BDK "cheesable" mechanics

[Deleted]

Also BDK was considered the shittiest tank in nighthold... they changed one talent noone ever tahes and buffed damage a bit. So what's the magical thing that makes DKs godlike because I'm missing it...

The new traits really helped BDK. More DS Healing, the Vampiric Aura + overheal from DS/Consumption giving a stacking max HP buff are all very strong traits. On top of that the new legendary ring is insane for fights with huge damage Spikes. Spikes have been a struggle in Legion because giving up Foul Bulwark for Rune Tap hurts a lot.

I wouldnt consinder BDK a god right now, but its the best state since the Launch of Legion. And as you said in general tank Balance is pretty good right now imho, pala and DH being a bit behind.

@Topic:
As most ppl already mentioned. Nearly all "cheesing" involves good use of AMS. March of the Damned is a nice Talent if there are stuns in a fight (odyn for e.g., sadly mistriss was "fixed").

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My prot warrior completly dumpsters every single tank class in damage taken department on every boss (except maybe Harjatan)

And guess what is easier to heal: lower damage intake with smaller HP pool or very high damage intake with high HP pool

'damage taken' isnt a good way to compare tanks. Yes for Progression most of the time a "mitigation tank" is better than a reactive / selfhealing tank.

Its probably better to check "external healing required" to compare yourself with the other tank in the raid.

[Ealyssa]

Really hard hitting bosses are irrelevant, if you're against those you just take Spectral Deflection to buff the 16% DR to 32%

HAHAHA holy shit nice one, specing into SD HAHAHA

Oh wait U serious ?

Even Mythic KJ Felclaws which is the most damage intake period from a boss that tanks have to deal with right now don't threaten BDK's in the slightest, you just pop VB for every one and heal yourself to full after each swipe.

Sure, that's why 100% of guilds are using double bears on KJ. Cause BDK are indeed the best.

The ammount of stupid facts you throw in this thread is quite remarquable.

And don't get me wrong here. BDK are currently strong. But still clearly behind bear/monk in raids. Where they shine is MM+

[Tojara]

Part of the reason blood DKs likely aren't used in Mythic KJ is solely because of how terribly the fight is designed. If you look, it's not because of blood explicitly, it's a comp wide problem. If you look at the overall comp guilds are using, people are preferring those with a shit load of mobility and gap closers. Being able to keep the boss stationary and not worrying about singularties at all (which knocks you back like 80-90% of the platform, as opposed to 40%) is a massive advantage.

If the knock backs (at least during the regular phases) operated like they did on Heroic, blood DK would probably be the best tank on that encounter, but unfortunately that's not how the retarded encounter is designed. Instead you see comps comprised almost solely of classes that can cheese knock backs, because it's poorly designed, and not designed with DKs/Paladins and a few other classes in mind.

[Deleted]

Blood DK was able to use Vampiric Blood, Rune Tap, and a combination of either AMS, IBF, or an External to survive every 100 energy Fel Scythe. Granted they were probably not as good as Guardian Druids (I had swapped to my Druid right before we got to Star Augur to trivialize the last few bosses), but I think Tojara was the first BDK to solo Fel Scythe on progression and he did pretty well.

Also for Gul'dan cheese, if you pop AMS before your Severed Soul comes back to you, you can avoid getting the Sheared Soul healing absorb shield on yourself. Here's an example from last week when we went back in:

https://clips.twitch.tv/SuperBelovedBorkGingerPower

Note that I popped AMS before the Severed Soul went out, and that was a misclick (AMS and VB are ctrl-4 and ctrl-5, respectively), but thankfully the rogue was quick about it. Ideally you would not want to use AMS with your other cooldowns (except Rune Tap) just because it takes care of the entire mechanic if your soakers are quick enough.

Other cheeses: If your AMS absorbs the entire hit from Nightmare Blast on Cenarius, you wouldn't gain another stack of the debuff (or refresh it) and could potentially hold Cenarius for the entirety of P1 (P2 Spear of Nightmare was physical so you couldn't drop your stacks of that). That didn't matter much since BDK sucked dick on Cenarius until the patch (was it 7.0.5 or 7.1.0? I can't remember) where Bone Shield stopped dropping stacks from spells, since before that change you would lose BS stacks on ICD and be forced to spend WAY too many runes on Marrowrend.

If you popped AMS before the Il'gynoth blobs died on Mythic, you could avoid taking the 8 or 10-stack debuff and so wouldn't have to stack. That's not a very important cheese, but the same principle applies to the Bursting debuff in M+ dungeons now.

There plenty of others (besides the ones posted already), but I need to go right now; I might update this post later.

Hello, thank you for the input. But i would not consider that like cheese at brewmaster and bear level of old, not the current i believe. I am retired from the raid scene, so i wont contest your argument, plus you have provided some points. But those, even from my experience fall in what i would define as small perks from the class. Just to think on the first one, take in consideration the massive investment and or having outside help, can you truthfully argue it is cheese?

I think we can understand that cheese can be seen when mechanics that could outright kill, are trivialized. Of course we can argue in the say, that your are doing the same despite the resource usage, but are you truly? To me you spent 3 resources for something that was meant to be avoided, 3 resources which may or may not be available at another date or can be critical down the line.
If i go even further and explain my argument, in relation to cheese, is in the line of Star Augur Etraeus being tanked by 1 bear. It is not supposed to happen ,but did, thats how the bear mechanics clicked together. Could other classes do the same? Possibly, i will not wage that i know enough or have enough experience to argue about that, but the fact that it happened with bears, it had so few requirements on their side and was so widespread that it warrant a change, it meant that that particularly type of cheese is the extreme, but highlights what i am thinking.

We can go further, we can avoid some a magical debuff from the boss, that is nice and interesting, but we can agree that does not trivialise the encounter. I don't see or have ever seen proof of this, and AMS has been with us for years.If we had AMS every time to deny these mechanics, then yeah i would call them cheese.

But i do consider, those are really nice to know, and speaks as an advantage and validates the BDK that know their class from those that just play it.

[Tehr]

@Faltharion I personally don't consider overpoweredness to be cheese, I consider avoiding dealing with mechanics to be cheese.

For example, I think Prot Warriors using Spell Reflect to avoid EVERY Burning Armor on Goroth to be cheese, but not solo-tanking Star Augur. Every tank eventually solo-tanked Star Augur (even Warriors, although the guy had to get a special gear set with like 16k vers on it), and even though you solo-tanked you still had to deal with all of the mechanics, but besides Prot Warrior first week and BDK now on Goroth, nobody else has the potential to ignore Burning Armor on Goroth.

Here's our kill video, you can see what our Prot Warrior does:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/155044536

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Instead you see comps comprised almost solely of classes that can cheese knock backs, because it's poorly designed, and not designed with DKs/Paladins and a few other classes in mind.

We should have known after seeing the Tank Challenge and all of its knockbacks lol.

[Deleted]

@Faltharion I personally don't consider overpoweredness to be cheese, I consider avoiding dealing with mechanics to be cheese.

For example, I think Prot Warriors using Spell Reflect to avoid EVERY Burning Armor on Goroth to be cheese, but not solo-tanking Star Augur. Every tank eventually solo-tanked Star Augur (even Warriors, although the guy had to get a special gear set with like 16k vers on it), and even though you solo-tanked you still had to deal with all of the mechanics, but besides Prot Warrior first week and BDK now on Goroth, nobody else has the potential to ignore Burning Armor on Goroth.

Here's our kill video, you can see what our Prot Warrior does:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/155044536

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We should have known after seeing the Tank Challenge and all of its knockbacks lol.

Yes in that instance i do consider it has cheese . It basically set's up so that only one tank is needed, it and basically ignores an entire mechanic not mitigate it like in the AMS examples you said before, but the second is still a design flaw that allowed to be cheesed. And like i said, it was the bear proliferation on that and other aspect's that lead to that. To give more insight on other cheese, there is now a discussion after method's use of rogues on kiljaden, that their immunity might be a cheap way to avoid mechanics of the fight and might need curbing. The other example although it was built on a bug and was penalized is the saronite bomb cheese on Lich King that basically trivialized the the hardest phase.

Also i wish to clarify why AMS works that way, hoping i am not being captain obvious but, it is built on a old WoLK rule, in which if a magic effect that does not destroy the shield it is nullified, best example is dots being ignored by shield, what is least understood is that this apply's to all schools of magic not dots themselves, meaning that a school of magic will be ignored, like a mage pyro dot, if the pyro does not break the shield it does not apply, but if it does it apply's, because the dot belongs to the fire school. But magical abilities with a physical dot would still apply.

I wish to also correct myself on a previous statement, i remembered after leaving work, there was one instance where AMS was truly cheese, during kelthusad encounter, there were shadow rifts that basically were able to one shot players, due to how AMS worked at the time, it did not had an upper bound, meaning that the ability being shadow school, could be completely ignored, and blizz quickly fixed that by making it ignore AMS. Bug? Maybe, to me felt like a potential way to cheese the encounter since that was the hardest ability, although Nax was tier 1 so meh hehe.

[Tehr]

I guess just a difference in definition, then.

[Deleted]

I guess just a difference in definition, then.

I feel i agree with you good sir.

[Spryte]

Most of the top Mythic+ tanks are BDK right now. We're definitely strong now. Our single target DPS is still miserable, which is funny. I was tanking H Maiden with a Brewmaster and he was doing 650k sustained. Jaw dropping to be honest.

DKs can do this damage as well.

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Are you kidding? I main both bear and blood and by far the best tank is the Blood DK. You literally don't need a healer and laugh at half the mechanics in the game. Not to mention how absurdly powerful grips are... oh AND you have incredibly versatile talents, the most powerful tank cooldown in the game... oh you need a single target stun too? Here we'll throw this in since you have everything else already. Oh wait, you want a mind control with a pet mechanic too? I guess that's fine... but you don't get anything else! ...except this amazing group leech buff whenever you use your 45 sec Artifact cooldown.

If there is any spec at all in this game that more perfectly fits the term "God", I have yet to hear about it.

BDK is very strong, but there are times where Bear or Brewmaster damage reductions are just so much better. For example was trying to do Lower Kara +20 on Teeming Fort last week, and the physical damage I was taking from coin toss and upper cut was absolutely brutal. Healing is useless if you get 1 shot.

A bear or brew master would have laughed at this.

[Deleted]

DKs can do this damage as well.

Oh really? Can you back up that statement with proof? And i am not saying gearing for DPS, i saying can you back up that gearing has a tank you can do consistent DPS like the other tanks and still have same the viability? Last i checked, we were way below and i wont throw numbers, its your statement.

[Spryte]

Oh really? Can you back up that statement with proof? And i am not saying gearing for DPS, i saying can you back up that gearing has a tank you can do consistent DPS like the other tanks and still have same the viability? Last i checked, we were way below and i wont throw numbers, its your statement.

Ok here we go, the post I replied to was talking about HC Maiden yes and was commenting on a Brewmaster doing 650k sustained. So here is one of my logs of HC maiden with me playing blood dk.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...&view=rankings

As you can see both my DK and the Bear did more than 650k. I dont think im particularly geared for dps instead of tanking, I aim to have Haste/Vers gear when possible and the legendaries I use are very good defensively. Now of course there are a lot of variables such as gear, buff uptimes (especially on maiden), but I was just commenting on how the poster was impressed with 650k by a brewmaster on HC maiden when other tanks can do that as well if not better.

Of course DK doesn't have the very best DPS of all the tank specs, but I feel like people are exaggerating how bad it is.

[Deleted]

Ok here we go, the post I replied to was talking about HC Maiden yes and was commenting on a Brewmaster doing 650k sustained. So here is one of my logs of HC maiden with me playing blood dk.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...&view=rankings

As you can see both my DK and the Bear did more than 650k. I dont think im particularly geared for dps instead of tanking, I aim to have Haste/Vers gear when possible and the legendaries I use are very good defensively. Now of course there are a lot of variables such as gear, buff uptimes (especially on maiden), but I was just commenting on how the poster was impressed with 650k by a brewmaster on HC maiden when other tanks can do that as well if not better.

Of course DK doesn't have the very best DPS of all the tank specs, but I feel like people are exaggerating how bad it is.

You know whats funny when i look at your logs? Your basicly ~50% less damage when tanking, according to your damage intake... And you jump those 50% when back to OT.

You want to know something funny too? DS is your hightest net contributor, and blooddrinker which is not common to take, possibly only that fight, netted you 11% of your damage. If we compound the fact of less need for morrowrending wich mean a couple more runes per minute it makes sense.

What i take? Bloodrinker is a good DPS talent, and while OT and not worrying when to DS we can dps. Does it corroborate your statement.. no it does not, i believe it reinforces what i some people say.

[Spryte]

You know whats funny when i look at your logs? Your basicly ~50% less damage when tanking, according to your damage intake... And you jump those 50% when back to OT.

You want to know something funny too? DS is your hightest net contributor, and blooddrinker which is not common to take, possibly only that fight, netted you 11% of your damage. If we compound the fact of less need for morrowrending wich mean a couple more runes per minute it makes sense.

What i take? Bloodrinker is a good DPS talent, and while OT and not worrying when to DS we can dps. Does it corroborate your statement.. no it does not, i believe it reinforces what i some people say.

Yes that is how BDK damage works thanks to Unending thirst and Bloodrinker is very common talent.

Anyway im not trying to start pointless arguments. DK damage is pretty much the lowest of the tanks, but I dont think its that much lower as some people seem to claim. I think its fine, you cant have everything in a class and DK is strong enough imo in its CDs, self healing and utility to not have to worry about whether it does 100k less dps than other tanks.

[Nangz]

Yes that is how BDK damage works thanks to Unending thirst and Bloodrinker is very common talent.

Anyway im not trying to start pointless arguments. DK damage is pretty much the lowest of the tanks, but I dont think its that much lower as some people seem to claim. I think its fine, you cant have everything in a class and DK is strong enough imo in its CDs, self healing and utility to not have to worry about whether it does 100k less dps than other tanks.

DK tank damage is not the lowest of the tanks in any stretch. We are in the top 3 on every fight except for Mistress and Desolate host and I feel the latter may be due to people using DKs to offtank the adds where the damage is pointless padding anyway.

[UR1L]

HAHAHA holy shit nice one, specing into SD HAHAHA
The ammount of stupid facts you throw in this thread is quite remarquable.

Oh the irony.

[Raiz]

You want to know something funny too? DS is your hightest net contributor, and blooddrinker which is not common to take, possibly only that fight, netted you 11% of your damage. If we compound the fact of less need for morrowrending wich mean a couple more runes per minute it makes sense.

What i take? Bloodrinker is a good DPS talent, and while OT and not worrying when to DS we can dps. Does it corroborate your statement.. no it does not, i believe it reinforces what i some people say.

I'm not sure to understand your post. Have you really looked at the logs ? Blooddrinker is the most popular talent. If you look @ the heroic logs, they're all taking it. You know you don't have to bank your RP all the time right ? So you can use DS for a pure dps standpoint.

[Tojara]

I mean, people can just check logs to verify tank damage lol.

DK DPS isn't miserable by any stretch. Look at ST fights in ToS if you're worried about raid performance. Sisters which is largely ST has pretty much every tank represented at the top. While guardian druids get a lot of shit, you actually have to scroll quite far down to find the first one. DHs have a slight edge, but I wouldn't call our ST damage terrible at all. There are plenty of DKs in the mid 700k range, and that fight for all intent and purpose is largely ST. Even if some tanks potentially do more damage in ST (which is mostly just DH), it's not enough to complain about.

The only area DKs do less damage than some of the other tanks are encounters where you have adds up constantly. My logs are private, but I did nearly a million DPS on Mistress, and had I changed a few things I could do roughly 1.1 to 1.15 million DPS on the encounter if I really wanted to. Mistress is basically a very good indicator (IMO) for what type of damage you would expect from a tank in your average M+ as well and that 1.1 to 1.15 million number is what I typically pull in M+. Bears/BrM/DH can pull a couple hundred thousand more in M+ and on a fight like Mistress. M+ however, isn't solely about damage, and a DKs ability to give 20% leech to the whole party, coupled with our self healing more than make up for that difference in DPS when compared to other tanks. Simply put, our toolkit is still amazing for M+ even though it might not seem it.

Finally if you're looking at overall logs, I'd like people to keep in mind that Blood (I don't, but we have our unholy DK do this job) typically OTs adds on Desolate Host on mythic and you're going to look pretty terrible doing that.

Personally I'd rather be fairly competitive in ST (again we aren't the highest, but to argue that we aren't competitive or viable in this metric is just ignoring data) than be higher on a boss like Mistress. ST is generally more common and important on the majority of raid encounters, where encounters like Mistress are a bit more rare.

I'm not sure why people have to prove anything. Public logs are available and you can simply glance at them, why the burden of proof is on other people when everybody has access to the same data is mind bogging. Blood drinker is the best talent in the first row for every metric (damage, healing, and the ability to use it at range). Aside from some niche encounters our talent choices should be virtually the same, and the way you gear your character is largely going to be the same. Haste/Versatility is just strong whether you 'aim' for DPS or survival, but like mentioned a million times, using multiple resources, you aren't going to sacrifice much iLvL on anything (sans jewelry) to get optimal pieces. So it's not like there is much mystery in how to gear or talent.

Essentially from a DPS perspective the only thing you can do (aside from spend resources as efficiently as possible) to 'push' damage is to take as much damage as humanely possible with blood mirror up. It's great for pushing numbers but it's something I wouldn't suggest doing all the time.

[Deleted]

I mean, people can just check logs to verify tank damage lol.

DK DPS isn't miserable by any stretch. Look at ST fights in ToS if you're worried about raid performance. Sisters which is largely ST has pretty much every tank represented at the top. While guardian druids get a lot of shit, you actually have to scroll quite far down to find the first one. DHs have a slight edge, but I wouldn't call our ST damage terrible at all. There are plenty of DKs in the mid 700k range, and that fight for all intent and purpose is largely ST. Even if some tanks potentially do more damage in ST (which is mostly just DH), it's not enough to complain about.

The only area DKs do less damage than some of the other tanks are encounters where you have adds up constantly. My logs are private, but I did nearly a million DPS on Mistress, and had I changed a few things I could do roughly 1.1 to 1.15 million DPS on the encounter if I really wanted to. Mistress is basically a very good indicator (IMO) for what type of damage you would expect from a tank in your average M+ as well and that 1.1 to 1.15 million number is what I typically pull in M+. Bears/BrM/DH can pull a couple hundred thousand more in M+ and on a fight like Mistress. M+ however, isn't solely about damage, and a DKs ability to give 20% leech to the whole party, coupled with our self healing more than make up for that difference in DPS when compared to other tanks. Simply put, our toolkit is still amazing for M+ even though it might not seem it.

Finally if you're looking at overall logs, I'd like people to keep in mind that Blood (I don't, but we have our unholy DK do this job) typically OTs adds on Desolate Host on mythic and you're going to look pretty terrible doing that.

Personally I'd rather be fairly competitive in ST (again we aren't the highest, but to argue that we aren't competitive or viable in this metric is just ignoring data) than be higher on a boss like Mistress. ST is generally more common and important on the majority of raid encounters, where encounters like Mistress are a bit more rare.

I'm not sure why people have to prove anything. Public logs are available and you can simply glance at them, why the burden of proof is on other people when everybody has access to the same data is mind bogging. Blood drinker is the best talent in the first row for every metric (damage, healing, and the ability to use it at range). Aside from some niche encounters our talent choices should be virtually the same, and the way you gear your character is largely going to be the same. Haste/Versatility is just strong whether you 'aim' for DPS or survival, but like mentioned a million times, using multiple resources, you aren't going to sacrifice much iLvL on anything (sans jewelry) to get optimal pieces. So it's not like there is much mystery in how to gear or talent.

Essentially from a DPS perspective the only thing you can do (aside from spend resources as efficiently as possible) to 'push' damage is to take as much damage as humanely possible with blood mirror up. It's great for pushing numbers but it's something I wouldn't suggest doing all the time.

We already had one log disprove this myth, and i was about to go and agree with Spryte that both yes, we are in the tail of dps in tanks and yes it does not break us has a tank so it does not matter. If you wish to make a statement like that show us proof. Stating that logs are available and shouting argument's does not make them any truer.

Stating that you can argue but you don't need to prove your statement goes against the basis or arguing. If you wish to be heard you have to show factual evidence that your right. That's scientific process right there, if you have a theory you both try to prove and disprove it.

I also do not agree about bloodrinker argument being better then the other options, and following the crowd with out evidence is not my cake. because by Spryte logs he only truly healed from it on the first hammer, where did other eight go? Now if you tell me your using it to add to your DPS and you can forgo the extra runic power from HS talent. Then yes i do believe you and your logs back you up on that.

Also the "every one does it argument" does not sit well for me.

And your proving my point with the adds case, because your marrowrending further consuming extra resources. I been doing mythics casually, and that is what stresses the most out of the classes resources.

Has for pointless discussion, well the basis of understanding is a good discussion with factual proof. I learn from you, you learn from me that's my thought's.

[Tehr]

Blooddrinker is used in 75% of Mythic Sisters of the Moon logs. Sisters of the Moon, Mythic, 95th percentile, all tanks, rated on damage:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...050&dataset=95
BDK Talents, same data:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...ntinfo=Talents


Heartbreaker is a noob trap talent almost as much as Bloodworms are. Blooddrinker beats Heartbreaker even in constant 5-target cleave (which is impossible anyway since you can't have 100% uptime on DnD) in all metrics, as Tojara said.

Let's look at the #1 Mythic Mistress Sassz'ine logs:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...9&type=summary

In this fight, for perspective, Lynathel got rank 1 DPS and rank 2 Healing as a BDK, so the logs aren't skewed in favor of either DPS or Healing.

If Lynathel had used Heartbreaker, he would have gained 286 additional RP from Heartbreaker, which equates to 8 extra Death Strikes, assuming he had Gravewarden and Ossuary up for every one. Eight additional Death Strikes would have been 8.18m additional damage, using his averages, whereas Blooddrinker did 25.90m damage. Now for healing, those 8 additional Death Strikes would have healed him for an additional 16.12m, whereas Blooddrinker healed him for 16.84m. So nearly equal healing from Blooddrinker and Heartbreaker, but over 3x the damage, and that's ignoring the fact that he only cast 11 Blooddrinkers in the fight out of a maximum of 16. If he had cast all 16, he would have dealt 37.67m damage and healed for 24.49m, which is 4.5x damage and 1.5x healing, respectively.

There are the data. Heartbreaker isn't terrible if the player is not comfortable with Blooddrinker, by all means, but Blooddrinker is definitely the best talent to take.

[Saverem]

I'm not up for a full report of eveything you can cheese with bdk throughout legion, but i can tell you what you can do in tos :

- Goroth - Burning armor: no debuff with AMS
- Sass'zine - Hydra Shot: no debuff with AMS
- KJ - armageddons (little ones) no debuff with AMS

That's all. BDK have nice heal, but they're not fucking god. If you want cheese, make a bear like every other lazy tank out there.

Can solo soak Maiden's hammer too with VB/RT (and AMS, BM, and/or IBF if they're up). Haven't tried on M since I'm not on her yet, but works pretty good on N and H. Should have a VB/RT for every hammer soak and can rotate between IBF/AMS/BM.