Your saying that The part of blood shield tracking adding is a bit behind since it gets it's information from the combat logg. It can be handy to know more precise so im wondering if there is any alternative?
Prehaps someone know if you can set weak auras or simular addons to track it more precise or are all of those also using the combat logg?

Another question I have is the possibility to combine DRW, bone shield and the cast of army of the dead to creat a combination with simular Dmg reduction as IBF if needed? Do they draw benefits from each other or that isn't working as that due to game mechanics?
Possible to combine some of em to be almost immune to dmg?

Bone shield no longer costs anything, so it would be 3 runes and 60 RP.

Now that the patch has been up for a while on Beta, I think it's safe to discuss what the changes brought us:

- Heart Strike now does 115% weapon damage, down from 170%
- Death Strike now does 280% weapon damage, up from 230%.
- In addition, Blood Boil base AP scaling got nerfed to down to 12.48% and base damage went up to 3855.

(Source for the first 2 is MMO-C and Otou figured out the BB bit.)

The changes have two effects:

1) The Heart Strike nerf and Death Strike equalizes damage done on single target between a DK who runs a normal tanking rotation with FU and D Runes on Death Strike and Blood Runes on Heart Strike and a DK who would use some Death Runes for Heart Strike every now and then.
In addition, the nerf to Blood Boil means we won't simply substitute Heart Strike with BB for a higher DPS rotation.

2) AoE damage went way down, presumably because it was too good at higher AP values. The fact that Blood Boil's base damage went up to help with threat at low Vengeance levels/fresh on the pull supports this theory and shows that atleast Blizzard is aware of the fact that we do need solid enough AoE threat to hold mobs without (excessively) sacrificing Death Runes for this (which could be a problem at low Vengeance values, hence the base damage buff).


Now with all this said and done, I am fine with 2) as long as holding threat doesn't cut into our survival by making us use BB/HS with our Death Runes.

What I do have a problem with is 1). I feel that rewarding a DK that sacrifices mitigation and healing with slightly higher DPS was a good thing. Now that one Death Strike outdamages two Heart Strikes there is no reason to ever do this. You actually lose damage in addition to survival.* While I understand that balancing tank DPS between classes is easier if you know that a DK will always use the same rotation (1xHS, 1xDS per Rune cycle) instead of one that could range from 1 to 3 Heart Strike, I feel they overdid it.
There should be some reward for tanks that sacrifice mitigation for damage (i.e. Maul, Heroic Strike). The delta between two Heart Strikes and one Death Strike might have been too much in the previous patch (+170% weapon damage assuming 2 diseases are up) but there should be one (+100% weapon damage would be my suggestion).

Don't get me wrong, I love Death Strike hitting hard. It makes sure we don't have to resort to Heart Striking just to keep up with other tanks doing their normal rotation. But just like Warriors and Bears, having the option to convert survival into damage without changing gear would be really, really awesome. It's fun finding a good balance between mitigation and damage after all - as long as it stays optional.

*EDIT: you do gain +19% weapon damage due to the disease increase but that isn't enough to make it worth sacrificing a huge chunk of healing/shielding.

For what it's worth, Death Strike is still healing on dodges and misses on Beta even after the new patch. Take that as you will (though the tooltip is still making me think it's a bug).

Ok I need some correction on my logic here or I need someone to backup my line of thinking. From what im thinking Runic Corruption is far and away the worst talent for Blood. Maybe im just thinking about this in terms of math that doesnt take into account everything that it should but here is what im thinking.

Just looking at this in terms of return per Rune Strike.

Blood Tap=40 Death Runes per 100 Rune Strikes or 20 Deathstrikes that is 100% constant and never changes regardless of rotation and playstyle.

Runic Empowerment=45 Runes total in 100 Rune strikes. Now if played perfectly this could yield all DS runes and you could in theory run a perfect rotation never giving up any RP for RSs and get 22.5 Deathstrikes per 100 RS.

Runic Corruption=45 procs out of 100 rune strikes and the uptime of the buff is modified by the amount of haste you have. I run 0 haste on my DK currently so the buff uptime is 2.5 seconds which would yeild 112.5 seconds of 100% haste uptime on my rune regen. Standard Rune regen time is 8.33 seconds and 4.17 seconds with the buff procced. So if the buff is up for 112.5 seconds that yields 26.97 runes times 3 since all of the runes regen at once for 80.93 runes but the value is only half of that since we are already regening and we are just doubling our regen rate not saying that our regen rate is 0 while the buff is active thus yielding 40.46 runes per 100 Rune Strikes. Now the kicker here is that only 2/3 of those runes are even usable for Deathstrike. So that leaves us at approx 13.489 Death Strikes per 100 Rune strikes with Runic Corruption.

So my contention here is that while if you wanted to be very lazy and have a really easy rotation that yielded you a very steady rate of DSs you can roll with Blood Tap but if your a true min/maxer then the obvious choice is Runic Empowerment as it actually yeilds the highest Deathstrike per Rune Strike and also the highest dps and rune regen overall.

Runic corruption currently for blood is a complete waste of a point and not only is lower dps than RE for us but the survivability aspect of it is terrible in terms of the other two choices.

If my math or logic is in anyway wrong please help me out here but I am pretty sure my math is sound and if this is going to be a guide for thousands of Tanking DKs I think they should know how much they are losing in terms of survivability with RC.

Im 100% with you on Blood tap and I may actually forgo the resource loss to be able to bank 1 DS whenever I need to have it in my back pocket over the rotational challenges of RE. RC however is so far behind in terms of resource generation that I dont see how you could suggest this in any situation. Our primary source of survival is Death Strike there is no denying that fact and all our T5 talent does is increase the number of them that we can use. BT/RE are both very good choices and I can see the arguement for both one being more effective and one giving you essentially 3 deathstrikes saved up at once. I think saying that either of these talents will pull ahead in the long run when you can only use 66% of RC where as you can use 100% of BT/RE is a misleading statement considering right out of the box its that much less effective in terms of our survivability.

If you were to look at a 3 minute fight like a zonozz kill

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

In that short fight I had 40 Rune strikes

Now I only had 12 RC procs which is bad rng but rng has no place in theory.

With the 3 different T5 talents I would get

Blood Tap = 16 DS

RE= 18 DS

RC= approx 12 DS

If you look at it in these terms your saying that over a 3 minute fight im getting 6 more DSs with RE over RC and this is in a very short fight. I understand you want to time your DSs for maximume effeciency however I think anyone that plays a DK at a level high enough that they are talking about this could find a spot every 30 seconds where they could use another DS I know I sure could.

There really is some serious math to be done about the extra rune return from RE thus yeilding more RP which in turn yeilds more runes etc etc etc to the viablity of having 3 DSs for certian burst situations and I look forward to those discussions but for the base information even suggesting that RC is reasonably viable in comparison to the other two is just missleading.

RE does give more resources (for more dps) and BT does give more control (for survivability), but RC gives consistency, which is not something to scoff at. In hardcore progression consistency is very valuable, and while I'd still prefer the control of BT there is an argument to be made for the consistency of RC in hardmode progression.

Hardmode tanking is all about handling burst damage. If you are playing at least remotely correctly (which you generally should be if your are doing hm progression) then overall healing taken and mana isn't going to be much of an issue, making it boil down to essentially how you handle the burst damage of either mechanics (high stacks of zonozz's buff, ph2 on warmaster ect.) or just large full hits from normal 25H boss swings. Blood tap gives us the ability to pool a DS, so that we always have one on deck in case of a surprise burst. RC gives us consistency, which will help to reduce the randomness of our damage intake. While i prefer to have the tools to deal with the spike damage (blood tap) having a more reliable dmg intake is also viable if your healers are consistent enough to be able to find a "groove". So while i agree that BT is still optimal, RC isn't exactly useless either.

The fact remains that as a blood DK you can only take advantage of 66% of any RC proc for survivability as you get the blood runes regening as well as your F/UH and you can take 100% advantage of the other two if played correctly. You can make any arguement you want about situational happenings but the math doesnt back you up if your talking about true min/max theory crafting then no reasonable DK would ever think about taking RC in any situation. If anyone could show me some math or actual theorycrafting to discount what im saying id love to discuss it as my only drive here is to find the absolute best talent for us.

Statements like ....

RC gives us consistency, which will help to reduce the randomness of our damage intake

This statement is so completely wrong...about the only thing that RC gives us consistantly is less survivability than RE and BT due to generating fewer DS per RS. Your basically saying that by having a steady stream of fewer DS per RS we are going to be more equiped to handle damage spikes which makes absolutely zero sense and mathmatically is completely unprovable.

I understand the timing of DS in reaction to damage and that DS/min isnt the end all again but I was mearly showing with emperical data that you would gain 1 DS per 30 seconds with RE over RC. Considering that even if your timing your DS pretty well you will be able to find another gcd in there somewhere to take advantage of that DS.

Im really confused as to why we are saying that RC is even close to viable for blood the math and TC is really simple and your basically arguing that gaining 50% more resources from a talent could be a bad thing in some situations which is laughable and no true TC would ever think that.

Im not saying that there is a clear cut winner between BT/RE as I can see situations for both but RC is completely unviable for Blood in current form.

This really has nothing to do with DS/Min and everything to do with resources per Runestrike which is the complete reason for this talent tier each one returns a finite amount of resources that our class can use for our abilities.

In its current form the rankings for our T5 talent choice are quite simple.

Survivability
1. Runic Empowerment
2. Blood Tap(if stored/timed correctly this could in specific situations be better)
3. Runic Corruption

Damage
1. Runic Empowerment
2. Runic Corruption
3. Blood Tap

Coupled with the fact that RE generates more Runes which in turn leads to more RP which leads to more RS and so on etc.

The math does not lie in a short fight of just 50 Rune strikes your returns on average would be
BT-10 DS
RE-11.25 DS
RC-6.74

We are talking about 66.9% more DS resourses if you just go by the log I previously posted with an average DS heal of 14332.

So in a 50 Rune Strike fight I would average 4.51 more DS which would be an average heal of 14332x4.51=64637 and my Blood Shield is approx 200% which would yeild 129274 blood shield. So this is 193911 mitigation that I have gained if played properly by only haveing RE over RC. You folks keep saying that DS/min isnt important because you can time your DS and get more use out of them than a bad player who is just spamming DS. I completely agree. What im talking about is one of us we all have done 8/8 Heroic DS we all played on a progression team and we all are pretty good at playing a dk. If we are already good at timing our DS and using them to our advantage doesnt it stand to reason that giving us a few more bullets in our gun would make us that much better? Give a great player 9DS/min he will do great things give the same player 11DS/min I promise you he will get use out of them and great players are going to want to be able to generate the greatest number of resourses to have that ability.

All of the Talent Choices yeild very similar returns on Runes however the fact that RC yeilds only 66% of the runes we need as a tank to improve our survivability makes it unviable for blood tanking in its current form.

I respectfully request that the guide be changed to accurately show the mathmatical desparity in the survivability difference between RC and BT/RE.

If there was some other TC or mathmatical analysis that would prove otherwise I would welcome the data to be viewed.

You're still looking at in terms of DS/per minute, and over all resources gained. As soon as you say, "I would get X Runes for casting Runestrike Y times" you've missed the point. The only talent that gives a guaranteed return on Runestrike is Blood Tap. Which makes that a bad method of comparison.

When we say RC is the most consistent talent, it means that it has the smallest varriation of time between DS intervals. RE and BT only give full runes, and need two procs to create a DS. Unlike RC, the resources from RE/BT will be bursts, instead of a steady flow. RE is also completely unpredictable. You have no way to ensure you'll receive a RE proc when you need it.

We already know that RE will produce the most DS when being spammed. It's been stated multiple times. The issue would be that you don't spam DS on serious content. If you're not using DS on cool down, you won't have depleted F/U runes. If you don't have depleted F/U runes, RE can't refresh them.


The ideal rune state when tanking, is to always have an active set of F/U Runes. Which means you have a DS ready to respond to any incoming damage.

bB dD dD

In this standby state, RE cannot proc. You have no depleted runes, so any potential RE procs will be wasted. With this as the ideal standby state, only RC and BT can continue to give resources.

With RC :

1. bB dD dD
2. Rune Strike (assuming RC proc)
3. Death Strike (20 runic power)
4. Heart Strike (10 runic power)
5. Bb Dd Dd
6. Rune Strike (with chance to proc RC again)

With BT:

1. bD dD dD (BT has already converted a B rune to D)
2. Runes Strike (assuming creates 11-12 charges of BT)
3. Can't use Blood Tap because no empty runes
4. Death Strike
5. Heart Strike (with recharging b rune)
6. bD Dd Dd
7. Stall, unless you plan to waste Rune Strike / Death Strike early

This would be the strong point of RC. It lets you hold a DS indefinitely, without wasting resources. Having RC means you can sit with once active DS, practically the entire fight. Even when it comes time to use that DS, the recovery time back to the ideal state is short. With BT, you could potentially hold more DS in reserve, but you'd end up wasting resources. The recovery time is also longer, since BT has a fixed proc rate.

This isn't to say BT and RE don't have their strong points. They do, and they've been discussed in the guide. If the damage in the encounter is predictable, BT will perform better. If the fight has a constant stream of unavoidable damage, RE is better. If the encounter has unpredictable damage, that requires you to always be ready to react, RC is better.

Otou and Reniat already covered the advantages of RC well so I'll just address these two points:

1) There are actual diminishing returns to Death Strikes. For optimal healing and shielding we need to take quite a bit of damage in the Death Strike healing window first. If you shorten that window by Death Striking too early, you waste some of Death Strike's potential which you wouldn't have if you had just waited longer (your rather high overheal and low average Death Strike heal in the log you linked earlier would confirm this).
Using your examples of 11 Death Strikes per minute, that would mean you would Death Strike every 5.45 seconds on average and by doing so you will most likely get quite a few minimum heal Death Strikes out of it because you aren't even giving the boss a chance to break through your Blood Shield by much in most cases before you already do the next Death Strike.
So in the end, you either have to waste resources by sitting on Runes to not get minimum heals - which allows RC to catch up - or you Death Strike anyway and get a suboptimal Blood Shield out of it - which is not very effective either.
This is why saying RE gives "66.9%" more Death Strikes than RC is misleading. Not all Death Strikes are equal because there are simply diminishing returns on the amount of Death Strikes you can do per minute (it's great for DPS, though).

2) Harks back into this. You are asking me to do the impossible. How exactly would I figure out the accurate mathematical disparity in survivability between RC and BT/RE? Which talent is better depends on the fight and your playstyle, and as we told you before, more Death Strikes per minute is not the same more survival. Just because a DK with RE does 66.9% more Death Strikes than someone with RC does not mean he is 66.9% more survivable. In some cases, he might actually be less survivable because he uses minimum Death Strikes at full or close to full health which leaves him open until the next Death Strike is ready whereas someone with RC will be able to sit on a fully refreshed Rune set while the other set is still regenerating during a time where you don't need to Death Strike just yet (remember that you cannot get such a high Death Strike per minute number for RE without gaming it which means you cannot sit on the Runes for very long and that in return means a higher chance of minimum Death Strike heals).
The only metric we can adequately put into numbers is how much more Death Strikes one talent could offer - but I am not even going to put a number on this either. Why? Because if I put a number such as the 66.9% figure above, chances are people will not understand what that truly means. They might, like so many others, misunderstand it as directly translating into the same amount of survival gain and just blindly spec RE over the alternatives because "hey, 66.9% is a lot!" - which is simply not true. No, all they need to know is that RE gives the most Death Strikes per minutes than the alternatives and that is already clear in the guide. And hopefully by the time they are done reading, they will also understand that Death Strikes per minute is a faulty way to gauge tank effectiveness/survival on it's own. This way they will give the other two talents a chance as well without outright dismissing it for giving less Death Strikes.

What I will do, however, is link to the discussion here since it will help people understand the advantages and disadvantages of the respective Tier 5 talents even more (I just hope I won't regret this if/when the only thing people take out from this is "Hey, RE gives me more Death Strikes, this is the best talent for everything!" <_<).
I have also added a Runic Corruption bit to the Advanced section which builds on what Otou said above.

SteffoRex, your kind words are very much appreciated.

Using the log of a fight that I outgear by such a huge margine coupled with the fact that the 35% nerf is live as a metric to my overhealing on DS is not a very good point to make. I quite sure that with a 390ish IL and no nerf in place my DS overheal would have been much better wouldnt you say?

The point of the log was to show you how in even a short fight you get enough runestrikes to make a difference in DSs and that was it.

I think people are getting confused with tanking a 35% nerfed DS with 407 ILs where they have the luxury of not really taking that much damage in the first place. In true prenerf hardmode progression I would love to see how often DKS are just sitting on a DS and waiting to use resources because they are taking no damage. I know that the physical damage of all of the first 6(excluding Yorsahj with is almost exclusively magic damage) was astronomically high prenerf.

Prenerf even CTC tanks were taking big spikes in prenerf DS if they ran into a bad string of only 33% blocks and in that kind of envioirment I just dont see how your going to be able to sit on resources as much as your thinking you can. In that enviornement im sure your going to get a very high return on just about every DS you throw out there and having more of them will only serve to make you more survivable.