My only hope for the two piece is that is will take our 2nd blood rune off cd allowing a quick bt to allow a guaranteed extra death strike. It's all speculation until ptr hits though. The only thing that is for sure is the pending massive raid damage in heroic encounters.

No.



As far as all of the 2 set bonuses, ours is hands down the best and most amount absorbed and arguably done at the time when you need it the most (when you're low hp). However, it is still in a shitty spot because we have to take the spike dmg to activate the bonuses given

The way they are setting up the DK is to assist in combating the spike dmg. If you're dropping to 30%, all of the following things are automatic and within the span of 1gcd:

-WotN Proc forces you to take 20% less dmg for 8sec
-Free Rune Tap
-Free Deathstrike and subsequent Blood Shield.

I do agree that it will be shitty to have to balance the use of VB around the raid at times, but with ours being the only tank 'raid cd' that is on a 1min cd, that helps a ton. I can see that playing in a favour pretty well. I can also see ours being inferior in many ways as well (ie its not prevented dmg like a warr/paladin).

It will have good raid synergies at least. Imagine a dps cat druid going bear and popping their FR w/ the 4pc bonus while our VB is active, Healing Rain at low hp (lol shaman), Efflorescence, or a HPally's radiance. Those are just some examples that would add a significant amount of additional raid healing and such. I assume alot of changes and balances will be made during the PTR time with all of this and do not be surprised if they are changed or values are tweaked. No point in speculating for 2 pages about this though, we'll just have to wait and see.

I would still love to see AMZ able to be obtained by a Blood DK.

The window in which 2P triggers and WotN does is too narrow to be of any real use.
Chances of triggering 2P and not WotN will be low considering the damage mob will hits us for.

Yes is another cool thing, but I don't see it as fixing anything.

PS. specially looking at Rune Tap here

I am not sure how we are getting a free death strike out of the 2pc bonus, simply because it only turns one blood rune into a death rune, not both. Effectively, the bonus would equate to half a death strike, as we would still have to burn other resources to use it.

It's effectively more than just half a death strike though. Quite often we'll have a single D/F/U rune up, but not a second one to use DS. When the 2pc procs, we instantly get a D rune. In the vast majority of cases, this will be enough to use a DS. Thanks to the mechanics of DS we're unlikely to do them within a GCD of each other, which allows time for runes to regenerate normally or through RE.

I'm mostly curious on the 4p implementation, specifically the way it'll interact with the glyph. The raid's needs during VB use may very well be different than the DK's personal needs. Since the bonus is 50% of what the DK gets, not using the glyph would mean a 7.5% health boost and 12.5% extra healing for the whole raid. With the glyph it'd be no health boost and 20% increased healing.

We might also want to think on how it interacts with a Warrior's Rallying Cry. 20% extra health on its own is nice, but upping that to 29% extra (1.2*1.075) has further positive interactions with Rune Tap and Spirit Link Totem. These interactions may not be much, but they are notable.

I'll edit in the math for the interactions between Frenzied Regeneration, Rallying Cry, Rune Tap, and Vampiric Blood. I'm assuming (and hoping) that the +% health effects are multiplicative. I'm also assuming FR doesn't grant Rage-Health conversion for the raid, but the glyph effect might become raidwide.

I did the math, but going through all the variations would make the post bigger yet not really add much worth discussing. Suffice to say that raidwide Vampiric Blood is awesome and combining it with Rallying Cry and/or Frenzied Regeneration is very powerful. If one wants to get the most out of percentage-based effects though, it is better to use unglyphed VB since the combination of higher max health and extra healing is better than just the extra healing.

I verified that the +%max health effects will stack multiplicatively. Vampiric Blood + Rallying Cry means the DK is at 138% normal health, and the raid would be at 129% of normal. Raidwide Frenzied Regeneration would increase these values to 158.7% health for the DK and 148.35% for the raid, respectively.

If the Frenzied Regeneration glyph effect does indeed pass to the raid, combining it with Vampiric Blood would mean 42.5% extra healing for the raid and 55% for the DK. Notice this isn't multiplicative since the majority of +% healing effects are additive. It's still quite powerful and I'm inclined to believe Blizz won't have the FR glyph transfer to the raid.

For shits and giggles, a 200k HP DK with unglyphed VB and the RC buff would have 276k health. Add in FR and that goes up to 317.4k. Walk into Icecrown Citadel and this becomes 412.62k.

Would have been better to just make your next Death Strike free as the 2 set bonus. Believe it or not, sometimes you get low on health with all your Runes cooling down so a single Death Rune won't help you there.

Also, the Warrior 4 set is simply amazing. They went from having already having Rallying Cry to having RC plus Divine Guardian on a 2 min CD. Vampiric Blood just doesn't compare to this at all even considering the lower CD. The only advantage we have is that using VB for raid healing purposes has less effect on our survival than if a Warrior would be saving SW for it. However, DKs still need a proper raid CD.

All in all, these set bonuses look like they weren't meant with DKs in mind anyway. It's just Blizzard's way of testing the active mitigation for the other tanks. So what do you give the tank that is already working on that model? The same as the other tanks and a small raid CD because everyone is getting it. I sincerely hope that the 2 piece isn't going to be Blizzard's excuse of dropping the Bone Shield idea altogether, either.

(I assume that the Warrior and Paladin 2 set bonuses mean we won't get another repeat of Alysrazor hatchlings because that would inflate the shields?)

That what I was thinking would be more beneficial than reset only 1 rune that for sure will force blood dks spam rune tap unless you will have another death/unholy/frost rune to use DS.

The thing is WotN procs when below 30%, 2P when below 35%. So with best scenario you will drop to 35%-31%, use if possible DS if not Rune tap, and unless you will be unlucky and wont avoid next hit push another rune tap.

Riggins idea to push DS when P2 procs abit strange, since you cant say for sure will you have another runes for it.

But right now ill say Blizz idea of p2 is completely crap and cannot be compared to lets say wars p2, will be changed soon im pretty sure for free DS or x2 death runes

I like the direction of the 2 piece, giving us something more to work with in dealing with our spike damage intake. I just find it a bit shitty that we have to be in a bad spot, or be getting crushed in order for our 2 piece to be useful. It sets a bad precedence where we need to be low health to take advantage of a bonus. If you are good at managing your runes/cooldowns, later in the tier, this 2 piece will get less and less useful, whereas the other 3 tanks 2 pieces will get better with higher iLevel items/damage for larger shields (even if marginally better).

I'm a bit miffed with the direction of the 2 pieces in terms of what Blizzard said about active mitigation as well. I understand the 4 pieces to be a model on that, but why would they talk about modeling the other tank classes more around the DK active mitigation model, and then make their 2 piece bonuses passive mitigation? (While ours is still active/reactive?) Just a bit confusing there. I guess you could argue the bear 2 piece is a bit more active, but...really? I could be totally off my rocker here, but this just seems bass ackwards.

I've also always been a strong advocate of AMZ as our raid cooldown. I play UH and love the utility of that spell. I am afraid it would push us into a niche tank role again of being the tank you take for fights with heavy elemental damage, and that is it.

It's not actually passive, all three of the other tank 2 piece bonuses are active. Active meaning you have to do something in order to use it, aside from sitting in front of the boss afk. The druid version calls for cooldown monitoring, the warrior calls for proc monitoring, the paladin calls for a shift in ability priority (judgement is last normaly). All three create a small active playstyle change for defensive purposes.

The reason it feels like "The other tank bonuses are passive.", is because we're the only tank that uses a "re-active" model rather than an "active" one. An active death knight tanking model would be if death strike provided a static blood shield based on mastery, and no healing. We'll always have that difference in play style so long as our "activity" is based on the damage we take.

I don't get this logic. Our 2p is a fail safe and vastly more powerful than the Warrior or Paladin versions. First off, it doesn't matter if we get less procs of our 2p once we outgear the content because that is not when tanks die. You die on progression where you will drop low on health and where this bonus will be useful. Why would we care if Warriors get a 15-20k (or whatever) absorb ever 5/10/15 seconds (depending on their hit/exp)? It's not going to change how people heal them nor is it going to impact their survivability by much; just let them have their fun soloing old instances with it or something.
Our bonus on the other hand has a significant chance to save us due to the fact that you should be getting a huge heal and Blood Shield by virtue of the damage it takes you to drop to sub 35% to begin with.

No, the problem with the 2p people should have is that it does not always give you a free Death Strike. If it did, I am sure there would be no complaints at all since this would be really helpful in dealing with DK spike damage. As it is though, the 2p is just too RNG. It can range from giving you absolutely nothing to saving your life by granting you a DS. There is just too much variance in it for me to call it a good set bonus (really, who would enjoy bonuses that sometimes do nothing?).

There should be something in that 2 piece that does not let your next DS miss or be avoided imo. It's still a pretty good 2 piece and I guess with higher gear level you'll innately have more hit and exp so you'll connect more DS.

They are already making DS proc the heal/BS on a miss/avoid in 4.3.

Another reactive ability might be nice, but so far it's yet another DK change that doesn't change the fact that a fully debuffed pre-nerf 25man heroic Shannox could outright kill you with a cleave/melee/dot combo before you have a chance to react to it with Death Pact or similar abilities.

If melee damage goes up as it has done so far, we can also assume that hits will be able to kill us outright before we get into the 35% range. And it has to go up, if blizzards wants to challenge healers in 391 gear.

It is my personal belief you are misleading and lack a bit of DK tank knowledge . that combo you mentioned for shannox is technically impossible to kill you if you utilize dk abilities properly .Do you have any proof of this ?
How can that combo kill you if you utilize your class`s mechanics properly and healers are not sleeping for more then 5 seconds ? And how is this 2-set bonus of T13 not perfectly in line with current dk-tank design ?reactive abilitis is what dk is all about . as riggs said it "Death Knight is almost a completely 'manual-ized' class as far as tanking goes."

The thing is swift , i was grouped with your dk a couple of times and it might be a case of missunderstanding the current dk tank design / mechanics .
Swiftstone @ Silvermoon - Game - World of Warcraft

The issue might be stacking stamina over avoidance and the fact that along with your 8 stamina gems + 2 dodge&stamina gems you also reforged 272 mastery into parry.
Death to a pre-nerf shannox combo in your case is : a) due to being a mana sponge and lacking proper avoidance ; b) due to dots on you not being reset on you c) not using /asking for cd-s when stacks don`t reset for a long period d)gemming like a druid when the blood dk is designed atm to be taking some spike damage then healing & shielding himself which requires mastery to boost the shield . stamina stacking was proven to be inferior in numerous posts.

Please reffer to the class mechanics in the OP's post as well as to the tips and mechanics greatly explained by Riggnaros (user riggins ) for further dk tank mechanics explanations / clarifications .

regards

Has there been any more info on this since they first anounced they were considering it? I'm more interested in learning how we'll deal with the (non-connecting DS refund = free extra block => non-connecting is good) issue.

So far no solution I've come accross has been elegant; obviously disconecting DS-land from DS-heal is a no-go, as it makes Exp/Hit a destructive stat. Making DS -not- refund the runes and always heal is debateable, but will make us really bad initial threat tanks and make multi-mob tanking suitably annoying. So far, only making DS always conect is elegant as a solution, but makes hit/exp almost entirely irrelevant; RS already ignores Exp.

It's quite a sticky issue.

I strongly disagree on the "vastly more powerful". It is, in pure healing done / absorb, at best the double of the warrior and paladin. But it is another mechanich tied to spike exposition where the two others have another way of smoothing incoming damage.

I'd rather have an absorb proc'ing on HS that is slight than another "when you take serious amount of damage...".


Also, I'm eagerly waiting to see if BS changes to absorb a certain percent of damage, which would help a lot.

To hell with PvP. There is no such thing as serious Blood PvP, even though there are about a million retarded people in unrated BGs playing it. Blood is a sub-standard, hopeless flag carry spec that only has a hope in hell against physical DPS that hasn't realized they're getting DSed to death. R-dru, F-dru, Holadin, Protadin and P-warr are all much better flag carriers and all have more useful mechanics to let them survive. All Blood has is Death Strike. Once anyone worth more than dogshit realizes all you have to do to a Blood is not let them melee you they evaporate like so much dust.

Blood PvP should absolutely not be a concern at this point in time. Even if it does perma-connect, it's still the least adaptable, survivable and meaningful spec we have.

Edit: Unless you were referring to the issue of having DS connect for every spec, which I'll agree is a lot more meaningful in PvP rammifications, even if current DS isn't what it used to be in 4.1. But it's no problem rolling the DS change to Blood spec alone.

I do want to dispel those illusions you have, about stamina and death knights, in Firelands.

Gemming stamina in Firelands should have nothing do with being a "mana sponge" reguardless of stamina or mastery, you as a death knight tank are responsible for the majority of your healing. If your "sponging heals" because of stamina gems, your playing incorrectly.

Pre-Nerf Shannox
Even before Shannox was nerfed, as a death knight I'm responsible for the majority of the healing done in the fight. This should be the norm for any fight, were the death knight is constantly tanking.

The deal with taking spike damage as death knights, is that if you can't live through the intial hits, you can't use death strike. Which then means you can't use mastery. No amount of mastery wil save you if you die before the opportunity to death strikie shows itself.

Riggins did say that he was using mastery in Firelands, and that it was still probably the best choice. However, every other death knight that was tanking in heroic Firelands (pre-nerf) expressed concerns about dieing before being able to react to the damage. If your EH is actually being challenged, stamina is the answer. In the end you needed to find the combination that works best for you and your healers. I will say that having less then 3 times the bosses' "average" auto attack (75k x 3=225k) was a recipie for disaster.


Personally I made the assumption that the change would be tied to improved death strike. I can't really see it being made universal for those very pvp reasons.

I assure you i live under no illusion . Stamina stacking and Firelands simply does not go hand in hand .period.
Aside from not understanding your current gemming nor your specc completely (especially skipping the points in improved blood tap ) this is a topic discussing end-game tanking as dk , optimal choices , optimal speccs .
Any missleading info , after being proven wrong should be disregarded. It`s a place to draw information for an "optimal"/universally-accepted specc/talent trees/glyph choice , not a place to give people wrong directions.
Ofc speccing/gemming/glyphing especially for a certain progression fight is a different story but stacking stamina is..no, just no. Could you give me an example of ONE boss in current tier on which it is more benefficial to stack stamina on , or as you said it "If your EH is actually being challenged, stamina is the answer" . it does not add up . i might be incorrect although i highly doubt it. please, explain your stamina choice .i cant undertsand how loosing a TON of avoidance over stamina is prefferable.

You need some avoidance to be able to mittigate SOME of the hits . you can`t just chug stamina and expect results or blame healers for your death cause you took 6 subsequent hits in the face and didn`t dodge any .

There have been people testing end-game combos with stamina/mastery/avoidance satcking (as dk ofc ) . Those people posted their feedback on this or other forums and from that feedback of people who DID clear end-game content , a lot of usefull data was provided and after it all cooled down , after all the data was ready was analyzed , an "optimal" priority of stats was pretty mcuh established : Mastery > Dodge > Parry > Exp > Hit > Haste > Crit .

look at WoW Gearscore Rankings :: WoWProgress - World of Warcraft Rankings and History , consider the gemmming/speccing/reforging and stat priorities of high-end dk tanks like Wakez, Riggnaros, Januzz, Alurez and re-consider your choices or share with the community an explanation of your choices. maybe they /we all all wrong and live ,as you so freely stated under "illusions" .

Looking at your gemmign choice i would say you choose stam > expertize > hit > mastery . am i correct ?

It doesn't matter which set bonus ultimately absorbs more damage. Healer mana is 100% irrelevant. All the Warrior/Paladin bonus would do is save healer mana if it would matter - but it doesn't. Our set bonus does not save healer mana but will save your life instead (if it gets changed to a free Death Strike anyway) so I don't get why you'd want the useless 10k absorb shields every 10 seconds or something instead.

The "will" is really really optimistic.
Our bonus might save our life given that we have either a FU rune available, or Blood Tap up (but a bonus that implies using a CD to be effecient... Really ?). Also, it might be wasted if for any reason it procs when a Blood rune finished to recharge, screwing our Blade Barrière uptime in the process, forcing us to chose between an emergency DS or refreshing BB asap.

Seriously, this bonus is crap in the philosophy (not smoothing taken damage) and in the design...

Re-read this thread starting from around page 2. The reasoning behind stamina gearing in heroics (pre-nerf), wether or not hit/exp is worth it, and how we should handle gearing in a world of intense spike damage was discussed. I'm speaking from the perspective of doing 6/7 heroic 25 bosses before they were nerfed. Shannox, Beth'tilac, last phase Ryolith, Baleroc, and Domo could all provide EH challenges to death knights.

Copy and pasting another death knights talents and gearing is usually not a good idea. There are specific reasons behind everything, and your not tanking with the same raid group as they are. Also re-working your talents for farm content (especially nerfed) is common sense. The most important thing with a farm boss is killing it faster so you can move on.