I personally haven't had any problems with paladins of any spec in pvp, I've found most of my trouble to be with the arcane/frost pvp spec that mages are going. They kite us too easily, and have too many outs.
I do have to agree that making death runes out of the rune that we need the most in pvp seems quite pointless. Though I'm sure we can make SOME use out of it, might actually be decent for a Blood PvP spec...
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
No offense, but that's basically a farming glyph if anything, I don't even think it has much place in a BG, let alone an Arena.
I wouldn't be so sure. We have disease ticks (to get that last little sliver of health) and large strikes (to help the chances of a killing blow), generally speaking in pvp and even raids, I will usually get the killing blow. It's certainly not something you can rely on, but in 2's with a healer, for example, it's pretty certain that you'll get the killing blow.
Formally Xyrm/Zurm, the Ret Pally. Now playing my rogue, Zyrm, more casually with RL friends.
Sorry Zurm, but that's a very poor example. If you get the first killing blow in 2v2, generally speaking you've won the match. Even if your partner were to drop simultaneously, the amount of situations in which a refreshed DG cooldown will produce a win are pretty much nil.
I'm going to have to second the verdict of "farming glyph" on this one, and a very poor use of a glyph slot period.
I think the main point is, most of the time, in 2s especially, if an opposing player is dead, you probably are winning already. So its a 'Win More' Glyph in that sense. Better to devote resources to getting that first player dead.
I can't believe there is even discussion of using this glyph in arenas. It is terrible in every pvp situation I can think of. They just seem to be clueless about what DK's need in pvp.....which I guess is a product of the class being so young. Things will hopefully go up from here.
I'm actually planning on seeing how blood works out with the new changes. From what I can see we're looking at a few things that are really nice.
30% Vamp Blood uptime combined with 30% rune tap healing which means at least one of them is going to be during a Vamp Blood uptime and get the 50% bonus.
4% healing from dmg to the raid
Basically 20% AP to the raid
6% stam bonus
So with IBF and the set bonus that leaves 15 seconds of each minute. For 2 out of every three minutes you can use mark of blood / lichborne to cover, which leaves trinkets for the last minute (and probably more often then that).
Seems viable to me and looks like Blood should add more single target DPS. I threw 1 point in blood worms for the hell of it but I just realized I need to pull 3 points for Subversion which is too good to pass up I think. Also not sure whether the 2 points in morbidity are needed. I picked them mostly because I figured blood's AOE would be weaker even with pestilence/bloody strikes changes and that would help cover.
Thoughts? I'm not sure how worthwhile the extra expertise is when compared to staying alive type effects or things like +crit etc for threat.
Personally, I'd cut Lichborne from that spec. While 25% more avoidance for 15 seconds is nice, you already have three 'Oh Shit' buttons on far faster cooldowns (Vamp Blood, Rune Tap, and IBF). This gives you 6 more points to play with, which allows you to fill out Subversion, Morbidity, and Blood Gorged (which is very valuable for it's expertise, if nothing else.)
Oh, as you can see I pulled the points from Spell Deflection and threw them into Bloody Vengeance. DD spells are usually not a concern for us, and Spell Deflection doesn't work on AE dmg, so I don't think it's worth it. I'd rather do more dmg (and thus more threat), and let AMS handle any nasty DDs.
I find the value of Epidemic without Annihilation to be questionable, or at least situational. In single target tanking it's all but useless unless you plan on replacing all of your Oblits with Death Strike. AoE-wise, it's not really needed because of Pestilence's cooldown removal (IE: you can just keep rotating between targets and keep diseases up on all of them just from that, generating threat at the same time with Mobidity's 15s cooldown D&Ds and Cleave Strike).
I'd put the points into Improved Icy Touch, topping it off with the one point from DRW. I'd rather not bank on another class being around to provide an attack speed debuff (my guild doesn't even have any warriors in our usual raid comp for TC). It would be odd to have absolutely no attack speed debuffs in a 25-man raid, but you're not doing yourself any favors by skipping it either way.
I often don't find myself even reaching into Blood Gorged because I can't bear using Oblit when it eats my diseases, but I won't deny that the Expertise and 10% damage (provided your healers are going balls to the wall to keep you topped off) are a great boon.
This is the build i will be tanking with as blood. I did not take spell deflection because its situational on bosses, but i do understand its a decent talent. However, I did not take it because in between all of our cooldowns as well with a much lower time on AMS given the new cooldown plus the talent for it, i feel magic mitigation will be fine.
I did take blood gorged. While im not above 75 percent all the time. the times that I am will be getting use out of it. Aside from that the 5 expertise points help for tanking as you all know.
Ah yes the 800lb gorilla in the room. Even though we will be doing more AE threat via pestilence buff in our blood tree as well as pestilence cooldown being removed, i had one point left over. What better place to put it? Corpse Explosion. This spell will without a doubt give us the final edge we need in holding AE threat. While the new heartstrike helps, it simply cant hit more than 2 targets.
Lets sum the AE thing up. DnD + Stronger Pestilence w/ no cooldown + heartstrike x2 mobs (or blood boil if you so choose) + Stronger Corpse Explosion = the end to our aoe tanking issues.
Some things off the bat about my spec you could change around, possibly taking all points out of blood gorged and putting 3 into Spell Deflection and 2 into Abom might. I did not take Abom might because we have a Marksman Hunter in our raid.
Feel free to question the build, id like to hear peoples thoughts on it as i have not seen anyone throw a point into the new corpse explosion for blood tanking yet.
Edit - Yes i didn't go after Annihilation. I feel wtih MoM Deathstrike will do just fine with building threat using that 1F 1U runes. Oblit is not the end all be all tanking strike. Its simply not needed. Lets not forget we have runic strike as our main threat strike to be queued along side your heartstrikes for single target threat.
Also some argue there is no point in taking epidemic if you dont take Annihilation. When aoe tanking you want your dots dicking as much as possible for as long as possible. Besides, you couldn't get CE if you didnt take it
Edit again - I updated the glyphs. Considering I will be death striking as i feel its our best choice over oblit when it comes to tanking I replaced the Icy touch glyph with the Death Strike Glyph.
Lets remember we are blood, we will have a massive amount of RP generation considering all the heartstrikes we can throw out after DRM has done its duty.
I find the value of Epidemic without Annihilation to be questionable, or at least situational. In single target tanking it's all but useless unless you plan on replacing all of your Oblits with Death Strike. AoE-wise, it's not really needed because of Pestilence's cooldown removal (IE: you can just keep rotating between targets and keep diseases up on all of them just from that, generating threat at the same time with Mobidity's 15s cooldown D&Ds and Cleave Strike).
I'd put the points into Improved Icy Touch, topping it off with the one point from DRW. I'd rather not bank on another class being around to provide an attack speed debuff (my guild doesn't even have any warriors in our usual raid comp for TC). It would be odd to have absolutely no attack speed debuffs in a 25-man raid, but you're not doing yourself any favors by skipping it either way.
I often don't find myself even reaching into Blood Gorged because I can't bear using Oblit when it eats my diseases, but I won't deny that the Expertise and 10% damage (provided your healers are going balls to the wall to keep you topped off) are a great boon.
Like you I'm torn between Annihilation and Blood Gorged.
One question I have for you and the others is about Rune Tap. I've noticed all your builds include it and the improved version. I currently do not spend any points in this, nor really want to. If I die, it's the healers fault, between Vampiric Blood getting a major overhaul, as well as 40% hp gained from sacrificing a pet, I see no need for this heal, especially at the cost of 4 Talent Points. I also have IBF and Lichbourne as other "Oh Shizer" buttons. Maybe Rune Tap proves to be effective in 5 mans, but I raid 25/10 man mostly and 20% hp isn't going to make or break a raid boss encounter. By not speccing into Rune Tap I feel we can get more threat generating talents.
With that said, I have two builds I am currently looking at. The first is an annihilation build, with Epidemic, as I see the two only necessary if i take the other. This would be my build. http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=201216050000.
The real question I have is what will produce more threat of the two builds? They would have two completely different rotations, as I cannot use Obliterate with the second build. What would an optimal rotation for the second build be?
IT->PS->HS->HS->DS?
or
DND->IT->PS->HS?
The rotation trouble I'm seeing with the second build and overall less threat seems to have me favoring annihilation heavily.
DRW seems too good to pass up now. Maybe its not exceptional for raiding but I tank 10 mans/heroics a lot and double AOTD seems like a fine thing to me as when I ran with 2 DK's before it was nasty for some bosses -- being able to do it by myself seems that much better. As far as not needing. Lichborne seems fairly easy for us to pick up and provides a much needed anti fear as well as another way to macro in heals to ourselves and is just nice in general I think. Like the other night on Patchwerk 25 one of the Tanks DC'd and I ended up soaking up all the hatefuls. It went ok but I think it would have been far smoother if I had had this spec with the extra cooldowns.
Corpse explosion is an intriguing idea though. I would basically have to pull 2 points from somewhere and either lose DRW or Lichborne. I will have to see how my AE threat is first.
D&D is an amazing threat tool. Not using it is a grave error as far as I'm concerned.
As far as Rune Tap goes, all I have to say is this. The healers job is to keep the raid's HPs from dropping to zero. The tank's job is the keep threat and all the while do everything he can do to not die at the same time. Rune Tap is a tool you can use to help keep yourself from getting nixed. You can blame the healers after you've done everything in your power own to survive.
This is a great simplification, but it's more or less what it all boils down to. 20% health is a lot of health for a tank. It's even more when you use Vampiric Blood. It goes to a 30% heal of 120% of your max health. It's a big heal for the cost of one rune. The glyph makes it even better, but there are more important glyphs as far as I'm concerned.
I hadn't though of using NotD with DRW, but I've yet to hear that DRW contributes any threat to the user, so I'm still not entirely convinced it's worth taking for a tank spec. Lichborne is always nice. I'd love to be able to have it along with the other talents I've put in my spec, but I only have so many talent points to use.
CE is something I thought about putting in a tank spec as soon as I read that it was getting buffed. It slipped my mind once I got to a talent calculator, though. Currently it's in the same position as Lichborne for me. It's usefulness is debatable on bosses, but I'll be damned if it's not fun to use after the fight is over and people are trying to loot badges.
Last edited by Kaejin : 12/15/08 at 4:40 PM.
Reason: Corpse Explosion is fun
Like you I'm torn between Annihilation and Blood Gorged.
One question I have for you and the others is about Rune Tap. I've noticed all your builds include it and the improved version. I currently do not spend any points in this, nor really want to. If I die, it's the healers fault, between Vampiric Blood getting a major overhaul, as well as 40% hp gained from sacrificing a pet, I see no need for this heal, especially at the cost of 4 Talent Points. I also have IBF and Lichbourne as other "Oh Shizer" buttons. Maybe Rune Tap proves to be effective in 5 mans, but I raid 25/10 man mostly and 20% hp isn't going to make or break a raid boss encounter. By not speccing into Rune Tap I feel we can get more threat generating talents.
There are several points that need to be considered about Rune Tap.
1. With the changes to the Glyph in the next patch a fully talented Rune Tap is 30% hp.
2. Vampiric Blood increases the effectiveness of Rune Tap in two ways simultaneously, first through the healing buff and second by increasing maximum hp. A fully talented and glyphed Rune Tap will heal for 54% of your normal maximum hp during Vampiric Blood.
3. Assuming Rune Tap generates threat, a 30k health tank healing themselves for 10-16k health will generate 8-12k threat, potentially more if the glyphed heals on the group add to your threat.
In order to achieve the same threat for a single rune, assuming no overhealing, your Heart Strikes will have to average 5.5-8.3k damage. That seems feasible against two targets, but in a single target tanking situation Rune Tap could potentially be a superior threat move in addition to the healing.
One would sincerely hope that you won't be consistently near 50-70% hp such that this looks like a desirable threat tool, particularly with a 50% bonus to healing running. Situationally it's still extremely potent both as an "Oh Shizer" move and a threat move (again, assuming the healing gives threat).
There is a case to be made for spending just the one point on a glyphed Rune Tap, saving the three points for something more important. It depends largely on preference, though mathematically the difference between the two is 48% additional healing done per minute (assuming you can only get one Rune Tap in per Vampiric Blood).
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity. Monte's LoL Blog
I can't believe there is even discussion of using this glyph in arenas. It is terrible in every pvp situation I can think of. They just seem to be clueless about what DK's need in pvp.....which I guess is a product of the class being so young. Things will hopefully go up from here.
The question is, if you kill a players pet, will it refresh your DG? ( Water elemental / mirror images / warlock/dk/hunter pets ) If you can then I can see it being decent, altho very situational.
There are several points that need to be considered about Rune Tap.
1. With the changes to the Glyph in the next patch a fully talented Rune Tap is 30% hp.
2. Vampiric Blood increases the effectiveness of Rune Tap in two ways simultaneously, first through the healing buff and second by increasing maximum hp. A fully talented and glyphed Rune Tap will heal for 54% of your normal maximum hp during Vampiric Blood.
3. Assuming Rune Tap generates threat, a 30k health tank healing themselves for 10-16k health will generate 8-12k threat, potentially more if the glyphed heals on the group add to your threat.
In order to achieve the same threat for a single rune, assuming no overhealing, your Heart Strikes will have to average 5.5-8.3k damage. That seems feasible against two targets, but in a single target tanking situation Rune Tap could potentially be a superior threat move in addition to the healing.
One would sincerely hope that you won't be consistently near 50-70% hp such that this looks like a desirable threat tool, particularly with a 50% bonus to healing running. Situationally it's still extremely potent both as an "Oh Shizer" move and a threat move (again, assuming the healing gives threat).
There is a case to be made for spending just the one point on a glyphed Rune Tap, saving the three points for something more important. It depends largely on preference, though mathematically the difference between the two is 48% additional healing done per minute (assuming you can only get one Rune Tap in per Vampiric Blood).
The Glyph increases the healing done by Rune Tap by 10%, not by 50% - in other words, with the Glyph and with just Rune Tap and no Improved Rune Tap, it heals you for 11% of your total health, and fully talented it will heal you for 22% of your total health.
Spell Deflection is definitely not worth it for me. Direct damage spells are almost nonexistent in all of the current raids. It would have to deflect dragon breaths (from the wording it sounds like it wont) for me to pick it up.
Morbidity seems like a requirement for any of my tank specs anymore. 15 sec CD on Death and Decay has become the bread and butter of my tanking in pretty much everything.
Theres one point left over in the build. I'd drop something and pick up Abomination's Might if you don't have Trueshot Aura or Unleashed Rage. For 2 points, 2% strength is bad.
I would really like to have Sudden Doom but theres just so much stuff to get in Blood, it was the easiest to lose.
my understanding is they are moving a damage bonus that was originally in the Unholy tree to the Bloody Strikes talent... meaning you can look to find Bloody Strikes applying additional damage to Pestilence in addition to what it already does.
Spell Deflection is definitely not worth it for me. Direct damage spells are almost nonexistent in all of the current raids. It would have to deflect dragon breaths (from the wording it sounds like it wont) for me to pick it up.
Morbidity seems like a requirement for any of my tank specs anymore. 15 sec CD on Death and Decay has become the bread and butter of my tanking in pretty much everything.
Theres one point left over in the build. I'd drop something and pick up Abomination's Might if you don't have Trueshot Aura or Unleashed Rage. For 2 points, 2% strength is bad.
I would really like to have Sudden Doom but theres just so much stuff to get in Blood, it was the easiest to lose.
I am not sure how your guild is sitting on DK's but if you have another Blood DK in your raids I would suggest just dropping the points in Blood Aura, you could also drop a point in DRW and Hysteria (from a pure tanking perspective) to pick up Sudden Doom. Free crit Death Coils are just really hard to pass up on since they build stupid threat.
Hello all,
I can't understand the point:
- Bloody Strikes will receive extra bonus damage from Pestilence
Can anyone explain please?
Thanks,
Originally Posted by Dillinger604
my understanding is they are moving a damage bonus that was originally in the Unholy tree to the Bloody Strikes talent... meaning you can look to find Bloody Strikes applying additional damage to Pestilence in addition to what it already does.
So the new Bloody Strikes talent will do also damage and spreads diseases?
New tooltip should be like:
Increases the damage by 30% and the bonus damage from diseases by 60% of your Blood Strike and Heart strike. Causes 65 to 79 Shadow damage to the target and all targets within 10 yards and spreads any diseases on the target to the additional targets.
Doesn't anybody else feel that by nerfing Bone Shield and IBF they've done the complete opposite of what they intended? I mean 20% and 35% is not very impressive, sure they're ok, but not something worth saving the cooldown for. I just see myself using them the same way as I am now, just to get extra mitigation. Also Bone Shield being on the GCD and a rune dependant ability, isn't such a good emergency button to begin with.
So the new Bloody Strikes talent will do also damage and spreads diseases?
New tooltip should be like:
Increases the damage by 30% and the bonus damage from diseases by 60% of your Blood Strike and Heart strike. Causes 65 to 79 Shadow damage to the target and all targets within 10 yards and spreads any diseases on the target to the additional targets.
The wording in the notes is confusing to say the least.
The talent Bloody Strikes will now also increase the damage done by pestilence by 10% in edition to its current effect.
12/15/08, 9:57 AM
