Blood Dk QoL issues? wha?

[noteworthynerd]

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i personally have so far shied away from blood tanking, simply because i'm afraid to become overwhelmed by the complexity compared to my paladin tank.

If my guild gave me the opportunity to switch to my Prot Paladin, I would do it immediately. I just do not like the DK tanking system (except for Anti-Magic Shield and Death Grip). Unfortunately, they keep insisting that they need me on my Blood DK; mostly so I can OS DPS when I'm not needed as a tank (which I could easily do as Ret), and because they have me as Frost to kite with Chilblains on certain fights.

Edit: I've decided I'm gonna start gearing up my Paladin; the more I read in this thread the more I realize that I really hate DK tanking right now. Gonna suck though, as I'm about to hit 100 mounts on my DK. >.<

[Deleted]

the point is on QoL is that you have to work a lot more than the other tanks to achieve the same.
First you have to look at your HP a lot more than the rest and juggle your DS and cooldows with it. This on top of the usual move from fire/mechanics of the game.

In fact it is really hard to "shine" more than the others outisde of some specific gaps. Most of the times ure simply taking more damage, even if you heal a lot. In reality if our threat wasn't as easy as it is we would be in serious trouble. We only perform par to the other tanks when we actually dump all the threat we can into survivability.
Still most people look at us as the "easy" class when its totally the opposite, just because aoe threat is cake in heroics dungeons and we have enough cooldowns to solo a 3/4 mins dungeon fight.

We are more fun to play, were still the best magic fights tanks but against multiple mobs or heavy melee fights we lack a bit.



To me the worst problem is QoL is that DKs are a LOT less forgiving than the rest... You can "easily" die by making a bad choice or timing it wrong, while in the others you hardly have to choose.

It really feels good when you do it and u succeed, but totally sucks when you fail... The first thing you think is... this would had been cake in my warr :S
Plus some fights on DKS have a higher learning curve and sometimes your guild is not up to waiting for that and just prefers to take a different tank in progress raids.

[Dyzon]

To be honest my only complaint is Rune Tetris and DS/min as well as losing survivability to keep debuffs up the entire time. I don't find the CD management to be tedious (and if a rune's on CD I need to pop a surviv CD i can just BT). I'd likely be completely satisfied with QoL if Runic Empowerment only procced Frost/Unholy for Blood.

[Jarkeld]

the main issue with blood Qol is how everything is strapped, tied, shackled to spamming DS.

Then, the mastery penalizes itself due to overuse of DS.

diseases? means you take spike damage when you use runes to apply, since you don't DS

wait a moment too long, or the attack misses/avoided by the boss? good bye to a significant amount of mitigation

string of avoidance? mastery suffers, but that is minor as zero damage taken, is still zero damage taken.


Only tank that once bosses hit for too much that out entire gearing strategy changes. mastery is king until fully epic'd out, then its avoidance.

You know what happens when tanks go the avoidance route right?

i'm able to reach 30+% avoidance, with 18-19 mastery now. i know i can boost that significantly if i reforge mastery off of every piece (most have it in my set)

What happens when tanks are avoiding 40+% of boss swings, is that bosses will have to start hitting much much harder.

wrath style. back to stam stacking for mitigation.

eventually healers will have to deal with more spike damage, in larger amounts. yay gibbed tanks?

[Deleted]

I made a DK because my friends wanted me to get to 80 fast to raid ICC with them so starting a lvl 55 on their server was the quickest route, I didn't know anything about the class at first besides them saying "DK's are awesome!". I picked up tanking to speed up grouping and heroic 5m gearing. Of course by the time I hit 80 and had raiding quality gear Cata came out =P

Right now DK mechanics are slightly less annoying than leveling/factioning/gearing a new char from scratch so I'm going to stick with it and see how Firelands plays out.

so much this... started DK on this server on wrath for the same motives...
Re-rolling my fully epic DK into a less annoying warr/pala but requiring gear grind makes me shiver in the corner

[Ruchika]

there's a thread on this page (the one about blood DK tanking videos) where i explain that DKs are difficult when compared to the other tank classes. blood DKs are by far the most complex to play tanks.

what other tank needs to time 2 of their attacks (DS RS) to go off at exactly the right time in order to make max use of their main survival skill (Bshield)?
what other tank has 6 survival cooldowns, 3 of which that have to do with selfhealing?
what other tank has to use 2 resources for half of their cooldowns?
what other tank has 2 different resources where you consume one to generate the other, and consume the other for a chance to regen the other? (paladins don't count, mana is not an issue for any smart tank)
what other tank has to juggle 3 debuffs, 4 procs, alongside the aforementioned 6 cooldowns, 2 attacks and 2 resources?

i personally have so far shied away from blood tanking, simply because i'm afraid to become overwhelmed by the complexity compared to my paladin tank.

When you actually start playing a blood DK these things really boil down to nothing. I lvled my dk from 55-85 tanking and I've found dk tanking to be extremely faceroll. I almost never die to regular mechanics (I do die when I fuck something up, but duh) and I can handle alot of non-regular situations with ease. IMO DK tanks are the tank that all the scrubs pick out b/c it is easy and then they cry when they cant figure out how to hit 3 buttons to win. DKs do take more damage than other tanks, but they also have insanely higher threat and dps (tank dps does matter for 10m HMs). I love my DK and I dont have any issue with my QoL. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...l/Dacra/simple

[SurrealNight]

I love my DK and I dont have any issue with my QoL. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...l/Dacra/simple

Your talents/glyphs/gemming/forging/enchanting is kinda odd for pushing HM's. You could easily get more avoidance/mastery for only like 5k HP (just use vial instead of MoBI if it's an issue). Can't even begin to figure out where you got that spec from for a raiding DK.

[Pope]

Your talents/glyphs/gemming/forging/enchanting is kinda odd for pushing HM's. You could easily get more avoidance/mastery for only like 5k HP (just use vial instead of MoBI if it's an issue). Can't even begin to figure out where you got that spec from for a raiding DK.

You're recommending switching Mirror instead of leaden despair?

[Dyzon]

When you actually start playing a blood DK these things really boil down to nothing.

I'll agree most of what you quoted is essentially non-issue, except for the first line really - depending on what exactly he meant by it. The point is simply no other thank has to work nearly as hard for the same results. Again I think the biggest QoL issue is requiring Rune Tetris to be just as effective as another tank. If you're not playing rune tetris, or don't know what it is, then you're not being as effective as other tanks, period. DKs are balanced around 8-9 DS / min, and an average player will really only put out about 7.5. It's a simple matter of fact that DKs have to work harder for the same results, and while I enjoy the challenge of that, I'd rather be rewarded for having more skill rather than put on the same playing field - but that's just me.

[Drunkenvalley]

Actually, DKs are balanced around 6-7 DS a minute. Which is rather hilarious.

Blood is expected to use (as an estimate, and assuming effective usage) around 6-7 Death Strikes a minute; any additional Death Strikes are helpful of course, but they shouldn't be mandatory.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...00?page=17#338

[SurrealNight]

You're recommending switching Mirror instead of leaden despair?

Not exactly, but he seems to be wanting to stack stam/HP pretty bad so didn't think he would actually do it if I did suggest it. On second thought he probably doesn't have the Vial or Worm yet anyways.

[Dyzon]

Actually, DKs are balanced around 6-7 DS a minute. Which is rather hilarious.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...00?page=17#338

Yeah I thought the numbers I was using sounded off... but point stands.

[SurrealNight]

Yeah I thought the numbers I was using sounded off... but point stands.

I don't even know where they came up with that number. Doing 8-10 per minute myself and still only on par with a warrior/pally for most fights.

Though the tank I've seen that always took the least damage taken was a bear. We haven't used a druid for tanking in a while now so have a pretty small sample size to compare with personally.

[Drunkenvalley]

I don't even know where they came up with that number. Doing 8-10 per minute myself and still only on par with a warrior/pally for most fights.

Though the tank I've seen that always took the least damage taken was a bear. We haven't used a druid for tanking in a while now so have a pretty small sample size to compare with personally.

What's more unnerving is that they apparently consider death knights balanced at the 6-7 ds/m level.

[SurrealNight]

What's more unnerving is that they apparently consider death knights balanced at the 6-7 ds/m level.

Yeah so lets go with Blizz logic on this one. So over 4 bosses I generated 211 blood shields during 21.6 minutes of combat, so almost 10 DS per minute average. Each BS being about 22k on average.

So by their logic I should be doing 30-40% less shields to be in par with a war/pally? That would mean at least 1392600-1856800 extra damage or almost 350k-464k more damage taken per boss. That would put me so far behind a war/pally it would be shameful.

It almost seems like they just rolled a dice or threw a dart or something to come up with that number.

[Dyzon]

Though the tank I've seen that always took the least damage taken was a bear.

I generally find my druid typically takes less damage than my DK even though my DK has 3-4 item levels on him. I'm simply not a fan of bear tanking in it's current state though; I can't stand the SD mechanics. Bear tanking feels very automated with so few cooldowns and a mastery that is for all intents and purposes passive + RNG; add that together and I don't feel like I've got nearly enough control of my own destiny in the fight. Although I haven't played my druid as much as I would have liked, prior to the last fix to SD AOE tanking was impossible. Truth be told though I'm not an AMAZING player, but I am better than your average bear! I hover right around 8.2 DS / min; I've never seemed to break the 9.4 mark. Of course I'm usually trying to help call out raid notices at the same time.

[Toatx]

Right now the thing bugging me is our mastery. Don't get me wrong, i love it and i love the control it gives us. But it makes us take stupidly spiky damage. And that spiky damage is our issue right now with QoL. At least in my mind it is.

[SurrealNight]

I've never seemed to break the 9.4 mark. Of course I'm usually trying to help call out raid notices at the same time.

I was the same way until I decided to really focus on RE gaming over anything. I only apply diseases with Outbreak and use my Rune Tap+Blood Tap every 30 sec to eat a blood rune and leave me with a free death rune in it's place. Then just hit 1-2 Rune Strikes and you got a instant pair to DS with. Don't forget that blood rune stays a death for 20 seconds making it a viable option to RE proc again for use. So it's really only a blood rune 33% of the fight.

The only problem is I've really let my blade barrier uptime suffers (60-85%) but now that I've gotten to a steady 9-10 DS per minute I can probably start refocusing on getting that uptime higher again.

[Drunkenvalley]

You will want to apply diseases. They will mitigate almost or more damage than death strike. >>;

[SurrealNight]

You will want to apply diseases. They will mitigate almost or more damage than death strike. >>;

Meh I always have DPS dk's in the raid so Frost Fever's uptime is 100% anyways. I've also become incredibly lazy/bored so don't feel like worrying about plague strike in between Outbreak.

Probably going to bail on most raid nights until Firelands anyways unless we are working on a HM fight that night.