When do I break from my Mastery/Multistrike stacked gear?

[Glycerine 0]

Hi,

I boosted a Blood DK and gathered this gear together in about a week and a half.  Now I'm helping my guild progress through HFC N. I don't think I need any gear from N, apart from a few things that might be better if they are WF. I am getting questions as to why I don't want any of the gear and I answer with, "Wrong stats." At which point should I start accepting the fact that not everything has M/M and equip gear with less than nominal stats in order to increase my ilvl?  Is there a Multistrike number I should reach and be "ok" with leaving it there when I do put on other stats.  Mr. Robot's advice on BiS had me losing tons of Multistrike and lots of Mastery.  Do I simply have the wrong idea about all of it?   Thank you for any help given.

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/draenor/Glycerine/simple

[TeamC 6]

I've main tanked as Blood DK through Normal and Heroic HFC -- haven't touched the Mythics yet -- so I'll just give you my advice from those two tiers of content.

 

Essentially, what you have will carry you well into the Heroic tier of content if your guild is going that far. There are pieces in Heroic tier that will start to replace some of what you have based on item level alone. They'll be Mastery/Multistrike itemization, so they'll be no-brainer upgrades. If your guild is pretty much planning to top out in Normal mode, then you are more or less sitting on what you could consider to be BiS items, aside from your trinkets, neck, and 1 ring.

 

You should consider a few things moving forward:

 

1) See if you can get the hang of Breath of Sindragosa. With that much Multistrike odds are you'll be able to keep BoS up for a fairly significant amount of time, which when used properly can be both a hefty boost to your damage, as well as a significant defensive CD to use in encounters with heavy magic attacks, such as Xhul'horac. Once you get used to it, you can trivialize a lot of damage as well as dish out a lot of damage at the same time. If you feel like you really need Defile as a survival cool down, consider whether or not you are using Rune Tap or Anti-Magic Shell properly, or if you are not leaving yourself a Death Strike to throw out when your health starts to dip.

 

2) This plays into #1 as well, but replace your Glyph of Vampiric Blood with Glyph of Regenerative Magic. Having your Anti-Magic Shell available more often will be a bigger bonus to you moving forward than 10% extra healing from Vampiric Blood, particularly when that same glyph eliminates VB's boost to your health. But having more AMS availability will also help the aforementioned Breath of Sindragosa usage. Play your cards right and you potentially stand to get off 2-3 AMS's during a Breath, which will often refill your Runic Power bar to full.

3) If you have no interest in learning Breath of Sindragosa, that's fine. It's not everyone's cup of tea. One thing I would suggest is start trying to get your hands on some DPS trinkets. According to your Armory profile you're only just getting into the second tier of HFC, so you won't be seeing these right away, but I imagine it won't be too long. Items such as Discordant Chorus from Fel Lord Zakuun, Unending Hunger from Gorefiend, and later the Empty Drinking Horn from Mannoroth are what I mean specifically. At first glance using these trinkets will seem counter-intuitive, but your Blood Presence 15% damage bonus works on Empty Drinking Horn and Discordant Chorus, making them exceptionally nice boosts to your damage/threat.

If you want to mix and match these with something like Anzu's Cursed Plume until you and your raid are a bit more secure in their gearing that won't hurt anything. But at your gear level with that level of MS/Mastery, you should be close to the point where the only reason you are dying is if you make a mistake while tanking, or your raid is wiping already, so when opening shipyard treasure raid loot chests or those from timewalking dungeons or weekly mythic dungeon events, I'd recommend swapping your loot spec to Unholy or Frost in hopes of picking some of these up.

 

4) Don't worry about your set bonuses at all. At most, run the Shoulders and Chest for the 2 piece. In the grand scheme of things, the set bonuses are meh, and the set piece itemization is crap for Blood.

 

5) This will sound far more judging and/or preaching than I want it to, but I'd suggest you really start understanding the flow of the encounters you are tanking, as well as where certain defensive CDs fit into those fights. The proper use of a CD like Rune Tap can do more for you than 30 item levels of gear. You've got one of the most elaborate suites of abilities in the Blood DK, with more or less a trick for every eventuality that occurs. Once you really get a feel for things like timing Rune Taps/AMS/Death Strikes properly, the itemization of your gear will be more or less an afterthought. This is where DBM timers are a godsend, as they allow you time to prepare a defense for an upcoming attack. And with the abilities at your disposal, anything a boss throws at you you can pretty much negate with a proper CD + Death Strike.

[Glycerine 0]

Thank you very much for your reply.  That is a huge help and more than I could have ever expected.  I am implementing the changes you suggested for testing.  Thank you. 

[TeamC 6]

Happy to be of help, Glycerine. If you have any questions about anything listed above, or anything that comes up that isn't represented in the above never hesitate to ask. Here to help.