[Blood] Am I doing it right?

[Devastation 0]

Hello guys and gals,

I've been wondering recently.. am I doing it right? I play Blood, obviously, as stated by the post name, but I have got a complaint from one of our healers calling me a paper tank. He is a bit of a fussy person, however, I decided to check it out in case I could improve, so I came here.

Any tips and suggestions are greatly appreciated, if i'm doing something wrong, point it out and i'll try to fix it. I'm trying to become a better tank, so asking for help isn't something i'm afraid to do. Also, if you could maybe suggest a profession for me to take up? That would be great, I have Engineering already but i'm open to anything else really, aslong as it provides something beneficial ^^

Here's a few links to help you all out.

Armoury: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/the-maelstrom/%C3%90evastation/simple

Last weeks WoL entry: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/qmk5sta2or6yrsvn/

This weeks: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/1zrwt64w64lq0nv6/

If you need anything else, please don't hesitate to ask. My Deathknight's name is 'Ðevastation' for anyone who looks at the logs!^^

Thanks in advanced everyone!:D

[Reniat 23]

Couple things I see right off the bat. Your CD use is really low. On one of your elegon kills you only used IBF once, and it was at the VERY end of the fight. As blood DKs we are balanced around our cooldowns, so if you aren't using your cooldowns effectively then you are missing a large part of what makes you comfortable to heal. That's not to say you should use them off CD either. Use them often but timed, preferrably BEFORE you take damage not after. I see a lot of reactionary CD use. You'll dip below 30% or so and then pop vampiric blood or something. It is much better to hit vampiric blood earlier and not go down below 30% at all then to wait until you are low and then pop the cd.

Also there are a few times where you use multiple CDs at the same time. We want to avoid this. A big part of being stable is spreading out our mitigation and trying to make dmg as smooth as possible. this means that unless you actually need both specifically, using 2 CDs at once is essentially wasting one of those CDs. I'm gonna head to bed but ill take a more in depth look at the logs later today.

Edited February 10, 2013 by Reniat

[Devastation 0]

Okay, thanks man^^ We have a raid tonight, i'll probably be tanking Windlord, so even if we don't kill it, i'll try post the logs and see if I have improved at all. I'll keep this advice in mind and try use CDs at the right times:D Ta:D

[Storm 426]

It seems to me like you may not be using Death Strike enough. Your ratio of heart strike/blood boil to Death strikes seems really high to me. Make sure you aren't using death runes for anything other than death strike unless you know you won't be taking any damage.

- its a good idea to get use to death striking only when you're taking damage or when you have to burn some runes to keep them regenerating. So hit DS once, then sit on the second set of runes until either you take a big hit, or the first runes regenerate. It takes some patience and discipline, but the healers will appreciate it.

- Also be aware of your blood shield. If it's a fight with tank swaps use your time as OT to spam death strikes and build up a blood shield, and watch the 9 second timer on the buff to make sure it doesn't drop. a 600k shield = no damage for at least 5 seconds after you taunt the boss back.

-As stated above, cooldown management is extremely important. however the one thing I disagree with is that with the exception of Icebound the rest basically should be used on cooldown, but staggered.

• keep boneshield up on CD (especially when you have a large blood shield built up from a tank swap because boneshield won't lose stacks until the bloodshield drops),
• Use Vampiric Embrace on CD any time you're going to be taking sustained damage for the next 20 seconds. (aka tanking the boss)
• Rune Tap on CD any time you're dropping below about 75%
• Anti Magic Shell on CD every time you're taking magic damage. not only does it mitigate the damage, but you'll gain a lot of RP from it. and it's only a 45 sec cooldown.
• Death Pact only has a 2 minute cooldown so you should be able to use it at least 3 times even in a short fight like Garaj. Make sure you are making use of this. but also be sure you save it if there are any abilities or difficult phases coming up soon (and if you know your healers are having a hard time with a particular phase, pre-summon your ghoul to get the death pact off faster)
• Runic Empowerment + 2 fast death strikes will net you just as much or possibly more healing than death pact, so save it to use defensively. (When you know the fights definitely a kill you can use it to pad the dps meters)
• Icebound Fortitude is just my backup for when I've used all other cooldowns and I"m still taking too much damage. or for when you know you're about to take a huge hit from something and only IBF can save you. (If you're at the point that you're popping IBF you should probably also warn your healers that you're out of CD's for a little bit and you're about to get hit hard)

That's about all I can think of right now. I have a couple useful macro's that I use which I can post for you later when I'm at my home computer. I use some stuff like a shift mod to put taunt and death grip in one action. and also some /castsequence macro's for mind freeze, strangulate and some other stuff, just to keep my bars more organized, and make things easier to get to. Edited February 14, 2013 by Storm301