Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[Troxism]

@Totaltotemic: This can easily be true, but if that is the case, why does Blizzard claim to be making tank gameplay more interesting and in depth with these changes? If their goal is actually to do as you say, saying this is a blatant lie. If they think tanking is too hard and they want to dumb it down a lot, then they should say that, so anyone who cares about the challenge can know in advance they should prepare to play some other role. A lot of the arguments I refute are common ones I hear ALL THE TIME, and it bothers me when people make claims about how 'reducing burst would make tanking take more skill', and 'slower rotations are actually harder' without a single lick of logic or evidence to support these claims, and I've grown tired of repeating myself in many places.

This isn't even mentioning the subject of how a major barrier to playing a tank for many players is simply the expectation to know every boss and pull before you even zone in, and this is 100% a community problem. I see your point, but like I said, if this is the case, Blizzard should be saying this straight up, yet they are claiming the opposite currently, which either way you look at it, is a problem.

@NoobistTV I specifically state that I am not concerned with tuning ATM. Druid for example is far better then DK on alpha currently, and DK healing is quite strong. But I never discuss numbers in anything but relative terms for that reason. My complaints are with GAMEPLAY problems and not tuning. I don't care if Blood is weak, average, or strong, if it ends up being a two button spec with no variation, and all forms of tank gameplay in general are simplified. If I simply wanted to be the best spec every tier I would just reroll every tier and not waste my time.

In general I still have yet to see a single argument here or anywhere else that explains in detail (I mean with actual logic) why these proposed changes actually make gameplay better for tanks and Blood. And I don't say this out of some sort of spite or to taunt people as doing all this work for that would just be wasting my own time. I say this because it scares the hell out of me that nobody can come up with a satisfactory reason for the changes outside of simply dumbing tanking down, and all indications from actual personal gameplay on alpha are currently that Blood, while strong currently, is insanely simple and boring to play.

[Totaltotemic]

@Totaltotemic: This can easily be true, but if that is the case, why does Blizzard claim to be making tank gameplay more interesting and in depth with these changes? If their goal is actually to do as you say, saying this is a blatant lie. If they think tanking is too hard and they want to dumb it down a lot, then they should say that, so anyone who cares about the challenge can know in advance they should prepare to play some other role. A lot of the arguments I refute are common ones I hear ALL THE TIME, and it bothers me when people make claims about how 'reducing burst would make tanking take more skill', and 'slower rotations are actually harder' without a single lick of logic or evidence to support these claims, and I've grown tired of repeating myself in many places.

This isn't even mentioning the subject of how a major barrier to playing a tank for many players is simply the expectation to know every boss and pull before you even zone in, and this is 100% a community problem. I see your point, but like I said, if this is the case, Blizzard should be saying this straight up, yet they are claiming the opposite currently, which either way you look at it, is a problem.

Are you sure they mean the simplification of tanking specifically is what makes it more interesting? They might be referring to the other changes Celestalon mentioned like more active tanking time and less ability to ignore damage from non-tank mechanics. He's been very careful to say "meaningful" and "interesting" and is staying very far from words like "complicated" or "challenging." It may be the case that they know very well that the core gameplay itself will be less complex, but are hoping that it becomes more interesting via more opportunities to tank and deal with non-tank mechanics.

I'm just saying that I don't think they've directly said in any of the posts through Celestalon or on Twitter that making AM and cooldowns more scarce is necessarily what makes tanking more interesting and they could be talking about different aspects of these changes. I think it's more likely that there's a miscommunication going on rather than Blizzard blatantly lying or saying something as utterly stupid as "simpler is actually more in-depth."

[Troxism]

At best it's word lawyering and it's still disingenuous in that case. If those are their goals they should be stated clearly and not have to be pointed out by people like me.

[nathrizarri]

Plague leech takes 3 Gcd and 1 glyph slot to function. PL, Ds, Outbreak. Generates 20 runic power, 2runes, 2 blood charges and spends 30 rp in process. Spending a rune for Blood boil means 75 rp, not worth.

Plaguebringer, With enough multristike to fill that 3 gcd with deathcoil, you do 3 death coils in 3 gcd. Generate 6 blood charge(1,20 rune). You do more dmg and your rotation becomes more flowing.

Plague leech was a very good talent on paper but more I scale with ms, I began to question its purpose. Trying to use it on Cd meant to sacrifice runic power on most occasions. Intense log digging shown me I was throwing away way too much runic power to use Pl, will resulting in negative outcome for both offense and defence.

Pl's defensive benefit is also questionable. During that minimum 2gcd period healers were topping me off and DS healing wasnt being efficent, was wasting rp thx to high Multi. It is a good talent for downtime issues like mastery build. But for multi Plague bringer is more flowing and effective on real, not paper.

Note that this is all for defile, BoS requires Pl.

For some of you sayin not bringing any counterargument, any player who plays high end content in a similar scaling like I do will understand. How many of your death strikes actually effectively heal? Let me tell you my current situation.

I generate 6 death runes and spam Ds on single target. If my total absorb is low or none, I time my DS. Absorbs are so strong atm I mostly throw random ds, death coil and survive with cd management. In mythic dungeons where I overpull I feel the timing benefit but in mythic raid content where multiple healers pounding you, nop, not possible.

So having more and more Ds being thrown around in a fast paced game is just overburden with no reward to me. This is not an engaging gameplay, it just forces you to Press buttons. I'd enjoy wow much better if I had more downtime and option to time my abilities.

Blood charges piling up, runic power piling up, runes being active. You are forced to Press buttons. I'D give up that 7 mandotory gcd to get a 1 gcd where I make a call gladly.

[Drekmar]

Plaguebearer doesnt do anything. 0 benefits. You reset your diseases with BBs...

[Deleted]

Plaguebearer doesnt do anything. 0 benefits. You reset your diseases with BBs...

It's no use. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into in the first place.

[Nayami]

It's no use. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into in the first place.

Reminds me of this post I saw a few months ago

[Milocow]

why cant troxism work for blizzard

[Shaddam IV]

why cant troxism work for blizzard

We have Skullflower in there, so there is hope. I thing that Blizz is not hiring Trox due to immense frequelt level of salt. At best they can go with a part-time consultant. :P

[Cosmic Janitor]

We have Skullflower in there, so there is hope. I thing that Blizz is not hiring Trox due to immense frequelt level of salt. At best they can go with a part-time consultant. :P

Are death knight tanks currently overly popular? If that is the case then nothing will help. They have stated quite literally in the past that sometimes they nerf a spec into the ground just so that people play others.

According to http://www.worldofwargraphs.com/stat...0-0-0-0-0.html it is one of the most used tank specs (I don't know how accurate the site is).

[Viriel]

What worries me the most is that this post is completely about the mechanics. With every post about alpha it usually is "But numbers and tuning". However, your article(because it just is a scientific article, from a foreword and abstract to the build up and conclusion) shows in depth and with arguments why the MoP(And now legion again) healing based on damage taken does not work, and why the whole "make a choice between blood strike and marrowrend" mechanic wont likely work either.
I'll update this later once Ive read the last 10 pages, but thank you for this Trox.

[Dreyen]

Plaguebringer, With enough multristike to fill that 3 gcd with deathcoil, you do 3 death coils in 3 gcd. Generate 6 blood charge(1,20 rune). You do more dmg and your rotation becomes more flowing. .

what

Plaguebringer does nothing. It extends your diseases, but bloodboil brings back your diseases to 30 seconds.

Plague leech is the best talent. You don't need to use it on CD if you want to: you can simply keep it there to use it on emergencies as a cooldown if you want. PL>DS>Outbreak is more survival and damage than any other talent will.

Like i said, if you dislike plague leech, at least take unholy blight, which can have some positive effects...

[mmimzie]

I liked the read but the abstract is more of an introduction than a true abtract, and abstract is uauly like a TLDR and just spills the beans on everything your gonna say. Hope the author redoes it and make it one paragraph that just gives a brief over veiw of his findings. But this is just a small gripe.

I think the issue here with how a tank should be has a few issues. I LOVE the burst damage kill or mitigate style, but the problem is that your death is kind of a bug deal and a tank dying in all tiers of difficulty is a wipe. Unlike at lower difficulties where a healer can carry if one of the other healers dies or similar for dps. As such being the only role at lower tiers that actually has to preform to the standards of thier tier at all times. Makes it tough on casuals. I know I know we are all top tier leet raids who where in the top 10 for first clear, but hummer me for a moment when I say there are more people at the lower tier then at the tops so they matter atleast as much as we do.

Also we are currently missing the shades of grey of how bad a player can do. While dps can do differing amount of dps. Is that me?? Or did I take a bad talnt?? Maybe I need this chest piece??? Or am I actually not using my abilities in the best way??. So damage and healing become weak ways to compare healers and dps. While tanks compare to each in that, "did I live??" Yes, then I rock; no, then I suck . So dps and healers also worry about the did I live/die problem. How long you lived doesn't really matter as usually it's 1 mistake that leads to your death.

I think if full healing a tank is REALLY toughz such that healers can only mitigate slightly more than the base auto attacks of the boss. Then you make burst such that it takes out a semi permanent 4th of your health if not mitigated. I think we'd have a system that's alittle easier to work with. One where multiple bad choices lead to your death. Rather than just one. Don't mitigate that burst about 4 times the. the healers either hard focus you and the rest of the raid dies, or you die and lead to basicly everyone else dying.

This could be scaled into higher difficulties better by making it so you have fewer chances to actually mess up before your failures kill you. I feel in lich king there were moments where I could feel myself dying because I didn't mitigate some large damage spike, and that weigh carried through the fight. I want to feel like dps do when they mess up there rotation. Where they miss a few K worth of dps because they used a cooldowns too soon or didn't realize a proc, and see that the fight might take that much liner because of it. How the dps sees in the dps meters that he's gonna be stuck at the bottom until some one else makes the same mistake.

Imagine you get to the end of a raid boss and you knew if you didn't mitigate the next 3 burst attacks then your deadbbecause the healers are still trying to help you get back some health because of a few big mistakes you've made in the middle of the encounter.

I think that's all abit idealistic, but that's the sort of thing I want to see. Where your mistakes weigh on your throughout the fight. Maybe they won't be instantly fatal but everyone can see that your struggling and you need to be on your game to make it through the rest of this fight.

[nathrizarri]

what

Plaguebringer does nothing. It extends your diseases, but bloodboil brings back your diseases to 30 seconds.

Plague leech is the best talent. You don't need to use it on CD if you want to: you can simply keep it there to use it on emergencies as a cooldown if you want. PL>DS>Outbreak is more survival and damage than any other talent will.

Like i said, if you dislike plague leech, at least take unholy blight, which can have some positive effects...

using blood boil costs a rune, exact reason I dislike that talent. Removes plague leechs extra rune advantage, puts you on negative in terms of dmg and gcd lock. Tried unholy blight but still diseases falling off. Ofc with these situations I assume you dont spend a rune, crimson proc for diseases. It only works with super high multistrike btw. Amount of utility I get by plaguebringer is beyond any math for my current state atm. Others may not like it but there is certainly a benefit in terms of dmg, utility, rotation. You may try and see it yourself.

Besides you said it has no use/benefit. I just told what it benefits in prev post. I assume you skipped it, check it out again

[Drekmar]

using blood boil costs a rune, exact reason I dislike that talent. Removes plague leechs extra rune advantage, puts you on negative in terms of dmg and gcd lock. Tried unholy blight but still diseases falling off. Ofc with these situations I assume you dont spend a rune, crimson proc for diseases. It only works with super high multistrike btw. Amount of utility I get by plaguebringer is beyond any math for my current state atm. Others may not like it but there is certainly a benefit in terms of dmg, utility, rotation. You may try and see it yourself.

10/10 for trolling.

[Deleted]

using blood boil costs a rune, exact reason I dislike that talent.

Crimson Scourge says hi

Removes plague leechs extra rune advantage, puts you on negative in terms of dmg and gcd lock.

If you wanna prioritize damage, you would play BoS, which Plague Leach is great with due to pooling resouces in the form of diseases on targets. Also; as others have stated, Plague Bringer does literally nothing for Blood Death Knights.

Tried unholy blight but still diseases falling off.

Press blood boil then.

Ofc with these situations I assume you dont spend a rune, crimson proc for diseases.

This completely contradicts what you said before...

It only works with super high multistrike btw.

PB doesn't get any better, no matter what your multistrike is, PB doesn't stop doing nothing at all.

Amount of utility I get by plaguebringer is beyond any math for my current state atm.

You gain nothing, and you lose something. You won't get any math to back up your claim if you set out to prove that something positive is worse than nothing or something negative

Others may not like it but there is certainly a benefit in terms of dmg, utility, rotation. You may try and see it yourself.

From what I've stated above, there isn't a single benefits to using plague bearer. PB is essentially the same as picking no talent, unless you go AFK for >30 seconds for some reason.

Can we stop now?

[Stacie]

Guys can we keep this on topic and about Legion tanking. If you want to talk about PB being better or worse (currently in WoD) I suggest you make a new topic, show some math/sims etc etc.

[nathrizarri]

Tunnelvision everywhere, say w/e you want do w/e you want, just dont diss the stuff that you cannot read or understand.

Anyways I have given my feedback to the original topic,

Downtime is healthy when optimized well. I'd give up 7 meaningless mandotory rotation presses to have 1 meaningful press. Glad that Death Strike is moved to Runic power and have high cost. From artifact weapon traits, we can clearly see that Blood Strike will be doing more dmg per rune and will be giving more RP, so it's offensive value is great. Marrowrend shouldnt be seen just couple bone shield stacks, remember bone shield loses stacks when you take damage. Having absorbs on you will extend the benefit of marrowrend more.

Last time I checked rune regeneration passives werent implemented, I assume runic longevity is blood's way of generating runes, If it has been implemented, downtime will be significantly reduced.

Burstwise, as I said before, having a "must do" ability is not engaging, and does not reward any kind of play because there is none. So your statement about difference between good tanks vs bad in legion, I disagree %100, because of the current state of burst. If blizz lives upto their promise, I am excited about tanks where good ones shine with their performence which will reflect both on DPS and Survival.

Damage vs mitigation tradeoff, I disagree on that too. Currently, only thing that you need to survive with dmg is to go full damage and manage your CDs, speaking as being top 18th Blood on Xhul mythic during the time that I was actually tanking HFC mythic with 731 ilvl, sad im DPS now.

Mobilitywise, I had no problem on HFC Mythic as Blood in terms of mobility, even the times I havent took DA just for fun. You have DA, but how many times you use the full 5 sec portion of it? Intentionally checked it on many occasions and 2-3 seconds is all you need to move out of range of mechanics and you wait afterwards. This is roughly 0.45 seconds we are talking about. Is it really that much of a big deal to make such noise in multiple threads? No. Just because you feel your character is slow to YOU, doesn't mean it will not function.

[celinamuna]

Guys, he's using Plaguebearer and NP, idk why you're still having discussion with troll.

[Sinzaram]

Thanks for the great read Trox! Very very enlightening.

Last time I checked rune regeneration passives werent implemented, I assume runic longevity is blood's way of generating runes, If it has been implemented, downtime will be significantly reduced.

There is no rune regen passive for Blood. I heard this is apparently intended due to Blood/Heart Strike giving extra runic power.

Personally I feel blood is gonna be super weird without a feedback loop rune regen mechanic.
Yet another issue on the Blood Strike vs Marrowrend topic.