In fully deadly gear with betrayer and awareness. Death strike was healing me for about 3k.
That is hardly going to make me "Immortal". Without glyph of blood strike affecting heart strike I can safely declare blood as a pvp spec dead.
Hysteria and DRW will bring blood back up to what it can do normally on live.

Most dps class can come in at 4500+ on sath 10 3drake (if they choose to ae). A dps dk can easily top meters due to our ae abilities and twilight torment, neither has anything to do with the single target dps nerfs blood received on the ptr. If a warrior with duo betrayers can’t match your dps then his not gearing properly or refreshing sunders too much or not hitting ww and cleave at all or taking breaks due to TT.

If all these changes go thru frost and unholy will easily beat blood on single target dps, is the sky falling? No, because we can spec into other trees…

but ptr tooltip says 10 seconds base on drw. or is this a known bug

At the end of the fight, I've yet to see anyone but fury warriors and shadow priests get over 4000 in my past experiences. I was pulling ahead of 4600 WITHOUT aoe. DRW helps, but Blood is a friggin monster even without it and while DRW is nerfed on the PTR (we'll lose DPS on Patchwerk!) many other things are buffed (Blood Gorged anyone?) and I expect blood dps to go UP on most challenging fights.

Sky isn't falling. It's early to say, but before the DRW nerf I was much worried about Blood being crushed by the nerfbat.

Blood DK versus Prot warrior is one of the more entertaining fights in WoW. It actually looks something like classic armored combat and is fairly lengthy if both remember all of their abilities. The prot warrior is favored, but it's not an impossible or largely gear-independent hard counter. Doesn't have much to do with Blood's DPS, though. My DK has gone about 50-50 with them by tanking up and trying to kill it with Icy Touch and Rune Strike. When she loses, the prot warrior is still always very badly injured.

Good thing about prot warriors is they aren't exactly known for jumping people, so you can switch to your own tank gear if you've got it (and Frost presence, obviously) and you really want to pick a fight.

What seemed to make the fights impossible for me was his access to more powerful tanking cooldowns (I'm not tank specced) and more importantly spell deflection. He knows I need my magic attacks to get him down, and he's got plenty of time to reflect them in my face. Switching to tankmode made the fight more intersting but I never got him below 25%.

I don't want to derail the topic with offtopic tho. Let's return to the proper discussion.

Um, no. Diseaseless Blood on live is a ridiculously strong spec for any single-target situation, regardless of fight length. Live DRW is very good, no question-- for a 2 min Patchwerk, it's about 10% of my damage. Take a longer fight, it's doing a smaller percentage, sure. But that's because the real strength of blood is a high percentage of weapon damage benefiting from raid buffs. (Not to mention, if the fight does go longer, you do get to use DRW again.)

It's hard to tell where DRW is right now, because there hasn't been a raid to test in for a few builds, and last build it wasn't lasting as long as it's supposed to. It seems to me though that if it does roughly the dps of Gargoyle for half the duration with half the cooldown, it should be about right, even if it's not as strong as before. We don't depend on it for damage, especially with a now very strong HS and then DS back to where it was before, but it does need to be strong enough to be worth taking.

I want a good DRW, but Blood is still a really good spec regardless. In 3.1 we will bring the strongest physical damage (benefiting from the loads of ArP they're piling on the gear), the 10% AP buff, and a dps raid slot that's essentially self-sufficient with DS healing and Rune Tap.

Edit, since another page sprang up while I was typing:

Where are you guys getting this stuff from? Apart from DRW, blood's single target dps had its mechanics overhauled, not nerfed. Heart Strike is now a significantly stronger main attack, we use diseases again, and Death Strike 3.1 hits as hard as diseaseless Oblit on live. We also get hands-free Sudden Doom procs, which free up GCDs. Again, apart from DRW which is a bit weak, where are the nerfs that make us suddenly terrible?

Too lazy to look up the notes but BS glyph no longer affects heart strike, necrosis is no longer dipping into modifiers, from the earlier builds you lost a controllable ghoul for about 1/4-1/3 of the Ulduar boss fights.

Some of us use diseases on live…People keep mentioning free gcds from the SD change, what damage abilities are you going to using in these free gcds?

The Necrosis loss was shared by all the speccs.

The new rotation for Blood will be PS IT DS HS HS - DS HS HS HS HS. The damage increase you will get from the new disease mechanic and Blood Gorged is going to outweight any of the nerfs you listed.
We lost permaghoul from PTR builds, but compared to live we get Night of the Dead which is a lot better than what we could get before.

Blood is gonna be stronger than it is live. Just because it had Godmode for a week on the PTR we can't say it's nerfed now.

I don't believe blood is getting hardcore nerfed like it first appeared. Yes, DRW is very lackluster and math is, imo, inconclusive about UB being "better" than DRW. With the perma-ghoul not being an option for blood anymore, we're forced to hope that the proposed changed to DS damage and HS will be enough. My primary concerns are as follows:

1) The glyph of BS not affecting HS anymore is a significant nerf for PvE in my eyes, I do not have enough information to say whether or not the added multipliers to HS will compensate us for this, only time will tell.
2) DRW as it is with the math I have seen previously in this thread, will not stay competitive enough to spec into until either it is buffed or the new gear's damage upgrades DRW dps past the threshold.

The other changes to blood are not entirely terrible, most of which in fact add a new spin to our playstyle which I am somewhat interested to see. I vacillate between blood and unholy depending on what I feel like playing that week, but overall I really enjoy blood as a viable raiding spec. Time will tell what will occur with our class, but hopefully blood will remain intact enough after this patch to remain competitive with frost and unholy.

Have you tested hs vs bs damage on test after the glyph change? Blood is not stronger on ptr compare to live, if anything I probably lost 300+ dps. It’s pointless to argue, since its relative. I agree that blood will be better after you get all the ARP gear/BIS from Ulduar, but by then does it really matter? To me it doesn’t.

I'm still boggled how anyone thinks that HS is better in it's current form than previous. Old - 60% wpn dmg + 220 + 110 per disease VS New - 50% wpn dmg + 308 + 10% per disease.
With 2 diseases, Old = 60% + 440
With 2 diseases, New = 60% + 369.6

Without diseases, Old = 60% + 220
Without diseases, New = 50% + 308

So, under no circumstances is the new HS better than the old HS. HS isn't even affected by BS glyph anymore, which with 2 diseases makes BS == HS. Nice 41 pt talent that's only as good as a base ability with a glyph.

Now, for the old OB vs new DS
Old OB = 100% + 292 + 146 per disease (*1.2 from OB glyph)
with glyph 120% + 350 + 175 per disease
New DS = 75% + 222 (*1.3 from talents * 1.25 from DS glyph (sometimes))
with glyph/talent 121% + 360.75

So, under diseaseless circumstances, DS is SLIGHTLY better than the old OB.

So, HS nerfed (via ability and glyph), OB -> DS is about a wash, and DRW was beaten like a red-headed step child. Still no real perks to using diseases.

Maybe HS is nerfed, but there are other abilities in Blood that are changing in PTR (3.1). I won't go into detail to list all the changes that will increase Blood DPS, for what it's worth Blood does about the same on PTR as live, however from my testing, you'd want to use diseases obviously in 3.1.

What’s a lot? 15% arp? Probably 20-25% if you go all out, with Ulduar gear it should be around 55+% without even trying. There is more than enough gcds to dump runic power, I am not running into any issues with a diseased rotation on live, on ptr raids I just sit on my hands with too many free gcds. I do use totally different rotations on live vs ptr, but with DS > OB on the ptr I don’t see much of a choice.

I just did this calc as well, and got identical numbers for both old HS and new HS (with diseases), and higher numbers for new HS without:

Old formula: 60% WD + 221 + 110/disease
New formula: 50% WD + 368 + (.1 * #diseases * [.5WD + 368] )

Using an average weapon damage of 778 (my weapon), I get:

Old + 2 diseases: 908
New + 2 diseases: 908

Old + 0 diseases: 687
New + 0 diseases: 757

Ah... I see what you did there. You're assuming that the "increases damage by 10%/disease" refers only to the bonus damage. I can't prove it, but the wording says "total damage" which leads me to believe it is the whole calculation.

Also, the BS + 2 disease calculation comes up as just over new 0 disease HS.

What you guys fail to realize is that bloody strikes was buffed from 30% to 45% on the ptr. So new heart strike does infact hit noticably harder than the old heart strike.

However heart strike being removed from the blood strike glyph coupled with the drw nerf, literally completely guts the spec. Not to mention the conditions allowing blood to use a ghoul for 2 minutes in Naxxaramas where almost every fight is less than 2 minutes, and has negligable raid damage, allowing for a blood 100% ghoul uptime is gone. Maybe superior scaling will allow blood to catch up late ulduar, but going in to ulduar the spec is vastly inferior.

Bloody Strike changes and Blood Gorged alone more than undo the Glyph loss.

Assume BoH & 3400 AP (exact same talents except no Bloody Strikes for less math)
Old formula
(758+(3400/14*3.3))*.6+221+110/disease = (no disease) 1156 + (220) = (2 disease) 1376
New formula
(758+(3400/14*3.3))*.5+368 = (no disease) 1147 * 1.2 = (2 disease) 1377

Same math, larger AP (just to compare scalar)
Old
(758+(10000/14*3.3))*.6+221+110/disease = (no disease) 2090 = (2 disease) 2310
New
(758+(10000/14*3.3))*.5+368 = (no disease) 1926 * 1.2 = (2 disease) 2311

So yes, they are almost perfectly identical with 2 diseases and old is better with no diseases by 1% at 3400 AP and 8% at 10000 AP.

[edit]
The comparisons were to see if HS (alone) was nerfed, not to see if HS was doing less damage than on live, so the changes in Bloody Strikes has nothing to do with whether HS was nerfed or not. Hopefully the math shows that overall there was very little nerfed to HS and absolutely nothing buffed to HS. Whether Bloody Strikes was buffed is completely isolated.

With DS being added to the 2&4T7+, I don't even know if you don't just go back to the diseaseless rotation and use diseases when you need to heal yourself. DS is almost as good as old OB, Bloody Strikes buff makes New diseaseless HS 7% less than Old diseaseless HS, and Sudden Doom probably makes new HS better.

So ignore the talents that make up for the slight nerf to HS that make new HS > Old HS? How's that make sense?

If they are equal before the glyph assuming no bloody strikes(as the above post suggests) then after modifiers are applied you have(lets ignore that the flat bonus gets 60% in current bloody strikes for simplisity),

X*1.3*1.2 = 1.56X
Y*1.45 = 1.45Y

You are arguing that 10% armor pen is worth more than the 7.5% damage increase essentially. That is clearly false. The gap is actually probably larger than 10% after factoring in 60% on the flat bonus.

Ofcourse blood got buffs(DS, Doom, Blood Gorged, PS) in other areas that more than make up HS hitting weaker than on live, however do the buffs makeup for all the other nerf aswell? (specifically having to use diseases, drw, ghoul uptime, and HS)

removed due to a bad flash of attitude on my part.

All mathematical calculations that involve the new way HS benefits from diseases are going to be sketchy. Unless you assume that Y=X, which I don't see happening. If we read it literally:

- Old HS: 60% weapon damage + 220.8 + 110.4 x disease

- New HS: 50% weapon damage + 368 + 10% total damage x disease

Now pardon the napkin maths, I'm trying to make a rough extimate.
So, assuming my 5800 raidbuffed ap (before proccs):

5800/14*3.3 = 1367, with BoH that means (606+910/2=758) 2125 average weapon damage before talents. Let's assume only Blood talents for this, so just 2 Hander weapon specialization for now: 2210.

Old HS:

2210*0.6+220.8+220.8=1767.6*1.3 (bloody strikes) = 2298

New HS:

[2210*0.5+368]*1.2=1767.6 (... wait what. Identical values. Feel free to rerun the maths) *1.45 (bloody strikes) = 2563.02


Let's factor in the Glyph for the old HS: 2298*1.2 = 2757.6


If my math is wrong, please point me out where. From what I can see, the old *glyphed* HS was barely stronger than the new one even before you consider you now have a free major glyph slot and 10% armor penetration that doesn't benefit HS only but all your other abilities.

Edit: wrong normalized coefficient. Difference is more sensible but still the reasoning isn't changed.