Blood Death Knight 7.3

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Blood Death Knight guide for Legion.

[Guest Donkeyjani]

Actually, tremble before me is OP talent for big pulls. It stuns mobs time to time, so they dont hit you. 

[Vlad 411]

6 hours ago, Guest Donkeyjani said:

Actually, tremble before me is OP talent for big pulls. It stuns mobs time to time, so they dont hit you. 

I asked our reviewer about this and he doesn't really agree. I'll let him elaborate on this, though.

[Guest Tylantia]

Grasp imo is far superior, considering its -CD coupled with alot of DnD procs.

[Guest DonkeyJani]

2 hours ago, Guest Tylantia said:

Grasp imo is far superior, considering its -CD coupled with alot of DnD procs.

With 2min cd? Yea grasp is nice, but not superior. 

 

And it's wrong to say in guide that tremble is useless in pve. 

[Guest Luio]

The disregard of Tremble Before Me as a PvE talent is understandable, people would usually be using tons of AoE on pulls with many mobs and this would break any semblance of stun on them. It is a useful talent for solo play tho, but I'm guessing this is catering towards raids and dungeos, not solo play.

On another note, I disagree with the lack of use for Rune Tap. Doing a bit of calculations with Foul Bulwark, the maximum health increase is 20%, which after Death Strike applies would only increase the minimum DS heal to about 12%, which is a mere 2% extra. Sure, it accumulates and can make a difference but this extra 2% would be assuming you have full bone shield, which usually isn't the case. More often than nor the enemy will hit you right after a Marrowrend on which case you would go down to 9 or even less depending on when you use your DS so its not 2% but rather less than 2% and 1% at 5 BS charges which is usually what you'd be above of. So all in all the increase isn't that great even with the synergy with Ossuary. On the other hand you have Rune Tap, which has a low cd and does consistent 25% damage reduction, which means you'd have an extra reliable mitigation effect which probably prevents as much damage as the extra 2% on the DS would. I'll go with rune tap.

[Guest Raelik]

Wouldn't our potion of choice be versatility instead of bonus armor considering bonus armor no longer exists?

[DomkeyJani 0]

28 minutes ago, Guest Raelik said:

Wouldn't our potion of choice be versatility instead of bonus armor considering bonus armor no longer exists?

I'm thinking to go mastery -> crit -> versatility -> haste. 

[Guest Kylo]

1st up; thanks for the guide!

It would be useful for the guide to be updated to point out the situation(s) that these Talents would be useful for; eg. This combo is probably the most effective vs raid bosses. It may be obvious to those who create the guides but the players most likely to come to IcyVeins in the first place are the players most likely to need to know that there can be better alternatives in certain situations (such as the alternatives suggested in the 'Rotation' page)

Better still would be options for the most likely situations will be in for the next few weeks;

• Vs. Raid/Dungeon Bosses (Maybe breaking stuns/fears with [Wraith Walk] is more useful here)
• Vs. More than X mobs - eg. Dungeon
• Vs Solo content - eg. Levelling (Maybe [Tremble Before Me] is more useful here)

 

[Aughyssul 3]

1) As was said, Tremble Before Me might be fine for solo large pulls, but it shouldn't be needed there. In any group content, the amount of AoE going out will never be 0, and since the disorients are both random and on a 10 second ICD, it's not reliable enough for anything. At best, it could be used on a fight like Xhul'horac to cause random interrupts on the imps, but this would require giving up faster grip CD (which is objectively better), and timing DnD with imps.

2) I fucked up potions, agreed. Guide is being updated, but it's versatility for survivability, strength for DPS. Versatility for surv because it still gives 1500 stat instead of 1000

3) Rune Tap is an interesting talent. While it can have its place, its uses are very niche and it is overall worse than Foul Bulwark. Foul Bulwark provides a consistent survivability boost throughout the fight. The additional Death Strike heal isn't what matters, it's the stability of having extra HP, which gives healers much more breathing room. Additionally, with Rune Tap, you will lose out on DPS and RP generation. Even with an average of 6-7 stacks of Bone Shield, Foul Bulwark is still much, much better.

4) I'll be honest, I haven't tested much WoD content in prepatch, as my focus was on Legion. Once the guide is updated to Legion, there will be further depth about talents for specific bosses and dungeons.

Edited July 20, 2016 by Aughyssul

[Vlad 411]

3 hours ago, Guest Luio said:

The disregard of Tremble Before Me as a PvE talent is understandable, people would usually be using tons of AoE on pulls with many mobs and this would break any semblance of stun on them. It is a useful talent for solo play tho, but I'm guessing this is catering towards raids and dungeos, not solo play.

On another note, I disagree with the lack of use for Rune Tap. Doing a bit of calculations with Foul Bulwark, the maximum health increase is 20%, which after Death Strike applies would only increase the minimum DS heal to about 12%, which is a mere 2% extra. Sure, it accumulates and can make a difference but this extra 2% would be assuming you have full bone shield, which usually isn't the case. More often than nor the enemy will hit you right after a Marrowrend on which case you would go down to 9 or even less depending on when you use your DS so its not 2% but rather less than 2% and 1% at 5 BS charges which is usually what you'd be above of. So all in all the increase isn't that great even with the synergy with Ossuary. On the other hand you have Rune Tap, which has a low cd and does consistent 25% damage reduction, which means you'd have an extra reliable mitigation effect which probably prevents as much damage as the extra 2% on the DS would. I'll go with rune tap.

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll let Aughy's post be your reply :)

2 hours ago, Guest Raelik said:

Wouldn't our potion of choice be versatility instead of bonus armor considering bonus armor no longer exists?

Yes, that's right. I'm fixing it now. Thanks!

2 hours ago, DomkeyJani said:

I'm thinking to go mastery -> crit -> versatility -> haste. 

I am making a stat update, but it's a bit the reverse of this :)

1 hour ago, Guest Kylo said:

1st up; thanks for the guide!

It would be useful for the guide to be updated to point out the situation(s) that these Talents would be useful for; eg. This combo is probably the most effective vs raid bosses. It may be obvious to those who create the guides but the players most likely to come to IcyVeins in the first place are the players most likely to need to know that there can be better alternatives in certain situations (such as the alternatives suggested in the 'Rotation' page)

Better still would be options for the most likely situations will be in for the next few weeks;

• Vs. Raid/Dungeon Bosses (Maybe breaking stuns/fears with [Wraith Walk] is more useful here)
• Vs. More than X mobs - eg. Dungeon
• Vs Solo content - eg. Levelling (Maybe [Tremble Before Me] is more useful here)

 

Thank you for this post. Right now, the guides are geared towards raiding (and always have), not dungeons and certainly not solo content. This may change in the future, but right now that's the case. Sometimes we mention when a talent is better for dungeons or solo content, but it's pretty exceptional right now.

[Guest Exie]

A very small change, and honestly it might be too self evident to be worth adding, but in the rotation I think it should be mentioned that Death Strike shouldn't always be cast when available.  Sometimes banking runic power and using Death Strike when you need health / are taking burst damage is the way to go, rather than just blindly following the rotation priority and using it as soon as you can.

[Dium 0]

What are the exact stat weights so I can import them into AMR?

[Valks 2,373]

1 hour ago, Guest Exie said:

A very small change, and honestly it might be too self evident to be worth adding, but in the rotation I think it should be mentioned that Death Strike shouldn't always be cast when available.  Sometimes banking runic power and using Death Strike when you need health / are taking burst damage is the way to go, rather than just blindly following the rotation priority and using it as soon as you can.

Thanks for the suggestion, we'll see if we can clarify this :)

1 hour ago, Dium said:

What are the exact stat weights so I can import them into AMR?

Going to tag @Aughyssul here, because I honestly have no idea. Perhaps he can help you with that. No promises though!

[Aughyssul 3]

I unfortunately fucked up and lost allll my simcraft data a few days ago. I'm rebuilding my APL and shit now, hopefully I'll have real stat weights soon.

As for the Death Strike thing, it does clarify underneath that it should be used reactively, but I'll see about clarifying that more :)

[Guest Guest]

Can someone please explain to me why haste is now the best and crit is above mastery? I just fail to see why, isn't bloodshield our main form of AM?

[Guest Sonalita]

Some errors and oddities:

in talents, the description of tombstone talks about consumed runes, rather than consumed bone shield charges

 

in the rotations  page section 5.2, second para, it says "Death Knights have, as we have seen above, a very large number of survival cooldowns."  this is no longer true, almost all our cool downs have dissapeared

 

in the stats priority page, the 1st two lists are identical.

 

[Guest Warpig]

10 hours ago, Guest Guest said:

Can someone please explain to me why haste is now the best and crit is above mastery? I just fail to see why, isn't bloodshield our main form of AM?

Death Strike is not the same Death Strike we are used to. DS is more of a reactive heal, rather than a protective shield. Death Strike can be used preemptively because it is Active Mitigation (3 sec window), however the shield that it provides is very small now. Mastery effects how big your shields are. I have a TON of mastery on my DK and the shield DS provides is very small. Having a lot of mastery does not increase the shield very much, therefore its value is less. 

Haste is really good because it increases the rate in which our runes regenerate. More runes equals more Marrowrends, which increases the uptime of our Bone Shield and provides us with Active MItigation for 3 seconds. More runes also equals more Heart Strikes which is our main Runic Power generator so we can cast more Death Strikes, mainly to heal us back up.

Here is a blue post talking about Marrowred's active mitigation it: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20743504316?page=21#408

As far as Crit is concerned, it increases your parry, which means more times we are not getting hit, compared to a DS shield (which is TINY) absorbing only some of the damage. http://www.wowhead.com/spell=161797/riposte

The gameplay of a Blood DK has shifted dramatically imo. We no longer rely on your DS shield to protect us. It is now all about keeping our Bone Shield stacks above 5, Death Striking after being hit, and filling with Heart Strike. 

[Vlad 411]

On July 21, 2016 at 3:45 PM, Guest Sonalita said:

Some errors and oddities:

in talents, the description of tombstone talks about consumed runes, rather than consumed bone shield charges

 

in the rotations  page section 5.2, second para, it says "Death Knights have, as we have seen above, a very large number of survival cooldowns."  this is no longer true, almost all our cool downs have dissapeared

 

in the stats priority page, the 1st two lists are identical.

 

Thank you very much for pointing out these errors. I'm going to fix them now :)

[Guest Prof. Screwtape]

I think until AMR manages to wrangle all it's cats (and even afterwards) we would all would like to applaud Aughyssul for all the work, and I for one can't express how much I appreciate your offer to share those stat weights.

[Dium 0]

On 7/20/2016 at 10:43 PM, Aughyssul said:

I unfortunately fucked up and lost allll my simcraft data a few days ago. I'm rebuilding my APL and shit now, hopefully I'll have real stat weights soon.

As for the Death Strike thing, it does clarify underneath that it should be used reactively, but I'll see about clarifying that more :)

Hey @Aughyssul, just wondering if you've got the stat weights figured out again or something. 

[Treufus 0]

Hello, why is the recommended flask stamina instead of strength? If stamina is that good, it should be recommended for food as well. Or the stat prio with strength > haste is wrong.

if its
strength > stamina > haste
it should be strength flask and stamina food

if its
stamina > strength > haste
it should be stamina flask & food

Or is it depending on the amount of stamina you already have. But this should be said in the guide.

[Guest Opi]

Hey!

I have some question about stats priority. Why strength is on top of list? Strength is giving nothing to our survivability only dps increase, or I'm wrong? Explain please.

[Vlad 411]

On July 26, 2016 at 5:39 PM, Treufus said:

Hello, why is the recommended flask stamina instead of strength? If stamina is that good, it should be recommended for food as well. Or the stat prio with strength > haste is wrong.

if its
strength > stamina > haste
it should be strength flask and stamina food

if its
stamina > strength > haste
it should be stamina flask & food

Or is it depending on the amount of stamina you already have. But this should be said in the guide.

Stamina flask is best for survivability, and Strength flask is best for increasing damage output. The actual moment to decide to switch between the two is hard to identify, but as the guide says, you need "enough" Stamina. I'm going to edit the enchants page to mention that Strength flask is best for damage.

Stamina doesn't really have a place in the stat priority. And at this time (pre-patch), you probably don't need Stamina at all, depending on your gear.

19 hours ago, Guest Opi said:

Hey!

I have some question about stats priority. Why strength is on top of list? Strength is giving nothing to our survivability only dps increase, or I'm wrong? Explain please.

Strength is at the top of the stat priorities because it provides attack power and parry, both of which are valuable. There is also a trend currently (especially during the pre-patch) to maximise tank DPS, since dying is less of an issue than during real progression content.

[Enly 0]

I did some casual theorycrafting myself, as I wanted to better understand stat priority given here (except for Haste, which would be too time consuming to calculate for me). Keep in mind, I haven't played beta Legion yet. I measured stat usefulness against a training dummy first and then roughly extrapolated on Normal/Heroic raiding environment. This is what I got:

Spoiler

Lets assume I choose between Mastery, Parry and Versatility:

• 73.3 Mastery Rating gives me 1% increased Physical absorb from Death Strike base healing.
• The same amount of Parry (or Crit) Rating gives me 0.45% chance to parry an attack.
• 73.3 Versatility Rating gives me +0.56%damage/healing_done and -0.28%damage_taken.

To get the idea how often my character is being hit in a spherical vacuum conditions I went to the Dungeon's Training Dummy and checked how often it would hit me and for how much damage on average (before it applies 5% increased damage done on itself):
The training dummy does approximately 9 hits every 10 seconds and deals ~40k damage per hit for ~360k total to my character.
My character has 570k health, 40% Mastery and 13% Haste. I manage to use Death Strike ~1.6 times every 10 seconds against single Dummy while keeping Bone Shield up. Within 10 seconds frame 1.6 of Death Strikes heal for 91.2k health and absorbs 36.5k damage with my 40% Mastery.

In these conditions:

• With extra 73.3 Parry Rating (+0.45%) every ~223rd attack would be parried effectively mitigating ~40k damage every 247.5 second or ~1616 Physical damage every 10 seconds.
• With extra 73.3 Mastery Rating (+1%) ~912 Physical damage would be absorbed every 10 seconds.
• With extra 73.3 Versatility Rating (+0.56%damage/healing_done and -0.28%damage_taken) my character would get ~511 healing, ~204 Physical absorb and ~1008 less ALL damage every 10 seconds. Total ~1715 points.

Haste would be too time consuming to calculate for me.

Keep in mind that these are all approximate numbers aimed to give a general idea of the relative usefulness of each secondary stat. And they apply to my character.

You may have different stats distribution/environment and this is how different stats affect numbers:

Less Mastery (say, if you have absolutely no Mastery on gear and only base character Mastery of 12%) would only affect the usefulness of extra 73.3 Versatility Rating and only marginally. It would give ~61 instead of ~204 Physical absorb every 10 seconds.

More health would increase the usefulness of both Mastery and Versatility:
Very roughly 10% more health would translate into stronger mitigation effect from Mastery  by 10% and from Versatility by 4%. However mitigation from Parry will remain the same.

If for some reason you fight something other than Training Dummy you probably take more damage within 10 seconds frames. That would make Versatility and Parry more useful.
Roughly 10% more damage taken within 10 seconds would translate into 6% stronger mitigation effect from Versatility and 10% stronger mitigation from Parry.

Finally, if you are being hit more often than 9 times every 10 seconds (with average hit still doing ~40k damage) Parry and Versatility become more useful, while Mastery does not.
11% more hits (1 extra hit per 10 seconds) would translate into 6% stronger mitigation effect from Versatility and 11% stronger mitigation from Parry.

As you can see, environment with stronger/faster hits on your character increases Parry usefulness more (faster) than Versatility allowing Parry to catch up with Versatility in usefulness at some not too distant point.

Obviously, I am not a hardcore raider. All these calculations are done with the Training Dummy. It does less damage than 50% of your total health every 5 seconds, so Mastery doesn't benefit from stronger than minimal Death Strike healing. 

In raids damage taken per 10 seconds is much higher, though the number of hits per 10 seconds could be less than 9. 
If my character (570k health, 40% Mastery and 1.6 Death Strikes every 10 seconds) is being hit 6 times every 10 seconds and takes damage equal to 100% of his total health, than 

• 73.3 Parry would mitigate ~2554 points of Physical damage.
• 73.3 Mastery would absorb ~1824 points of Physical damage.
• 73.3 Versatility would give stronger heal+absorb+reduction by ~1021+409+1596 or total ~3026 points (where 1596 points of Physical AND Magical type damage.

 

Edited August 3, 2016 by Enly