Dk Blood tank DW?

[Tipz1 0]

Hello

I've been wondering for sometime now if it is possible to tank with DW as blood atm? i think it would be great if we could so please let me hear your thoughts about it

Sincerely

Tipz1

[ragebarr 153]

I am no DK expert, but I don't see any way this would be a viable thing.

Blood DK's simply have no skill or ability that would take advantage of two 1-handers instead of 1 2-hander.

[Tipz1 0]

no but u from 2 1 handers u could ge tmore Stam, Str, Crit, and exp, ,which will allow u 2 threat/dps more,

[ragebarr 153]

Not at all, because all of your damaging skills (Heart Strike, Rune Strike, Death Strike) do a % of weapon damage, which means that they're gonna hit like wet noodles if you use them with 1 handers. On top of that, 1 2-handed weapon actually gives more Str/Stam and secondary stats than 2 1-handers.

Once again, there is absolutely *no* reason at all for you to take 2 1-handers over 1 2-hander.

[Storm 426]

Is it viable? Yes

Is it optimal? not by a long shot.

On the one hand, Death Strike's healing is purely based on HP and damage taken. RP and rune regen have nothing to do with weapons. so you won't lose survivability by Dual wielding blood. Diseases and spell based abilities such as Icy Touch, and blood boil, and death coil don't figure in weapon damage at all, so they won't be affected.

But your dps will take a considerable hit. The only reason DW Frost works is because there is a passive ability which causes your offhand to also strike whenever you obliterate or frost strike. WIthout a similar talent for blood you will essentially cut out 50% of your Death strike, rune strike, and heart strike dps. Doing rough math on my Lei Shen logs from last night, I would lose about 25% dps bringing me from around 60k dps down to more like 45k.

Best case scenario you could change up your rotation by completely abandoning heart strike in favor of blood boil, and death coil instead of rune strike. That will leave you with Deathstrike as your only gimped ability, but you're still going to come out much lower in dps. and the only thing you stand to gain for survivability is the use of 2 different runeforges on your weapons.

Although there is one major exception I suppose. If you have a 1H that is like 50ilvl higher than your 2h. to the point where the 1h actually has higher DPS than the 2h. then you'll definitely benefit from DW. (You'd basically need to upgrade from 463 to 522)

Edited March 18, 2013 by Storm

[vaeevictiss 17]

I think the conclusion from years ago that 1h will never be viable for tanking still stands.

[Assar24 0]

Thanks for bringing this up lol, i miss the WotLK time where most dks went dw frost tank hehe. :)

I want blizz to make an option to go frost dw tank again, so blood is not the only tank spec.

[Storm 426]

The way the system works now I don't think they could easily bring back frost tanking. Since we have very few choices to make with talents all of the passive abilities you would need to tank would turn frost dps into a beast. (mechanics? lol now I'm basically a half tank with 100k dps, I don't need to move from mechanics)

Unless they somehow tied even more of the tanking benefits into blood presence, and then also gave frost a passive which reduces damage taken by an addition 25%, or increases parry by 10% or something along those lines when they're in blood presence to compensate for not having blood shield. and then they'd also have to make it much more difficult to switch presences in combat, or else they'd break PVP by easily switching from 100k dps mode to tank mode.

A more likely solution though is to just add a blood version of Threat of Thassarian. If Death strike, heart strike, and rune strike hit for offhand damage then DW blood would be much more viable.

Edited March 19, 2013 by Storm

[BullDozzer 1]

A more likely solution though is to just add a blood version of Threat of Thassarian. If Death strike, heart strike, and rune strike hit for offhand damage then DW blood would be much more viable.

It would be very doabel and possible and my guess is just that the loot is sorted out in such a way that if we rather wanted one-handers there would not be enough of them. But in my head it is a bit odd?

Strength 2Handers:

Arms

Fury(TG)

Unholy

Retribution

Frost

Blood

Strength 1Handers:

Fury

Protection(paladin)

Protection(warrior)

Frost

[Leshoyadut 0]

I've actually been toying with the idea of switching to DW mid-combat in the event that 1) I have a large threat lead and 2) there is large incoming raid damage soon, and then switch back to my 2H. It could spawn more blood worms, hopefully popping during the damage phase and helping the healers a bit with the melee. That said, I'm doubtful it would have a truly significant effect, and it would take a bit of luck and timing to get right.

Edited April 26, 2013 by Leshoyadut

[omicron 3]

There's always people obsessed about DW tanking. Fortunately, there's even more people available to explain how it's not optimum at all.

[TheJoGeLu 0]

Also.. you're all forgetting that while dual wielding about 95% of all abilities are scaled back to proc only 50% as often, so you'll still see the same number of Blood worms, and Scent of Blood won't proc after every swing like it does while 2 Handed. Dual Wielding is not optimal in anyway and can not be argued for at all.

(The throttling back of procs goes out to all classes as well, no only DKs, although it rarely matters now, those mechanics in the game are still in place)

Edited April 26, 2013 by TheJoGeLu

[Storm 426]

I've actually been toying with the idea of switching to DW mid-combat in the event that 1) I have a large threat lead and 2) there is large incoming raid damage soon, and then switch back to my 2H. It could spawn more blood worms, hopefully popping during the damage phase and helping the healers a bit with the melee. That said, I'm doubtful it would have a truly significant effect, and it would take a bit of luck and timing to get right.

I've actually started DW'ing blood recently because I just happen to have 2x 1h's that are 39ilvl higher than my best 2h. This is actually very true. My blood worms are on steroids now. I'm getting about 10k hps out of just the Bloodworms.

Thats a small portion of my self healing during a heavy melee phase, but during heavy spell damage phases the blood worms are making up close to 25% of my self healing.

Edited May 30, 2013 by Storm

[Reniat 23]

Even with the 39 ilvl difference, the DW is a dps loss. Also my bloodworms do about 30% of my overall healing as 2H, so let's not use anecdotal bloomworm data to support DW tanking.

[Storm 426]

You're right on top of hating on the DW blood today Reniat. keep up the good work

[Reniat 23]

I'm not hating anything. Theorycrafting isn't about playstyle favoritism, it's about what is and isn't optimal/viable.

[Storm 426]

sure it's a huge dps loss, but there isn't any survivability loss, and if it's possible that Blood worms do proc more often then it could actually be a slight survivability gain. but if everyone just dismisses DW blood as inferior without crunching the numbers beyond the DPS loss then nobody will ever find out

and if people keep talking about DW blood on every forum, then obviously there are people that want to do it, so maybe Blizzard should consider making it more viable.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Storm

[Tarazet 144]

sure it's a huge dps loss, but there isn't any survivability loss, and if it's possible that Blood worms do proc more often then it could actually be a slight survivability gain. but if everyone just dismisses DW blood as inferior without crunching the numbers beyond the DPS loss then nobody will ever find out

and if people keep talking about DW blood on every forum, then obviously there are people that want to do it, so maybe Blizzard should consider making it more viable.

DK's were already unique for being able to tank with a two-hander instead of a sword and board. (Now Monks do too, of course but it's a different type of weapon and animation.) If you want to be a special snowflake, you can, but all you're going to accomplish is being a detriment to your raid because you insisted on using the wrong tool for the job. Tank DPS does matter. If you've never had a mage pull a boss off you because of a lucky crit and get one-shot, you wouldn't understand why, but it does.

[Darkenson 0]

There's other things going against dual-wielding Blood as well - aside of the fact that the damage will be lowered and you may have a hard time holding threat against well geared raiders.

You cannot actually loot 1h Strength weapons from LFR or from the world bosses if you choose your gear spec as blood. You're only eligible for 2H weapons. Sure this may not affect many people, but it shows one thing - Blizz did not design Blood with 1 handers in mind.

If they did, they'd probably add Threat of Thassarian on Heart Strike and Death Strike as well. Even so, it's not optimal, and while you may be able to survive better, killing the boss faster by means of extra DPS is just as great if not better.

Edited June 10, 2013 by Darkenson