Blood spec, advise for gear/rotation?

[Shine 144]

Ok, so I'm a blood DK. and I've been wondering what I could change in gear/rotation.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/ragnaros/Shinelord/simple

I've done most of the tweaking following the advise of AskMrRobot. I use the "High Stamina" Setting.

I'm quite an experienced player, yet I've never really looked at stats and caps.

I would like 2 sorts of advise considering gear.

• What changes should I make in Enchanting/Reforging/Gemming.
• What pieces should I replace, and which pieces should I replace them with. (Where they drop or are bought would be nice info too.)

I am pretty confident about my rotation, but I still want to ask if any of you find I could improve it.

My rotation is pretty much the same for single target and multi target.

• Death Grip/Outbreak macro for the pull (unless Outbreak is on cooldown in wich case I use Icy Touch and Plague Strike to apply diseases.)
• I immediately use Blood Boil to spread out my diseases among other targets. (due to Roiling Blood)
• When Crimson Scourge procs, I ALWAYS use it on Death and Decay, this means when Death and Decay is available or less than 10sec of its cooldown remains. otherwise I use it on Blood Boil
• I always use my blood runes on Heart Strike unless the target is below 35% health in wich case I use it on Soul Reaper. And occasionally on Blood Boil in case my diseases need refreshing. (When I'm dealing with large packs, I use Blood Boil in stead of Heart Strike because Heart Strike wont grant me enough dps in these cases.)
• I try to use all my death runes on Death Strike, occasionally I use them on a Rune Tap or Death and Decay.
• I drop my Runic power using Rune Strike and when the target is near 35% I use Dancing Rune Weapon (This to copy Soul Reaper, wich you can do twice if you time it right)
• I use Strangulate and Mind Freeze for interupts, I try to do this as much as possible.
• I try to make good use of cooldowns although I feel I'm not doing this enough yet.
• My Horn of Winter and Bone Shield are always up, I try to use Horn of Winter a bit more often to make some more Runic Power.
• I always make sure one blood rune stays available. (I use this bloodrune when the other one has regenerated for at least 75%)
• I hardly save any death runes, since I almost always use them immediately.

I really want to know your thoughts. I'm looking to increase my DPS a bit, and occasionally I have some trouble maintaining threat.

Should I use Dancing Rune Weapon more often?

Which cooldowns should I try to use more. I pretty much only use cooldowns for when large damage spikes are soon coming in, or when I am already getting much damage. The cooldowns I use mostly are Anti-Magic Shell, Icebound Fortitude and Vampiric Blood.

I hardly find a good time to use Empower Rune Weapon because my runes are nearly always available (due to Runic Corruption wich I almost always use.)

Should I be saving the death runes more often and/or the blood runes less often?

Any advise is welcome.

Cheers

Shine

[SirenX 0]

For more dps it would be helpful to use dancing rune weapon after a few seconds in the fight or right after a hard hit from a mob. Vengeance ist the factor here and you should have an addon for this - such as TellMeWhen with which u can always easily see your actual vengeance. Empower rune weapon can be a massive burst cd (but can be kept as a cooldown, as well). To get the most benefit out of it, be sure to activate it with dancing rune weapon and ideally with most of your runes on cooldown and relatively low runic power.

As always, dps mostly comes from gear. You can try, depending on your gear and the encounter, to get some dps gear or even full dps gear, if the encounter isn't that hard. If you go instances you should always be using dps gear, unless your gear (and the gear of your healer) is really really low. Haste is assumed to be best dps stat (to some extend) and then crit. Try to use your dps cooldowns clever, as already said don't use dancing rune weapon if your vengenace is zero. Try to get some extra vengeance. For instance, stay in voids or other ground effectes to get more attack power. But don't die Your ghul and your armee scale with your attack power.

The more attackpower (thus vengeance) you get the less important is str but the value of haste and crit will increase.

Edited July 9, 2013 by SirenX

[Shine 144]

Thank you for your tips, I will certainly look into it.

[Ceraius 34]

One thing caught my eye here.

You say you use your death runes almost rightaway. I'd advise having two in reserve in case you take some burst damage for easier recovery. DS timing is a key factor if you want to be comfortable to heal. Don't blow it all when it comes available and make use of the fact it scales from damage intake.

Try to keep a pair of Deaths or U+F in reserve all the time so you can react easily. But always keep runes regenerating. Blow the pair you have in reserve when the next pair is ~80-90% refreshed for the rune regeneration continuity.

Edited July 10, 2013 by Ceraius

[Drafty53 17]

A couple things. One of the main reasons why you might be having threat issues is that your drastically below the hit and exp caps. They are both at 7.5% and your at at like 1.5% on each. Getting hit/exp capped will help a TON with threat generation and maintaining it. It also helps with survival because your rune strikes will never miss causing your tier 5 to ALWAYS have a chance to proc. It will also prevent disease application from failing which may hurt initial threat generation.

Personally, this is just a preference thing but unless you have Outbreak and DG binded separately as well as a bind for your macro, I wouldn't like having them always macroed together. In raids and even in some dungeons/scenarios you will often want to use one of those abilities outside of the other. For instance you might want to grab an add to bring back to the pack without wasting your outbreak cd for just one add, especially when the pack probably has diseases up already and a simple blood boild will suffice.

I also think that you are safe to use a crimson scourge proc on blood boil with DnD on cd even under 10 seconds. Blood boil does a decent amount of damage once vengeance gets rolling. DnD should almost always be used if its up with a crimson scourge proc, unless you will be moving the boss/mobs out of it before it reaches full (or close to full) duration.

For your cd's, I personally use DRW as a dps boost if I know I am going to be relatively safe for the next 90 seconds, or I will often use it as a defensive (Bats on tortos comes to mind or popping drw and then army for a nice damage reduction, etc.). Think of IBF as your major preventative CD. It's value becomes strongly diminished if you use it after you have already taken decent damage, in those situations its better to use VB, if a few DS's + RT are not enough on their own. AMS should be used to soak large magic damage spells or to prevent debuffs from being applied to yourself (Think ionization or static burst on Jin'Rok).

At the end of the day, keep reading the guides, forum posts, etc and keep playing. You will learn when to use what and all that a time goes on. Hope something helped in their.

Edited July 10, 2013 by Drafty53

[Shine 144]

One thing caught my eye here.

You say you use your death runes almost rightaway. I'd advise having two in reserve in case you take some burst damage for easier recovery. DS timing is a key factor if you want to be comfortable to heal. Don't blow it all when it comes available and make use of the fact it scales from damage intake.

Try to keep a pair of Deaths or U+F in reserve all the time so you can react easily. But always keep runes regenerating. Blow the pair you have in reserve when the next pair is ~80-90% refreshed for the rune regeneration continuity.

Ye I was wondering about that. Someone gave me the advise to keep a blood rune and use all deaths, but I was starting to think the other way around might be a tad more efficient. I will try to adjust my rotation accordingly.

A couple things. One of the main reasons why you might be having threat issues is that your drastically below the hit and exp caps. They are both at 7.5% and your at at like 1.5% on each. Getting hit/exp capped will help a TON with threat generation and maintaining it. It also helps with survival because your rune strikes will never miss causing your tier 5 to ALWAYS have a chance to proc. It will also prevent disease application from failing which may hurt initial threat generation.

This is a tip I was kinda hoping to get. tbh I never really got the full grasp of capping stats. I understand what it means, but I've always just prioritised my main stats and hoped for the best. I will go and adjust my gemming/reforging (probably the latter to the most extent) in order to reach these hit and exp caps.

I might figure it out on my own, but how much rating would be how much percent, and how does one find out?

Personally, this is just a preference thing but unless you have Outbreak and DG binded separately as well as a bind for your macro, I wouldn't like having them always macroed together. In raids and even in some dungeons/scenarios you will often want to use one of those abilities outside of the other. For instance you might want to grab an add to bring back to the pack without wasting your outbreak cd for just one add, especially when the pack probably has diseases up already and a simple blood boild will suffice.

You are totally right, and I did not mention this, but I do have them bound seperately in my action bars. it would indeed be a waste to blow an Outbreak for a simple add, and the other way around can also arise, sometimes (mostly after some phase) I need to refresh my diseases on the boss, but it's not my agro at that moment. in these cases I use Outbreak not bound to Death Grip. Thanks for pointng it out, I had already figured it ^^

I also think that you are safe to use a crimson scourge proc on blood boil with DnD on cd even under 10 seconds. Blood boil does a decent amount of damage once vengeance gets rolling. DnD should almost always be used if its up with a crimson scourge proc, unless you will be moving the boss/mobs out of it before it reaches full (or close to full) duration.

I do this occasionally, yet I try to get as many Death and Decay out of Crimson Scourge procs as possible, if there is one thing I hate, it is to have to use a rune on Death and Decay. I know its folly and I should, but since I always have these 4 deathrunes which I use 2 at a time very neatly, its annoying to blow one of them on a Death and Decay. When I do this, I always make sure to use i.e. Rune Tap, to use the other rune aswell. I will try to give myself a bit less of a window here, maybe step back to 5 sec cd or less would make a difference.

For your cd's, I personally use DRW as a dps boost if I know I am going to be relatively safe for the next 90 seconds, or I will often use it as a defensive (Bats on tortos comes to mind or popping drw and then army for a nice damage reduction, etc.). Think of IBF as your major preventative CD. It's value becomes strongly diminished if you use it after you have already taken decent damage, in those situations its better to use VB, if a few DS's + RT are not enough on their own. AMS should be used to soak large magic damage spells or to prevent debuffs from being applied to yourself (Think ionization or static burst on Jin'Rok).

Thank's again, I was playing with Dancing Rune Weapon usage already. I found that when I use it nearly at the beginning of the fight, it will always help giving me a head start (this is not smart in all cases, but mostly it can work very well this way.) I understand the concept of using it proactively, meaning I should not use it after already having had a huge blow or 2. it increases parry chance and should therefore be used before incoming physical damage. I indeed try to use it when safe for 90 seconds, but most importantly I try to squeese in alot of strikes when its active. I noticed this burst boosts my DPS enough to satisfy me.

I still like to save it nearing the 35% or less on a boss since the copy it makes of Soul Reaper does about 50% of the damage Soul Reaper already does, this makes 2 Soul Reapers into 3 within 8 seconds.

Thank you very much for posting, I will give you an update as soon as some changes have been made.

[Tarazet 144]

Since you're progressing slightly undergeared on normal ToT, I think you've got the right idea, except I would go with the Max Stamina build instead of High Stamina and change the weighting to put Hit (7.5%) as the next priority, behind Stamina, to make sure that Rune Strike and white attacks never miss. Expertise isn't as important at this point because you don't use it as a control stat like other tanks. Runic Corruption is OK, but Rune Tap is better for getting that extra Death Strike when you need it. You'll understand when you start tanking Horridon.

Edited July 10, 2013 by Tarazet

[Tyrendorf 1]

• What changes should I make in Enchanting/Reforging/Gemming.

- First of all, you should enchant your new ring with the stam + 240.

- I don't think you should go for Max. Stam. build, since you are already using a stam trinket. More than 650k HP should be enough to tank most of the 10N content.

- I suggest you use the blue sockets for Puissant Wild Jade, instead of Solid River's Heart. And Fractured Sun's Radiance for prismatic sockets. As I can say for what you wrote, u play nicely as a DK blood, the increase in active mitigation will boost your survivability greatly,

• What pieces should I replace, and which pieces should I replace them with. (Where they drop or are bought would be nice info too.)

- I would, for sure, buy the Lao-Chin's Liquid Courage. This is a amazing trinket for DKs. With your Jade Warlord Figurine can give you +1700 mastery "passively". You can buy it from Shado Pan faction with 875 Valor Points. You can replace your Vial of Dragon's Blood what will give you substantial stam and mastery.

- Axebinder Wristguards can be purchased at shado pan assault quartermaster for 1250 Valor Points.

- You should use your bonus rolls in Lei Shen LFR, since he can drop a better weapon, trinket or leg. Twin Consorts, since you can get a head token or a better neck. etc...

Edited July 10, 2013 by Tyrendorf

[Shine 144]

Ive done a little retweeking, dunno if armory is updated yet tho.

Stam on ring is there, and hit and exp are both @ 7.50%

I replaced the Jade Warlord Figurine for now, tho I still have it, I was eager to learn what will happen to me without it.

I am currently valor capped, but I will look into buying those pieces.

For real raiding I will always equip Jade Warlord Figurine because it is still better.

Thanks for the update m8.