"Death Strike no longer refunds its rune cost if it fails to hit the target"

[asharia]

you arent there for dps

my warrior doesnt get jack when things miss. he loses the rage and gets nothing in return.

you get the heal. your job is to survive first and foremost.

[Ieft]

We're yet to see how this will effect our dps / if tank dps will matter again. Just wait and see.

[xeqt]

Currently if your DS misses this happens:

DS - Miss
* No RP generated
* You get a runes refunded
* Lose a GCD
* No heal
* No blood shield.

After this change I think it will be more like this:

DS - Miss
* RP generated
* No runes refunded
* You get a heal
* A blood shield proc
* No GCD lost.

So in the current system, you could try and hit DS again on your next GCD and once again get nothing (no damage no survivability) or under the new system you could hit DS again for another heal, RS for damage or HS if required.

It doesn't really seem like a damage loss to me.

[Nyanmaru]

you arent there for dps

my warrior doesnt get jack when things miss. he loses the rage and gets nothing in return.

you get the heal. your job is to survive first and foremost.

Your warrior gets his ressources from getting his face dented in not for hitting the target with special abilities. That's the biggest difference.

[godofslack]

Far from it. A good DK tank does not die because they missed a DS. They die because they got hit too often, too fast, by fast hitting raid bosses since we lack a block mechanic. Missing a DS here and there is not usually the cause of death.

And we're perfectly viable. This is a good change

I don't claim to be more knowledgeable than a class mod (as I assume you are given your post history [I am very lazy]). But, I was referring primarily to heroic modes where it's not abnormal for bosses to hit very hard. I guess a single miss is an over exaggeration but if you miss a couple in a row your as good as dead.

[catseye543]

If you want to keep doing the same damage, then KEEP THOSE STATS. No one is putting a gun to your head to force you to reforge and regear out of Hit and Expertise. All this change does is make so that if you DO miss - which with Hit/Exp didn't happen as much, but still COULD - it's not an impact on your survivability, just your DPS.

Every other tank I know has to reforge for Hit/Expertise or has a separate set for it when they want to do as much damage as they can. Why should DKs be any different?

[BoomChickn]

Along similar lines - Blue's post about the change to bone shield was a bit underwhelming. I expected a substantial change to how it works. Instead they've just given it 6 charges.

Seems like a bandaid before the xpack. Just my view on it.

Now, as to dieing due to a missed death strike... I can definitely vouch for that, having it happen 3 times in a row to me (rng is a hater). Now, as to death strike healing even though it is dodged/parried, some math just to clarify how much is gained/lost.

Death knight with .5% hit (It WILL show up on gear...), 26 expertise.

The bosses chance to avoid the death strike will be 15% from parry and miss. By this it is 1/.85, 17.6% more damage than if the death strikes did not refund runes.

Without expertise cap, .5% hit and 8 expertise (Again, unavoidable ratings)

7.5% miss+4.5%dodge+12% parry
A total of 25% chance to miss the death strike (Now all those times I died make much more sense...), making 1/.75 giving a total 33.3% more damage than if they did not refund runes.

Now with outbreak moved to 30 seconds, it is 1 extra death strike per minute. About a 11%(if champion at rune tetris and get 9 death strikes/minute), to 16.6% extra (if you go at the bare minimum 6 death strikes it is balanced at).

Now it is assumed all death strikes land.

Best case, where you have exp cap and do 6 death strikes per minute (Any less and you just suck...) 1.176/1.166= .8% decrease in damage. This is easily made up in globals, making it roughly break even or even a dps gain after the patch.

Worst case, where you do 9 death strikes per minute and avoid hit/expertise 1.333/1.11= a 20% decrease in damage. Pretty brutal.

So death strike is approx 40% of a dk's dps on bosses.

Simple matter of multiplying ratios making this change have no impact at all on a dk's dps at best, to 8% loss of their dps at worst.

Hope I got it right and it is helpful. I gotta go to bed.

[roahn the warlock]

I think it's amazing. That and the Outbreak buff for Blood, I might go back to tanking MS.

No longer will we have to chance to die because enemies avoided our attack after taking a big hit, and now Outbreak fits together with the Disease duration.

No it's stupid, because now the spec is stupid easy... i no longer need to keep a single blood rune up or even give a damn about my diseases.. so what it's just
spam heartstrike?

[Darsithis]

No it's stupid, because now the spec is stupid easy... i no longer need to keep a single blood rune up or even give a damn about my diseases.. so what it's just
spam heartstrike?

You don't normally keep a blood rune up now - you want them on cooldown. BB only procs when BOTH runes are on cooldown (not one), and lasts for 10 seconds. During that time, blood runes can come back up, but you'll want to either use them to reset the barrier, or hold onto one for Rune Tap if necessary but only until BB falls off. No, you won't be heart striking like crazy, and overall you won't notice any difference in your tanking except you will NOT lose a shield or miss a heal when using Death Strike. That's it. Your ability to survive will still come down to proper use of DS.

Oh, and diseases will be slightly easier to manage.

[Ealyssa]

Your warrior gets his ressources from getting his face dented in not for hitting the target with special abilities. That's the biggest difference.

Paladin doesn't get HP point when CS miss...

[Jeffyjimbob]

If Bloods DPS is truly suffering, allowing you to keep runes from missed Death Strikes is a band-aid on a missing limb. I'm not real big on DKs myself, I only have one at level 71, but I'd assume DS isn't your hardest hitting skill as a Blood DK. I'd assume that's one of the "decisions" you have to make, using DS to heal, or X skill for more damage.

Even if my assumptions are entirely wrong, allowing you to keep the runes solves nothing, and only creates more problems. The main problem being, DKs "stacking" miss rating, for near-constant self heals. That would go over well.

If your DPS really is that bad -and I haven't a clue why it would matter, you're a tank, not a DPS- you need more than refunded runes to get you up to par. But again, I have no idea why it would matter to a tank. It'd be nice to hit harder, but it's not your job. It'd be nice if every single DPS had considerably stronger self heals, but they don't, because it's not their job.

It's not settling for mediocrity, it's accepting the fact that this is the role you chose.

[Softreset]

You don't normally keep a blood rune up now - you want them on cooldown.

Darsithis, I'm confused by this statement. My understanding of how Runic Empowerment works is that you always want 1 Blood Rune available and then the other always refreshing. Then just as that Blood Rune is about to become available you'd use a blood rune consuming ability to reset the timer on Blood Barrier. This ensures that the RE proc would always be towards a Death/Frost/Unholy rune to increase Death Strike usage and also ensure Blade Barrier uptime. The "reserved Blood Rune" being for a situation where you'd Rune Tap.

[veldrinal]

I do agree. I remember the speculation people were coming up with, suggesting that we would be wanting our Death Strikes to miss in order for us to get an infinite amount of heals. Obviously, that would be incredibly strange... However, will the current implementation impact threat or DPS in any meaningful way?

You can still get hit/exp capped if you reallly want your threat and dps so badly, nobody is stopping you.

[SurrealNight]

It's a screwed up problem between they also have to keep in mind PVP. So right now we are stuck with reduced DPS for the change but how do you fix it?
1) Buff Heart Strike? Queue the griping of people dying in PVP to Blood DK's that convert their death runes into HS and burn them down.
2) Buff Rune Strike? Can still cause issues in PVP since eventually you can spam it, and we would end up over threat'ing other tanks classes so they gripe too.
3) Buff Death Strike? Technically this is the only power that we even want to use and people could stack hit/expertise and come out way ahead in DPS for the cost.

They created a really messed up situation and there really is no 'good' answer to it. I'm going by the assumption that they want to get the mitigation related changes in and see how they start affecting things and then start tweaking DPS (I hope).

You can still get hit/exp capped if you reallly want your threat and dps so badly, nobody is stopping you.

This totally depends on if their are fights where tank damage matters (even to beat enrage timers that are really tight). If so then why should we be forced to stack hit/expertise to be viable tanks when no other class needs to? Which would also force the class that has struggled the most mechanically to push rating away from mitigation?

[Darsithis]

Darsithis, I'm confused by this statement. My understanding of how Runic Empowerment works is that you always want 1 Blood Rune available and then the other always refreshing. Then just as that Blood Rune is about to become available you'd use a blood rune consuming ability to reset the timer on Blood Barrier. This ensures that the RE proc would always be towards a Death/Frost/Unholy rune to increase Death Strike usage and also ensure Blade Barrier uptime. The "reserved Blood Rune" being for a situation where you'd Rune Tap.

Sorry, I was referring to the start to get it to proc in the first place. I usually keep on up but I will use it for Rune Tap if necessary (then blood tap to bring it back up).

[blackjack90631]

I'd assume DS isn't your hardest hitting skill as a Blood DK.

It is.

But it's not that big a deal. We will most likely still get RP for using up the runes.
And after the first 6 seconds of an encounter you don't have to worry about threat regardless of your hit/exp.

DKs have 2 taunts so if you MUST pre-emptively taunt to ensure you get that 6 seconds of threat gen then DO IT

[zackforester]

Checked some WoL Top100 parses for DK tank damage
Damage done:
DS ~40%
RS ~23%
HS ~17%
Melee ~12%
Diseases ~7%

Outbreak will increase your Heart Strike damage by 30% an additional 70% of the time, averages out to a 21% increase in heart strike, multiplied by 17% of your total damage is a 3.57% increase in total damage.

You would have to lose over 55% of your total current hit/exp to see a dps loss overall.

Edit: If it's possible for you to reach 0% hit/expertise you would see a maximum loss of 4.43% total damage.

[veldrinal]

This totally depends on if their are fights where tank damage matters (even to beat enrage timers that are really tight). If so then why should we be forced to stack hit/expertise to be viable tanks when no other class needs to? Which would also force the class that has struggled the most mechanically to push rating away from mitigation?

If the enrage timers are so tight that the tank damage suddenly matters, then all other tank classes would have to make sure they were hit capped too? Otherwise they aren't doing as much damage as they could be either?

[zackforester]

So many posts in here from people who don't even know DK mechanics. Such as the one just above.

Other posts just saying "well get hit/exp" are dumb as well. Why the fuck should I get exp/hit and sacrifice mastery just to get ON PAR with other tanks who do not go for exp/hit and just stack mastery ?
Not even considering the fact we're more squishy than them, so that'd be pretty stupid to reforge to exp or hit.

If you're permanently keeping up Blood Plague and Frost Fever on the target without Epidemic you're losing 2 Frost Runes and 2 Unholy Runes every minute while spamming Outbreak, which means you're losing 2 Death Strikes a minute. How exactly does going from 21/60 seconds of Diseases on the target to 21/30 seconds of Diseases on the target not translate into a 21% increase in Heart Strike damage + additional disease damage uptime?

[iorcedurmother]

This is def broken, but it's PTR hopefully blizz will fix it.

---------- Post added 2011-09-28 at 04:17 AM ----------

Outbreak will increase your Heart Strike damage by 30% an additional 70% of the time, averages out to a 21% increase in heart strike, multiplied by 17% of your total damage is a 3.57% increase in total damage.

You would have to lose over 55% of your total current hit/exp to see a dps loss overall.

Edit: If it's possible for you to reach 0% hit/expertise you would see a maximum loss of 4.43% total damage.

Really dude? You weren't applying diseases before then? All that does is gives you an extra Death Strike every 30 seconds.