Blood Death Knight 7.3

[Valks 2,373]

21 minutes ago, Guest Avlaen said:

is it me or is the rune forge choice missing under enchants and consumables

It is! We'll get it updated. If you need the information, here it is from my previous comment:

On 10.9.2016 at 11:32 AM, Blainie said:

Use Stoneskin for survivability and general tanking, use Fallen Crusader to maximise your DPS.

 

[TalonShadowsong 5]

I believe, in the Artifact Section, 1.1 General Survivability seems a little... off.

Short:
It prioritizes Bonebreaker (Marrowrend damage) over Iron heart (Armor %) in route 1, which ends up flawing route 2 as well since it has us seeking out Skeletal Shattering, which is directly tied to our Critical Strike chance, which is listed as 3rd on the priority, below Haste and Mastery (which no stat weights or breakpoints listed), meaning that the effectiveness of this trait would likely come down to be about 15% chance to absorb an additional 8% damage per Bone Shield Stack consumed, which is a very low return.

Long:
I believe a more suitable path for Survivability would be more along the lines of:
Consumption > Sanguinary Affinity (1) > Vampiric Fangs (4) > Rattling Bones (5) > Dance of Darkness (8) > Mouth of Hell (9) > Iron Heart (12) > All-Consuming Rot (15) > Unending Thirst (16) > Veinrender (19) > Umbilicus Eternus (20) > Blood Feast (21) > Grim Perseverance (24) > Skeletal Shattering (25) > Coagulopathy (28) > Meat Shield (31) > Bonebreaker (34)

I'll go into more detail below about all of the traits.

20 traits is a pretty reasonable goal to hit before the 20th for raiding. This provides you with:
Vampiric Fangs :  +15% to the health gained and the healing returns provided. This is a very nice addition for such a cheap trait.

Rattling Bones: +30% for 1 extra stack, which may not seem like much, but is a nice addition. This means that we have a 30% chance to have 1 extra boss swing (1.5-2 = at least 1 GCD) before we have to Marrowrend, which can allow for various other options.

Dance of Darkness: By default, this ability lasts 8s, so this almost DOUBLES our base duration. 14s of echo'd attacks, double Blood Plague and +40% Parry chance is pretty ridiculous. Furthermore, this becomes even more powerful with our next trait.

Mouth of Hell: Gives you a 2nd Dancing Rune Weapon. While this is active, Marrowrend will generate +1 stacks from its base, which means we are getting 4. However, this is overkill regardless, because we now have 3 swings of a single Marrowrend granting us 12 stacks (capping at 10) in a single use. Furthermore this gives us a 3rd Blood Plague on the target for 14s.

Iron Heart: Provides 2% Armor per trait for a nice +6% armor, which is just more than Stoneskin Gargoyle gives as is.
   Now, armor is a really powerful stat (so says the mighty Ask Mr. Robot), more so since we are dealing with very high numbers in this expansion. In my current set up, I have 5 points in Iron Heart (2 from relics, obviously) giving my an additional 10% armor + Stoneskin Gargoyle and i848, putting me 5314 Armor for a 41.83% reduction in physical damage.
   Now, doing some shoddy napkin numbers we divide the % reduction by the Armor value to get the rough reduction per point at lvl110 (assuming it doesn't start strong and level out later) I am getting 0.00787% reduction per point of armor. At my current Armor rating, this means that Stoneskin Gargoyle itself is worth: (5314*0.95 = 5048.3 = 265.7 Armor = 2.091059% physical reduction) Furthermore, all my points in Iron Heart work out to double that, which equals: (531.4 = 4.182118% physical reduction).
   Now, if I remove Stoneskin Gargoyle, my Armor is reduced to 5061 for a 40.65% physical reduction (in-game). This, however, alters the formula for how much armor is worth per point to 0.0080, which means there is some decimal skimming, etc. working on the in-game value, somewhere which is only slightly altering these numbers, but not to a major degree. Anyway, the difference here, with my current Armor value is 1.18% physical damage taken. Now, that may not seem like a lot, but a painful ability from a boss, lets use Mythic Smashspite the Hateful (Black Rook Hold) as an example. His Brutal Uppercut deals 1,892,000 damage. 1.18% of that is 22,325.6 which clearly doesn't really matter to us overall (but seriously, this is lolMythic numbers we are talking about and in high-level raiding 1-2% is valuable). Note: In addition to the 5% armor, we also get 5% Strength (idk how this meshing into the overall formulas for damage return, but this also grants us Parry Chance = FC Parry(passive): 16.70% -> SSG Parry: 17.17% = 0.47% [FC Proc Parry: 18.09% = 0.92% difference from SSG]) and 5% Stamina (which is about FC HP: 2,829,540 -> SSG HP: 2,971,020 = 141,480) from Stoneskin Gargoyle. In my current gear, Fallen Crusader is healing my for 215k per proc, which is a fair bit.
   Based on what was said here, I don't really see a reason to be taking Stoneskin Gargoyle at all, unless perhaps Mythic Raids, but it would appear that the proc from Fallen Crusader still outweights the 5% armor and 5% Stamina/Strength. Of course I have no data for this :(

All-Consuming Rot: We seek to have Death and Decay down as much as possible, affecting as many targets as possible for both our survivability and our DPS. Futhermore, we HAVE to take this to get to our gold trait. 12% damage bonus on our AoE isn't anything to scoff at either, it is fairly hefty.

Unending Thirsty: Now, this trait may be a little deceiving. Note that it says WHILE BLOOD SHIELD IS ACTIVE, not Recently Used Death Strike, or anything like that. This trait only DOES SOMETHING while you actually have a Blood Shield. Therefore, the likeliness of maintaining this ability while you actually tanking enemies is fairly slim, even in Heroic Dungeons as our Mastery rating and return is so low we do not generate a lot of Blood Shield in return to our heals. Anyways, 25% Damage Bonus for Death Strike while we have a Blood Shield is great. This lets us really build up our Blood Shield for when we do enter the main tank position in an encounter. Not to mention the 25% Leech, which is always welcome (more heals, yay!).4
   Just for reference, as it stands for me, I have 4242(30%) Mastery and 2.8M HP making a raw (very raw, since this is out of combat, no boneshield+Foul bulwark HP, etc) Death Strike shield me for 88,485 damage. Now, as you may have noticed, trash mobs hit harder than that, probably even in heroic. So, it doesn't take a lot to lose the Blood Shield, making this trait feel empty during this stage of the game where Dungeon content is all we have.
   Overall, I would argue that is a fairly non-beneficial trait unless you are raiding, at any level (not just high end) due to the factors I have mentioned before.

Veinrender: Now, you may or may not have noticed, by you use Heart Strike... a lot, so a bonus 9% damage from going this route is a nice bonus. In addition, this has direct synergy with Blood Feast, which we would be taking as our 21st trait.

Umbilicus Eternus: This, is the trait that really shines out of our entire tree in my opinion.
   After Vampiric Blood expires (that means this trait is only active when we use Vampiric Blood. You will see the buff pop-up on you), you absorb damage equal to 5 times the damage your Blood Plague dealt during Vampiric Blood.
   There are a certain condition that need to be met for this trait to actually be working: You must have a Blood Plague active on the target(s) before using Vampiric Blood.
   When you pop Vampiric Blood, you also now gain the effect of Umbilicus Eternus. Enemies currently affected by your Vampiric Blood now immediately gain the effect of Bleeding Profusely, which is the game parsing how much damage is being dealt to them by your Blood Plague. This effect, however, does not occurring if you apply Blood Plague AFTER Vampiric Blood has been used. Try it yourself. Walk up to a dummy, pop Vampiric Blood then hit Blood Boil. You will only see Blood Plague apply to the target. Same thing when using lolDeath's Caress to apply Blood Plague. This is simply a tooltip error. It doesn't matter if you re-apply after it seems, as the debuff is already there on the target, so be careful this, although there should never really be a case where you run into a brand new enemy with Vampiric Blood pre-popped unless its some strange next level strat I guess...

With that said, here are the numbers related to the returns of this trait:
   This effect is directly linked to Vampiric Blood, which lasts 10s, this means we parse 10s of Blood Plague, then multiply it by 5 to get our shield value. This also means that multiple targets makes this even more powerful. Since this is also tied with Vampiric Blood, our Red Thirst (level 60 trait) becomes infinitely more powerful as it reduces the cooldown of Vampiric Blood by 1 second per 6 runic power spent (45 runic power per Death Strike (the game automatically always parses it as 45 regardless whether we actually only spend 40). This means that each Death Strike reduces our CD on Vampiric Blood by 7.5s, meaning in order to entirely remove the CD, we will need to use 12 Death Strikes.
   Looking strictly at the tooltip, Blood Boil says that Blood Plague will deal 124,872 damage over 24s, which at a 3s interval per tick, we get 8 ticks, which are each worth 15,609 damage. Now, if timed properly, you will only ever see 3 full ticks of Blood Plague damage per target. This means that we are looking at 46,827 damage from Blood Plague within our 10s window. Multiplying that by 5, we end up with a shield absorbing 234,135 damage. Not too shabby. Now, keep in mind that this is directly tied to damage done by the Blood Plague for the 10s duration. This means that if we land some yummy crits, we are looking at 31,218 damage for that tick. All and all, our shields can look like this:
Single Target:
No Crits: 234,135 absorb
50/50 Crits: 351,202 absorb
All Crits: 468,270 absorb

2 Targets:
No Crits: 468,270 absorb
50/50 Crits: 702,405 absorb
All Crits: 936,540 absorb

8 targets (trash pack(s)):
No Crits: 1,873,080 absorb
50/50 Crits: 2,809,620 absorb
All Crits: 3,746,160 absorb

Now, I have seen on the Official Blizz forums that people from the beta were saying this shield might be capped in relation to current max HP, but I don't believe this is definitive proof of that yet. At the time, the maximum shield they were seeing was just under 3,000,000. Even still, this trait has a ridiculous amount of AoE tanking potential and a nice bonus to single target tanking potential regardless.

Blood Feast: Heart Strike now heals you for 25% of the damage it deals. This means we are self-healing while generating RP to further heal and mitigate. This provides us with a large amount of middle rotation self-sustain, making use seem slightly less spiky in trash clearly scenarios. As for big boss swings, this isn't entirely going make or break anything.
   As an example for some numbers, my Heart Strike tooltip stats that it deals 102,583 damage, which would translate directly into 25,645 healing return. Not bad form something I NEED to use anyways in order to properly generate Runic Power.

Grim Perseverance: Grants us 1% chance to Parry per point. Due to the low amount of Critical Strike the Stat Priority section of the guide suggests, we are going to be in and around the base 15%ish rate, so this trait will bump us up to 18%ish. Not entirely the best of traits, in my opinion (but Parry is pretty strong in this game), but don't have a lot of options left when it comes to defensive selections.

Skeletal Shattering: This is an odd trait, but it does blatantly spell out how we should be gearing ourselves. Truth be told, I believe that if we were more focused on Haste/Critical in this guide rather than Haste/Mastery, this trait may be considered best for 2nd position. But, as this is not the case, the proc rate of this trait would be so low (12-15%) we may not even really realize we have it. Simply put, the numbers don't look good  for this. Here are some dummy numbers:
With my gear, assuming I actually didn't have Titganforged STR/Crit trinkets (and the following actually dropped), I'd be rocking Shivermaw's Jaw and Parjesh's Medallion. Anyways, as it stands I have 19% Critical Hit chance because of my two trinkets. Removing them I only have 13%.
   So, out of 100 swings, at 13%, we would proc Skeletal Shattering on only 13 of those hits.
   Let us assume that each of those 100 swings are 200k damage.
   This means that we are mitigating an additional 8% on 13 swings out of 100.
   At 200k a swing, for 13 swings we are taking, normally 2.6 million damage. Note: Since we automatically need to have Bone Shield on for this to even begin to work, im not going to factor it.
8% of 2.6million is 208k.
   208k over 13 auto-attacks is worth 16k per attack. Which is basically negligible damage. Note: at 200k per swing, 8% is always going to be 16k. Damage values would need to be a lot higher for this low % to be worth anything, which at the same time, would push us over the edge in terms of actual survivability anyways. With that said, plz blizz, fix dis.

Improving Critical Strike, obviously will improve the rate at which this trait mitigates for us, passively. while additionally providing us with DPS in the form of crits, more returns from Death Strike, Blood Plague and Umbilicus Eternus.

Coagulopathy: This directly increases our Blood Plague damage by 4% per point, for a total of 12%, which directly ties in with our Umbilicus Eternus, making our return from that trait 12% stronger each time. Not to mention the passive 12% additional HoT we are receiving.

I'm not here to hate on the guide or anything, I used to write these kinds of things all the time while I was heavily active in the hardcore end of FFXIV. Since I am now apart of this game and getting into the swing of things, again (haven't played since wrath), take what I say as you will. I am not experience in the raiding environment that is mythic raids, or even high-end stuff in this game (yet, hoping to get involved this expansion). I am sure the writer of this guide, has his reasons pertaining to his experience in the field rather than myself at this time.

Anyways, those are my 2 cents for that particular section of the guide. I'll be going through it more seeing if I can surface any more number oddities (note: I'm not a trained numbers professional so don't shoot the guy trying to iron out all the mathz). No, I didn't proofread this. It took enough time to write it once let alone make it all pretty -_-;

I hope this comes off as useful! If anything, it shows some numbers tied to the traits as I have not personally seen any myself yet. Thanks guys.

Edited September 15, 2016 by TalonShadowsong
Naming edit on first 3 traits for my sanity

[Ruend 0]

I'm confused... I've always considered AMR and Icy Veins as trusted sources for gear / stats, etc.  But this guide is the antithesis of Ask Mr. Robot's, when it comes to stat priorities.  Which is correct???  :(

Here (balanced):   Strength > Haste > Crit > Mastery >= Versatility.

AMR:  Versatility (3.55) > Stamina (3.06) > Mastery (2.43) > Haste (2.16) > Crit (1.21) >= Strength (1.16)

Nevermind the tons of additional stats AMR lists, such as Leech.  Just comparing the ones listed by both, it's a complete reversal.  Icy Veins says Strength is top, with Haste and Crit being the two highest secondaries.  AMR considers those to be the bottom three.  Who is right?  It it for different situations?  How does two in-depth sites get two completely different lists for the same spec?  I know for Noxxic it's because they don't really have "top players" fueling their guides.  Is AMR suffering from the same thing now?  Help.  :(

[Valks 2,373]

10 hours ago, Ruend said:

Here (balanced):   Strength > Haste > Crit > Mastery >= Versatility.

AMR:  Versatility (3.55) > Stamina (3.06) > Mastery (2.43) > Haste (2.16) > Crit (1.21) >= Strength (1.16)

With lack of a better way of putting it, I can't see any reason why Versatility would be top, nor can I find anywhere that agrees with that assessment. 

[Valks 2,373]

18 hours ago, TalonShadowsong said:

I hope this comes off as useful! If anything, it shows some numbers tied to the traits as I have not personally seen any myself yet. Thanks guys.

Thanks for the hugely detailed post! I'll get our reviewer to take a look and see what needs to be changed :)

[TalonShadowsong 5]

10 hours ago, Ruend said:

I'm confused... I've always considered AMR and Icy Veins as trusted sources for gear / stats, etc.  But this guide is the antithesis of Ask Mr. Robot's, when it comes to stat priorities.  Which is correct???  :(

Here (balanced):   Strength > Haste > Crit > Mastery >= Versatility.

AMR:  Versatility (3.55) > Stamina (3.06) > Mastery (2.43) > Haste (2.16) > Crit (1.21) >= Strength (1.16)

Nevermind the tons of additional stats AMR lists, such as Leech.  Just comparing the ones listed by both, it's a complete reversal.  Icy Veins says Strength is top, with Haste and Crit being the two highest secondaries.  AMR considers those to be the bottom three.  Who is right?  It it for different situations?  How does two in-depth sites get two completely different lists for the same spec?  I know for Noxxic it's because they don't really have "top players" fueling their guides.  Is AMR suffering from the same thing now?  Help.  :(

Yeah, being newer into this scene and checking out all the resources that have been mumbled about in various chats and forums, these are the big names that have come up.

AMR puts huge weight into Versatility and no one else seems to care for it. AMR, I believe is solely focused on a 'Tanks tank' methodology where improving DPS isn't the prime function and increasing the AMR NPS stat is the sole goal. Furthermore, I don't know what kind of data goes into AMR vs. the information coming from here is known and stated. Trusting what higher end players do is a great way to get the feel for something, sure. But at the end of the day, the scenario that is there for them, in their guild, in their raid, may be vastly different then what you experience in your guild and your raid, making it a bit more difficulty to pull off a DPS-oriented stat build vs a defensive stat build.
Note: Math isn't wrong however, so if AMR's outputs are 100% based on mathematical outputs through different parses of each individual setup, etc. If that is the case, then that is what I will be going with.

Versatility, as a stat, passively reduces damage we take and increases damage/healing done, which would mathematically likely make it the most powerful stat, per point, in increase this NPS stat that AMR has for tanks. With that said, I believe the issue most higher end players have with it is the scaling/return from the actual stat for the investment.

If we take what AMR says and use their stat weights:

Quote

Armor (8.1) > Leech (3.88) > Versatility (3.55) > Stamina (3.06) > Mastery (2.43) > Haste (2.16) > Avoidance (1.85) > Crit (1.21) > Strength (1.16)

Then it has our Best-In-Slot parse coming out to be:
23,138 STR
8.49% Critical - Which basically makes Skeletal Shattering moot
15.15% Haste - Which, with Bone Shield is 25%, not awful.
27.06% Mastery - Meh.
21.13% Vers. - Which, by the in-game text "Increases the Damage/Healing/Absorbs done by the shown value and Decreases damage taken by 1/2 of that Value". So, at a 21.13% increase in damage and a passive 10.565% damage reduction

Now, this make Versatility seem REALLY good, but look at what this investment does to everything else. We have very little critical hit chance at this rate, making one of our Gold Traits (Skeletal Shattering) basically non-existent (which I could see being argued as fine since its borderline useless anyway). The haste loss could create gaps in the rotation, or 'down time', as you will, which is unideal and may lead to lack of mitigation resources when required. The high value on Mastery means nothing when we are regenerating runes or RP fast enough to Death Strike appropriately (a bit extreme, sure, but I think you get what I am saying)

----------------------------
The AMR stat weights are fairly close to each other, by comparison of the Noxxic ones, which has stamina weighted almost double to crit, strength significantly higher than anything else, and haste being the boundlessly incredible, with versatility on the back burner:
Stamina [12.05] > Strength [9.05] > Haste [7.55] > Crit [6.05] > Mastery [4.55] > Versatility [3.05]

These numbers, according to Noxxic were determined by:

Quote

The below Stat Priority recommendation is based on a mix of SimulationCraft, spreadsheets, in-game testing and through collaboration with other players. Understanding the priority will help you make decisions on which gear to use and how to optimize it, helping improve your overall tanking performance.

---------------------

I think, what the guide here is trying to relay to it's readers is something more along the lines of:
"Here, use stat priority 1.1 if you want to be overly defensive"
"Use stat priority 1.2 if you want to be overly aggressive"
"But I believe that priority 1.3 will be the most ideal for a majority of situations"
Something like that. This guide has provided options, which are great, but I suppose it could be argued that without knowledge, options create confusion.

The question "When do I decide to pick up gear focused on Haste/Mastery vs Haste/Critical?" Could come up I suppose, since it does work out to being a lot of work to swing one way or the other as it is not as simple as it used to be in Cata (which was forever ago) with the reforge system lol, we're talking a full on swap on gear in most cases.

Now, for Mythic raids coming here in 2 week, I would imagine the baseline behavior will be for tanks to go full turtle mode and ease towards DPS as the encounter entails.
If you don't plan on running Mythic raids, you don't really need to worry about Survivability for Normal/Heroic raids to the same degree and can likely get away with running the recommended stat set off the bat, rather than later in the progression tier.

That's how I am looking at it at least. It's great to have so many resources to turn to in different situations, but I agree they seem to lack some context in regards to where, how and why the numbers are suggested to be how they are.

Blah Blah Blah, another long post. Whoops.

[Valks 2,373]

38 minutes ago, TalonShadowsong said:

Versatility, as a stat, passively reduces damage we take and increases damage/healing done, which would mathematically likely make it the most powerful stat, per point, in increase this NPS stat that AMR has for tanks. With that said, I believe the issue most higher end players have with it is the scaling/return from the actual stat for the investment.

Versatility is one of those stats that is just a plain +/- difference on your damage output and incoming reduction. It is OK as a stat, but is nowhere near the value of Haste. It's value for damage classes has become HUGE due to the increase in damage done, but it's actually not great for tank classes. It works for Prot Warriors due to how it double dips into damage reduction and the IP shield, otherwise Mastery would be top for them.

Haste essentially allows a Blood DK to consistently fill GCDs that would otherwise have been wasted while waiting for runes to come off cooldown. More runes spent generally means more damage, more healing and more reduction.

40 minutes ago, TalonShadowsong said:

Now, this make Versatility seem REALLY good, but look at what this investment does to everything else. We have very little critical hit chance at this rate, making one of our Gold Traits (Skeletal Shattering) basically non-existent (which I could see being argued as fine since its borderline useless anyway). The haste loss could create gaps in the rotation, or 'down time', as you will, which is unideal and may lead to lack of mitigation resources when required. The high value on Mastery means nothing when we are regenerating runes or RP fast enough to Death Strike appropriately (a bit extreme, sure, but I think you get what I am saying)

Skeletal Shattering is actually pretty solid. You can essentially gain a flat 8% damage reduction increase, which is almost equal to the full damage reduction amount you calculated with your Versatility stat.

Mastery is good for full survivability, but even then, it sucks when you start actually DS-ing for a decent amount. For low DSes, it's awesome, but it really starts to slow down with more gear.

44 minutes ago, TalonShadowsong said:

The AMR stat weights are fairly close to each other, by comparison of the Noxxic ones, which has stamina weighted almost double to crit, strength significantly higher than anything else, and haste being the boundlessly incredible, with versatility on the back burner:
Stamina [12.05] > Strength [9.05] > Haste [7.55] > Crit [6.05] > Mastery [4.55] > Versatility [3.05]

The problem with obtaining stat weights for a tank or healer is that you cannot specifically create a situation that fits everything. For a DPS, generally weights stay the same from fight to fight, changing only if there is a HUGE change in mechanics or ST vs. AoE.

For tanks, every fight is different. Different damage income, different healer cooldowns, different types of damage etc. Simming a tank for weights is incredibly difficult due to this and they should seriously be taken with a HUGE pinch of salt.

47 minutes ago, TalonShadowsong said:

This guide has provided options, which are great, but I suppose it could be argued that without knowledge, options create confusion.

The options are fairly self-explanatory in their nature. If you feel you need more DPS, you gear one way. More survivability? Gear another way. Want some balance between the two? Use the final method.

[TalonShadowsong 5]

2 hours ago, Blainie said:

Versatility is one of those stats that is just a plain +/- difference on your damage output and incoming reduction. It is OK as a stat, but is nowhere near the value of Haste. It's value for damage classes has become HUGE due to the increase in damage done, but it's actually not great for tank classes. It works for Prot Warriors due to how it double dips into damage reduction and the IP shield, otherwise Mastery would be top for them.

Haste essentially allows a Blood DK to consistently fill GCDs that would otherwise have been wasted while waiting for runes to come off cooldown. More runes spent generally means more damage, more healing and more reduction.

Skeletal Shattering is actually pretty solid. You can essentially gain a flat 8% damage reduction increase, which is almost equal to the full damage reduction amount you calculated with your Versatility stat.

Mastery is good for full survivability, but even then, it sucks when you start actually DS-ing for a decent amount. For low DSes, it's awesome, but it really starts to slow down with more gear.

The problem with obtaining stat weights for a tank or healer is that you cannot specifically create a situation that fits everything. For a DPS, generally weights stay the same from fight to fight, changing only if there is a HUGE change in mechanics or ST vs. AoE.

For tanks, every fight is different. Different damage income, different healer cooldowns, different types of damage etc. Simming a tank for weights is incredibly difficult due to this and they should seriously be taken with a HUGE pinch of salt.

The options are fairly self-explanatory in their nature. If you feel you need more DPS, you gear one way. More survivability? Gear another way. Want some balance between the two? Use the final method.

Definitely agree with Versatility not being king for Blood DK, so if I sounded like I was lobbying for that, my apologies. Haste is most certainly better as I tried to explain somewhere in the wall. I also agree with most of what else is said, so sorry if it came off as something else. One thing that did stick out however was your comment about Skeletal Shattering, which doesn't really pan out. Explained below:

For clarity, Skeletal Shattering is 100% tied to our Critical Strike chance. Which we could never actually achieve a flat 8% from it unless we had 100% Critical Strike Chance. From the example before:
13% Critical
100 raw swings
200k raw damage per swing
20,000,000 damage total
13 SS swings
87 BS swings
Bone Shield reduces 16%
Skeletal Shattering Chance = 13%
13 Swings effected by Skeletal Shattering
24% reduction on those 13 swings

Bone Shield damage = 14,616,000
(we take all of the hits not effected by Skeletal Shattering (87) and calculate them with the -16% from Bone Shield)
Skeletal Shatter damage = 1,976,000
(we take all of the hits effected by Skeletal Shattering(13) and calculate them with the -24% from the proc)
Final End damage = 16,592,000
(The result of adding the two)
16,592,000 / 20,000,000 = 0.8296
(Our % of damage taken after mitigation out of the raw damage in decimal form)
= 82.96% damage taken
(expanded)
Therefore, we have mitigated 17.04% of the damage. Which is only 1.04% more than Bone Shield does on it's own.
Based on how tied to Critical Strike Skeletal Shattering is, and based on the Survivability stat weights being Mastery before Critical (yes, I'm aware the guide stats Haste/Crit under recommended), this is the realistic outcome from that kind of setup, which was my original conflict with the guide suggesting for survivability, go for Skeletal Shattering first with very little critical strike.
As I said before, I don't consider myself a math person so if something is glaringly wrong, let me know lol.

I'm certainly not here to argue or step on toes, so I hope that's not how this is coming off. I'm just hoping to shed light on possible improvements, etc.

[Ruend 0]

Definitely appreciate the responses.  Thank you much for the insight.  No worries -- I'm not scared of reading, so I welcome walls of text.  :)   I was mainly trying to figure out something to put into Pawn as a quick reference, not only for myself but because I just recently got my wife into the game (I used Poke-WoW as a lure) and wanted to enter Pawn strings to prevent the constant "Which one is best for me?" questions I inevitably get with each quest / boss reward.  Haha

I will stick with Icy Veins' priorities, since I know these are actually moderated by well-known players.  I now understand why some guides are picking Versatility so much, as well.  Again, thank you all!

[Guest Klonken]

what is the haste cap for blood dk anyways , im at 37 percent with boneshield right now 

[Valks 2,373]

On 9/16/2016 at 6:17 PM, TalonShadowsong said:

Definitely agree with Versatility not being king for Blood DK, so if I sounded like I was lobbying for that, my apologies. Haste is most certainly better as I tried to explain somewhere in the wall. I also agree with most of what else is said, so sorry if it came off as something else. One thing that did stick out however was your comment about Skeletal Shattering, which doesn't really pan out. 

Very well explained. Will do my best to relay your info to the reviewer and we'll see if/what changes need to be made! Thanks for your analysis of it all :)

[Valks 2,373]

17 hours ago, Ruend said:

Definitely appreciate the responses.  Thank you much for the insight.  No worries -- I'm not scared of reading, so I welcome walls of text.  :)   I was mainly trying to figure out something to put into Pawn as a quick reference, not only for myself but because I just recently got my wife into the game (I used Poke-WoW as a lure) and wanted to enter Pawn strings to prevent the constant "Which one is best for me?" questions I inevitably get with each quest / boss reward.  Haha

I will stick with Icy Veins' priorities, since I know these are actually moderated by well-known players.  I now understand why some guides are picking Versatility so much, as well.  Again, thank you all!

It'd be nice to have, for sure, but it's not always quite that easy :p Priorities are the easiest to go with though.

[Valks 2,373]

9 hours ago, Guest Klonken said:

what is the haste cap for blood dk anyways , im at 37 percent with boneshield right now 

What cap are you looking for? Your runes will still continue to recharge faster with more haste. GCD can technically cap, I suppose.

[Guest Qlanth]

I noticed that the guide doesn't mention some of the non-DK specific legendaries that can drop. Namely, Prydaz, Xaveric's Magnum Opus. 

http://www.wowhead.com/item=132444/prydaz-xavarics-magnum-opus

Seems like the main weakness to DK tanking right now is starting a fight cold without any built up charges of Bone Shield. The Neck legendary seems like it could help considerably with that weakness. 

[Valks 2,373]

14 hours ago, Guest Qlanth said:

I noticed that the guide doesn't mention some of the non-DK specific legendaries that can drop. Namely, Prydaz, Xaveric's Magnum Opus.

This is because they simply do not come close in comparison to the class specific ones for Blood. 

[Guest Qlanth]

On 9/20/2016 at 1:38 AM, Blainie said:

This is because they simply do not come close in comparison to the class specific ones for Blood. 

There is no DK class-specific legendary for that slot and both of the other DK guides address that item, and others, specifically. 

[TalonShadowsong 5]

10 hours ago, Guest Qlanth said:

There is no DK class-specific legendary for that slot and both of the other DK guides address that item, and others, specifically. 

Since you can, by default, only equip 1 legendary. You will NOT want to be using a non-Blood specific one in that slot, assuming you have the option.
Later on, we will be able to equip 2 legendaries, but the mentioned legendary is still not more valuable than yet another blood specific legendary.

I believe the go-to two legendaries are:
Shackles of Bryndaor
Service of Gorefiend

 

[Valks 2,373]

11 hours ago, Guest Qlanth said:

There is no DK class-specific legendary for that slot and both of the other DK guides address that item, and others, specifically. 

As Talon said, you can only use 1 legendary at one time currently. This means you don't want to be wasting that legendary slot on the neck-piece that is sub-par compared to the Blood ones.

[Zataron 5]

On 15.9.2016 at 8:41 PM, TalonShadowsong said:

I believe, in the Artifact Section, 1.1 General Survivability seems a little... off.

Short:
It prioritizes Bonebreaker (Marrowrend damage) over Iron heart (Armor %) in route 1, which ends up flawing route 2 as well since it has us seeking out Skeletal Shattering, which is directly tied to our Critical Strike chance, which is listed as 3rd on the priority, below Haste and Mastery (which no stat weights or breakpoints listed), meaning that the effectiveness of this trait would likely come down to be about 15% chance to absorb an additional 8% damage per Bone Shield Stack consumed, which is a very low return.

I was also not quite sure about the General Survivability build, and I  gotta say that I agree with your path a lot more. Especially Skeletal Shattering seems to be too underwhelming to take early on, unless you have a ton of crit. I'm still kind of afraid that I'm missing something though, since the writer of the guide seems to be a competent raider. I would like to ask some other experienced blood DKs to chime in if possible.

[Valks 2,373]

3 hours ago, Zataron said:

I would like to ask some other experienced blood DKs to chime in if possible.

Please do keep the feedback coming on this. It really does help a lot and allows us to properly assess certain issues within the guide, if they are there. 

Thanks!

[Valks 2,373]

Generic comment being mass posted over the comments threads guys.

We are aware of the changes and our writers are working hard to update the guides to suit what has changed. Currently, there is a lot of work still to be done and it's unlikely that every guide will be up-to-date immediately. Expect a flood of updates over the coming days that will answer all of your questions about what is now best after X change, in time for the reset next week.

Thanks for your understanding and patience.

[p1xel8ted 1]

Hey

Awesome guide. Thanks! Any word on actual stat weight numbers for the balanced priority? Handy to import into Pawn/StatWeightScore/AMR.

 

[Valks 2,373]

2 hours ago, p1xel8ted said:

Hey

Awesome guide. Thanks! Any word on actual stat weight numbers for the balanced priority? Handy to import into Pawn/StatWeightScore/AMR.

 

Hey there! 

Stat weights are pretty difficult to conjure up for the non-DPS specs. The weights you find listed on the net are general weights, which means they aren't tailored to your character's current gear levels. You generally need a spreadsheet to find the weights, but I'm not sure if there is one for DK.

[Guest Toesoe]

Is it my or do I still see no information about Runeforging?

[Valks 2,373]

28 minutes ago, Guest Toesoe said:

Is it my or do I still see no information about Runeforging?

https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/blood-death-knight-pve-tank-gems-enchants-consumables