' it for like 10% of the fight. Why have a ton of passive stamina, that does NOTHING 90% of the fight, when you could have stats that both give you DPS 100% of the fight, AND give you SOME survival (Strength, Mastery whatever) even when you do need it. And again, having a trinket proc, or a CD, can easily be a 60-100% increase to your EHP (50% DR = double EHP). Having two cds up, makes it even better. Why would I gear for stamina to increase my EHP by about 20-25% the entire fight, when I could just use CDs smarter for the 10-30% of the fight I need it for, and get WAY more EHP then.

Now the counter-arguement is that 'well I need both of them because this fight is really hard'. However that doesn't really happen in practice. You can skate by fights with just smart external and personal CD usage, along with trinkets. Even I overkill it on progression really badly most of the time, and I play like a crazy man compared to most tanks. Bosses just don't hit hard enough for LONG ENOUGH to not allow CDs to cover it in this game as a rule of thumb to actually make this a problem. Last time that was even an issue was Paragons as a Blood DK, where unlike other tanks you could literally be autoattack 1 shot for more then 50% of the fight, which did actually put a strain on cds since the duration to cover was so long that you could run out and just have to pray for good RNG. And I have a strong feeling Paragons won't happen again, because Blood isn't as shitty anymore in terms of EHP compared to other tanks, and the healing model has shifted to make fights like that not really possible. And ultimately that fight was the exception to the rule. One fight in an entire expansion where you could argue that getting stamina trinkets/all survival stats was actually smart and correct, then 13 fights in the SAME TIER where you were better off using DPS Cloak + Tank Meta + DPS trinkets + Crit/Parry/Dodge gear as a Blood DK, because externals would cover all the danger periods.

*And please FFS don't turn this into 'LOL I DID PARAGONS WITH ALL CRIT GEAR U SKKK!1!1'. I have solo tanked (well after Korven was dead at least, so more like 1.5 tank) Heroic 25 man Paragons in SoO (and not in 6.0 obviously) as a Blood DK in all Crit gear with DPS meta, cloak, and trinkets while doing nearly 1.2 million DPS with scorpion. That doesn't mean it's a smart or reliable strategy for progression, or that I didn't get carried by my ilvl, my raid's ilvl, and just a healthy dose of straight up luck. Just because you can do crazy shit on X fight doesn't mean it's a reliable way to do the fight. I could have just as easily died doing that, and I have ALWAYS respected that fight all the way through farm on 25 man (10 man version was literally laughable all the way through) as a Blood DK. What I or others do 8 months into farm because I am bored shitless doesn't really have any bearing on the true difficulty of a fight.


Concluding Remarks:

Either way, I'm sure there are loopholes in the arguments I have given here. I wrote all this very quickly, and honestly I would have preferred to say it in a conversation with someone, so I could explain the details more and cover any gaps that I missed. However at least this way it's actually written out somewhere and people other then the person I'm talking to at the time can read it.

However to counter the most obvious point, yes there are exceptions to what I say here. Butcher is PARTIALLY an exception, but even then not really (I have given people cd patterns for that fight to completely trivialize it on Mythic, without needing to gear Mastery or w/e). Paragons was one. If a fight just has a MASSIVE burst to soak (Impale?), then stamina trinkets can be good. But on almost every fight every tier, above above is true.

Either way if you actually read all this, congrats. You now know the secret to being a pro tank. This is literally why good tanks are just immortal and bad tanks die like flies. The only trick is figuring out the damage patterns of every fight, and matching with what your healers are capable of providing, and figuring out what cds to use where (which actually isn't always easy, so grats you know the secret but you still have to figure that part out).

Note: It is possible to sim a specific fight in simcraft if you design the boss like that with the boss events. However it is very difficult, and honestly pointless, because what you would simming for is stat weights; but like I said above gearing for survival is only going to give you like 10% more survival over the whole fight, while smart CD usage will basically double your survival for the parts that actually matter. And even if you had a perfect boss sim, the Blood DK APL would be flawed; I have tried hard to make a 'smart' APL and I still can't really do it. I can make it way better then the current default, but I still can't make it play like I do as simcraft is not currently capable of 'thinking ahead' to the next GCD and deciding if you are likely to die and choosing to DS now to save yourself.

[Deleted]

I'm a newly dinged 100 blood dk and am still getting the hang of things,
You recommend potting a Greater Draenic Strength Flask as choice,
however would the extra stamina not be useful from the Greaten Draenic Stamina Flask?
Is this purely gear based, as in, if you gear is low and your pool of hp isn't great enough for soaking heavy hits, would it be worth using stamina at this point?
Or would the strength always come up trumps as it values other elements?