3/3 increases Pestilence damage by 60%.

I've always thought that unless you are in a guild that uses the exact same 25 people 100% of the time that versaitily often outweighs stacking the unnecessary. For example going Sudden Doom for extra threat. My threat as unholy typically demolishes anyone so the only time free crit death coils would typically help is with threat wipes. That's a small percentage of encounters where its not even really needed their either if the raid is half smart and you're half quick, compared to pulling out other things that could potentially be very nice to have. Sure it's not the tanks job to do damage, its the raids. I can also tell you that when we're doing a fight where the raid has to pull an average of xyz DPS per person they certainly don't mind that I'm pulling double what the warriors are even when tanking. I suspect blood will be even higher, and if you have a decent number of rogues you can't have too many hysteria's although with a full time blood DK I agree with getting rid of blood aura (however most of our dk's raid unholy atm.)

Alas, I misread the glyph. That being the case while my points require some revision I think they are largely still valid. 20-22% of your maximum health instantly healed is significant, the synergy with Vampiric Blood is still powerful even if it's "only" 36-40% healing instead of 54%, and you can still generate 4-9k threat (without accounting for the group healing).

Whether you go 1 or 4pts in, or glyph it, is going to be purely the tank's preference unless there's a truly compelling threat or mitigation talent or glyph in competition.

What was the verdict on the changes with armor? Is the PTR going up during maintenance right now or was it already closed? (at work right now).

I would imagine more speficific information is required on how bonus armor etc works when deciding between items such as these:

[Heritage]
[Boundless Ambition]

[edit]found the post where it looks like ring armor etc stays as is. So have any of the people far better at math then me figured out how that changes our priority tree as far as getting armor vs stam etc?[/edit]

I don't.I'm not so good with the maths...buuuut. I did a few rough calculations based only on IBF. We should be roughly the same if not better off. The damage reduction without IBF active is enough to offset the the increased damage with it on from an averaged damage point of view. Enough to where I won't be as inclined to keep a mitigation rotation going. But we'll see

There are much smarter people than me on these message boards and I'm sure they'd be willing to share some real math.

While I think they're useful talents, I'm not sure they're "all that", as they say. Reliance on having 2 Blood runes available to pop an oh-shit-button is kind of a pain in the ass, as you're probably NOT going to have them. At that point, you're down to either sequential use via Blood Tap to use VB and waiting for the next rune to naturally refresh to Rune Tap, or ERW to pop everything back, which is a 5m CD to enable use of 2 1m CDs, which seems... Lame.


I'd certainly take them if I went blood, mind. I however think that the best use will be as separate cooldowns, one as a mini-Last Stand (Rune Tap) and one as a proper Last Stand (VB) with additional +heal component. I do, however, feel that putting the points in Rune Tap is now not an investment best described with "Meh."

Yeah, Vampiric Blood should be up for 50% of the time no matter what. It's not really a Last Stand as much as it is an unbreakable armor or bone shield. The difference being - we hope the 20% max health bonus is enough to give healers breathing room so you don't die. If it is, then VB is a very powerful quasi-mitigation tool. Giving healers 50% extra healing on you (assuming, again, your baseline mitigation is good enough that you don't get gibbed between heals) is very similar to taking 33% less damage, in the long run. The rune tap on top of that is an emergency button - it's not even on the GCD. I'm pretty sure Blood tap isn't on the GCD either, allowing you to macro a blood tap - rune tap emergency heal that would go for 20% of your health if you're not in VB and 30% if you are.

You can indeed macro Blood Tap and Rune Tap together for a free heal every minute.

I have 23453 Health unbuffed in Frost Presence on the test realm. Vampiric Blood boosts me up to 28612, and Rune Tap (no glyph, but fully talented) heals me for 8583. I don't think that's anything to sneeze at.

I don't think this has been mentioned in here, but any word of if Ebon Plaguebringer can now be placed by 2 DKs for a damage bonus?

I'm definitely going to try out a blood tank build. But I'm kinda curious where "to go" to fit in points - there are so many awesome talents in blood, and I am concerned that if I drop some of the DPS talents, I give up too much in the way of threat generation(i.e., can I afford to give up crit and blood vengeance?). Then there's Spell Deflection, and I'm not sure if that is worth it, even though it's a great tool for direct cast spells, a good portion of boss spells are cone or what not... Then I'm curious if Annihilation is necessary for blood tanking, as if so, that's very limiting as to what I can fit into Blood or Unholy... Blah, so many decisions.

Decisions are good, though. I like this. Lots of questions to ponder thanks to these new changes. =)

I wouldn't put much stock into Spell Deflection, as the damage reduction is inconsistent and rather low for its cost. We already have some excellent abilities in the way of IBF and Anti-Magic Shield to fend off bursts of incoming magic damage.

Ah thanks, was watching my fraps from tonight sartharion, and was wondering about some strange spell deflection behaviour, specifically when I was AMSing with 5/5 AMS and was still taking damage. I guess I'll drop it then, it didn't seem terribly useful, at least for this fight. And yeah works fine on breath attacks, it just doesn't work on ground targetted AEs and pulsing/environemental dmg, but everything else requires a target so they're considered direct damage.

It's not a bad talent(30%chance to reduce 30%dmg on every spell), but the issues with AMS will probably remove it from my blood tanking spec.

I estimate I should be nearing around 40k hp raid buffed with my blood spec from what i see on the PTR and the nuber of defense gems i can swap out for 24 stam. Combine that with Vamp blood up for 30s of every minute and that would seem to me to be hard to argue with. The only thing that worries me is if I'll have comprable AOE threat.

With the changes, Boundless Ambition, Cloak of the Shadowed Sun, Keystone Great-Ring, and Gatekeeper are still "best in slot" items. Sand-Worn Band can be better than Gatekeeper in some gear setups.

Nexus War Champion Beads are comparable to Boundless Ambition and can surpass it in some gear setups.

Cloak of the Shadowed Sun is a clear winner for its slot.

The 850 armor trinket is no longer very good. Valor Medal of the First War/Repelling Charge are much better for mitigation. Indestructible Alchemists Stone, the JC trinkets, and Essence of the Gossamer are better for survival.

reply is not edit, sorry

Doing a search through the thread, it doesn't look like anyone has tested out the new will of the necropolis yet. Just wondering if anyone has and how its actually being implemented considering the different ideas that were being tossed around earlier.

You could always find one of the wandering elites in Northrend. Like those big storm giants wandering around Howling Fjord, or those guys you have to kill for group quests in the Dragonblight, and let them beat on you. If they aren't hitting you hard enough to get decent results, you can always take off some pieces of armor.

Failing that, you could solo Onyxia naked, and use those results.

I would test these results myself, but I'm having problems logging into the PTR. The problem reportedly is a result of me being a beta tester, and I have heard Blizz is looking into it.

Ok it does look like it works as worded. I took all my armor gear off and let myself get beat down to 36-41%. Each hit from the elite took me down below 35 and the first hit was always reduced.

Confirmed. At present, in the PTR Will of Necropolis is working exactely as the tip. Damage that would -for example- reduce your hp from 50% to 30% suffer a 15% mitigation -fully talented-.

Moreover, I've noticed quirkness with Heart Strike's cleave, doing insane damage -critting over 4k at lev 73- to the off-target and normal (or maybe less, I've just took a glance to the combat log) dmg to the target.

I believe the secondary target on Heart Strike is getting 100% weapon damage instead of 60%. Numbers seem right for it.

For clarity, does this talent only affect hits which reduce (or would otherwise reduce) your health below 35%, or does the talent also mitigate hits received at 34% or below?

Any hits that put you under 35% health or hit while under 35% health.