Posting the relavent Blood changes here

Unholy

• Death Strike now deals 75% weapon damage (up from 60% weapon damage), additional damage increased as well. (From 178.2 to 222.75 for Rank 5)

• Vicious Strikes doesn't affect Death Strike anymore

Blood

• Dancing Rune Weapon now lasts 10 sec plus 1 sec per 5 additional runic power, doing the same attacks as the Death Knight but for 50% reduced damage. Cooldown reduced from 3 min to 1.5 min.

• Might of Mograine now increases the critical strike damage damage bonus of your Blood Boil, Blood Strike, Death Strike, and Heart Strike abilities by 15/30/45%. (Old - Increased damage of all these abilities and Obliterate for 3/7/10%)

• Improved Death Strike now Increases the damage of your Death Strike by 15/30% and increases its critical strike chance by 3/6%.

• Bloody Strikes now Increases the damage of Blood Strike and Heart Strike by 15/30/45%, and increases the damage of Blood Boil by 10/20/30%. (Down from 20/40/60%)

Glyphs

• Glyph of Death Strike - Increases your Death Strike's damage by 2% for every 2 runic power you currently have (up to a maximum of 25%). The runic power is not consumed by this effect. (Old - Increased your Death Strike's damage by 1% for every 5 runic power you currently have.)

Set bonuses are also in:

Item - Death Knight T8 Melee 2P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Increases the critical strike chance of Death Coil and Frost Strike by 5%.
Item - Death Knight T8 Melee 4P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Increases the bonus damage done per disease by 20% on Blood Strike, Heart Strike, Obliterate, and Scourge Strike.

These changes only seem to confirm to me that they are moving in the direction of Blood using Death Strike over Obliterate, contrary to what Ghostcrawler posted a week or so ago.

Obliterate is removed from Might of Mograine completely, Imp. Death Strike is back to 15%/30%, the Glyph of Death Strike now caps out its benefit at 50 RP.

The DRW changes are interesting as well. You can have an uptime of ~42% if you only pop it with 130 RP and use the Glyph (38 seconds out of every 90).

Unless there are some major pro-Obliterate changes soon I am going to be convinced that Death Strike over Obliterate is going to be the way to go in 3.1.

This seems to be a repeating cycle, buff up Death Strike and then drop it back below Obliterate again soon after. I'm not saying I have huge faith in what GC says most of the time but I would be surprised if Death Strike is still ahead when 3.1 goes live as it does not live up to the "FU Strike of Choice" model that was posted. Also I remember reading a blue saying that if DS was ahead now that probably would not be the case on live. Granted that was a build or two ago and maybe they have changed their philosophy. I guess we'll see.

This is a pretty significant buff to DRW though, 48 seconds glyphed (38 without) every 90 seconds is going to be pretty huge.

Ya DS is now at 122% weapon damage slightly above the 119% it was with the old glyph. I've always thought they will end up making it the primary FU strike for blood but nerfing it's healing to compensate. Now that the first tier of UH is completely useless for blood I'm hoping they move morbidity back up. And the new glyph actually caps at 26 RP so not only is DS stronger its also more consistent.

Thought I would share the WWS of our 25man XT Deconstructor kill in Ulduar since I was Blood specc'd 51/0/21.

Wow Web Stats

Some key notes to keep in mind on this WWS

-was killed in the last build where DRW had the 20sec duration before RP was factored in.
-DRW/Hysteria used 3 times
-was using a melee dps flask and str/stam food
-major: IT, Ghoul, Blood Strike
-minor: Pestilence, HoW, Corpse Explosion (had a hard time of finding a Raise Dead on the PTR)
-I was using a Heart Strike spam rotation vs. Oblit with the Dark Rider sigil equipped
- IT,PS,HS,HS,OB (I use this rotation once and then move onto my standard 2 part-rotation below)
- part 1 IT,PS,HS,HS,HS,HS
- part 2 HS,HS,OB
-during certain parts of the fight the Deconstructor becomes immobile and his heart opens up and he spawns big and small adds. it is during this part that I BB the small adds and work them down then go back on the boss while the XM-024 Pummeller (these are the big adds that look like the engineer pet Lil' Smoky) are dragged onto the boss where my Heart Strikes cleave them while I'm targeting the Deconstructor
- IBF is up everytime the Deconstructor casts Earthquake, so we DK's are able to negate a large amount of incoming damage during this portion of the fight and are able to keep our focus on the boss.

any questions/comments are appreciated.

also- I am currently 0/35/36 on live so please keep that in mind when looking at my armory.

Yeah I totally brainfarted that. The cap isn't 50 RP like I said.

38 seconds with the Glyph, 28 seconds without, isn't it?

Assuming 130 RP, 130 - 40 = 90 / 5 = 18 + 10 = 28 baseline, 38 Glyphed. Unless I'm being stupid somewhere.

Pretty annoying that the Ghoul glyph is mandatory (no way you're going to keep the Ghoul alive without it and no AE avoidance) so that only leaves 2 Glyph spots. DRW, BS, DS & DC - which ones will be the biggest DPS boost? Time for some spreadsheets!

With them adding in a specialised Glyph of Heart Strike I am wondering whether or not the Glyph of Blood Strike will continue to work for Heart Strike.

That will be something that needs to be tested.

That came into my mind, too. It wouldn't surprise me, since HS already is very good.

I really cant understand this at all, he says Obliterate over Ds then it loses 10% more damage, iv'e been on ptr pre this nerf and im afraid Obliterate is no great shakes with sigil. So who knows what its like now :< your right despite what he said looks like they are pushing Ds over Obliterate.

I must say, from the perspective as someone who's primarily been dpsing as 51/13/7, I was hugely dismayed to see the removal of Obliterate from MoM.
For one thing (and this is of course being purely petty), it renders the 2/4t7 bonuses utterly redundant for blood dps, as Obliterate has absolutely no reason to be a part of our rotation anymore regardless of how we spec. Without the MoM critical damage bonus modifier, its a vastly inferior strike.
I know that it can be argued that Death Strike is somewhat -thematic- as Blood, but am I the only one concerned that having our main nuke be a huge source of self healing might come back to bite us in the rear if it creates pvp imbalances? I'm a former TBC Retridin raider, and I've spent far, far too much time being nerfed because of stupid pvp issues, so I'm afraid to see the seeds for another pvp issue being created right in front of us with hard hitting selfhealing strikes being made our biggest nuke.
Additonally, this change makes Subversion a lot less appealing for deep blood (though still necessary/mandatory) with the Obliterate portion of the crit being meaningless.
I'll keep waiting to see what else changes, the dust hasn't settled yet.

That's right, I totally forgot that it reverted to 10 seconds baseline. Either way 38 seconds glyphed isn't too shabby.

@Lollers

Yes that is the rotation I use for the HS spam build as it lets me get 6 quick HS's out and then burn the diseases via one Obliterate before reapplying and repeating the HS spam. I'll to try to show it a little better below.

IT, PS, HS, HS, OB (this one time rotation generates 1F, 1U, 4D - I then move onto my stand 2 part repeating rotation)

IT, PS, HS, HS, HS, HS (at this point my 1F, 1U and 4D have been used and I am sitting at a standard set of runes)
HS, HS, OB (here I use the 2B runes and 1F/1U for the Oblit which leaves me back at 1F, 1U and 4D to then restart the part1 of my rotation. I of course RP dump between parts 1/2)

I hope this explains it a bit better. I know the 2nd rotation looks odd b/c its so short but its all about eating the diseases after 6 HS's and then reapplying the diseases and doing it all over again.

For those who didn't see this today, its been confirmed that the push is now for Blood to use DS and not OB.

I've got to say I'm fine with that, and it was increasingly obvious with all these changes that that was the direction they were intending to move in.

I also didn't particularly want to drop points into things like Improved Death Strike when I would hardly be using it. It would be close to a complete waste, and I'm glad to see the back of that concept.

I would imagine that this comes close to killing any Blood/Frost build, and the overwhelming majority of deep Blood will subspec Unholy. 51/3/18 definitely seems to be where its at for a PvE Blood build.

Props to Ghostcrawler for a) backing off on Obliterate and b) actually posting that they are backing off. It does make things much easier when we don't have to try and divine what they are thinking but they actually come out and tell us.

Personally, I really like the move toward Death Strike as the Blood FU nuke. Death Strike has always felt largely pointless outside soloing raid bosses and such, but now it has a purpose. Furthermore, it thematically fits with blood very well, furthering the image of a blood DK drinking his opponent's blood, and gaining strength from it, exactly what you'd expect from the tree. So from both a gameplay and an RPish standpoint, it seems quite appropriate.

I'm liking the new DS changes and it really frees us up to use simpler rotations. I'm having trouble deciding where to put points now though. With 51 pts spent in Blood, and the following being a guaranteed in Unholy:

2/2 Vicious Strikes
3/3 Virulence
2/2 Epidemic
3/3 Ravenous Dead

I question where to put the remaining 10 talent points with what seem to be so many good options.

RPM - 6 extra seconds of DRW per use
Morbidity - DC does alot of damage and boosting it isn't a bad idea
Necrosis - 20% melee damage as shadow is really nice
BCB - 4-5% of our total damage, which is significant

Obviously at least five points must go into either Necrosis and Morbidity or a combo of both to get to Master of Ghouls which is required, I'm just at such a loss since they all look so so good. Where do you guys plan on putting your points?

I was planning on dropping BCB. It is consistently one of my lowest damaging abilities when I go back and read the meters. This right now is mostly due to being diseaseless Blood, but even when I was traditional Blood BCB was nothing to write home about.

Barring major changes this is what I am planning on going with come 3.1:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...6&version=9684

I personally would be fine with them making Glyph of Blood Strike not work any longer with Heart Strike since that would then free up a slot for Glyph of the Ghoul. Unfortunately the PTR has not been stable enough for me to be able to test this out yet.

I also note that MMO-C have the new Glyph of Disease slated as a minor glyph, which might throw up some interesting possibilities with regards to including Pestilence in rotations. Should this be feasible I would imagine that dropping the Glyph of Horn of Winter would be the easiest way to include Disease.

As far as I know Glyph of Blood strike is still working with Heart Strike. With this being the case I think the three majors of choice will be Death Strike (Mandatory) and then some combination Blood Strike / Ghoul / Black Death (15% Death Coil) / Dancing Rune Weapon.

With the DRW buff, I think the extra 10 seconds is going to become even more staple and be a mandatory second major. The third for me right now is a wash as I haven't been able to run any numbers yet.

I'm liking the DS buffs but I have a question. That being will RP still build up as well without the extra 10 we all get off T7 four peice? Will this cause a loss of a DC or not?

It's been a long time since I abandonned Tier 7 for us mainly because of the crappy haste. I really do more DPS with off set like pants of razu or the torso on Sapphiron.

All those buff are good though, at first I really thought Blood was really really nerfed but they changed a bit the way for DPS and playstyle. I think it'll be good, and hopefully we will see more Blood spec.

If anyone can test BS and HS glyph together it would be interesting. All those glyph are going to be really tough to choose but I think i'm going for ghoul, DS and DRW.

And just to know, does anyone tested the changes to armor pen ? Is it worth now ? I have a lot a stuff with the stat now so I am wandering !