Does blood Need a buff?

[Moraxus 2]

In your opinion do blood dk`s need to be buffed? and how likely is it we will see one?

I feel like blood is really good for low level mythic + but our low mitigation and high healing imo dosnt work that well in the higher 10+

[Shells 64]

Where it could be easily fixed/buffed. 

Mastery gives very little to us atm. A tiny shield that melts away in no time and by melting wont allow us to get our leech effect in from our artifact. 

Simple fix, without making OP. Let the  artifact trait give the leech effect for 2 seconds after a shield is applied. (Currently, the shield has to be active for the leech effect to work, which is great for when your off tanking and need heals badly)

Alternatively, alter DS slightly that any additional healing that brings you over 100% of your health transfers into the shield, or a portion into the shield. Think of how the DH's get a hot from their healing (if talented).

Last option, probably the easiest to do and would not make us any more OP but would give us more choices (which might go against the Blizz meme that tanks should not have to think), let Rune Tap be a baseline skill (or one improved by the existing talent) that costs RP rather than a rune. That way I can decide to reduce damage or heal myself up a bit. It also gives me a AM on demand that reduces damage which can be handy for certain fights where reduced damage taken helps. Think the spear of light on Cenarius. 

[demonardvark 556]

All dks are in trouble this expansion and there is quite a bit of outrage. A lot are filling petitions on the official blizz message board and getting some attention. The issue is scaling. The scaling problems are worse than ever and because of it we are falling behind big time. Frost and Unholy at 865 nighthold sims are dead last dps and blood tanks are not fairing much better either. So, its not just blood that needs a buff, its DK's period are moving towards a very questionable place.

[Alexizonfire 7]

Well, i've noticed blood has some awful talents. Like idk, i feel blood mirror has a terrible cd, mark of blood, tombstone and blood tap are complete shit with awful cds and just bad effects. Soulforgeis actually funny, like seriously, when i look at it, i litterally burst in laughter. And blooddrinker feels like it could be good, in the wod expac.

[Moraxus 2]

1 hour ago, demonardvark said:

All dks are in trouble this expansion and there is quite a bit of outrage. A lot are filling petitions on the official blizz message board and getting some attention. The issue is scaling. The scaling problems are worse than ever and because of it we are falling behind big time. Frost and Unholy at 865 nighthold sims are dead last dps and blood tanks are not fairing much better either. So, its not just blood that needs a buff, its DK's period are moving towards a very questionable place.

And do you think blizz will listen?

[Desruc 15]

I think what we need to remember is a blood tank is different play style than warriors druid or paladins..

We do not mitigate as much and we do not have the same absorption as them.

tho where we excel is in taking big hard hitting attacks and surviving especially if these attacks are magic based.

I raid heroic atm with a warrior at my side and we have very clear roles on who is best at what and utilize those strengths.
He is better at tanking flat dmg from boss auto attacks and such.
I'm better at picking up adds, (double Taunt), and we have vampiric blood up most of the time.

He has mobility

I have magic soaking capabilities.

So i think the trick is, and this is not something sims will show, to utilize the strengths we bring instead of trying to cover into our weakness

[Moraxus 2]

1 hour ago, Desruc said:

I think what we need to remember is a blood tank is different play style than warriors druid or paladins..

We do not mitigate as much and we do not have the same absorption as them.

tho where we excel is in taking big hard hitting attacks and surviving especially if these attacks are magic based.

I raid heroic atm with a warrior at my side and we have very clear roles on who is best at what and utilize those strengths.
He is better at tanking flat dmg from boss auto attacks and such.
I'm better at picking up adds, (double Taunt), and we have vampiric blood up most of the time.

He has mobility

I have magic soaking capabilities.

So i think the trick is, and this is not something sims will show, to utilize the strengths we bring instead of trying to cover into our weakness

Irrelevant for mythic+ tho

[demonardvark 556]

1 hour ago, Desruc said:

So i think the trick is, and this is not something sims will show, to utilize the strengths we bring instead of trying to cover into our weakness

That doesn't get your competitive spots though. On small servers you are fine but for the big ones you just flat won't get a raid spot. That's where the concern is for the competitive people, mom and pop guilds and people just wanting to clear heroic for mount and GG will be fine. However, for end game content, there is the cruel reality of both sims and real player logs. Blood falls behind and will not scale well at all. Even early legion to right now blood is considered 2nd worst tank next to brewmaster, that's not going to improve at all. It comes down to the question, why bring a DK? Mythic + we have tanks that can do it better and end heroic early mythic there are more durable tanks and higher dps tanks. The flat numbers and play results show, blood needs buffs, DK's need buffs altogether. It's not a new problem its existed before, its just with ability and talent changes its worse then ever.

This isn't saying blood isn't fun, I love DK's hence why I spend so many hours of my life on this site for no pay whatsoever.  Its about passion. However, there are realities. No good feeling or hopefulness can fix them. For most players you are fine playing Blood or frost or unholy, however, on big servers, trying to get spots in the good guilds or on progression teams, DK's are going to struggle. 

 

[demonardvark 556]

2 hours ago, Moraxus said:

And do you think blizz will listen?

The forum got a response............ but people weren't quite pleased with it. Sooooo, not by 7.1, no.

[TalonShadowsong 5]

11 hours ago, Moraxus said:

In your opinion do blood dk`s need to be buffed? and how likely is it we will see one?

I feel like blood is really good for low level mythic + but our low mitigation and high healing imo dosnt work that well in the higher 10+

Stating the viability of a tank strictly on their performance in Mythic+ content is pretty flawed. Furthermore, several Blood DKs have successfully completed Mythic+10 or higher content, which can be found here:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/9#metric=ehrps&class=DeathKnight&spec=Blood
 

DHT+10 wasn't even that bad when I did it last week with Teeming/Skittish/Fortified. While my DHT wasn't in time, we weren't trying to push the key because it was headed on 3am Tuesday morning and we just wanted to get it completed for the week.
If you are having problems with the Mythic+ content, consider looking over talents, party composition, dungeon affixes, etc. Also ensure you're using your tools to your highest benefit. Umbilicus Eternus is a very powerful tool, normally giving you a 2M+ shield per usage assuming all the mobs don't die before the 10s is up.

As it has been mentioned here in guides/posts, Tremble Before Me is a fairly decent talent for Mythic+ content. While the fear is almost instantly broken, the nullification/delaying of auto-attacks, casts, etc. can be a big deal. For certain affixes, such as Necrotic this week, Blood DK shines even more I think. Necrotic cannot apply while AMS (Battle text actually shows you as Immune to the effect, which grants you an automatic 6s window of 0 stack generation every minute)is active nor can it apply on a parried attack (coupled with the fact you should be seeking critical strike to maximize Skeletal Shattering's mitigation aspect, you should be housing a base 20%+ parry rate. I personally have 23% base Parry rate outside of my Memento of Angerboda procs and Dancing Rune Weapon up time (which is a flat +40% pushing me over 60% chance to parry (~65% with an Angerboda Critical proc) while this isn't a guarantee that your stacks will drop, it is a decent probability that it can occur. If it doesn't at least you are likely to gain a 1-5 stack reprieve from getting you into unhealing range). I know Guardian Druid really struggles with Necrotic as they are used to mitigating incoming damage by boost armor and healing back windows of damage, which just isn't overly viable for dealing with Necrotic. Furthermore, Tightening Grasp is very good this week too, due to the ability to kite mobs through the 70% movement speed slow from Death & Decay (for the most part the mobs will stay clumped, allowing for cleave DPS to go to town still, but you escaping the threat long enough for stacks to reset with ease.

Now, I've been doing most of my Mythic+ as Frost DK because we have a Guardian Druid only player that has been running with us, so I'm not suggesting I am an expert at the content in question. Now that he has been at work, I have made the switch back and have been using this weeks run at +7 (have done 2 far, picking up entire room of imps in VoW = 99 stacks of Necrotic = fun times and swift death lol) thus far as learning runs to see how I can get around being gibbed by Necrotics -healing%, etc.

The viability of tanks, while attempting to be balanced in all content forms, mainly comes from their performance from Heroic-Mythic raiding content, all of which Blood has cleared. If a class is too strong in raiding content, it is likely too strong elsewhere, however that doesn't mean if a tank is too strong/weak some else it doesn't have viability within raiding content.

Basically, it comes down to questions like this:
Is content easier with other tank classes? My Answer: Perhaps.
Is content beyond the capability of our class? My Answer: No.

Sadly, not all tanks are built the same, which I guess is good for gameplay because it would be pretty stale if you had all 6 tank specs play the exact same. Properly utilizing a tanks strengths is the key to success. If you are having difficulties, make sure to assess some of the factors I mentioned above.

Personally, I don't believe Blood needs a buff at all. Not yet. When the time comes around when all Blood DKs have both Legendary Belt and Bracers, their potential for self-healing goes through the roof. Until this occurs, which is basically the peak of the classes potential, I don't believe we will be seeing much/any major adjustments. Perhaps minor tweaks here and there as we move into 7.1, or short there after.

 

/endRant

[Moraxus 2]

1 hour ago, TalonShadowsong said:

Stating the viability of a tank strictly on their performance in Mythic+ content is pretty flawed. Furthermore, several Blood DKs have successfully completed Mythic+10 or higher content, which can be found here:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/9#metric=ehrps&class=DeathKnight&spec=Blood
 

DHT+10 wasn't even that bad when I did it last week with Teeming/Skittish/Fortified. While my DHT wasn't in time, we weren't trying to push the key because it was headed on 3am Tuesday morning and we just wanted to get it completed for the week.
If you are having problems with the Mythic+ content, consider looking over talents, party composition, dungeon affixes, etc. Also ensure you're using your tools to your highest benefit. Umbilicus Eternus is a very powerful tool, normally giving you a 2M+ shield per usage assuming all the mobs don't die before the 10s is up.

As it has been mentioned here in guides/posts, Tremble Before Me is a fairly decent talent for Mythic+ content. While the fear is almost instantly broken, the nullification/delaying of auto-attacks, casts, etc. can be a big deal. For certain affixes, such as Necrotic this week, Blood DK shines even more I think. Necrotic cannot apply while AMS (Battle text actually shows you as Immune to the effect, which grants you an automatic 6s window of 0 stack generation every minute)is active nor can it apply on a parried attack (coupled with the fact you should be seeking critical strike to maximize Skeletal Shattering's mitigation aspect, you should be housing a base 20%+ parry rate. I personally have 23% base Parry rate outside of my Memento of Angerboda procs and Dancing Rune Weapon up time (which is a flat +40% pushing me over 60% chance to parry (~65% with an Angerboda Critical proc) while this isn't a guarantee that your stacks will drop, it is a decent probability that it can occur. If it doesn't at least you are likely to gain a 1-5 stack reprieve from getting you into unhealing range). I know Guardian Druid really struggles with Necrotic as they are used to mitigating incoming damage by boost armor and healing back windows of damage, which just isn't overly viable for dealing with Necrotic. Furthermore, Tightening Grasp is very good this week too, due to the ability to kite mobs through the 70% movement speed slow from Death & Decay (for the most part the mobs will stay clumped, allowing for cleave DPS to go to town still, but you escaping the threat long enough for stacks to reset with ease.

Now, I've been doing most of my Mythic+ as Frost DK because we have a Guardian Druid only player that has been running with us, so I'm not suggesting I am an expert at the content in question. Now that he has been at work, I have made the switch back and have been using this weeks run at +7 (have done 2 far, picking up entire room of imps in VoW = 99 stacks of Necrotic = fun times and swift death lol) thus far as learning runs to see how I can get around being gibbed by Necrotics -healing%, etc.

The viability of tanks, while attempting to be balanced in all content forms, mainly comes from their performance from Heroic-Mythic raiding content, all of which Blood has cleared. If a class is too strong in raiding content, it is likely too strong elsewhere, however that doesn't mean if a tank is too strong/weak some else it doesn't have viability within raiding content.

Basically, it comes down to questions like this:
Is content easier with other tank classes? My Answer: Perhaps.
Is content beyond the capability of our class? My Answer: No.

Sadly, not all tanks are built the same, which I guess is good for gameplay because it would be pretty stale if you had all 6 tank specs play the exact same. Properly utilizing a tanks strengths is the key to success. If you are having difficulties, make sure to assess some of the factors I mentioned above.

Personally, I don't believe Blood needs a buff at all. Not yet. When the time comes around when all Blood DKs have both Legendary Belt and Bracers, their potential for self-healing goes through the roof. Until this occurs, which is basically the peak of the classes potential, I don't believe we will be seeing much/any major adjustments. Perhaps minor tweaks here and there as we move into 7.1, or short there after.

 

/endRant

Thanks for your input, im not basing the viability of the class around mythic +, my point is i thing since mythic+ is such a big deal for alot of people that dont really raid / have a guild its worth thinking about not basing tank viability around raids alone.

Edited October 14, 2016 by Moraxus

[demonardvark 556]

The experience of one player versus many can differ. However, over on the battlenet forum there are mutiple post cap reaching threads of people petitioning to the game designers for DK buffs and DK scaling fixes. Three filled up and a couple had to be extended so people could post more. Even the devs acknowledged that the feedback had been received. The issue is there are problems with the class and the scaling behind it. Even now to make blood competitive requires a large amount of stat stacking, artifact gearing, and rotational mastery to do okay in all game functions. Yes a few allstars exist but many times its because of the group. You have insane disc priests or resto shammies, as as well as big d%^$ dps locks, burning things down and pushing one further. The facts are there are only handfuls of blood dks on the higher charts compared to throngs of other tanks including many brew masters. 

Buffs may be not needed, but repairs are. There are issues with the stats, the scaling, and talents. So, you don't need blood dks do to 200k dps or solo tank a boss, but they need it where the average player can have success and not have to struggle or invest incoherent amount of time into it to be okay. that's the issue. 

[Zataron 5]

5 hours ago, demonardvark said:

The forum got a response............ but people weren't quite pleased with it. Sooooo, not by 7.1, no.

Can you link to the response?

[Sniz 60]

I struggled with Blood at first but got into how it works and so far its been much better.

I can only imagine how difficult it must be for developers to balance DKs as a class though, especially with the amount of player input thats required.

 

Edited October 15, 2016 by Sniz

[demonardvark 556]

On 10/14/2016 at 10:54 PM, Sniz said:

I struggled with Blood at first but got into how it works and so far its been much better.

I can only imagine how difficult it must be for developers to balance DKs as a class though, especially with the amount of player input thats required.

 

oddly blizz seems to not give a crap, in the 7.1 feed they noted they care about "Real" players not sims or logs. I'm like WAT how the hell else are you obtaining your data!!!!. Even then skullflowers was THE dk theorycrafter who got hired into blizz (another person did too forget their name) and he gave them a ton of feedback and they really didn't care or do anything with it. I mean frankly I can fix DK real quick right here, you ready? 

Frost - Obliterate does pure frost damage nothing else, problems fixed

Unholy- Death coil actually does damage, problem fixed

Blood- Mastery - actually make blood shields strong again ie mop tuning, problem fixed

its not terribly difficult to get things in working order, many dks have well itemized lists, its just not high on blizzords priority for some reason. 

[Shells 64]

1 hour ago, demonardvark said:

oddly blizz seems to not give a crap, in the 7.1 feed they noted they care about "Real" players not sims or logs. I'm like WAT how the hell else are you obtaining your data!!!!. Even then skullflowers was THE dk theorycrafter who got hired into blizz (another person did too forget their name) and he gave them a ton of feedback and they really didn't care or do anything with it. I mean frankly I can fix DK real quick right here, you ready? 

Frost - Obliterate does pure frost damage nothing else, problems fixed

Unholy- Death coil actually does damage, problem fixed

Blood- Mastery - actually make blood shields strong again ie mop tuning, problem fixed

its not terribly difficult to get things in working order, many dks have well itemized lists, its just not high on blizzords priority for some reason. 

Hello Demon, we at Blizzard would like to hire you to allow you to forumlate your ideas and give them to us in a report that we will blindly ignore. Please accept this offer and go the basement with your coworkers who want to fix the DK's. You are now assigned to project "WEDONTCARE". 

 

:)

 

Good changes and would fix alot of the issues alright.

[demonardvark 556]

5 minutes ago, Shells said:

Hello Demon, we at Blizzard would like to hire you to allow you to forumlate your ideas and give them to us in a report that we will blindly ignore. Please accept this offer and go the basement with your coworkers who want to fix the DK's. You are now assigned to project "WEDONTCARE". 

 

:)

 

Good changes and would fix alot of the issues alright.

haha my office is an old broom closet with a type writer in it XD 

"please type out all suggestions and place them in the in box"

In box is paper shredder

[Sniz 60]

3 hours ago, demonardvark said:

oddly blizz seems to not give a crap, in the 7.1 feed they noted they care about "Real" players not sims or logs. I'm like WAT how the hell else are you obtaining your data!!!!. Even then skullflowers was THE dk theorycrafter who got hired into blizz (another person did too forget their name) and he gave them a ton of feedback and they really didn't care or do anything with it. I mean frankly I can fix DK real quick right here, you ready? 

Frost - Obliterate does pure frost damage nothing else, problems fixed

Unholy- Death coil actually does damage, problem fixed

Blood- Mastery - actually make blood shields strong again ie mop tuning, problem fixed

its not terribly difficult to get things in working order, many dks have well itemized lists, its just not high on blizzords priority for some reason. 

I suppose you're right.  My biggest pet peeve with games that have a competitive class element is that developers always seem to create "flavors of the month" where a specific class would have a higher statistical reward for the same amount (or less) skill brought to the table.

Blood DKs are particularly challenging because we depend on cooldowns and timing for survival, whereas other classes have insane amounts of flat mitigation AND cooldowns.  On top of that, DK dps is linked to DS, but optimal DS timing sometimes requires us to hold back.  Do other tank classes have this problem?

In a perfect world, classes that have a higher skill floor should have a higher skill ceiling as well. But it seems that the "best tanks" right now have a lower skill floor plus a bigger skill ceiling as well.

[Shells 64]

I think that pretty much covers it Sniz. 

 

They wanted to dumb down tanking to make it appeal to a wider audience but I dont see the need to do that and to punish people who want to play a harder spec and get more out of it. We player a harder spec than the others yet we are also more limited. 

By harder, it takes more effort to get a good rotation and awareness for a dk than for something like spam IP and shield block or sit there and take it and shrug it off like a druid. 

 

[demonardvark 556]

1 hour ago, Sniz said:

I suppose you're right.  My biggest pet peeve with games that have a competitive class element is that developers always seem to create "flavors of the month" where a specific class would have a higher statistical reward for the same amount (or less) skill brought to the table.

Blood DKs are particularly challenging because we depend on cooldowns and timing for survival, whereas other classes have insane amounts of flat mitigation AND cooldowns.  On top of that, DK dps is linked to DS, but optimal DS timing sometimes requires us to hold back.  Do other tank classes have this problem?

In a perfect world, classes that have a higher skill floor should have a higher skill ceiling as well. But it seems that the "best tanks" right now have a lower skill floor plus a bigger skill ceiling as well.

no, other tanks really don't have that issue at all, some ala warrior can keep near 100% uptime on their defensives, others have more prolonged measures that you simply use on CD and say GG.

[Sniz 60]

40 minutes ago, Shells said:

I think that pretty much covers it Sniz. 

 

They wanted to dumb down tanking to make it appeal to a wider audience but I dont see the need to do that and to punish people who want to play a harder spec and get more out of it. We player a harder spec than the others yet we are also more limited. 

By harder, it takes more effort to get a good rotation and awareness for a dk than for something like spam IP and shield block or sit there and take it and shrug it off like a druid. 

 

Its a shame.  Perhaps they can't give DKs a higher skil ceiling cuz then the top ranks would be flooded with them, but I certainly don't like to hear how top raid groups avoid DKs.  That should not happen.

Nevertheless, I love the class, and it personally doesn't really matter for me as Im not in a progression guild.  Its the first xpac my main wasnt my mage.  I can't play thaaat much so I figured concentrating on tanking would be more time efficient. So far so good. Finished a mythic +5 BRH Sat in 854ilvl gear. 

[Aegis 27]

I agree with demonaardvark here, at least for blood DKs (i avoid dps like the plague, so i have just about no opinion on the frost/UH tuneups). Just tune up mastery to make our blood shields actually relevant for more than a single swing and the class will be competitive again. I've taken to stacking enough rune power to get off three casts of DS (with ossuary, of course - rattlegore bone legplates would up this to 4), just for the damage boost. Delaying it a couple of seconds til my healing is relevant is fine, as Blood boil acts as a filler. What i'm noticing is that in raids and mythic+, even with 3 Death Strikes back to back, my blood shield can be removed in between casts, thereby making unending thirst (which on paper is AWESOME) completely irrelevant.

[Aegis 27]

On 10/18/2016 at 0:25 AM, Sniz said:

Its a shame.  Perhaps they can't give DKs a higher skil ceiling cuz then the top ranks would be flooded with them, but I certainly don't like to hear how top raid groups avoid DKs.  That should not happen.

Nevertheless, I love the class, and it personally doesn't really matter for me as Im not in a progression guild.  Its the first xpac my main wasnt my mage.  I can't play thaaat much so I figured concentrating on tanking would be more time efficient. So far so good. Finished a mythic +5 BRH Sat in 854ilvl gear. 

Just wondering, what the hell would be wrong with the top ranks being flooded with DKs? Not like that hasn't happened in the past - (looking at YOU, tankadins)

[Sniz 60]

3 hours ago, Aegis said:

Just wondering, what the hell would be wrong with the top ranks being flooded with DKs? Not like that hasn't happened in the past - (looking at YOU, tankadins)

Just giving the benefit of the doubt.  Nevertheless, im not holding my breath. Just DSing as much as possible. ;)

[Shells 64]

9 hours ago, Aegis said:

Just wondering, what the hell would be wrong with the top ranks being flooded with DKs? Not like that hasn't happened in the past - (looking at YOU, tankadins)

Hahahha

 

It would be nice alright but they dont want top tanks, they want tanks that are "strong for different content" read some are OP for most content while others are a bit meh. Where we really come into our own is in WQ, slip into blood and stick up your Blood shield and watch and laugh as the mobs can not break it and you get insane healing from the leech.  You can then mock the poor WQ elites as they die and your health stays constant.  I for one dont mind being brittle in raids, mythic plus's or any other content so long as as a Blood DK I can rock this aspect of the game. 

Or not, cop on blizz. 

:)

 

A simple fix is to boost our blood shield to do something or last long enough for our our passive leech and 25% increased DS to actually happen. I paid for the talent, the only place I can get it to work is if I am off tanking or in WQ's as noted above.  

You could even have the overheal from DS, either go into the shield to bolster it or have it hot us. Simple fixes.