Hivemind without DK

[Kief]

Nah, in Uldir people wanted blood dk for mass grip adds on Zek'voz and Zul and to grip people out of MC on Mythrax. In current raid they want it for not only Hivemind, but also Vexiona and Ilgynoth.

I wish I could find any proof about how blood dks aren't "good" or "needed", it's a bane of my existence, I like to play my dk as an alt and then face constant questions why don't I main it instead.

You are overestimating how much impact a Blood DK has on Hivemind and Vexiona. Sure, for Hivemind it can be chill to be able to grip in a darter to melee, but for Vexiona literally any tank class is just as capable at tanking the adds. They are very useful on Il'gynoth though. If you find that you get a lot of help from having one on Vexiona and Hivemind chanses are you are playing in a very low-quality raid environment. Also, I'm not sure why you are arguing against me when I said that this tier is the first one in VFA that actually doesn't just have DKs as a niche only tank. In Uldir they were helpful somewhat on Mythrax Mythic yes, but other than that there was no need for them.

[apustus]

If you do plan to get a DK alt in for your next raid, try to get 1000 arena rating before the reset. C&S Major essence even at rank 1 gives you 2 charges of death grip, which I feel is immensely underused for jobs like this.

[Marrilaife]

Also, I'm not sure why you are arguing against me when I said that this tier is the first one in VFA that actually doesn't just have DKs as a niche only tank. In Uldir they were helpful somewhat on Mythrax Mythic yes, but other than that there was no need for them.

I'm not arguing "against you", I'm saying that there's a huge dissonance between people saying "you don't need specific tank class for x" and the real behaviour of guilds that want specifically monk and dk tanks.

The number of parses reflect not only what people want to play, but also what guilds are willing to recruit or what they tell their tanks to reroll to. Dks have been the second most popular tank after monk in bfa not only because people enjoy playing it, but also because guilds actively don't want the other 4 tank classes.

And yes, my guild did tell me to bring DK alt over my main for Zek'voz, Merkatoque, and they were trying to argue only monk / dk can do soaks on blockade as well which imo was mega stupid statement and completely untrue, but there's some unhealthy obsession with the idea that dks are better than they are.

It's always the same argument tbh wherever I go "we see many guilds bringing monk / dk and nearly no one uses the other tanks" and that somehow implies the other tanks are non-viable? Same thing this tier, because Limit used monk + dk combo on world first apparently that's the way to go. FML. I really dunno why guilds way outside of top 100 obsess about it.

You can literally see I posted 1 post above yours in #11 that you can do Hivemind without a dk, but you need to have people dodging the rollys and focus the adds. Also I forgot to add 5-healing it instead of 3-tanking is also a valid strat (2 tanks 5 heals instead of 3 tanks 4 heals), and can add extra cushion against people being not topped and then being gibbed by combos of abilities (like exploding drone + something else). I've heard of some guilds trying to kill exploding drone, don't know how that works, my guild ignores it and pops healing cds, but you should be sure to not have rolly debuff prior or you might get 1-shot.

Yes, you can stun / knockback adds but the most important part is that people focus them and clean 1 wave up before next one comes and don't get overrun. Also ofc rolly deaths are prime cause of wipes because people dead = less dps = get overrun by adds.

It might help for raid leader to mark a person that is good at dodging them to work as a stacking point, since there are always people who are better and worse at spatial awareness in any guild. (Tbh even limit had people die from rollys during progression, only difference is they fix their mistakes faster while in a casual guild it might take tens of pulls for people to figure it out.)

- - - Updated - - -

If you do plan to get a DK alt in for your next raid, try to get 1000 arena rating before the reset. C&S Major essence even at rank 1 gives you 2 charges of death grip, which I feel is immensely underused for jobs like this.

You can get c&s rank 1 with no rating just doing the call to arms wpvp quests and faction invasions in warmode. You do need 1k rating for rank2 though and 1,6k for rank3 from what I remember.

[GringoD]

Well, I never have a DK Tank in my Raid, and while I can see the Upsides of having one, I dont think its Particular hard.

We basically Stacked behind the Bosses until Echoing Void, then Spread out and Stack again.
Drones were no Problem, they immediatly died in Cleave.

Ranged dealt with Wasps. We struggled for a few tries on the Acid Pools from the Drones, but we dealt with that, as we Stacked on the Other Boss when we tanked them apart.

If you die to the Banelings, no amount of Blook DKS will help you with that, have your members open their Eyes and Dodge them, its not that hard.

We have too many melee in the raid to kill the darters with just ranged before the phase switch AoE hits, which should be the goal afaik. Or did you put CC on some darters? That's the part where the DK would help.

Although you pretty much hit the nail in the head with the banelings.

[Kief]

We have too many melee in the raid to kill the darters with just ranged before the phase switch AoE hits, which should be the goal afaik. Or did you put CC on some darters? That's the part where the DK would help.

Although you pretty much hit the nail in the head with the banelings.

Your melee players should have keyboards as well and thus be able to move to the Darters. You can outlast this fight for like 8-9 minutes before the Hivemind switch AoE becomes unhealable with keeping up add damage.

Shining Force, Ring of Peace, Typhoon (Ursols vortex if you for some reason have a resto druid), Thunderstorm to reposition adds and any single target stuns to stop damage. They are only an issue if you choose to make them an issue. If you knock one close to the other and bring the bosses on top of them they flop in seconds.

[Jonnusthegreat]

I believe they stated that with a 20 player raid, they expect you to have 1 of every class. This is good design.

Class stacking, where rank 1 guilds have 5 of the same spec class is the problem.

[Marrilaife]

I believe they stated that with a 20 player raid, they expect you to have 1 of every class. This is good design.

Class stacking, where rank 1 guilds have 5 of the same spec class is the problem.

The "good design" you speak of never happened. There was always classes that were OP and fotm and stacked, just different ones every tier, and there were ones that were never brought or just 1 of them for some mandatory buff.

Also "at least 1 of every class" idea often ended up with "hybrids" being delegated to the healing role while dps spots were still stacked with fotm classes.

I mean people can have rose tinted glasses towards "ye olde days" but look at Classic, guilds that cleared BWL the fastest stacked Warriors to oblivion, because it's "the best dps class".

Obviously current tier we have a problem that not only for example fire mage does top dps, but also provides necessary utility (immunity soaking). So there's no "dps vs utility" some classes have both, some have none.

Anyway I have no idea why did they remove mass grip from dps dk and every time you need mass grip you have to tell your dps dk to respec tank, unless you already have a main tank dk. What did it hurt them to have a melee spec outside of rogue / dh that actually provides nice utility, goddamnit.

[LanToaster]

We have too many melee in the raid to kill the darters with just ranged before the phase switch AoE hits, which should be the goal afaik. Or did you put CC on some darters? That's the part where the DK would help.

Although you pretty much hit the nail in the head with the banelings.

No, we just kill the Darters, but I actually have mostly Ranges.

[Eapoe]

Hivemind is of course killable without a BDK; however, having one definitely makes the encounter much easier.

[Chonar]

If you die to the Banelings, no amount of Blook DKS will help you with that

Blook sad now. What did Blook do to Blook beater?