Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[celinamuna]

Is there currently a Tank spec in the right place with all these design and meta changes going around?

I'm not real keen on the meta changes thus far as it seems as a tank we are a lot more reliant on healers again, which isn't that much fun as a class, basically the DPS that stands in front of the boss who has a couple cds.

Druids are the closest to actually having engaging gameplay.
So they will probably get nerfed and lobotomized soon.

[Zoldor]

Druids are the closest to actually having engaging gameplay.
So they will probably get nerfed and lobotomized soon.

Damn. I'm going to be switching back to tanking in Legion to help our raid out and keep a player from burning out and currently my tank choices are DK, Druid and I'm tempted to bring up a warrior. I have a pally but that is what the other tank is and we would like to not have 6 people on one loot token and have some diversity in our small raid group.

So I might start digging into Bear more. I just have always loved my DK and tanked on him in two other, well three other expansions as a MT in a raid group. I just keep hearing doom and gloom and the new system just doesn't sound too conducive to what DKs are based around. Who knows its still Alpha things could change but I won't hold my breath on that.

[Fenrkyr]

At this point we could be not too far off from tanks vanishing entirely, and instead we have the melee DPS just rotating taunts on the boss(es) and using what CD's they have to survive before the next DPS taunts off. Non-rogue melee are already largely a liability so might as well give them a reason to actually be in the raid.

[dixincide]

This was a good read. I'm hoping they will fix the issues before they go live rather than handling them through set bonuses.

Giving back Blood Tap and Soul Reaper would make a big impact for saving things. I always kept the haste buff from soul reaper rolling off of little mobs when tanking CMs and had plague leach/lifetap to ensure I was always able to do something. I think those changes would make everything better to be honest.

The talent choices would then just need some number tweaking and maybe light adjustments but there is always going to be a clear winner when it comes to talents.

I'm on the fence about the mobility thing.

On the one hand, a deathknight is supposed to be a reanimated corpse so I don't expect us to be bouncing off the walls.
but on the other hand if we aren't given more control over our defensives (And more defensives) to eat the mechanics that we will be forced to stand in due to the lack of mobility I can see it being a very big problem.

[nephzor]

Read all. Your WoD tanking stuff were very clear and instructive. Can't say the same about this one. There were multiple parts made me cringe, wanted to just scroll down to pass your inner dialogue but I sticked with it, can't say that I am pleased of doing it.

Denial-Anger-Bargain-Depression-Acceptence.

Your strong bias against the changes in general felt like you haven't reached to the aceptence phase yet. Stuck in denial/bargain for the most part. As a person who follows your previous work, you seem like you are in a tunnel at the moment. Your claims sound like an angry self righteous person, which I try to avoid IRL.

My feedback for your post:

Downtime

I am GCD locked atm even though I do not take plague leech as you and most other suggest(and it is one of the best things that I did as blood in WoD). Your opinion towards downtime doesnt feel right to me, I prefer having 1.5 sec GCd with downtime, so that my choices can have impact. Bringing up previous tiers as a backing point is irrelevant, especially meta is shifting.

Tanking

Burst was never fun to me. Choice was so obvious, leaving you without options. Should I press rune tap or AMS? Not fun. I always had more fun during basic melee swings, especially when my DS was making impact with high effective healing. Now from what Blizz told, we need to manage our survival in a long run, I like it. You sound like pressing an Active mitigation sets good tanks apart from the rest however, I believe presenting the choice so obvious does exact opposite.

--

I think you need to digest the change a little bit. I dissed everyone here who makes claims based on Current/Past metas for Legion. BTW not everyone thinks challenge is the best way to enjoy a game. Again, self righteous.

Right plaguebearer is much better than 2 on demand death runes, have you ever tanked anything else than a heroic dungeon or heroic raid boss at less than 740ilvl ?

[Positions]

The exact instant I knew the rest of this post would contain nothing of value

But bro he's already gcd capped so why does he need plague leech.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Damn. I'm going to be switching back to tanking in Legion to help our raid out and keep a player from burning out and currently my tank choices are DK, Druid and I'm tempted to bring up a warrior. I have a pally but that is what the other tank is and we would like to not have 6 people on one loot token and have some diversity in our small raid group.

So I might start digging into Bear more. I just have always loved my DK and tanked on him in two other, well three other expansions as a MT in a raid group. I just keep hearing doom and gloom and the new system just doesn't sound too conducive to what DKs are based around. Who knows its still Alpha things could change but I won't hold my breath on that.

I would wait for the more final stages of alpha/beta. Even after the numbers pass you will most likely have 1-3 months time before launch. Considering demon hunter are the new thing, there is a high possibility that they will be broken OP in some fights. They are certainly far from done at the moment. Not sure how that would play into your token distribution though. I guess it also matters how diverse a class you want, nothing is more flexible than druid after all.

[Zoldor]

I would wait for the more final stages of alpha/beta. Even after the numbers pass you will most likely have 1-3 months time before launch. Considering demon hunter are the new thing, there is a high possibility that they will be broken OP in some fights. They are certainly far from done at the moment. Not sure how that would play into your token distribution though. I guess it also matters how diverse a class you want, nothing is more flexible than druid after all.

This is the conundrum. We don't have a DK or Druid in raid currently. Until you don't have one you don't realize how fucking nice it is to have one. Mass grip in HFC is baller level shit. Trust me fucking with Xhul'Horac without one can sometimes suck greatly. Same thing with an instant Battle Res, Tranq etc. So going either direction will be awesome. I'll get luck and get to stay DPS if Demon Hunter tank is the shit, because I know one of our current tanks is going to play a DH, but as of now he wants to play DPS, but I bet if Tank is rad OP he'll side with that and I'll get to stay Warlock or whatever I want. Maybe Tree. I'd love to be a tree. I've dreamed of being a Tree for years. Really I just want to Tree /Dance all the time.

Also, agreed I'll wait till final passes and tuning goes in to get all doom and gloom, but I hope those in Alpha/Beta are giving their feedback. It doesn't always make a difference, but if you don't voice it it will 100% for sure be ignored. Thanks to those out there putting in the time and effort to do this kind of stuff. You guys make it better for the rest of us. keep it up.

But that is off topic. Blood is my favorite tank spec and really one of my favorite in game specs of all time and I'd hate to see it get smashed into the shithouse. The fun part about blood was all the possible and necessary AMs and Self heals. The eat it in the face and keep going mentality of Blood is what always drew me too it and if that remove that and make us just another two AM class with neglible heals I'll be sad. Blood is a great spec and I want the best for it. Still hands down one of the most fun Tank specs in the game. I always forget how much I love it, until I pick it up again. One of the only specs that can pull me from being a Warlock.

If they are going to keep jacking with the CD of Mass grip and normal grip, we really really have to have a better escape/movement button. Even if it is just a reverse grip I'd be happy. Something to get me out of the center of a debuff puddle that gets dropped at my feet would be fantastic. Especially if its a slowing one. Nothing worse to a DK than a slowing pool of death dropped at your feet. Go Go wasted AM.

[Troxism]

The new system, on paper, isn't about healers saving you through bad choices. Yes, not having burst means healers can top you back up, but at a very large price - with spirit being removed, the number of times that can happen in a fight will be limited.

The whole point of getting rid of burst to tanks is that your choices are supposed to be much more cumulative. In a bursty system, if you survive a burst, that's it. Prep for the next burst. If you consistently miss your active mitigation in the new system, you put mana strain on the healers, and at a certain point in the fight, they're out of ways to keep the raid alive.

Not to mention, burst mechanics make additional mechanics harder to put in. If you're burst down at certain points, it's difficult to have a fight where other mechanics can meaningfully interact with the tank directly before or afterwards. The new system allows for the juggling of multiple mechanics at once - no single one will kill you, all three definitely will.

I feel like you overlooked this section of the text.

Now let us talk about the other side of the spectrum. In a world where burst damage is either nonexistent or much less random and frequent, and healer mana/damage taken is a concern, what kind of decisions do you end up making? Well, let us take a simplified example from Legion Blood. You could spend your runes on Blood Strike to generate more RP for Death Strikes, in order to heal + shield, or you could spend your runes on Marrowrend, to get 66% as much RP per rune, but get 3 Bone Shield charges. Now what matters in a meta like this is ‘total damage prevented or healed’ by an ability. But the problem is for any given situation one or the other of these abilities will be better mathematically, and therefore will always be the right choice. Now, let us sidestep or ignore this issue, and say for various reasons, this balance shifts over a fight, so that the optimal choice varies anyways. The problem is that even then, in a metagame like this, the penalty for making the wrong decision in this case is very small. Let us say in a given situation using runes on Marrowrend is 25% less effective than on Blood Strike at reducing damage (this actually isn’t an unrealistic example, infact this number is probably too high and the real difference will usually be less than that). That means the penalty for picking Marrowrend is relatively small, compared to the burst damage situation where picking wrong in a similar choice = dying (for example if you needed those Bone Shield charges to avoid a one shot, but you chose to waste time converting runes to RP and trying to heal instead). Even if healer mana is fairly precious over a fight, and tank healing is a big strain for healers, a single mistake of this mathy nature will have little impact over the entire fight, meanwhile a single mistake in a burstier metagame can lead to death. This means basic tank gameplay in such a model is FAR more forgiving, which means there is much less penalty for playing badly and therefore much less reward for actually bothering to improve. And if there is less penalty for getting it wrong, how exactly does it make gameplay more interesting as is often claimed?

But assuming you read that, let us go over it again anyways.

The new system, on paper, isn't about healers saving you through bad choices. Yes, not having burst means healers can top you back up, but at a very large price - with spirit being removed, the number of times that can happen in a fight will be limited.

The whole point of getting rid of burst to tanks is that your choices are supposed to be much more cumulative. In a bursty system, if you survive a burst, that's it. Prep for the next burst. If you consistently miss your active mitigation in the new system, you put mana strain on the healers, and at a certain point in the fight, they're out of ways to keep the raid alive.

I specifically talk about this above, but to go over it again; yes obviously you are still punished for mistakes in this case. But you cannot argue that dying from making a single mistake (because of failing to deal with burst via AM or CD usage) is harder then dying because of cumulative mistakes (because of bad overall mitigation via bad AM or CD usage). Also, as I will explain a bit later, the way you use AM and cooldowns against burst is basically the same way as you use it to mitigate as much damage as possible, because they actually ARE the same thing. So this isn't a case of trading 'easy but punishing decisions' for 'hard but cumulative decisions'. And if your opinion is that dying from a single mistake is too unforgiving, then that is why difficulty modes exist. To change tanking to reduce burst in this way simply makes it easier, and there are already plenty of people who think Mythic tanking is too easy as it is.

To put it a second way: In a bursty world there might be 10 instances of burst damage, and if you fail to react correctly to ANY of them, you die. In a non bursty world, there might be 20 chances to use your AM to reduce varying degrees of damage. Except you don't instantly die if you screw any of them up. Like you said, screwing up too many would cause healers to OOM, but this is still obviously way more forgiving then the first example. And again, my whole argument is that reducing burst only makes the game easier for tanks; arguing about 'how hard should mythic be for tanks' is a separate subject (I think harder then now, but people have varying opinions).

To put it a third way: Burst is the concept of fluctuations in damage, ie having damage be inconsistent. If damage is perfectly consistent (no burst), then think about how you would use AM abilities like SoTR, Shield Block? It would make no difference when you used them, because if damage intake is 100% steady, they would reduce the same total damage no matter when you used them (SoTR reduces for example a % of damage taken over X seconds, but if damage NEVER varies, what difference does it make when you use it?), meaning AM usage in such a world would devolve into mindless spam. As I said above, this also leads to the understanding that 'dealing with burst' is the same as 'mitigating overall damage'; both happen because of damage fluctuations. The difference is 'burst' in this context is just a damage fluctation large enough to actually kill you, ie a more difficult one. If you look at how tanks play around burst in encounters, you quickly realize they are playing for overall mitigation at the same time in many cases, since by using AM for the huge burst, they are reducing as much damage as possible, comparing to using that AM for lower damage periods.

Now your obvious rebuttal to that would be that 'okay well I don't want NO burst, I just want 'less burst'' so that you don't get one shot, but AM timing is still a thing for tanks. But at that point, the issue is you are bargaining over degree rather then against the concept of burst, and on top of that, you can't tell me that somehow lowering burst to below fatal levels makes the game harder then it was before it was fatal. Also, this idea of 'less burst' already exists today; lowering the difficulty, and/or getting more item levels and doing the boss at a later date.

Not to mention, burst mechanics make additional mechanics harder to put in. If you're burst down at certain points, it's difficult to have a fight where other mechanics can meaningfully interact with the tank directly before or afterwards. The new system allows for the juggling of multiple mechanics at once - no single one will kill you, all three definitely will

This doesn't really make sense. Xhul'horac is an example of a fight on live that has multiple sources of damage/burst like you describe here. The way you deal with them when they overlap is heavier AM + CD usage, for example instead of just using AM you might add a cooldown, or even two cooldowns to survive an 'overlap'. For example if just taking melee + strike from boss you might be fine with just using AM. If taking melee + strike from boss + add special attack at the same time, maybe you need to thrown in a cooldown as well. The point is multiple concurrent damage mechanics even in a bursty world can still easily be dealt with.

And if you mean having burst AND some other mechanic at the same time, fights like that do exist already. Archimonde has very high damage with boss + add while having to move the boss on Mythic. Again, how is this a problem in today's world? It doesn't need to be addressed, tanks can do more then one thing at a time just fine, such as move, interrupt, or position, while dealing with bursty damage and doing their own DPS rotations. It was fine on Empress, Paragons, Blackfuse and many other fights that combined multiple mechanics at once for tanks, and has not suddenly become a huge problem now.

[Murderdoll]

I do not take plague leech as you and most other suggest(and it is one of the best things that I did as blood in WoD)

That awkward moment where you discredit yourself in any argument from this point on.

----

Im still going through most of it, but mostly agree so far. Going forward, I really dislike the overall tanking goal for legion. It feels like were being torn between being a poor DPS and being a glorified dummy to hit for the boss. My thoughts differ from someof those that Ive spoken to in the Tank Discord channel so Im happy to accept that my vision for Tanks in Legion may be different. But id like to focus on engaging mechanics and problem solving as a Tank, as a byproduct - rather than a direct goal - of good play being good tank damage.

I agree that AM has got out of hand and needs to be reduced but we need engaging options to counter dynamic problems that arise. If youre taking that away from us you may as well just introduce a Bot that can tank for the group and we can all just go DPS. If at this point the only reason we are called Tanks, is because Im getting hit by the boss, just do away with it.

It feels at this point, the goal is to reduce the impact, a good or bad tank has, on a raid through reducing the amount of cooldowns and their responsibility for their own well being.

By also reducing the APM performed by a Tank (Blood plays like a 0 Haste caster) it allows each person more time to think about their actions and it severely lessens the skill cap for Tanks that can think on their toes and make good quick decisions.

The margin for error is so low that even old mate "I do not take Plague Leech cause Im GCD capped" can excel. If there is a 5% margin between the top and the bottom, why are we putting so much effort into how we play going forward? Whats the carrot for me to excel at my role?

From a strictly Blood PoV, many Blood DKs started running BoS and more and more DPS options not only from a pure numbers standpoint but because the Blood Playstyle was incredibly boring and maximising BoS uptimes implemented a goal. Atleast BoS introduced a challenge from a survival and numbers standpoint which is more than can be said about the spec as a whole on live without BoS or on beta.

From a toolset point of view, the Blue Reponse a few days ago regarding movement speed is a direct slap in the face and is a clear indicator of the thinking thats going into Death Knights. This expansion, and this tier in particular had many fights where high movement was almost mandatory. Deaths Advance barely made the cut and made several bosses more difficult by simply having a Blood DK.

Its all well and good to say "Not all Classes should have X tool", that is perfectly fine, not everyone should be able to do everything. But there are certain tools that MUST be shared. Basic movement speed increases are a basic tool that everyone should have. Do not create specific encounters that require those tools from individuals.

In Leigion, we are taking an already boring spec in a role that has largely been going downhill in excitement (Lets face it, HFC was absolutely dreadful for tanks) and then make it even WORSE for Tanks in general, what the fuck are we supposed to get excited about? At this point, I am being held hostage between the NEED for a tank in our guild and the WANT for me to be challenged in the role I am playing. Competing for Tank DPS is not something that I find exciting or motivating.

[Davryn]

The crux of the issue is that bursty tank damage (and the short-term reactive tank gameplay that comes with it) does not co-exist well with the proposed tank healing concept where cumulative decisions by healers over a long period meaningfully affect tank survival. If you want to argue in favor of the bursty tank damage model, you pretty much have to reject the new tank healing concept. I don't think the two can co-exist well.

[Troxism]

The crux of the issue is that bursty tank damage (and the short-term reactive tank gameplay that comes with it) does not co-exist well with the proposed tank healing concept where cumulative decisions by healers over a long period meaningfully affect tank survival. If you want to argue in favor of the bursty tank damage model, you pretty much have to reject the new tank healing concept. I don't think the two can co-exist well.

Blizzard's rhetoric on tank healing is massively exaggerated, which makes it hard to really discuss the issue seriously.

One of the main points of the document is to explain that it doesn't matter what anyone 'wants' with tank healing; if you remove burst, smooth damage, then tank gameplay becomes trivially simple. If that doesn't fit with what anyone feels needs to be done, well tough, because as I heavily allude to, if you want to remove burst, you may as well just remove AM and cooldowns with it, and any concept of tanks actually controlling their own survival. And that is the point I am trying to get across (if perhaps said in a slightly hyperbolic way in this post).

[Davryn]

Blizzard's rhetoric on tank healing is massively exaggerated, which makes it hard to really discuss the issue seriously.

One of the main points of the document is to explain that it doesn't matter what anyone 'wants' with tank healing; if you remove burst, smooth damage, then tank gameplay becomes trivially simple. If that doesn't fit with what anyone feels needs to be done, well tough, because as I heavily allude to, if you want to remove burst, you may as well just remove AM and cooldowns with it, and any concept of tanks actually controlling their own survival. And that is the point I am trying to get across (if perhaps said in a slightly hyperbolic way in this post).

I agree that tank gameplay will suffer as a result of the new direction. But then healing gameplay might improve, in theory anyway. That's supposed to be one of the main reasons for this change. Is it correct to sacrifice tank gameplay in favor of healing gameplay? We've seen the pendelum swing from one extreme back in Wrath, to the other extreme now MoP/WoD. I personally think that it's better to leave most of it to the tanks because they don't have much else to do, whereas healers still have a whole raid to heal.

[Ampere]

I think it's possible to have compelling tank gameplay without crazy Tyrant style burst fights, and instead have a slow rot occur if the tank and healers aren't efficient with their decisions. However... I'm not sure how easy that will be to design, and I wouldn't be surprised if we quickly shift back to the 0 - 100% in a global style fights. Ursoc felt really bursty in testing

I think Blood is too slow on the alpha currently, but it was way to slow during WoD testing and they bumped that up by adding the multistrike/haste passives (maybe something else too). I do still enjoy it though, and I'm optimistic that things will still be fun, even if different.

I might be more bummed about the loss of utility spells (Chains of Ice, Dark Sim) than I am about slowed down gameplay. Oh, and no Rune Tap is a bummer.

[Totaltotemic]

At the end of the day the reason I and many others play a game is to discover and master its mechanics, and then feel rewarded for my effort via ingame success. In the context of WoW this means things like helping my group succeed by bringing more damage, utility, or making other people’s jobs easier by playing better myself. It needs to feel like optimizing my performance actually makes a difference, and it is dangerously close to hitting the point where reaching the effective skillcap (not failing mechanics and not dying) is becoming both simpler and the absolute limit to how much you can improve as a tank player. The types of changes going into Legion Blood are the latest and largest steps in a long line towards this result. Basic mechanics have been simplified, and advanced mechanics like Breath of Sindragosa that gave you something to strive for after succeeding at the basic requirements are gone. I understand quite well that many players play this game for other reasons; social aspects, acquiring power (loot, levels, etc), ‘spectacle’ (a good story, good cinematic, pretty vista, etc). But gameplay for players like me does not need to be cannibalized for those other groups of players. There is a reason difficulty modes exist, and there is a reason WoW is not purely raiding; because it tries to cater to many groups and tastes. Having advanced mechanics in the game, that are either ‘opt-in’ such as Breath of Sindragosa, or via not being required on lower difficulty levels, does not hurt other types of players. So why remove these things just to hurt mechanically focused players?

This is a selection from the second to last page in the conclusion. I have bolded what I believe to be the reasons why these things are changing.

Most of this essay focuses on proving the idea that tanking is becoming more forgiving, but fails to explore any reasons as to why that might be happening other than "Blizzard thinks it makes tanking more interesting and that is incorrect." The assumption here is that the only reason Blizzard would be changing the tanking model is to make the gameplay of career tanks more interesting, but what if that assumption is a misinterpretation of what Blizzard actually thinks?

Maybe Blizzard wants tanking to be more appealing to less skilled players, and part of "cannibalizing" things like mitigation/DPS tradeoffs and optional complexities is lowering the skill ceiling so that being less skilled is less of a detriment than it has been in the past.

The key here is what Troxism already knows: if you aren't good at tanking, you can't really do Mythic raids. You don't have to be great at it to succeed (in fact, it's fairly simple once you know what you're doing), but if you are anything less than "acceptable", you handicap your entire group and make them literally unable to progress. This is the age-old burden of tanks that it is the only role that has personal failure being equal to raid failure on virtually every fight in the game. Raids can carry a single bad healer or a single bad DPS, but a bad tank is horribly painful for everyone involved. The implication is that if you want to tank but aren't good at it, there are always Heroic or Normal modes, but that doesn't help the Mythic guild whose tank quits and needs to rush to find a replacement, except nobody in the guild has tank experience and someone learning it for the first time will take a month or two because they can competently handle difficult Mythic bosses without randomly dying due to some kind of failure.

The "we need a tank and we need one now" problem is extremely common in Mythic guilds beyond the top 100, and I've personally known many guilds over the years whose moment of collapse was losing their tank and not having a suitable replacement. I believe the core goal of all of these changes is to alleviate this problem, and if the collateral damage is 50-100 hardcore tanks being upset, I'm not sure that Blizzard cares.

I don't necessarily agree with the way they are going about this, but I do think that Blizzard honestly believing that tanking feels more engaging to hardcore players when control is taken out of their hands is a little ridiculous and that there's probably an ulterior motive there. They clearly want to make tanking easier, but it seems to me like that's because it will make tanking more interesting to less-skilled players, not higher skilled players.

[chaos61988]

As a DK tank since wrath it concerns me greatly that our spec is being gutted, its sad that almost no youtubers or streamers care a bit about tank coverage in the alpha so we who did not get an invite have to try and piece together tiny bits of info here and there to get even a small perspective on whats going on, but i guess thats the overwhelming dps love for you huh? i think ive seen only preach, sco(method) and belluar cover the tanking specs at all (if anyone knows anymore please let me now)

anyways tanking is all i do. and if they push dks into being slow resource starved gameplay, i sadly must say ill be done with this game. they killed our mobility, they wrecked mass grip, and now we wont even have any buttons to press? im glad i havent prepurchased legion yet. ill be waiting till that 3 week window when all the changes go live before the expansion actually comes out to decide if ill buy the expak. if its ruined, im gone. please let blizzard find their sanity.

also yes, obligatory laughter at people not using plague leech... thats just sad.

- - - Updated - - -

The "we need a tank and we need one now" problem is extremely common in Mythic guilds beyond the top 100, and I've personally known many guilds over the years whose moment of collapse was losing their tank and not having a suitable replacement. I believe the core goal of all of these changes is to alleviate this problem, and if the collateral damage is 50-100 hardcore tanks being upset, I'm not sure that Blizzard cares.

I don't necessarily agree with the way they are going about this, but I do think that Blizzard honestly believing that tanking feels more engaging to hardcore players when control is taken out of their hands is a little ridiculous and that there's probably an ulterior motive there. They clearly want to make tanking easier, but it seems to me like that's because it will make tanking more interesting to less-skilled players, not higher skilled players.

Blizz has been trying for years to get more people into tanking, i dont think the problem is simply that getting into tanking is difficult or hard, the fact of the matter is that tanks are simply not appreciated for one, and for two, theres no great way to epeen on tanking, no logs to throw around, no numbers to give out to show your prowess, and one more matter that may or may not be relevant is that tanks are (with the exception of paladins) just not FLASHY! lets be honest. dps specs get the coolest spells, and effects in general. for a new player or one without much focus why wouldnt a dps class draw them more? they egt to be flashy, and have less responsibility, why not?

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Wait so you are assuming what is currently playable on Alpha is getting nerfed or something?
Blood has managed (as only blizzard can do) to get even more absurd in terms of self preservation.
I said when the legion alpha started that I was excited to see how they nerfed Blood dk from the CM gods they were, but instead they basically buffed their survivability and broke their rotation.

For me, they resemble current Unholy DKs. They do really nice spread aoe, on a sustained basis, but now that sustained aoe actually heals them! So it seems like the perfect marriage to me.

I didn't expect Monk to be retarded OP after MoP, and I didn't expect DK to be retarded op after Legion, but this time I think they did exactly what Blood needed to do.

Their self healing potential is absolutely absurd. I can basically solo anything in the dungeons right now, provided I can kill them before I get bored.
Their damage is certainly lower proportionally, but once again I am happy to pass to torch to another tank. They were WAY too good at dealing damage, especially in AOE situations, so it only seems right.

The only real complaint I have is how slow their rotation feels, but this is obviously a work in progress, because last build with that runic regeneration talent, they were a bit too fast.

I'm confident there will be a middle ground met, and that issue will be patched before the raiding content begins on the Live alpha.
Either way, I am VERY happy with Blood atm, and honestly surprised to hear anyone complain about more than one thing with them.
They seem too good, if anything.

- - - Updated - - -

As a DK tank since wrath it concerns me greatly that our spec is being gutted, its sad that almost no youtubers or streamers care a bit about tank coverage in the alpha so we who did not get an invite have to try and piece together tiny bits of info here and there to get even a small perspective on whats going on, but i guess thats the overwhelming dps love for you huh? i think ive seen only preach, sco(method) and belluar cover the tanking specs at all (if anyone knows anymore please let me now)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvLauasf7r9S7buOA_-Vr7Q

If you have any topics you'd like videos on specifically just comment on the channel or PM me here. I will make anything anyone serious wants to see to the best of my ability.

[chaos61988]

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvL...r9S7buOA_-Vr7Q

If you have any topics you'd like videos on specifically just comment on the channel or PM me here. I will make anything anyone serious wants to see to the best of my ability.

I have seen your videos,, watched the multi-tank darkheart thicket video a few days ago. i thought you were funny, couldnt tell if you were being serious or not about mechanics etc

anyways as said, i dont think anyone is complaining or commenting about blood being OP or not as far as healing or numbers, the only thing in discussion here is the general spec design, and rotation. blood has always been a fast paced spec. i play all the tank specs except for pally and ive always loved my dk the most. these changes are terrible from my perspective.

[Shaddam IV]

Thanks for your work, Trox.
What worries me the most atm is that so far we have various ways of healing back the damage and increasing out hp. + 20% damage mitigation. That's it!

[enak101]

Numbers and tuning aren't of anyone's concern at the moment and especially aren't related to this essay. Even dk's soloing current 5 mans isn't a big deal it's just overtuned amounts of self healing.

Are you happy with blood on alpha atm because it's strong or because of how it plays? I'd like to see you comment what specifically you like about the changes from WOD to Legion.