I get that double Death Striking and then putting up Bone Shield after a huge burst sounds like a good idea because you can pretty much count on Bone Shield to increase that huge shield by another 20% without losing charges until the boss actually breaks through the shield. Let's say that double dipped shield is worth 2x50k absorbs and the boss melees for 30k. Bone Shield alone would increase the shield to 120k before it's charges are being consumed which is pretty nice since that means you can take 4 non-avoided swings from the boss before your bubble breaks. In the worst case of 0% avoidance that would take 4x2.4 = 9.6 seconds which is a lot of time for your healers to stabilize you. By then atleast 1 pair of FU runes will have cooled down so you could keep stacking on the shield - except I am not convinced that doing so is such a good idea to begin with. At this point in time you have not taken any melee damage at all so the next Death Strike would be a min heal one. Adding normal avoidance (around 30% is easy to get without gearing for it) here would ensure you could even go longer without taking damage at all, true. But again, is it really such a good idea to use t on min heal Death Strikes? If the answer to that is "yes" then stacking avoidance would be good in that scenario. If the answer to that is "no" then stacking avoidance does not matter because you want to wait until you can get bigger-than-minimum shield anyway without sitting on unused Runes anyway.

Again, stacking up min heal Blood Shields until you can take fully absorbed boss swings even while OTing would take a while. Such a strategy is niche enough that someone, somewhere at some point will probably try to pull of something like this (imagine a boss like Maloriak where you need 2 tanks but instead of releasing adds continually you only need to tank in P2) but in reality I just don't see how using min Blood Shields is going to give you more damage mitigation in the long run than if you used them for bigger Blood Shields when it's actually your time to tank unless you absolutely know that you have more than enough time to stack up a huge Blood Shield in the beginning (i.e. it's not a good idea to use your 2 Death Strikes on Halfus because it takes 5 seconds for the other dragons to be freed and then counting on avoidance to keep that shield up but if you know you got 60+ seconds to stack it up then by all means go for it).

Unlike scenario 2 I can see scenario 1 play out more often in actual gameplay. That said, it still needs to be proven that double dipping on the Blood Shield isn't actually more beneficial for the mastery stacker than the avoidance stacker (or vice versa). Personally my money is on the mastery stacker because it doesn't take much avoidance to keep up the shield until your FU Runes are available to be used on a non-min Blood Shield.


Wow, that is low. That means you can't even double dip on huge bursts. :/ I was expecting a cap for sure but I would have hoped for something around 75% of max health.

Assuming 200% Mastery, you would need to take 110% of your total health as damage within 5 seconds in order to hit the Blood Shield cap.
We still don't know how the next tier will look like in terms of gear, boss damage or what our avoidance levels will be at with the possibility of "boss expertise". It is a valid concern though.

There's something wrong with this test, intuitively. Perhaps it's because the damage you'd have taken couldn't have really pushed the upper-bounds.

How do you mean? The damage taken made the shield wear off prematurely. Total damage absorbed this way was never above 33% of total health, even if Blood Shield was supposedly stacked to absorb 200% of total health.

Perhaps there is more to it, such as it working differently if above the minimum heal stacked several times.

About the blood shield stacking, i think the idea itself will not work as it is.

one of the two will happen while you try to stack 2 shields.

1. you wait 5 seconds to make your shield stronger and better and by that time you get damage, the first shield is most likely gone or almost gone from that 1-2 hits so the amount that will be moved to the second shield will be really low to nothing.

2. you don't wait 5 seconds to rebuild your shield and waste your runes on sub-optimal shield which will result in more damage taken since for example 50k shield + 15k (for not waiting) aka 65k shield is still less than 50k shield --- 20k damage taken after the shield is broken than 30k shield aka 80k shield.

i've posted a thread on the ptr forums asking blizzard about their design and you are welcome to give it some of your ideas and maybe just maybe blizzard will look into it and make it abit smarter shield.

Blood shield stacking - Forums - World of Warcraft

What addons were you using? Recount bugs shield and counts absorbs as healing, so that could be where some of the missing absorbs went. If the shields never outlasted the damage, then even 1 shield at a time at minimum heals would absorb a lot more than that.

I'm patching the latest build on PTR and then i'll try to log some fights and post em here.

I think it comes down to how you utilize the shield. Currently you wait for the damage to make the best shield, but in a stacking scenario, you can wait for the damage and use your DS runes twice for one big shield to absorb a big spike in damage.

Using the old method of spacing DS out 5 seconds to keep even refreshing most likely won't be the best way for it to be used anymore, unless you're getting even amount of spike damage at that 5 second intervals.

And you shouldn't lose the damage done to you in the 5 second span unless you were slow to place the initial shield. The GCD shouldn't let that damage drop off, but that could depend on latency. Another thing I'll test when I jump on the PTR soon.

Jeebs, unless I'm misunderstanding how Wakez did his testing (though granted it wasn't explained in detail) then what you're describing doesn't seem possible. If Wakez was able to repeatedly DS and stack to what should have been a 106195 shield (that ended up being much less) I don't see how he would have done that while simultaneously having the Warrior beat on him to satisfy the conditions you're claiming.

It seems like you are suggesting that the new way of using DS be to always hit them back to back then sit for 16 seconds without doing another so you can do it again. That sounds like a fantastic way to make your damage intake into a rollercoaster while simultaneously hitting the 33% of health shield cap constantly.

I'm assuming he was having the warrior hit him so he could stack shields, and even his description is misleading. He said he stacked to 106k, then he said it dropped off due to damage, then he said it was supposed to be 200% of his health.. at 126k, the 106 is 84%, so where is the 200% coming from. And the amount absorbed... was that total, or biggest hit absorbed?

I think we need tests against mobs that hit for a lot more. The cap, if there is one, could just be limited to the amount of damage taken.

As to the uses of it.. I think the old method is going to remain the norm, but for mobs that do periods of bigger damage, it might be more beneficial to stack the shields prior to that big damage period, and then go back into a normal rotation. For instance Magmaw. You know the mangle is coming, and damage is pretty low prior to it, so you can stack 2, absorb the first chunk with cooldowns and then let runes refresh while you're in the damage phase. It won't be good for every boss, but it will have its uses. And you can always use ERW for one period to get back to normal rotation without missing a beat.

The 84% absorb was an example I had from my tests, 200% was just a hypothetical example.

All tests were conducted in the following manner:

Me hitting the Warrior, presumably stacking my shield to 84% of my total health, only through minimum heals, thus the warrior was not hitting me at all. Once the shield was fully stacked (to 84% of my total health, or 12 Death Strikes without Blood Shield wearing off), the Warrior started attacking me and broke my shield before the duration of Blood Shield ended.

Data was gathered from the real combat log, checking all damage absorbed from attacks, such as "Warrior's attack hits Wake for X (Y Absorbed)." no addon used.

Sadly, it's far worse than that. With the new PTR build, rolling shields are gone completely. The duration on blood shield does not refresh when you apply a new one, and it is difficult to be 100% certain, but it looks like the additional shield does not stack during the remaining duration either - i.e. it's back to like it is on live.

Hopefully this is a bug.