Mythic plus dungeon tips for BDK- updated 16 Feb 17

[Shells 64]

These are my observations along with a lot of input from others here on the forums, in no particular order, Drtrain, Aegis, Snizz, Demonardvark and others.

I have run a good few Mythic plus so far and while no expert this guide should help. Its by no means exhaustive and its open to being edited and updated based on peoples experience in mythic plus runs.

Update 07Nov16

Have added in some more advice from @Aegis, @Sweitzer and @Rylad

 

Talents: 3,1,1,2,1 or 2 ( see below), 3,1 or 2

Blooddrinker is very strong, even with the nerf just after 7.1.5 hit. It can be used while moving and its a nice self heal that can be used to save yourself. Try to use it on CD, its good dps too.  

TG is great for a quicker Gorefiends Grasp and for the slow effect. I like it for kiting adds and its very useful for the necrotic affix. Drop it behind you, wraith walk through it and hope your debuff falls off in time.

Tremble is pretty strong too as it will interrupt spellcasters and can slow down melee adds on top of you to give you some breathing space for a DS or for your healer to catch up. It is unreliable but it is lovely when it hits a mob.

Switch them out depending on the composition of your group and the affixes this week.

Bonestorm is amazing for Mythic plus where the biggest threats are in the trash packs. It really packs a punch and eats through trash packs.  Use it on CD once you have 3-4 mobs or more in range.  Also good on bosses but it competes for DS for RP so better on bosses with adds involved. The other option is blood mirror which is nice if the affix is tyrannical and the boss will guaranteed hit like a train. Also, purgatory is an option for higher level dungeons but its not optimal. Some swear by it some dont. It has more value in progression raiding than Mythic plus in my view.

 

Consumable: You should be trying to use as many potions of prolonged power as possible during the dungeons, using them right before the pulls is ideal and waiting until you drop combat and pull another pack popping it right before hand again is the ideal way to do this. These pots are really cheap and pack a good punch so in my view chain drinking them adds a lot of more dps/health for little cost.   Saving time on the trash boosts your chances of getting an extra chest so its worth it from my pov. If the costs mount up too much try to find a friendly alchemist to do them at cost. 

I suggest using  haste food  'Aszhari Salad' and either of the strength flask or the stamina flask as you see fit. The strength flask is called 'Flask of the Countless Armies'. The Stam flask is 'Flask of Ten Thousand Scars'

 Use potion of prolonged power or unbending on bosses depending on your comfort level. PP will net you more dps and some solid health  while unbending will give you another oh crap button.  Depends on your group and the dungeon   in  question.                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

PlayStyle: Pretty normal play style. Beware of the trash packs, they will wreck you more than the bosses unless you mess up a boss mechanic. Don’t be afraid to blow VB and DRW, no point in being dead and having them ready to be used.

Enchants: Mark of the heavy hide neck, Rune of the fallen crusader, strength on your cloak and haste on the rings.

Stats:

Ripped off from @Sniz and edited since.

Crit-> 20% parry

Haste 25% base  ( you get a plus 10% from having BS up which is great as this brings you up to 35% where the rotation gets alot more fluid) 

Versa next, try to aim for 10% ish or more if you have been luck with gear. Crit is good for dps, poor for surviving. 

This is the "base" or starting point.

Haste is your best stat point for point. I would not recommend enchanting or gemming for anything else at this stage.

Gear:

The T19 gear set is pretty sweet and can get farmed on LFR. If your lucky enough to have a raid group then you can get a stronger version but even the 860 set is nice for the set bonus. Probably not worth taking off better gear if you have it but it is solid.

Trinket wise, DMC- Immortatilty is a very strong trinket for physical damage fights. For the other one try to get either a str/haste or str/versa stat stick of decent ilvl. Several other good options out there too, can even use a dps trinket if your not worried about surviving.

 Tips, and tricks:

Voice comms make a lot of the pulls a lot easier. Also makes interrupts more efficient as your not all interrupting the first cast and then no one has an interrupt for the next one.

Los pulls are also very good as it can prevent pulling lots of mobs into the pack  you have and maybe causing a wipe.

Dont be afraid to kite mobs backwards, this is especially effective if you have the TG talent which slows them down. Even without this talent, spamming HS will slow mobs down too.  This will give your healer a chance to top you off if needs be.

Always attempt to grip in targets as much as possible, save your Gorefiends grasp to pull in the really big packs for maximum aoe nuking. 

Make use of your stun ability (Asphyxiate) as a tank, it can take a ranged mob out of the fight for a few precious moments.

In BRH, the annoying packs between the 2^nd and 3^rd bosses have a panther that can be controlled by you and it generates some nice dps and takes it out of the fight.  Remember to re-control it when the timer goes down, they can be nasty if unchained in a boss fight or a big trash pack. Don’t be afraid to use your control undead ability even on other adds up to this point.  It takes them out of the fight for a time ad starts the mobs fighting each other rather than you.

in BRH specifically, there are lots of mobs that you can do this to - my recommendations are:

first 3 packs, CU the councillors - because they cast a heal (dark mending)

after 1st boss, when you go upstairs, CU an archer in each pack - one less barrage to deal with is good. Note that you can NOT CU the champions, and that there's a chance that when you control the arcanist, his pet will bug out and continually reset to full health while spamming arcane explosion. Also, the third pack in this room (the one that is right at the back, as well as the pack that jumps down) are immune to CU.

after smashspite,  my suggestion would be to CU a lancer in the first pack, and pull that and the next 2 to the bottom of the stairs - this way, you only have one lancer to deal with, and your pet lancer will stun for you. Do the same for the 2 mobs in the middle of the stairs (pull them down), and again for the 4 mobs at the top.

in all cases, remember to dismiss your pet AFTER all targets are dead, but before moving on to the next pack - if for whatever reason you die, the mob will instantly be released, resulting in more for your group to handle (sans a tank!)

 A tip I came across is to get your main to revered with the wardens, buy the bloodhunters shoulder enchant, stick it onto a BOE set of shoulders and send it to alts. They get free bloods while leveling and with the new vendor for blood and or just making these pots, can be amazing.

Trash packs, especially with fortified, are an absolute nightmare - use VB liberally, the CD is very short, and if you have Red Thirst talented (which you should) and/or the Legend belt (if you're lucky), this CD is reduced even more - great mileage, aim for the 3 point talent in your artifact that boosts VB. DRW is very useful for big pulls, I find myself using it in places where there's very large packs (e.g. before smashspite in BRH, both the imps/felguards, and the dominators up the stairs). 40% parry is a god-send.

 

[demonardvark 556]

Pinned

One recommendation. for your section header, make them bold and potentially colored, they are same font color size as the rest of the words so they are easy to miss

so instead of  Tips, and tricks:  something like  Tips, and tricks:

Otherwise thanks for making this :D will be valuable for community and its good to see blood getting some love and attention :D

[Shells 64]

23 minutes ago, demonardvark said:

Pinned

One recommendation. for your section header, make them bold and potentially colored, they are same font color size as the rest of the words so they are easy to miss

so instead of  Tips, and tricks:  something like  Tips, and tricks:

Otherwise thanks for making this :D will be valuable for community and its good to see blood getting some love and attention :D

I write one guide and he is giving me work already. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will fix the editing in a few hours, at work atm and it didn't look right when I tried it here. 

Edited November 2, 2016 by Shells

[demonardvark 556]

7 hours ago, Shells said:

I write one guide and he is giving me work already. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will fix the editing in a few hours, at work atm and it didn't look right when I tried it here. 

Edits look really good, made it much easier on my old man eyes :D my optometrist thanks you

[Sweitzer 1]

Don't forget we get that 10% haste buff from having boneshield up (which should be up 900% of the time) so for me I'm sitting at 18% was 26% I suppose with that would have to find haste thresholds and see when percentages we gain extra ticks and runes.
I've just jostled my stats and picked up the gargoyle affix, enchanted and gemmed verse I seem to be taking a lot less damage, after looking around for ages and basically winging it I might try out bonestorm (yay more button adjustments -.-)because I only dip into purge when we start doing funny stupid sh!t with pulls.

Feel free to check me out on armory and etc more than happy to contribute to this thread anyway possible :)

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/barthilas/Sweitzer/advanced

Edited November 7, 2016 by Sweitzer

[Aegis 27]

On 11/2/2016 at 10:20 PM, Shells said:

I suggest using haste food for mythic +s and strength flasks. You can use a Sta flask if you’re feeling a bit vulnerable or have fewer points in your weapon and haven’t unlocked many of your traits yet.

 

For those who are unsure, the haste food is called 'Aszhari Salad' and the strength flask is called 'Flask of the Countless Armies'. The Stam flask is 'Flask of Ten Thousand Scars'

I generally use stam flask all the way, it seems to work out better for me (i'm still parsing somewhere in the 90s for most fights in terms of damage dealt)

On 11/2/2016 at 10:20 PM, Shells said:

You should be trying to use as many potions of prolonged power as possible during the dungeons, using them right before the pulls is ideal and waiting until you drop combat and pull another pack popping it right before hand again is the ideal way to do this.

This. This all day long. I've gotten to the point where i'm pre-potting on pulls in heroic dungeons just cause these pots are so cheap to make, and provide so much benefit (and because I hate random heroics with a vengeance - but it remains the best way to get defiled augment runes)

On 11/2/2016 at 10:20 PM, Shells said:

Use potion of old war or unbending on bosses depending on your comfort level. Old war will net you more dps for a faster timer while unbending will give you another oh crap button.  Depends on your group and the dungeon   in question. 

Potion of old war is kinda expensive, and honestly in dungeons I feel that it would be better to stick to prolonged power for your pre-pot, and keeping a second prolonged power and/or unbending for an oh-crap - one gives more armor (EHP), the other flat out gives more HP.

On 11/2/2016 at 10:20 PM, Shells said:

Pretty normal play style. Beware of the trash packs, they will wreck you more than the bosses unless you mess up a boss mechanic. Don’t be afraid to blow VB and DRW, no point in being dead and having them ready to be used.

Trash packs, especially with fortified, are an absolute nightmare - use VB liberally, the CD is very short, and if you have Red Thirst talented (which you should) and/or the Legend belt (if you're lucky), this CD is reduced even more - great mileage, aim for the 3 point talent in your artifact that boosts VB.

DRW is very useful for big pulls, I find myself using it in places where there's very large packs (e.g. before smashspite in BRH, both the imps/felguards, and the dominators up the stairs). 40% parry is a god-send.

On 11/2/2016 at 10:20 PM, Shells said:

Mark of the heavy hide neck, Rune of the fallen crusader, strength on your cloak and haste on the rings.

YMMV on this, i'm actually putting crit on my rings, simply because i need it to hit that 25% mark (at 24.6% now, thanks to getting the haste/mas legs from ursoc)

On 11/2/2016 at 10:20 PM, Shells said:

Voice comms make a lot of the pulls a lot easier. Also makes interrupts more efficient as your not all interrupting the first cast and then no one has an interrupt for the next one.

I could not agree with this more, especially in harder difficulties. It's easy to YOLO up to maybe a +3 - once affixes start showing up, voice comms become essential (especially on things like DHT - those damn elementals are evil)

On 11/2/2016 at 10:20 PM, Shells said:

Los pulls are also very good as it can prevent pulling lots of mobs into the pack  you have and maybe causing a wipe.

This is very very important in M+ - especially in places like HoV where the mobs are pretty close together. pulling a healer/thundercaller or two when you have the sentinel up is very very painful, as the casters can't be interrupted until the sentinel dies. Other good places for this are in BRH (the packs up the stairs after the first boss/the little spiders) and MoS (the watchman - if you place him next to a wall, your group can just LOS him around the wall when he casts lantern to take no damage)

On 11/2/2016 at 10:20 PM, Shells said:

Make use of your stun ability as a tank, it can take a ranged mob out of the fight for a few precious moments.

Remember that this can be used as an additional interrupt - crucial on the Odyn fight in HoV for the stormsurge dude.

 

On 11/2/2016 at 10:20 PM, Shells said:

In BRH, the annoying packs between the 2^nd and 3^rd bosses have a panther that can be controlled by you and it generates some nice dps and takes it out of the fight.  Remember to re-control it when the timer goes down, they can be nasty if unchained in a boss fight or a big trash pack. Don’t be afraid to use your control undead ability even on other adds up to this point.  It takes them out of the fight for a time ad starts the mobs fighting each other rather than you.

in BRH specifically, there are lots of mobs that you can do this to - my recommendations are:

first 3 packs, CU the councillors - because they cast a heal (dark mending)

after 1st boss, when you go upstairs, CU an archer in each pack - one less barrage to deal with is good. Note that you can NOT CU the champions, and that there's a chance that when you control the arcanist, his pet will bug out and continually reset to full health while spamming arcane explosion. Also, the third pack in this room (the one that is right at the back, as well as the pack that jumps down) are immune to CU.

after smashspite,  my suggestion would be to CU a lancer in the first pack, and pull that and the next 2 to the bottom of the stairs - this way, you only have one lancer to deal with, and your pet lancer will stun for you. Do the same for the 2 mobs in the middle of the stairs (pull them down), and again for the 4 mobs at the top.

in all cases, remember to dismiss your pet AFTER all targets are dead, but before moving on to the next pack - if for whatever reason you die, the mob will instantly be released, resulting in more for your group to handle (sans a tank!)

 

 

One last note in general - remember that death grip acts as an interrupt when used on a mob that it doesn't fail on - so, on packs like MoS after harbaron, if a mistcaller is casting and there's no interrupts available, don't be afraid to take a step back and DG it to you - this will reset the cast of the spell, giving your group another couple of seconds to stun/interrupt it. Also take note that if the target is rooted (due to druid entangle, warrior charge, or the like), your DG does NOT work except to increase the threat you generate on that target for the duration.

All in all, good post, @Shells =) hope you don't mind my longwinded commentary =P

[Rylad 6]

14 hours ago, Aegis said:

first 3 packs, CU the concillors - because they cast a heal (dark mending)

after 1st boss, when you go upstairs, CU an archer in each pack - one less barrage to deal with is good. Note that you can NOT CU the champions, and that there's a chance that when you control the arcanist, his pet will bug out and continually reset to full health while spamming arcane explosion. Also, the third pack in this room (the one that is right at the back, as well as the pack that jumps down) are immune to CU.

On the last pack before the boss, CU the Ghostly Retainer because it's Soul Blade stacks on the 1st boss for an extra boost of damage.

Instead of an archer, you should CU the Risen Companion as Bloodthirsty Leap is an amazing AoE if you're lacking in DPS.  The only time I switch from the Risen Companion is if there are not enough AoE stuns/DPS to do 3 lancer packs at once.

Edited November 4, 2016 by Rylad
Combined posts.

[Aegis 27]

12 hours ago, Rylad said:

On the last pack before the boss, CU the Ghostly Retainer because it's Soul Blade stacks on the 1st boss for an extra boost of damage.

Instead of an archer, you should CU the Risen Companion as Bloodthirsty Leap is an amazing AoE if you're lacking in DPS.  The only time I switch from the Risen Companion is if there are not enough AoE stuns/DPS to do 3 lancer packs at once.

My group has an issue with forgetting to interrupt, hence why I uc the councilor. If that's not an issue, then yes, the retainer does more dps. However, when you uc them, they lose the mythic+ buffs and affixes, so I prefer to focus on hard to handle mobs rather than more dps. 

Also, I don't think it's a good idea to maintain the companion til the end - a lot of different things can go wrong. 

[Shells 64]

Anyone have any other bits they would like to add to this?

Will try an update along with a view towards 7.1.5 which will be based roughly on PTR notes and some guesses tomorrow night.

[Shells 64]

I will update this over the weekend but not a huge amount has changed. 

 

Rune tap is worth taking for some fights now, Spears from Cen and Odyn for example. Overall more health from FB is still stronger for most stuff. 

RP gen is down but then again your Bone shield will last alot longer so you can spam HS more to generate more RP for DS so it kinda balances out a bit. 

Blood drinker is now something worth looking at as its cast is reduced by haste, mine is at 2.3 seconds haste unbuffed. It can crit while healing, more heals and its dps is strong as well.  Dps counts in mythic + and in progression and realistically even in farm content so it can only be a good thing for single target fights. Its marginally weaker for aoe tanking due to less RP generation but its an alternative now rather than a laughable talent beforehand.

[spacefiddle 0]

Question: the Blood guide says only "never use this" about TBM. Should it maybe have a side note about its use as an AoE interrupt for dungeons / mythics? It's been pretty amazing in pugs while leveling.

[Shells 64]

Hi spacefiddle

 

I didn't write the official blood guide so I cant update it to add your comment. 

[Matheredor 1]

Another great target for CU, the stablehands in Karazhan before Attumen, they have an armor reduction ability that really helps out physical dps, if you get one, you can keep him up to Curator, which is pretty great.

[demonardvark 556]

2 hours ago, Matheredor said:

Another great target for CU, the stablehands in Karazhan before Attumen, they have an armor reduction ability that really helps out physical dps, if you get one, you can keep him up to Curator, which is pretty great.

plus one internets for you :D 

i love moments when we can use CU and get fun results. like in brh getting the archers. also i miss dark simalmalmalmalmacrum (who has time for proper spelling) being used in raids or even on raid bosses.

great tip @Matheredor

[Shells 64]

I will have an udate to this in a few days , some of it has changed alot, some of it remains the same.