[Archived] Blood Death Knight 5.4

[Reniat 23]

So the situation you are painting is the following:

You're having multiple hits, but not heavy strikes as to use burst healing.

The exact opposite. I'm painting frequent areas of burst healing. Full hits can easily take you from 100% health to 40% health, or from 60% health to dead. Lets say you have a DoT that is ticking on you (a la ragnaros) that ticks for 20% of your health. You get take a tick for 20% followed by a melee hit for say 50%. now you're at 30% and you death strike, giving you a shield for your healers while they get you back to full.This all happens very quickly (in the span of <3 seconds) so AT MOST you would get only 9% of your health back through conversion. That would require unhuman precision on placing conversion ticks, and in practice you will be lucky to get 2 ticks off. You and your healers are dealing with 60-80% of your health at a time, so tell me how 6% of your health through conversion makes a big enough difference to lose the life saving ability of death pact? Lets say you are bursted down to 40%, then get a dot tick for 20% and your healers are in the middle of moving to avoid a mechanic (such as engulfing flame from again, ragnaros). Hitting death strike and death pact will allow you to almost top yourself off without having the healers help at all, meaning you didn't die to the healers being occupied after a burst. death pact can save your life, whereas conversion will not. at least not for burst damage (which is the only damage that really matters in progression)

[Flesh 1]

The exact opposite. I'm painting frequent areas of burst healing. Full hits can easily take you from 100% health to 40% health, or from 60% health to dead. Lets say you have a DoT that is ticking on you (a la ragnaros) that ticks for 20% of your health. You get take a tick for 20% followed by a melee hit for say 50%. now you're at 30% and you death strike, giving you a shield for your healers while they get you back to full.This all happens very quickly (in the span of <3 seconds) so AT MOST you would get only 9% of your health back through conversion. That would require unhuman precision on placing conversion ticks, and in practice you will be lucky to get 2 ticks off. You and your healers are dealing with 60-80% of your health at a time, so tell me how 6% of your health through conversion makes a big enough difference to lose the life saving ability of death pact? Lets say you are bursted down to 40%, then get a dot tick for 20% and your healers are in the middle of moving to avoid a mechanic (such as engulfing flame from again, ragnaros). Hitting death strike and death pact will allow you to almost top yourself off without having the healers help at all, meaning you didn't die to the healers being occupied after a burst. death pact can save your life, whereas conversion will not. at least not for burst damage (which is the only damage that really matters in progression)

Ok´let's see:

We've been reduced to a 30% health suddenly due to a 50% damage strike plus a 20% damage DOT and healers are on holiday

5 charged death strike means 40% damage received healed so if received 70% of the damage means 28% healing plus let's say 150% mastery shield which gives us 42% shield.So we're in a situation with 58% health and a 42% shield, which is equivalent to 100% health. Let's keep on with the conversion to recover some health while the shield is up. Of course, you don't need unhuman precision to place conversion ticks, in this case you just activate it and let it heal you until you run out of power. And it's not only three seconds that we have to use conversion. It's those three seconds and the duration of our shield plus our health.Let's say we activate conversion after we used death strike, which is very improbable, as we know the phases of the boss and we activate it with the first tick, but let's say we activate it later. We hit death strike plus conversion, so we're having 100% health which is 5 more ticks of 20% damage that we can handle, so 5 seconds. That gives us 15% more health, so 115% health in total, which should be more because we probably activated conversion earlier, when we know we're to receive continuous heavy damage, but let's leave it like this.

Let's see what happens with death pact. 20% damage healed with death strike means14% plus 21% shield and 50% death pact.

This is 30+14+50=94% health + 21% shield makes a total of... 115% health in total!!!

Ok, this might be more because we may have one charge in our death strike, but we're in the worst situation, just like in the other case.

Now, let's increase mastery to 200%

Runic power spec: 30% + 28%=58% + 56% shield= 114%. In the following 5 seconds health will be 14% + 15% from conversion= 29%, which allows us to have one more second for conversion to heal another 3%, so total health is 114% + 18% conversion = 132% total health

Death rune spec: 30+14+50=94% health + 28% shield makes a total of 122% total health :S

But these numbers don't really make de difference. The real advantage is that Runic power spec will be ready for another heavy damage wave in less than 30 seconds!!

Edit:

by the way, using vampiric blood also increases the shield, so, with 150% mastery it would be 30+35% health and 52.5% shield =117.5% +22.5% (6 seconds with vampiric blood)=140%, which will leave you one more second for conversion to heal another 3.75%, which is 143.75% health (8 seconds of survival without healers)

vampiric blood in death rune spec results into overheal, so maximum health you're going to get is 30+17.5+62.5=100% (overheal) + 26.25 shield=126.25% health (7 seconds of survival without healers)

Edited September 16, 2012 by Flesh

[Wake 4]

Sounds to me like you're comparing apples and oranges.

These two talents serve quite different purposes from the very start. Sure, both contribute to the Death Knight's survivability, but in no way are they comparable against each other in a situation basis. Sustained healing over time and burst healing are two completely different things.

The reason most people are going to choose Death Pact is because the main struggle for Blood is the amount of burst damage we deal with.

Conversion is going to be great on certain encounters for sure, but my experience with the beta raid testing tells me Death Pact will win out in most cases, simply because of how damage is designed to work on tanks here. Not to mention how well Death Pact works with Purgatory.

[Reniat 23]

Ok´let's see:

We've been reduced to a 30% health suddenly due to a 50% damage strike plus a 20% damage DOT and healers are on holiday

That was one example of a place where death pact saved your life, not the only example.

Of course, you don't need unhuman precision to place conversion ticks, in this case you just activate it and let it heal you until you run out of power. And it's not only three seconds that we have to use conversion. It's those three seconds and the duration of our shield plus our health.Let's say we activate conversion after we used death strike, which is very improbable, as we know the phases of the boss and we activate it with the first tick, but let's say we activate it later. We hit death strike plus conversion, so we're having 100% health which is 5 more ticks of 20% damage that we can handle, so 5 seconds

Again, in order to have a 5 stack death strike you would need to have waited through some other burst damage to get there, forcing your healers to recover from the burst without a death striike. You can't just magically get 5 stacks without waiting for it. Also I'm not quite sure I understand your arguement here. Are you saying that since you are at full health (100%) we could take 5 hits at 20% and be using conversion the entire time? If so, that's not realistic. As we've already gone over countless times, boss hits hit for a LOT more than you realize in progression content. A full hit with no cooldowns on <20% 25H morchok (no nerf) will hit you for 237,000 damage. Realistically you will have a cooldown available as well as a death strike, so say bone shield reduces that to 190k, which is much more managable. Then you death strike after this burst (and you won't have 5 stacks since you had to use death strike for the last burst ~4 seconds ago) to recover and you get healed up IMMEDIATELY. When you have a chance to be hit for 80% of your health, your healers have to keep you at 100%. This means you will have very little time to get a conversion tick off, and even if you do it wouldn't make a difference.

When you drop to say 30%. You get healed to full, and your healers don't heal you exactly to full. When they need to top you off, they will spam larger heals on you until topped off, so there will be some overheal going from like 86% health to 100% with 10% overheal. In other words, your conversion may not have even mattered. lets see with and without:

You burst to 30%, you death strike (assuming ~3 stacks) and get to 50%, and two healers each hit you with a large heal for 30% each, giving you 20% overheal. This all happened with 1 GCD (so around 2 seconds counting latency/reaction) so you have at best 2 ticks of conversion. that's 6% of your health. They are already overhealing by 10%, so they aren't going to notice that 6% at all. And you mentioned vampiric blood. That would make it 7% of your health. It's like when you and a group of friends are all trying to pay for dinner and you holding up a dime and saying "will this help?"

The real advantage is that Runic power spec will be ready for another heavy damage wave in less than 30 seconds!!

Again i have to ask what content you are running. There is no place i can think of where burst damage is 30 seconds apart. Try anywhere from 6 seconds to 1.8 seconds apart.

vampiric blood in death rune spec results into overheal, so maximum health you're going to get is 30+17.5+62.5=100% (overheal) + 26.25 shield=126.25% health (7 seconds of survival without healers)

Are you only looking at the DoT for 20%? you can't get 7 seconds of survival without the healers. That's not realistic. Your shield caps equal to your health, and when bosses hit for more than 50% of your HP, you've only got 1 hit without any damage with the next hit being partially absorbed. that's a max shield placed and gone in under 4 seconds. And you're never gonna get a max shield in practice if you're actively being hit, regardless of how many stacks you've got.

[Flesh 1]

Sounds to me like you're comparing apples and oranges.

These two talents serve quite different purposes from the very start. Sure, both contribute to the Death Knight's survivability, but in no way are they comparable against each other in a situation basis. Sustained healing over time and burst healing are two completely different things.

The reason most people are going to choose Death Pact is because the main struggle for Blood is the amount of burst damage we deal with.

Conversion is going to be great on certain encounters for sure, but my experience with the beta raid testing tells me Death Pact will win out in most cases, simply because of how damage is designed to work on tanks here. Not to mention how well Death Pact works with Purgatory.

Man, I'm not explaining again. Please read and then discuss.

That was one example of a place where death pact saved your life, not the only example.

Again, in order to have a 5 stack death strike you would need to have waited through some other burst damage to get there, forcing your healers to recover from the burst without a death striike. You can't just magically get 5 stacks without waiting for it. Also I'm not quite sure I understand your arguement here. Are you saying that since you are at full health (100%) we could take 5 hits at 20% and be using conversion the entire time? If so, that's not realistic. As we've already gone over countless times, boss hits hit for a LOT more than you realize in progression content. A full hit with no cooldowns on <20% 25H morchok (no nerf) will hit you for 237,000 damage. Realistically you will have a cooldown available as well as a death strike, so say bone shield reduces that to 190k, which is much more managable. Then you death strike after this burst (and you won't have 5 stacks since you had to use death strike for the last burst ~4 seconds ago) to recover and you get healed up IMMEDIATELY. When you have a chance to be hit for 80% of your health, your healers have to keep you at 100%. This means you will have very little time to get a conversion tick off, and even if you do it wouldn't make a difference.

When you drop to say 30%. You get healed to full, and your healers don't heal you exactly to full. When they need to top you off, they will spam larger heals on you until topped off, so there will be some overheal going from like 86% health to 100% with 10% overheal. In other words, your conversion may not have even mattered. lets see with and without:

You burst to 30%, you death strike (assuming ~3 stacks) and get to 50%, and two healers each hit you with a large heal for 30% each, giving you 20% overheal. This all happened with 1 GCD (so around 2 seconds counting latency/reaction) so you have at best 2 ticks of conversion. that's 6% of your health. They are already overhealing by 10%, so they aren't going to notice that 6% at all. And you mentioned vampiric blood. That would make it 7% of your health. It's like when you and a group of friends are all trying to pay for dinner and you holding up a dime and saying "will this help?"

Again i have to ask what content you are running. There is no place i can think of where burst damage is 30 seconds apart. Try anywhere from 6 seconds to 1.8 seconds apart.

Are you only looking at the DoT for 20%? you can't get 7 seconds of survival without the healers. That's not realistic. Your shield caps equal to your health, and when bosses hit for more than 50% of your HP, you've only got 1 hit without any damage with the next hit being partially absorbed. that's a max shield placed and gone in under 4 seconds. And you're never gonna get a max shield in practice if you're actively being hit, regardless of how many stacks you've got.

Ok, you know what? I'm tired. Everything is explained in the former posts and if someone wants to try it, there it is. It's working pretty well for me, raiding 10 man normal/hero DS.

[Tehstool 10]

Your numbers are good but you mistook the approach. Who's talking about using conversion for burst healing? I spoke about using conversion to help replenish your health after using a 5 charged death strike, while the shield remains, although you can also use it in situations of sustained heavy damage.

With the rotation you use, it is impossible to get a 5 charged death strike, as you'll spam it all the time.

My rotation is diseases, spam heart strike and blood boil when procs. You seldom use a death strike (at the begining of the rotation or when no burst damage is expected) to get some death runes and rune strike when no runes available, so you can keep using heart strike. Thus, when receiving burst damage, you can use a 5 charged death strike which gives you burst healing and a great shield, and then you apply conversion to replenish life while the shield is up, but the burst healing is a fully charged death stirke.

How often can you use death pact? 2 minutes CD. if receive burst damage after using it you're dead

On the other hand, in less than a minute you'll have another 5 charges for your death strike, and if you're using this for burst healing, conversion is more useful than death pact, as you can use it a lot more often and in many different situations.

The lines in bold make your response hard to understand. I also fail to understand how rarely using death strike would provide you with more heals than actually using death strike. As you know your physical absorption shield stacks meaning the faster you get those runes on CD the more death strikes you will get and the more overall healing you will receive. Also why wouldn't you use death strike at the beginning? the boss usually melees you and that first death strike will mitigate some of the damage. You also failed to actually dismiss or acknowledge what I said in my post. I also do hope you understand where my math was coming from and saw what my final number was. I have approximately 264k hp on my blood dk and my calculations ended up with 110880 MINIMAL (presuming you have decent gear, if not the same can be applied to lower geared people just on a lower scale.) healing received from not using conversion to replenish the same amount of hp that death pact would. Reason being is that you could've suffered damage previously to your death strike making it heal for more or somehow your conversion could wear off because you might not have enough RP to sustain it therefore costing more runic power that could be used on rune strikes which proc your 5th tier talent. now

110880 / 264000 = .42 so a minimum of 42% health heals (should be more as well since you take damage constantly throughout the fight) (not burst but as conversion isn't burst they can be compared) Just from not taking conversion while yous till have the 50% from your minion.

Man, I'm not explaining again. Please read and then discuss.

Ok, you know what? I'm tired. Everything is explained in the former posts and if someone wants to try it, there it is. It's working pretty well for me, raiding 10 man normal/hero DS.

Would you mind linking your DK here so I can see how well you are doing? Edited September 17, 2012 by Tehstool

[Reniat 23]

Would you mind linking your DK here so I can see how well you are doing?

Theorycrafting shouldn't be based on his armory. While logs would be helpful in trying to see just what he is talking about, I don't want this discussion to devolve into "my DK has done more than your DK", since that argument can't be the basis of solid theorycrafting.

[Guest IwishiwasOP]

In regards to the AOE rotations can someone clairfy and make it a tab bit clear with use of runes

[Guest IwishiwasOP]

In regards to the AOE rotations can someone clairfy and make it a tab bit clear with use of runes can anyone explain?

[Tehstool 10]

Theorycrafting shouldn't be based on his armory. While logs would be helpful in trying to see just what he is talking about, I don't want this discussion to devolve into "my DK has done more than your DK", since that argument can't be the basis of solid theorycrafting.

If he links his DK we can check out his wow-heroes for said info.

[Tehstool 10]

In regards to the AOE rotations can someone clairfy and make it a tab bit clear with use of runes can anyone explain?

If you specced into unholy blight you should pop that to inflict all the aoe targets with diseases or if you specced into roiling blood and have outbreak up, put outbreak then blood boil to help gain aggro and spread your diseases if you specced into roiling blood. After I have sufficient aggro from blood boil, death strike, or heart strike, I just revert back to single target tanking (on groups of 3 or less) and switch targets every so often to hold aggro because it's our active mitigation and if needed pop CDs. On bigger groups I essentially just do the same thing.

*I usually pop Death and Decay to gain aggro on the adds first.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Tehstool

[Tehstool 10]

The lines in bold make your response hard to understand. I also fail to understand how rarely using death strike would provide you with more heals than actually using death strike. As you know your physical absorption shield stacks meaning the faster you get those runes on CD the more death strikes you will get and the more overall healing you will receive. Also why wouldn't you use death strike at the beginning? the boss usually melees you and that first death strike will mitigate some of the damage. You also failed to actually dismiss or acknowledge what I said in my post. I also do hope you understand where my math was coming from and saw what my final number was. I have approximately 264k hp on my blood dk and my calculations ended up with 110880 MINIMAL (presuming you have decent gear, if not the same can be applied to lower geared people just on a lower scale.) healing received from not using conversion to replenish the same amount of hp that death pact would. Reason being is that you could've suffered damage previously to your death strike making it heal for more or somehow your conversion could wear off because you might not have enough RP to sustain it therefore costing more runic power that could be used on rune strikes which proc your 5th tier talent. now

110880 / 264000 = .42 so a minimum of 42% health heals (should be more as well since you take damage constantly throughout the fight) (not burst but as conversion isn't burst they can be compared) Just from not taking conversion while yous till have the 50% from your minion.

Would you mind linking your DK here so I can see how well you are doing?

Remember, I posted this to demonstrate the RP to health conversion (no, not the talent) rate for with and without conversion. As you can see it was pretty even before calculating in any varying factors like if you take more damage your death strike will be more potent therefore making it even better than conversion. My calculations were also based under the presumption that you get a perfect conversion off, which in practice might not always be the case.

[Tehstool 10]

Correction: I have 280k hp fully buffed.

[Guest Jacob]

Can anyone confirm for me whether or not death strike heals and/or triggers a shield if it misses or is parried? I'm seeing sources saying both on the internet; does anyone know for certain?

If it does, is there any reason to take accuracy over avoidance?

[Vlad 411]

Can anyone confirm for me whether or not death strike heals and/or triggers a shield if it misses or is parried? I'm seeing sources saying both on the internet; does anyone know for certain?

If it does, is there any reason to take accuracy over avoidance?

Having just tested, it seems to still heal/shield if it misses. Haven't had a parry in a very long time attacking the Raider's Target Dummy with 1% expertise.

[Guest Anastasa]

Hi Hi,

Loving the site. Lots of good info. So far it feels like Dk is the tank of mop, (hardcore tanky fan here). My Dk has survived things that would have flattened my other tanks, no contest. Still working on leveling the monk though, but so far the others dont seem to hold a candle to the Blood DK's with this Active mitagation thing.

But I did want to say with the recent release fo the raiding content, I am pretty disappointed with the 2h weapons. I mean we have what, One 2h sword from the vault, and a 2h axe? And both of them were dps-y if i remember right, not tanky at all. And aside from those two, its nothing but blues.

Hopefully we get more choice soon, because I really hope it doesnt turn into farming 1 raid boss once a week praying for a drop. = (

[Goil 3]

Having just tested, it seems to still heal/shield if it misses. Haven't had a parry in a very long time attacking the Raider's Target Dummy with 1% expertise.

I was just having a look at the stat priorities on AskMrRobot and found that in the PVE:Hit/Exp build it says that since Death Strike cannot be parried they use a soft cap for it and rather focus on hit. I wasn't aware of this but if so would like to know what the expertise soft cap rating is and what advantages reaching it has.

Also just to repeat the question by Jacob, if Death Strike procs the heal/shield when it misses and threat is a non issue, why would you take hit/exp over dodge/parry?

[Guest TwoLæt]

Thanks Every one, even Flesh and Reniat ! I would like to know about any soft caps/hard caps for Parry/Dodge .. I understand ALL the mastery i can get! But remembering a Cata post about reaching 15% Parry/Dodge. Whats it now in MOP ?

[Vlad 411]

There's no cap for Parry or Dodge. Once you're stacking Mastery, the more Dodge/Parry you can get (provided that they're balanced), the better.

Regarding the value of Hit/Expertise, they are important not because of Death Strike itself (since it can't be parried, and misses still heal/shield you), but because of Rune Strike. You need to hit your Rune Strikes to proc your Tier 5 talent of choice, which in turn gives you more runes for Death Strike.

Also, they help for threat, but this is much less of an issue.

[Guest Fitz]

One Thing I've noticed is that death siphon is actually useful if used carefully. You can use in sets of two and allow your stacking proc to build up making your next DS more potent. Essentially it's a net gain since you'll end up with the same amount of heals and absorb from DS plus the heals from 2 siphons. with proper monitoring (which isn't all that difficult) it works well

[Guest Zelenia]

With patch 5.1 live, I am wondering how the gear list will be updated. The ability to upgrade gear 8 levels could drastically increase the amount of items in the list. My main concern is the weapons, not only because up upgrading, because I have a 471 (1 upgrade) Lightbreaker Greatsword which has mastery and Expertise as it's secondary stats and the next upgrade in logical order would be Startshatter RF (476) which has crit and expertise. Mastery is our #1 secondary stat and Crit would be our worst secondary stat so i am wondering if the base damage, STR, and stam upgrades and slight secondary stat amount upgrades on a 476 would be worth replacing crit for mastery on a 471 weapon. I know i could upgrade the starshatter also but the might be of greater use for a while longer before i use them on upgrades. Would this replacement be worth the mastery loss at 476, 480 (1 upgrade), and 484 (2 upgrades).

Maybe the gear list should be ordered not by ilvl but instead by a score.

I am wondering this only because MaxDPS.com has the DK weapons listed so oddly, basically whichever one has more mastery wins, and other then my BiS i do not know which items would be more beneficial.

[Vlad 411]

With patch 5.1 live, I am wondering how the gear list will be updated. The ability to upgrade gear 8 levels could drastically increase the amount of items in the list. My main concern is the weapons, not only because up upgrading, because I have a 471 (1 upgrade) Lightbreaker Greatsword which has mastery and Expertise as it's secondary stats and the next upgrade in logical order would be Startshatter RF (476) which has crit and expertise. Mastery is our #1 secondary stat and Crit would be our worst secondary stat so i am wondering if the base damage, STR, and stam upgrades and slight secondary stat amount upgrades on a 476 would be worth replacing crit for mastery on a 471 weapon. I know i could upgrade the starshatter also but the might be of greater use for a while longer before i use them on upgrades. Would this replacement be worth the mastery loss at 476, 480 (1 upgrade), and 484 (2 upgrades).

Maybe the gear list should be ordered not by ilvl but instead by a score.

I am wondering this only because MaxDPS.com has the DK weapons listed so oddly, basically whichever one has more mastery wins, and other then my BiS i do not know which items would be more beneficial.

We are working on this. Some of our gearing up pages are not fully up to date in the BiS department, which we are fixing. And we have an update going in for this that just adds the 1/2 and 2/2 upgraded items there for you to view. It'll be cool, you'll see :)

[Zelenia 0]

We are working on this. Some of our gearing up pages are not fully up to date in the BiS department, which we are fixing. And we have an update going in for this that just adds the 1/2 and 2/2 upgraded items there for you to view. It'll be cool, you'll see

Sounds awesome! I know it is generally early into 5.1, but is their an estimated update date?

Also, will the BiS without upgrades become available before or will this be an all-in-one package?

[Vlad 411]

Sounds awesome! I know it is generally early into 5.1, but is their an estimated update date?

Also, will the BiS without upgrades become available before or will this be an all-in-one package?

https://www.icy-veins.com/blood-death-knight-wow-pve-tank-gear-loot-best-in-slot - check the non-BiS tables.

BiS should be updated "soon".

[Zelenia 0]

http://www.icy-veins...ot-best-in-slot - check the non-BiS tables.

BiS should be updated "soon".

I like the upgrade updates. How about stat priority, Will that ever be factored in?