That's some pretty great changes, especially for Blood. I wonder if the removal of Runic Power Mastery from Frost Presence means it is gone for good or if they will now make it a glyph for us instead. I would be quite happy if the latter was the case.

If they wanted to stop weapon swapping, it would be a pretty simple fix: Just make MotFW and it's equivalent only work after 10 secs (or something) when you equip a new weapon. Basically like how Feral T13 works right now for Frenzied Regen.

Interesting UI change this patch. Death Strike's icon now displays the number of Scent of Blood stacks while on the action bar.



This gives us an easier way to see how many stacks of SoB we have. Since there are currently no addons allowed in Beta, it's a pretty solid improvement to the default UI.



Bastion of Glory / WoG for paladins also recieved the same treatment, so I'm sure there are more cases where this UI change has been / will be applied.

Oh I like it. It was hard a bit for me to look on buffs, health bar me and enemy and cooldowns on bars in one time

According to this post, bosses ignore vastly more avoidance in MoP than they do in Cata. With -1.5% parry, dodge and miss per level above you we are looking at 13.5% less avoidance against boss mobs. That is pretty huge compared to now (which is like -1.8% IIRC).

On the flipside, Strength apparently gives more Parry rating in MoP than it does now but it is probably not going to compensate for that completely. In terms of gearing, this pretty much rules out avoidance stacking in the first tier atleast. Maybe in the latter tier, with more Str available, this might change but even that is doubtful.

Mistaken

Blood Tap is now has a 1.0 sec GCD which is quite terrible for Blood. The minimum time to get a free DS went from 5 GCDs (5xRS) to 7 GCDs (5xRS + 2 BT GCDs). This is simply too much to use BT reactively. While 5 GCDs was borderline, it had the advantage of being off the GCD and that you could even plan around it proactively for a few things (DS twice in a row for predictable burst for example) but that is pretty much nerfed now as well with the 2 sec delay since that will drop atleast one swing out of the heal window (the swing right after your first DS will get fully absorbed so it doesn't contribute to the second DS).

I realize the nerf was done because people macro'd Blood Tap but this really is not the way to fix this. It breaks BT for one of the specs that legitimately benefitted from it's reactive use (sure, you could macro for trivial content but it was DPS specs that benefitted from this the most).
Last I read, BT was already slightly worse than RC/RE in terms of DPS boost for Unholy (and I assume Frost is similar), so that makes this even more baffling. If they want us to fill in some free GCDs, they could always give us Crimson Scourge back (modified to give you either a free Heart Strike or Blood Boil so you can choose for multi- and single-target). Or just leave things as it is, free GCDs every now and then aren't a big deal either way.

With how things currently stand, I will most likely not spec BT anymore and just stick with RC because that never unsync's my Runes even if it offers slightly less D/FU Runes per min (not that this is always the best criteria but it's probably the easiest to understand). It also has the benefit of potentially proccing twice in a row which will grant you a nice survival boost whereas BT would not since it does not rely on procs. And for situations where you want to double DS, you can do that too with faster Rune regen and without the hassle of monitoring Blood Tap stacks and requiring 2 GCDs to do so; you have to plan around it either way which rather devalues the benefit BT had when it was still off the GCD.

Get rid of the macro in a different way please, so BT actually remains a viable option for Blood.

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I am also still waiting for the Weakened Blows buff for DKs that GC alluded to in one of his posts:

I really hope this will still come to pass even if it did not happen yet for this patch because this would be an awesome buff for us.

PS: Soul Reaper costing a Blood Rune for Blood spec is all kinds of awesome. So is the fact that one DS actually beats one HS in terms of damage though I don't quite understand why they had to nerf HS instead of just buffing DS. I didn't think Blood DPS was high.

Since Soul Reaper costs a Blood Rune now, they probably have to balance around Blood using it during the execute phase. (we certainly weren't balanced around it before)

Heart Strike hitting so hard also caused a problem in relation to Blood Boil. The older 3 target Heart Strike cleave, would've hit almost as hard as 7 of the Blood Boils in this build. It's pretty out of place when your "single target ability", hits harder than Blood Boil during aoe. With the current scaling, Blood Boil is better than Heart Strike at 5 targets, like we've come to expect.

This build also brought the new pet scaling to our Bloodworms. They seem to have recieved a slight health and damage increase, but more importantly they now inherit our hit and expertise. This means they'll be stacking up Blood Gorged much faster, and Blood Burst should heal for considerably more.

As an aside, Dancing Rune Weapon learned Death Sihpon and Soul Reaper, but still cannot use: Roiling Blood, Unholy Blight, or Asphyxiate. One small step I guess.

Purgatory would be the fall back talent, for when you can't make use of the other two:

• If the encounter has significant magic damage, AMZ will be better. Stopping the damage will be better than soaking it and trying to heal it off.
• Similarly, if the encounter let's you often take advantage of Lichborne Death Coils, Lichborne is better.
• In a situation where you can't make use of AMZ / Lichborne, or the encounter is focused around tank killing damage, Purgatory is better.

Also keep in mind that Purgatory won't be very effective vs "I didn't get heals" situations.

• If healers aren't able to keep up with the damage, you'll die anyway, because Shroud of Pugatory will expire.
• If you just barely heal the de-buff off before the 3 seconds end, you lose the immunity to death effect (which is the de-buff itself). This means the next hit you take will likely kill you.

The only reliable way to come back from activating Purgatory, is a large healing cooldown. You'll need something like a Void Shift or Lay on Hands everytime it happens.

For dps dks Purgatory wont matter that much. Although you may save yourself by using deathpact after it procs, AMS already protects us from most aoes and if you dont make really big mistakes you shouldnt die before the rest of the other dealers is already dead. It may have its uses but personally i will choose amz in 9/10 cases to provide some raid support.

I can see it having its uses beeing a tank, thinking about encounters with huge burst like t11 chimaeron, t12 baleroc etc.

Personally, I see that CD being used more proactively than reactively in general gameplay. If you know some big burst damage is incoming but you cannot use your normal damage reduction CDs on it, get out your ghoul and wait for the burst to land. Then use Death Pact and ERW to Death Strike away the shield (the 1.0 sec GCD will stay especially useful here provided it does not get changed). If you can let a Paladin or Priest in your group know in advance that this will happen so they can throw in their CDs as well, all the better.

I could also see it getting used on something like pre-nerf Baleroc who could pretty much global a DK inbetween heals. Purgatory would give you a small cushion to deal with it since heals are going to land regularily and if you avoid some hits or reactively use CDs you might survive. On the other hand, if there is a boss like Baleroc again, deciding which talent in tier 2 to pick will be the least of our worries.

Keep in mind that any hp percentage based heal, heals for 2.6% more with un-glyphed VB than glyphed. Un-glyphed would heal for 72% of your real health.

From the testing so far, it does seem that several encounters will be favoring AMZ useage:

• Sha of Fear's Dread Spray from the Bowmen
• Tsulong's Shadow Breath
• Lei Shi's Spray melee attacks
• Stone Guard's Overloads
• Gara'jal's melee specials
• Elegon's Celestial Breath and on heroic Total Annihilation from the Celestial Protector
• Will of the Emperor's Energy of Creation from the Titan Spark
• Garalon's Pheromones