DRW's melee definitely isn't based on our weapon damage (I don't think it has been for a while). It probably uses some kind of AP to weapon damage formula.

From a quick look at logs, it seems to do the same auto attack damage as a Raise Dead Ghoul when they're both active. So you can probably assume it uses the Ghoul's formula.

So I've checked a few logs and ran a few target dummy tests about how DRW's Death Strike damage works and found out the following things:
There is a rather high offset in damage done between the DRW and my damage which is about 20k unbuffed on a dummy (20k vs 40k) and doesn't seem to be much higher in a raid setting ~23-25k
I also looked at some older Mel'Jarak logs with a full 100% recklessness buff where the difference was at about 35k damage (130k vs 160-170k) which is about as much as expected (2x17.5k - had a weaker weapon back then)
After switching to my dps gear (dw 1H) the difference was only about 5k damage (24k vs 19k)

So then I got curious and bought some good old white weapons from my friend in stormwind:
Good old 20 dps 2Her : My damage 10k - DRW damage 17k
Good old 20 dps 1Her (+sha gemmed Offhand Weapon) : DRW damage 18.5k

My conclusion (based on some further calculations) is that it simply doesn't scale with weapon damage and is based on attack power plus some other stat used instead of weapon damage (which appears to be strength*2).
Or in other words DRW damage = 3.6*(pAP + pStr*2)/14


Another thing I noticed after skimming through my logs was that my DRW takes about half a second to accept commands meaning that pressing DRW and Outbreak at the same time has a rather high chance to produce only 1 pair of diseases even if done while on the gcd.

With the Patch 5.2 preview released and more talent changes to come (according to GC's twitter/interview), I figured it would make sense to for us to make a tally about what which MoP changes worked for us and which could use some work. I hope we can get some discussion going here and maybe we can help influence the Blood DK changes (if any) we might get. :V

Keep in mind that I raid 10 mans so that will be reflected in how I evaluate some of the things and which is why I hope some 25 man raiders can chime in so we can get a more rounded discussion. Do note that this is also purely from a PvE point of view.


General stuff
Obviously, not all our changes came just from the new talent system change and they, too, deserve mentioning.

The new 1 sec GCD is one of the best changes we got in my opinion. It just fits and makes our gameplay feels so much smoother. Same with Crimson Scourge which allows us to fill some of our GCDs with free Blood Boils or even let's us cast Death and Decay every now and then, the latter of which we would be hard pressed to do without CS because it would unlink a rune pair we would Death Strike with (especially so if you specced Runic Corruption over the alternatives). In addition, I really like that you can hold the Crimson Scourge procs for when you need them more (i.e. Empress transition into P2). All of this is made even better with Scarlet Fever which lets us refresh diseases with Blood Boil making Blood the best DK spec in regards of handling disease application and upkeep (even better than Unholy).
I have to admit that I didn't like more of our damage being shifted into diseases at first but all those new toys we got ended up making strong(er) diseases an advantage to us, especially on sustained AoE with a lot of mobs or when you don't have 100% uptime on mobs (i.e. kiting).
There is one small issue though: our diseases do not update dynamically whenever our AP goes up or down. This is unfortunate since you have to make sure you refresh diseases on your target(s) again when you hit your vengeance peak even without CS procs and even if your diseases are still far from running out. While you can argue that the advantage of this mechanic is that that you can keep up high-AP diseases long after your vengeance dropped, it just doesn't sit right with me that using CS procs would actually be a DPS loss in this situation since it would refresh your diseases to your currently low-AP values.

Scent of Blood is also a good addition for the constant stream of Runic Power it gives (more so the more accuracy stats you have) even if my stance on the +healing portion still hasn't changed since you will still not Death Strike any differently than you did before. Nonetheless, the RP boost is pretty great.

The uncapped Vengeance has been very kind to us as well and allowed me to impact raid progression more than in Cata where DPS checks were involved. For example, on Elegon where pushing him into P2 before the third add spawns was more important for us than saving tank CDs for later, we could trade CDs to stay in longer to take more damage and do more DPS to help push him under 85%/50%. This is especially great with Anti-Magic Shell which gives us RP on top of it (which is yet another great change) which allows us to do stuff like pull Protectors in Terrace with AMS up, take the first Lightning Bolt from Elder Regail to get full RP and kickstart your Vengeance, Dark Sim the second Bolt and absorb part of that one as well (I just love it when stuff just works so well together <3).

And lastly, it's nice that Death Coil now actually hits reasonably hard for us, most likely because the Unholy specific damage boost (besides the Unholy mastery) is gone so it had to be buffed baseline. It's great having a ranged ability that isn't hilariously inferior to the melee alternative for moments where we cannot get full melee uptime on mobs or even just to do some nice ranged threat.

Talents
T1
Roiling Blood is another of those abilities I have come to like very, very much. One that makes you think "Hey, this is just awesome, I don't believe how I could play without it before", much akin to the 1 sec GCD and the other disease QoL buffs we got. It just works great and people seem to agree. I really wouldn't be surprised if this talent might to baseline in the next expansion, it just makes so much sense to have it on anything involving adds.

Plague Leech turned out to be one of those talents that I thankfully could opt out of on most encounters. In general, it is quite the hassle to use and pretty much the anti-Roiling Blood in terms of improving the flow of gameplay. Though to be fair, the deciding factor of speccing PL is not made in this tier anyway, it's what you pick in T5: If you pick Runic Corruption you have very little use of an unpaired Death Rune (Death Siphon is pretty much the only thing worth using it on but then you losing out on Death Pact so you can do this once a minute? Not very likely. Heck, it might not even be a DPS gain if you manage to leech high vengeance'd diseases of your target only to replace it later with a lower AP Outbreak). If you spec Blood Tap (or Runic Empowerment), you will atleast get some use out of it and I grudgingly spec it whenever Blood Tap makes sense on a given encounter but the fact that it's on the GCD really rubs me the wrong way (and judging by the lack of popularity, I think I am not the only one).

I don't have much to say about Unholy Blight since I have used it maybe once or twice overall. I just don't see much of a point in using this as Blood as RB is strictly superior for AoE since it's not tied to a CD. The other situation I saw UB be useful for was kiting (UB + Chilblains would give you a 10 second 10 yard 50% snare) but RB+CB or even Remorseless Winter on it's own solved that issue just fine, if not better.

Summary: Roiling Blood is just all kinds of awesome, Unholy Blight is nearly useless and Plague Leech is pretty cumbersome to use and tied more to the use of your T5 talents anyway. That said, I could see myself using Plague Leech more often if it was off the GCD and more fights would encourage me to pick Blood Tap/Runic Empowerment over Runic Corruption.


T2
Lichborne has been my favorite in this tier so far. I like that Death Coil heals now scale with incoming damage due to uncapped vengeance so you can expect 200-250k heals non-crit in most cases which is pretty good for 40 RP and I also like that it is an active talent that you have to manage.
I was actually quite surprised seeing Purgatory as being the most popular Blood DK talent in this tier instead of Lichborne because bosses in this tier generally do not hit so hard that we cannot react to it with Death Coil heals. Maybe it's different for 25 H tanks, but I highly doubt that Purgatory is going to catch more than 200-250k overkill in most cases where it procs (pre-planned Purgatory procs are a different matter though and fill a different niche than LB heals) which is what the single DC heals for. Any heals past that are even more in LBs favor and I tend to use my RP on the heals while I still have LB up to let my Runes regenerate.

That said, I still think Purgatory has a strong niche for us where it can replace a big CD like IBF where you can warn healers in advance to bomb heal you just after Purgatory will proc. It is also a passive talent even so you can use it reactively (that is, it just procs and saves your life every now and then without you intending it to) but that is certainly a less efficient (and more dangerous) use of it, in my opinion. Either way, I think it's great that the active CDs (pre-planned Purgatory and LB) are potentially better than passive effects to reward the fact that you need to manage them.

Anti-Magic Zone on the other hand, has been a disappointment. So far, I have only used it on Garajal because it actually reduces some of the burst damage on the raid during Voodoo Doll'd Shadowy Attacks but quite honestly, that's all I used it for. I had intended to use it on Elegon for the Total Annihilation soaker but on 10 man you only need one soaker so their personals and/or Glyph of Death Coil is more than sufficient. Maybe it's different on 25 man but then again you can argue that they also have more raid CDs available by virtue of having more healers and/or Paladins anyway so it might be wash.
The fact that you have to give up a personal CD to actually gain a quite mediocre and very situational raid CD also doesn't sit well with me. AMZ is
- targeted so people have to huddle in it unlike, say, Devotion Aura which has a 40 yard range.
- has to be used on damage that comes in one big burst and not be delivered over time.
- costing you a self-CD as tank (a single DC will heal you for more than AMZ would absorb even if you stand under it yourself).
- only absorbs magical damage.
You might think the last bit is obvious, because it's right in the name and all but keep in mind that this only contributes to the fact that AMZ is very niche, so niche in fact that you wouldn't be wrong to think that is has to be the best magic damage raid CD in the game because you have to jump through so many hoops to use it as efficiently as the other cooldowns. But alas, if the damage is not delivered in a single big burst, it's not even that great. If it were a baseline ability I wouldn't even say anything but if you are going to have it compete with Lichborne and Purgatory, it better be atleast as good as those two because at some point the excitement of actually having a raid CD available will fade and it will have to stand up on it's own merit.
(My suggestion would be to make AMZ more generally useful by getting rid off the absorb cap and making it absorb x% of magical damage for y seconds or something along those lines.)

And lastly, even if we were to ignore the other short comings of it, would it be too much to ask to tie AMZ into a passive talent like Druids get with Heart of the Wild? Obviously it would be adjusted to our needs which means just +% stats are out of the question so you don't have DPS DKs spec it for a DPS boost. But something like -x secs on AMS or -% magical damage taken passively would make sense. That way you could pick between 2 self-CDs and 1 raid CD with weaker self-CD component and it would actually fit the theme of the tier.

Summary: Both Lichborne and Purgatory are good picks but Anti-Magic Zone needs some serious improvements.


T3
Death's Advance has turned out to better than I expected it to be. Initially, I just considered it the go-to choice because run speed is always nice to have and the other talents may not be applicable on a given encounter but I somewhat underestimated the passive that doesn't let you get slowed below 70% which was pretty useful on Stoneguard, Blade Lord, Lei Shi, Challenge Modes etc. It's a great talent to have, no complaints.

Chilblains, on the other hand, has been about as I expected it to be: Situational but when it works, it is tremendously powerful especially for 10 mans with less available snares (or Challenge Modes). Really awesome talent.

Unfortunately, Asphyxiate has been quite the disappointment. I have used it once so far: On Protectors in Terrace and only for the interrupt portion of it. It was ok as failsafe interrupt if one of the melee had to run out with Lightning Prison etc. but I feel this talent could be better. I considered speccing it for the stun on encounters with adds but pretty much all of them have the same problem: There is usually more than one add, which means you are going to use your AoE stuns instead (Remorseless Winter for us and other raid AoE stuns) which means that there is no need to single target stun anything to begin with (it could have been useful if it shared a different diminishing returns category than stuns but that is probably unlikely to happen).
The next closest use for it I could think of was the Night phase on Tsulong but since Chilblain's root portion works on the adds anyway you can just use CoI as a superior "stun".
(PS: Still waiting for Strangulate to be put off the GCD like every other silence/interrupt in the game. :V)

Summary: Both Death's Advance and Chilblains have been amazing. While DA was expected to be useful because runspeed is always something you want, Chilblains is really great at anything where it works (See that AMZ? That's how you pull off being a niche talent. :V). On the other hand, Asphyxiate just can't compete with the other Blood PvE perspective (though to be fair, it is competing with two really good talents in this tier).


T4
Death Pact is amazing. Off the GCD, heals for a ton at once (this part is important) and has a reasonable CD on 2 mins. For hard hitting mobs this is by far my favorite.

Death Siphon is not too bad. It has it's niche by being our highest Rune-to-damage ability while also being useful on anything with increased damage done or with full magic damage phases (Blade Lord sub 20% for example). It is generally not as good a CD as Death Pact but this has more to do with the fact that it blocks us from using Death Strike and the accompanying mastery that goes with it than anything else (the PTR buff is definitely making the loss off Death Strike/Pact easier to swallow even if it doesn't make DSi better for pure survival). Death Pact is basically a bonus and can stand on it's own whereas DSi has to beat both abilities at once - which is impossible barring gimmick encounters. But that's fine, it's still useful for adding DPS and said gimmicks.

Conversion definitely deserved the buff it got on PTR. Before, it was only better than basically a minimum shield Death Strike:
5 Rune Strikes are 2 Death Runes with Blood Tap = 150 RP. Substract 30 RP for blocking Scent of Blood and you end with 12x3% max health ticks = 26% max health. For Death Strike with 120% mastery (which is a pretty low estimate) to pull even you would need to heal for atleast 26%/2.2 = 12% with Death Strike which really is not hard at all to do. This is in addition to the fact that shielding is always better than healing it reactively, that burst healing is better than healing it over 12 seconds and that you also lose DPS while doing this. That is also disregarding the fact that you cannot even get the 150 RP within 12 seconds so you would have to cancel and restart Conversion at a later point.
While the PTR buff helps a little with that by cutting down on the RP consumed, it doesn't fix the underlying problem: Conversion still competes with Death Strike by draining your resources. While DSi also does this, it offers greater DPS and range in return whereas Conversion actually costs us DPS while offering a HoT instead of a more powerful instant heal or absorb.
Personally, I don't see myself speccing even the improved version but it's possible that we are not even the intended target for Conversion but the DPS specs are. I guess in that case it's fine because we already have a great survival choice with Death Pact and a nice DPS/healing option with Death Siphon.

Summary: Death Pact and Death Siphon both have their place but Conversion is of no use to Blood barring gimmicks.


T5
Blood Tap: I like the control. I like the Death Runes and I especially like that you gain Blood Charges for non-damaging Death Coils (such as under Lichborne and/or Death Barrier ones). This talent really ended up working well, specifically because it stacks charges on any Death Coil. While the wording suggests that it may be a bug, I really hope that this feature will not only stay ingame but also be extended to the other two talents. In my opinion, we already have little defensive raid utility so we should encourage it by having stuff like Glyph of Death Coil proc the T5 talents instead of discouraging it by removing the proc chance (in the Cata beta Death Coil heals could actually proc Runic Empowerment but this presumably got fixed due to the interaction with Glyph of Death's Embrace but since that glyph also got fixed for Lichborne heals, there is no need for non-damaging DCs not to proc T5 talents anymore, is there?).
And lastly, I consider Blood Charge just an extension of our RP bar so it also works nicely with RP soaking from AMS.

Runic Corruption: I am not going to go much into detail here since the guide already covers the benefits, I will just say that I like how it worked out. And this talent tends to be my default unless I need Blood Tap for whatever reason.

Runic Empowerment: I'll be frank but I see little reason for this talent to exist. If I don't want RC for the smoothness and the ability to hold a Rune pair in reserve while still benefitting from it's procs, I am better served with BT. BT only marginially offers less D/FU throughput, which by itself, doesn't even mean anything. What it does offer me though is the flexibility of Death Runes so I can use Death Siphon if I specced for example. Sure, you could game RE for Death Runes as well but gaming RE is so much more restrictive. To be able to game it, you need to have all Rune pairs on CD which is not an ideal state to be in to begin with so artificially inducing said state just to game more Runes seems backwards to me (it obviously does happen every now and then by itself but let's not pretend that we didn't deliberately set it up in Cata just as often just to game it). It also means that the RP boost you gain fromAnti-Magic Shell will either be wasted or not be used for procs on FU/D, a problem neither BT nor RC have.

Summary: Anything Runic Empowerment can do, Blood Tap does better. Runic Corruption is a solid choice whenever you don't want the enhanced control of Blood Tap.


T6
I'll keep this part short since there is little to say: All three talents are situational but powerful when they work. I am happy with how this tier worked out and I am pretty sure that I change talents on this tier more from encounter to encounter than the other talents combined.


Glyphs
I am positively surprised by how well Glyph of Death Coil ended up working. I am sure that this partially because I raid in 10 man so shielding one or two people is relatively more powerful than it would be on 25 man but even there I am sure being able to help out 1-2 people on predictable raid AoEs is useful (and let's be honest, there is always that guy who nearly dies on AoEs regardless of raid size :V) - and that is only in addition to how awesome it is to shield your co-tank.
It would be nice if we would get more defensive utility like this.

Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell has also been quite useful. More because fully absorbed damage does no extend a Bone Shield charge than anything else though (i.e. I used it on Garajal when I taunted in combination with a max size Blood Shield and a fresh Bone Shield so I could atleast prevent the random Shadow Bolts from expending a BS charge and sustain the Blood Shield longer).

(Also, I dearly hope the Dancing Rune Weapon trap glyph will be removed soon.)


Defensive Utility
You can probably guess what I am going to say but here it is: I wish we had more of it. Not to the ridiculous extent Paladins (have you seen the new Hand of Purity?) do but something new would be great here. I love Glyph of DC and I like the idea of AMZ and would really welcome more ways to help out my raid for all the (physical) AoEs that the bosses love to do.
But first, credit where credit is due: Army has been surprisingly great as a defensive utility on a few bosses (Lei Shi at 20%, Elegon on the P3 transition, stuff like that) where it worked. Unfortunately it is pretty situational since it requires tauntable, hard hitting adds and it will "only" help your co-tank and yourself. But when it does work, it's pretty great. (Is this a knock against the equally-situational-yet-less-powerful AMZ? You bet it is. )

I also saw the Bloodworms buff on PTR which basically triples the healing it does. I am not sure what to think of that; while it does sound like a lot keep in mind that Bloodworms do not scale with our AP but with our max health which in itself scales slower than AP from Vengeance from tier to tier. I will have to reserve judgement until I see it in action but these theories should hold true regardless:
- It will heal for more than the Brewmaster equivalent (which got a buff as well) or the Paladin equivalent on low Vengeance fights because it doesn't scale with AP. It also does not scale with bosses that take increased damage.
- It will heal for more in 25 man because the healing is AoE so the more targets it affects, the better.
- It will heal for more if you can stack, for the same reasons as above.
- It can also overheal whereas absorbs are generally always useful (and Battle Insight is a smart heal, always targeting the lowest health raid member within 30 yards).

I am not entirely sure how Blizz wants to balance Bloodworm healing since it can go from being ridiculously good (low vengeance, highly stacked 25 man) to ridiculously bad (high vengeance, everyone spread out in a 10 man) compared to Ox Statue/Battle Insight but oh well. It would be so much easier to just make Bloodworm healing scale from AP, IMO.

(You know what would be else would be great? A glyph like this to force Bloodworms to spawn when we need it most. Credit goes to Galida.)


Misc
Anything else that doesn't fit anywhere:

Blood DPS:
I can't believe how I missed this, but Necrotic Strike is actually our hardest hitting strike on a per-Rune basis at 150% weapon damage. It does 40% more weapon damage than using Death Strike (2x150% vs 260%) and around ~10% more damage than Heart Strike on single target (150% vs ~140%) so if you did not spec Death Siphon and still want to add some damage at the cost of survivability, use NS instead of HS whenever possible.
Yes, it is weird that the PvP strike beats the Blood only Heart Strike even discounting the healing absorb but hey, that's the way it is.
(For reference, at 120k AP with N Shin'ka it does only 2k less damage than Death Siphon)

Dancing Rune Weapon bug:
Equip a fast 1h before you cast DRW and compare the auto attack damage it does to yours. For giggles, use a really low ilvl and fast one like Thunderfury. Something is seriously messed up here and I am not sure that the explanation that it works like the ghoul is sufficient to explain why it doesn't do proper strike damage anymore.

To add to that, Conversion would be fine if it didn't disable rp from Scent of Blood. As is, using it while tanking is completely dependent on AMS soaking. If you can't AMS soak for surplus rp, Conversion is a waste of runic power.

I'd say the biggest problem with the healing tier, is that there is no "passive" option. All of the abilities are active, which limits the diversity in the tier. Every ability is "heal on button press". What would be really nice to see, is something like a Rogue's Leeching poison, where we're healed based on the damage we deal. Thanks to vengeance, this would definitely be a solid survival option, rather than "Death Pact is always the best heal".

As far as utility, the lack of a 3 minute cool down is seriously punishing. I've ended up swapping to my warrior for several fights this tier, just to have more raid cool downs. Every tank except Blood / Guardian has a 3 minute category raid cool down (warriors have two). Guardians at least have their level 90 talents and a Tranquility. Blood is seriously lacking with its lone AMZ talent, that comes at the expense of personal cool downs, and only works on magic burst damage. I'd be fine with re-packaging the T13 Blood 4P Bonus, as a new ability with a 3 minute cool down, but we need "something".

The Bloodworm change is basically reverting a beta nerf they got after pet scaling was implemented. Apparently it was surprising to see Bloodworms doing noticeable healing, so they got the nerf hammer. Right after that, they got another "stealth nerf", that 6 target capped their AoE healing (not including their master). Then Vengance came into play, and attack power based healing became relevant. With the serious levels of healing the Battle Healer glyph and Ox Statue bring, Bloodworms being useless was kind of silly. Especially considering you have to stand on the Bloodworm to get a heal.

I just played with a bunch of white weapons, while naked, and attacking the level 80 dummy in Acherus. Rune Weapon always did the same melee damage, no matter what weapon I used. Most obvious comparison would be [Cutlass] and [Brunnhildar Great Axe].

[Cutlass]: Details for Rune Weapon - 22-12 17:50 - Oto Logs - World of Logs

[Brunnhildar Great Axe]: Details for Rune Weapon - 22-12 18:23 - Oto Logs - World of Logs

The Rune Weapon's ability damage stays the same, regardless of weapon stat changes (speed and damage). So DRW ignores weapon stats, and is based on attack power / haste / crit, just like a Ghoul. Basically, its a Ghoul that knows how to cast a few DK moves.

Seeing how much other tanks can contribute to raid healing I really wonder why they removed the group healing component of Rune Tap, which was basically my only reason ever to use Rune Tap (outside of WotN procs obviously).
I think if they changed Rune Tap to grant x% healing per raid member (limited to y targets, or group wide only) and give the 10% self healing on WotN procs only, it might be a step into the right direction.

It still takes about a full RP bar to even heal as much as a Death Pact and I can't see it ever being useful unless there's a really massive resource generating (or haste) buff in a particular fight.

I know in the OP it says that you should never glyph DRW but I do have a question on it just for questions sake. Does the 100% threat buff that is given apply to all abilities or just strikes. The reason for asking is that on Challenge Mode GSS, my group likes to pull the entire group, and in the process of running down I bank 60 RP to cast DRW, thus using it in combination with ERW to roll blood boils for extra threat? I guess I am having a problem holding threat on every single mob as we blow hero to get through the pack and need some boost in threat. Give me your thoughts EJ?

It should be a flat modifier to any threat you generate while active, so yes it includes non-strike abilities. Now, DRW itself won't copy BB but will copy heart strike, death strike, rune strike, soul reaper, ect. This may be where you got the idea that it only increases the threat of "strikes".

As far as your situation, glyphing DRW and BB spamming (make sure you have diseases on all targets) should work. I've got a gold on that challenge mode, but I don't recall any huge number pulls. Which room/pack are you having trouble with?

People already gave you some advice but I just want to stress the fact that glyphing DRW is never a good idea, especially not in Challenge Modes. As the tank, you will be responsible for the lionshare of the damage on trash and pretty high up for bosses that hit hard, too (while everyone's gear got scaled down to 463, Vengeance values went way up since everything hits harder now and you will pull more at once to boot).

To give more specific advice for said pull: You should be able to get sufficient aggro on a single mob with a Death Strike or Heart Strike while running past them (people should not unloading until they are all gathered anyway) and use Rune Strike when you have no runes left. Once you are in Death Grip range of the last pack you want to pull (personally, we pulled the whole trash before the boss) grip one of these, Death and Decay and by that time mobs should have bunched up.
Stun the mobs with Remorseless Winter so your healer and ranged can stand on top of you (there are mobs that will jump on top of people and hit them but if you they stand close to you the mob will hit you instead since they retain their aggro list; alternatively, you can use Hand of Protection on them if available).
At this point the pull is pretty much stable and you can work to increase your own DPS while the group dodges the bombs together: Dancing Rune Weapon with Empower Rune Weapon plus Blood Boil spam is amazing for damage though it may require you to actually use a tank CD or two since you skip on Death Strikes but keep in mind that bosses in CMs (with the Sha boss in Shadopan being the one exception) are relatively easy compared to trash so you will be fine even without CDs on them.

In general, work with your healer to increase your DPS on anything you can without causing a wipe. A good example would the Jinyu boss in Jade Serpent. The damage you will take if you avoid everything that is avoidable is incredibly low. Fortunately, nothing is stopping you from standing in the damaging water pools (especially with AMS!) to build Vengeance and kill stuff faster. And so on.

Delete

A hotfix and new set bonuses to discuss!

The hotfix:

For all intents and purposes, it is still uncapped for normal gameplay. You just can't solo a MSV boss as level 80 now.

The Tier 15 set bonuses:

Death Knight T15 Blood 2P Bonus (New) Reduces the cooldown of your Rune Tap ability by 10 sec and removes its Rune cost.
Death Knight T15 Blood 4P Bonus (New) Your Bone Shield ability grants you 15 Runic Power each time one of its charges is consumed.

(Death Knight T15 DPS 4P Bonus (New) Increases the duration of Army of the Dead by 15 sec.)

Looking over the other tanks' bonuses, I think we can find a theme:

2P bonus is (nearly) guaranteed healing or damage reduction: -10 secs on Rune Tap, Word of Glory gives block chance, Elusive Brew gives increased Stagger reduction, Savage Defense gives more Frenzied Regeneration healing, Shield Slam/Revenge give a chance to proc Victory Rush/increase Impeding Victory's healing.

There are two issues I have with our 2P bonus:
First I can't help but notice that there is some form of interplay between two abilities to trigger the 2P bonus for all tanks - besides Blood. The Paladin is not going to get the increased block chance until he actually uses WoG nor will the Druid get increased Frenzied Regeneration healing until he build up some charges with Savage Defense beforehand. While this is not a deal breaker on it's own (and I actually quite like the fact that Rune Tap loses the Blood rune cost), the second issue is that Rune Tap is simply... not that good. I get that this is "merely" the 2P but compared to the current T14's 2P, this one is rather underwhelming. 20 seconds off VB is essentially the same as 10 secs off RT in terms of effective reduction (-33%) but VB is simply a more powerful cooldown and a 40 second VB easily blows the 20 sec RT out of the water (there is also the fact that VB gives more EH unglyphed and RT is only healing etc).

Overall, I think we can do much better here. If the focus is supposed to stay on Rune Tap, how about we actually increase the power of it per use and have it interact with some other of our mechanics? You could have RT heal for 10 or 15% max health and give you some form of damage reduction based on Scent of Blood stacks when you use it (it should still give some damage reduction at 0 SoB stacks and average out at 10% for 2-3 stacks, with a potential to do more if you actually manage to get 5 stacks). That's actually a CD I would look forward to use when I got my 2 set.
If this is too complex, you could just have Rune Strikes give you charges that gets used by Rune Tap instead. Or just have the 2P reduce the cooldown on Will of Necropolis. And so on. Either way, the current Blood 2P simply is lacking in both power and theme right now.


4P bonus is all about generating extra resources: Warriors and Druids get more rage if they use Demoralizing Shout/Enrage respectively, Monks get a chance to have Purifying Brew be free (which essentially means +1 Chi per use), Paladins get bonus Holy Power for damage taken under Divine Protection and DKs gain 15 RP per Bone Shield charge consumed.

The biggest problem I have with our bonus is that 90 RP per Bone Shield is really just not all that much. Assuming none of it is wasted (which is going to be tricky for people who want to game RE still), it is not even going to be one Death Strike unless you get lucky with procs. If we use Blood Tap as example (since it is not RNG based) you would get 6 Blood Charges out of it which translates to half a Death Strike.
I understand that giving DKs resources is more complicated than other tanks because we use both Runes and Runic Power and because we have Tier 75. The latter is probably also the reason we are getting additional RP instead of just plain Rune refreshes - which is fine since I rather like the way Tier 75 worked out and wouldn't want to have it disappear just to make giving set bonuses a bit easier - but nonetheless this does pose a problem.
So if we ruled out Rune refreshes, what does that leave us? Free usage of Death Strike. There is already a precedent with the Monk set bonus there that can proc a free Purifying Brew (note that they could have easily just given them +x Energy as proc instead of the free PB but they decided not to do this even though Monk's dual resources of Energy and Chi is probably the closest to the RP and Rune system we have on the tank side of things).
So alright, free Death Strike it is. But how do we get it? Using Bone Shield charges as vehicle does not make sense anymore and we also do not have a nearly constant debuff like Stagger on us that could proc it. What do we have is multiple 1-1.5 min CDs which all could just proc the free Death Strike on use though (i.e. you use DRW or Bone Shield and you immediately get a buff that let's you do a free Death Strike within x seconds).

And just to preempt: Yes, all of the 4 set bonuses seem rather weak compared to the current T14 ones but I think that is more a mistake of making the T14 bonuses too powerful since a flat +10% healing/mastery bonus is pretty hard to pass up.



And finally, you may have noticed I also included the DPS 4 set bonus in there and there is a reason for this. If this bonus works anything like the 4 set on [Reinforced Sapphirium Shoulderguards], then we will be able to use this whenever we can Army before the pull and swap back to tank gear for some added damage (and since the LFR set bonuses are the same, it shouldn't be too hard to get 4 set as your offspec either). Doesn't work if you need Army (or Hero to a lesser extent) at a later time instead of on the pull of course, but it's there to be taken advantage of otherwise.

The idea behind the Blood T15 2pc is sound, but the cool down reduction on Rune Tap might not be enough.

It's being compared to:

• A stacking 10% healing buff to Frenzied Regeneration, based on Savage Defense usage
• +12% Stagger, based on Elusive Brew usage
• 40% Block chance, based on WoG usage
• Free Victory Rushes, based on Shield Slam / Revenge usage

It's unlikely that a 10% heal every 20 seconds, is equal to the potential damage reduction the other tank 2pc bonuses will offer. Guardian, Brewmaster, and Prot Pally all scale directly with boss damage, so it doesn't seem like Rune Tap will measure up. (The hidden monster here might be Prot Warriors during AoE, since Revenge refreshes also reset Revenge's gcd.)



The 4pc bonus is just one of those things that's not going to feel right with Blood. Even a free Death Strike doesn't quite fit. The other tank bonuses are free resources. It's up to you to decide, what the resource is for. Brewmaster is fine with free purifying brew, because they're not going to be spamming Purifying Brew when resources are high. You only purify when your stagger is high, if not Blackout Kick/Breath of Fire. A free Death Strike just encourages you to, "press Death Strike moar". Free Runic Power gives you a lot of versatility. Do I Rune Strike? Do I Death Coil? Is it worth it to use Conversion?

The best solution I can think of, is making the Runic Power procs from the T15 4pc a periodic buff. Something like "5 Ruinc Power every 2 seconds, for 6 seconds. Additional procs are added to the duration". That would deal with the issue of, "Bone Shield with high resources".