Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[Deleted]

You really don't want to use Soulgorge on pure multi target, not just because of how hard it is to apply but also because 1 (2 at most) Soulgorge buffs are enough to GCD capping you.

[Zorish]

so... any new feedback on the current state of Blood? I rarely see now any words about it. Is is bad? if yes - how bad? interesting/not interesting? competive? Would be happy to see something like Trox big post (and where is he?). sorry for bothering (#noalphaclub)

[Nayami]

so... any new feedback on the current state of Blood? I rarely see now any words about it. Is is bad? if yes - how bad? interesting/not interesting? competive? Would be happy to see something like Trox big post (and where is he?). sorry for bothering (#noalphaclub)

Well... ONE person posted in the new Blood DK feedback thread... I guess that's something. Seriously though, are none of the alpha players Blood DK mains or do they just hate posting feedback on forums? Still better than rogues I guess since they haven't even gotten a single reply, even for Combat and Sub which are already playable. I really hope that they will invite more players because at this rate, barely any feedback is going to be given and Blood (and other specs) are going to hit live with major issues that won't be dealt with before the following expansion.

I'll provide some feedback about talents here I guess, although I don't have alpha access so this is from just reading tooltips (hundreds of times... the hype..). I'll only post about talents since I feel that our core gameplay is fine, the only issue I see regarding this is not having a spammable AoE and being tied to DnD and BS/HS cleaving. Talents that I have nothing to talk about are excluded from the list below.

Lvl56 Tier

Blood Worms - The ONLY way to stack up on Bloodworms, is by purposely overhealing with Death Strike. We finally get to spend a single resource (RP) on Death Strike so that we may store Death Strikes for when we're missing health, which is a fantastic change. However, this talent is basically telling us to do the exact opposite. I can only see it being useful if you're playing content you've outgeared where spamming Death Strike won't get you killed.

Heart Strike - A spell that all Blood DKs remember and loved. My only issue with it is the single target damage nerf, it should hit as hard as Blood Strike on ST because this should be an improved version of BS, even though it cleaves 2 extra targets.

Consume Vitality - The only fun thing in this talent is that the damage scales off your HP, which you obviously have a lot of as a tank. Otherwise, it's a 5 second channel, we'll be rune capped before this spell even finished channelling since we can't cast anything else at this time.

Lvl57 Tier

Ossuary - Not sure when this talent should be taken. Rapid Decomposition seems better since it provides extra DnD damage and may also possibly give us a massive RP gain if enough targets are present. Soulgorge seems to be for single target. So what about Ossuary? Why would a DK take this if they can already keep their Bone Shield stacked all the time? Not to mention that it doesn't even cleave for Marrowrend's full damage. Hope this talent gets scrapped.

Lvl60 Tier

Rune Tap and Mark of Blood - Both great, fun and good old talents we previously made use of. Only issue I see is the CD (What's up with DKs and their exagerated CD times?). Would love to see Rune Tap at 1min CD and Mark of Blood at 2min CD.

Lvl75 Tier

Tightening Grasp - Basically, a massive kick in the nuts. Boring and lazy talent, I hope it's a placeholder.

March of the Damned - Can be useful in some PvE situations I guess, although it doesn't break any effects in progress. Would definitely prefer a completely different talent in this tier though, although I honestly have no idea what this tier is about. Surely, this is the talent tier that needs most work.

Lvl90 Tier

Foul Bulwark - I have no idea if this will be good or not. But the extra health gained is instantly removed as soon as you lose a bone shield stack. So a mob would hit us, we'd lose health based on his damage (-20% from the consumed bone shield stack) and we'd also lose the 3% health gained. Maybe make the health gained be lost a few second after the bone shield stack is consumed instead of instantly.

Lvl100 Tier

Bonestorm - *cough* BONEEEESTORMMMMM. I just had to sorry.

Not many complaints for this tier, looking good. Maybe reduce the CD on Blood Beasts since they only last 15 seconds, which isn't a lot for a whopping 5min cd.

[Deleted]

Here is the short version, I guess:

Talents:
Heart Strike needs to be superior to Blood Strike in every way and Consume Vitality needs to lose a lot of it's constaints (keep CD, reduce to 3 sec channel, allow actions during it).

Ossuary is useless and Tightening Grasp is a filler talent that shouldn't exist. Red Thirst also needs a change away from granting resources to something like a significant amount of Leech which would fit the name and Exhume is very much undertuned and probably shouldn't exist in that form. Mark of Blood also has me baffled; it needs a significant buff and needs to lose its charges to be even considered.

In the grand scheme of things, we are pretty good on talents, especially if these things get fixed.

Artifact:
Mostly good but it's a bit passive but I can live with that. Umbilical Eternus is pretty bad though; scaling from damage done and tying it to a major CD are both bad choices.
I am also concerned about how single target focused it is but then again, so are most tanks' - except, who would have thought - Paladins. It's like we learned nothing from the current situation and their dumb class trinket.

Rotation:
Note that this is already from a PoV that accepts having permanent Death Runes and losing Blood Tap. Would I rather have kept those? Yes, I would have but it's a lost cause so I am trying to make the best of what we have:
The current rotation is generally fine by being able to emulate the rotation we have on live with 1 Rune available for damage/utility and 2 Runes for survival. I made a video that is just confirming the theory of how easy, relatively speaking, Bone Shield is to keep up here. (That is also the reason why Foul Bulwark is pretty good; we should be around 6-7 stacks most of the time so that's 18-21% max health constantly).

My main concern is that the current numbers of passive Rune regen buffs make stacking Haste pointless and that we are so close to the GCD cap again. An easy fix would be to give us back our 1.0 sec GCD (I really hate that we lost this.); otherwise, expect a nerf soon.

Mobility and other mob control abilities:
Lets be frank here: Wraith Walk with it's current CD is garbage. It could easily drop to 30 secs CD and we'd still just pull even with the other worst mobility spec (Prot Paladins) while still lacking snares or proper hard CCs. We need significant buffs in this area.

Loss of CDs/new tanking paradigm:
I am willing to give this a shot because a) I remember how much fun the first tier of Cataclysm was to tank when healers could run OOM and still had to spend time healing you (I still felt engaged and there were still the obvious skill checks involved for tanks) and b) the current meta of putting beacon on a tank and just letting that and smart heals sort out everything just feels dumb.
Maybe I am too optimistic but I think this could work if done well. I also hope that our class ends up losing the least CDs (doesn't necessarily refer to the amount of CDs we have but how often we can use them) of every class so we can retain our feel of being the CD tank.

Feel of the fantasy:
It's pretty amazing, actually. We have so much self healing and health boosting abilities instead of damage reduction that you can easy tell the defining theme: We are the vampiric tank who takes more damage and heals it back than mitigation tanks like Warriors and to a slightly lesser extent, Bears; in fact, we have zero damage reduction abilities if you don't specifically spec into the one we have available (Blood Mirror (and Blood Beasts to a less extent)). My only gripe is that we could use a little bit more on the CD side of things (and well mobility/snares but that I mentioned that above).
Now I realize that a lot of this depends on whether the devs can pull off their promise because we'd be the first tank to bow out if burst damage came back. But if it doesn't (or at least not in the extreme that was fucking Baleroc HM or Tyrant Mythic) we should be in a really good place.

[Anastacy]

Lvl57 Tier

Ossuary - Not sure when this talent should be taken. Rapid Decomposition seems better since it provides extra DnD damage and may also possibly give us a massive RP gain if enough targets are present. Soulgorge seems to be for single target. So what about Ossuary? Why would a DK take this if they can already keep their Bone Shield stacked all the time? Not to mention that it doesn't even cleave for Marrowrend's full damage. Hope this talent gets scrapped.

Just FYI, Rapid Decomposition doesn't scale with the amount of targets it hits. It will give the same RP over DnD's duration for 1 target as it will 20.

[mmimzie]

Just FYI, Rapid Decomposition doesn't scale with the amount of targets it hits. It will give the same RP over DnD's duration for 1 target as it will 20.

This man speaks the truth!

I still wonder about rapid decomposition vs soulgorge. I think soulgorge might get nerfed??? While in a AOE situation you get alot of your blood plagues from blood boil as that 1% health will be money. Soul gorge at 3 or 4 targets is great, and it's really great if thos targets you rather hard as your death strike will income you lots of health. Plus, if burst aoe tanking is a thing bone storms will cover this base?? i guess blood mirror and blood beast do the opposite for rapid decomp for burst single target tanking in aoe situations???

Talents that are weird right now:
Exhume is abit pointless doesn't provide much.

Level 75 tier This is glyph level silly random abilities.

Ossuary While rapid decomposition lets you get passive easy RP gain but less of it, and soul gorge lets you sacrafice AOE damage and healing from blood plague/ blood boil. Ossuary helps you do something.... you already can do which is keep bone charges up... very similar to exhume

Heart Strike While, i super disagree that this hsould do more damage than blood strike. I do think the talent is lack lust. Blood worms are an interesting way to store your excess RP, and consume vitality is sort of the opposite in that it lets you take a loan out of your future RP for some quick healing.

[Nayami]

Just FYI, Rapid Decomposition doesn't scale with the amount of targets it hits. It will give the same RP over DnD's duration for 1 target as it will 20.

Thanks for pointing that out. I guess I automatically assumed that it scales on the number of targets since it only gives us 1 RP (based on mmo-c talent calculator tooltip). Does it also give just 1 RP for each tick on alpha currently?

[Anastacy]

Thanks for pointing that out. I guess I automatically assumed that it scales on the number of targets since it only gives us 1 RP (based on mmo-c talent calculator tooltip). Does it also give just 1 RP for each tick on alpha currently?

10 RP for casting (sans-proc, I believe), and 1 RP for every tick that damages at least 1 mob (regardless of proc).

[Xeoshades]

Seems.... Ossuary is kinda the way to go now, was hoping more from Rapid Decomposition. Soulgorge is interesting, but only for Single target, because it seems to be a nightmare to manage many adds with and a large loss of passive healing.

[Deleted]

It could just be that the talent is bugged. Rapid Decomposition seems like such a clear winner for AoE once it scales from the number of targets with Soulgorge being the go to single target talent. If it turns out RD is not bugged then it is undertuned. Either way, this is not going to the final version of the talent if Blizz wants people to consider speccing it.
Ossuary is just plain useless and I am expecting something entirely different in its place.

[mmimzie]

It could just be that the talent is bugged. Rapid Decomposition seems like such a clear winner for AoE once it scales from the number of targets with Soulgorge being the go to single target talent. If it turns out RD is not bugged then it is undertuned. Either way, this is not going to the final version of the talent if Blizz wants people to consider speccing it.
Ossuary is just plain useless and I am expecting something entirely different in its place.

I'd agree with this. Odds are if this how it work out i think RD still beats out ossuary because to really use it you'd cut into your blood strikes which will be your real AOE damage when your under DND. Mainly because bones aren't hard to keep up even when your getting punched by a bunch of dudes.

[Anastacy]

Bone Shield charges seemed to be getting chewed up quicker this build, but full Artifact talents (specifically, the extra Bone Shield charges one) seemed to smooth this over.

Purely anecdotal, though.

[Deleted]

Could be that Bone Shield ICD got changed but I have no way of confirming this if the PvE realm keeps having a 300 min+ queue to get to Myzerian in Uldum.

[Deleted]

Could be that Bone Shield ICD got changed but I have no way of confirming this if the PvE realm keeps having a 300 min+ queue to get to Myzerian in Uldum.

Found some time while the server was cooperating: Didn't notice any difference in how easy/hard Bone Shield was to keep up.

- - - Updated - - -

I made a new video about the rotation with the 110 premade an fully leveled artifact with regards of how easy Bone Shield is to maintain atm over here

In the last video with starter gear and starting artifact level it was already possible to maintain Bone Shield with just using a simple Blood Strike + Marrowrend rotation every Rune cycle.

Now the same thing with a fully leveled Artifact, no Soulgorge and 15% less Haste from gear which means a ~2 sec longer Rune cycle. Is it still possible?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes, and it is much easier even though we have a lot less Rune regen. How is this possible? The artifact itself offers two boosts to Bone Shield:
Rattling Bones which adds +1 Bone Shield charges (technically it says it has a chance to add it, but practically it pretty much always happens).
Another oddity I can't figure out is how we have a random chance to generate +1 Bone Shield charges just by attacking a mob (this actually happens at the very start of the video if you pay attention to it). This might be a bug or it may not be and this is Touch of the Grave's replacement (the artifact trait which gives Death Coil 50% leech which obviously doesn't do anything for Blood on Legion).
Either way, even without that talent we would be fine:

Rattling Bones with the current 100% chance to proc alone is worth -2 seconds of Rune regen time which is pretty much equivalent to the missing 15% Haste from gear and the 15% Rune regen from Soulgorge.

Either way, no one can tell me this is going to be the intended rotation since there is very little thought that needs to go into maintaining Marrowrend, especially once you add normal Haste levels (you will not able to avoid all of it in PvE gear after all), potentially Soulgorge and avoidance.

(All of this does weaken the regular use of Foul Bulwark since the efficient way to keep up Bone Shield would be to only use Marrowrend at 5 stacks (4 charges + 1 from potential auto attack) to avoid wasting Bone Shield procs.)

[Murderdoll]

Seeing videos like that really hammers how just how basic Blood feels. You can literally faceroll your way through keeping it up.

[Deleted]

Yeah, it's pretty simple to keep Bone Shield up. I am hoping/expecting some nerfs here or something else to spice the rotation up.

[cujoe]

Found some time while the server was cooperating: Didn't notice any difference in how easy/hard Bone Shield was to keep up.

- - - Updated - - -

I made a new video about the rotation with the 110 premade an fully leveled artifact with regards of how easy Bone Shield is to maintain atm over here

Why are you fighting against lvl 85 mobs that miss 95% of the time? With that your average bone shield charge lasts way longer than it would with lvl 110 mobs. Against appropriate enemies bone shield charges will be consumed on CD (so every 1s) in AoE situations. I don't know whether it makes a big difference rotation wise, but your video doesn't anything basically.

[Deleted]

Why are you fighting against lvl 85 mobs that miss 95% of the time? With that your average bone shield charge lasts way longer than it would with lvl 110 mobs. Against appropriate enemies bone shield charges will be consumed on CD (so every 1s) in AoE situations. I don't know whether it makes a big difference rotation wise, but your video doesn't anything basically.

Having to deal with Myzerian is a necessity because he is the only unkillable mob that I know of that will not in return kill me so I can do my rotation in peace.
Note that there are mobs hitting from the back, including throwing grenades which always hit. A simple check would be to look at the Bone Shield charges and how long they last (the ICD is 2 secs, not 1 sec - which is also the rate Bone Shield gets consumed in the video; it's 1.5 secs on live, I think).

Alternatively, look at it like this: What you are seeing is close to the actual worst case scenario of expending Bone Shield charges every 2 seconds so you are correct that it makes a difference in rotation but for the opposite reason: Against a single target full absorbs and avoidance actually makes Bone Shield charges last even longer so you need to press Marrowrend even less.

[Deleted]

I just tried a dungeon, and outside actually just practicing on a dummy I really enjoyed blood. Much more than I figured.

The problems for me are that it has entire dead and defunct talent rows, and I suppose you could even say columns haha. Some artifacts are also pretty bad.

However I think I like the general playstyle of marrowrend and blood strike and all those goodies. I'm not sure if this is the best exact way to play, but I don't play it GCD capped, and you know I like that. A tank that kinda waits a second or two between actions and does things. Bear for me feels stronger but it just feels so hectic and full of constant priorities in your rotation coming up... blood feels like you decide your priorities and just seems cool.

But hey, maybe the best way to play will be to just spam heart strike and not even maintain the bone shield who knows... but so far I really like it.

[mmimzie]

But hey, maybe the best way to play will be to just spam heart strike and not even maintain the bone shield who knows... but so far I really like it.

heart strike isn't worth right now. IT definitly needs something that makes it more unique when comepared to blood strike, right now ti's just more RP if you hit multiple target, but does less damage over all. I'm not sure what they could do with heart strike to make it interesting with out just making it an auto take over consume vitality.