Help with Blood DK -with logs.

[Aegis 27]

So, i've cleared Heroic EN, but I feel like my performance is seriously lacking, based on logs - my ping is on the high side cause i'm playing from Malaysia, but the thing is that in terms of actual in-game performance, i feel that i'm doing fine - no serious spikes that i can't handle, fights feel smooth - but my parses are absolute dogshit. any comments or feedback would be very much appreciated.

Logs for first full clear of EN Heroic:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/xQfDc26CdgZB91h8/

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/JdQX4WjN2VLk6HrM/

 

Logs for second full clear of EN Heroic:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/xQfDc26CdgZB91h8/

 

My toon's armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/saurfang/Aegisblade/simple

Thanks in advance!

[Shells 64]

Some simple stuff, in work so cant dig too much

 

Heroic Xavius, your parsing 86% for dps and 39 for tanking.  Thats not bad. 

Cenarius, your food and rune fell off mid fight, not a major issue, happens to me too sometimes. 

Your crit is a bit low, I would try to push it closer to 25% if you can swop out gear or chants. 

I would stick fallen crusader on your weapon for more strength and healing. 

Nothing jumps out after a brief look but I will let the experts here help you more. Nice gear btw :)

[demonardvark 556]

Honestly your gear is solid, your talents are solid, and you appear to be doing very well as noted by shells. Aside from what shells noted I don't have much for you. I'd really have to go through the logs with a fine toothed comb. 

[Rylad 6]

I would use either Blood Mirror or Bonestorm instead of Purgatory.

[Shells 64]

Blood mirror if timed correctly on bosses can be a major dps increase and survivability increase too. 

 

Bonestorm is ace for trash and in my view, better for mythic plus rather than raiding.  

[Aegis 27]

Thanks for the input - will definitely take a look at blood mirror - only fights I'm using it on are cenarius and xavius. Would it make sense on something like Il'gynoth or ursoc? Can't see any benefit on nythendra, tbh. Before raking talons on elerethe seems like an interesting idea =) 

I generally roll with purgatory simply because it's a safety net - as mentioned, my connection has unpredictable spikes, so having that safety net is, if nothing else, a psychological security blanket =) 

Crit: 25%? Definitely possible. Strictly speaking, wouldn't fallen crusader be a survivability loss? Cause losing 5% str/Stam seems like a pretty big deal. Not to mention the damage reduction. 

Thanks, all. Any further comments or input would of course be greatly appreciated. 

[Rylad 6]

On Il'gynoth you can use it for when you tank 1 round of the Nightmarish Fury from the Dominator Tentacles.  I would also use DRW for the next Nightmarish Fury, if you tank it for more then 1 round.  Since it seems you have a warrior tank as well, I would try to have you be on the Dominator killed first, since you don't have as many mitigating defensives compared to Warriors.  On Ursoc it's definitely good to have Blood Mirror for the later part of the fight when you're taking massive damage, or if you mess up the taunt rotation and get both Overwhelm and Rend Flesh.  On Nythendra I would take Bonestorm for extra DPS, since you really don't get hit hard at all on that fight.

Regarding Fallen Crusader vs Stoneskin, you get the 15% STR buff with very high uptime, so that usually negates the 5% perma buff.  The armor of course is nice to mitigate physical abilites and melee damage, but usually that's the easiest stuff to heal up from with multiple DeathStrikes.  Unholy Strength seems to be between 5%-10% of my healing done per fight, so it's definitely nice to have.

[Sniz 60]

14 minutes ago, Aegis said:

Thanks for the input - will definitely take a look at blood mirror - only fights I'm using it on are cenarius and xavius. Would it make sense on something like Il'gynoth or ursoc? Can't see any benefit on nythendra, tbh. Before raking talons on elerethe seems like an interesting idea =) 

I generally roll with purgatory simply because it's a safety net - as mentioned, my connection has unpredictable spikes, so having that safety net is, if nothing else, a psychological security blanket =) 

Crit: 25%? Definitely possible. Strictly speaking, wouldn't fallen crusader be a survivability loss? Cause losing 5% str/Stam seems like a pretty big deal. Not to mention the damage reduction. 

Thanks, all. Any further comments or input would of course be greatly appreciated. 

With skeletal shattering, crit does just as well as mastery.  Plus crit gives you parry, a full mitigation, saving a bone shield which means less marrows, and more runes for HSs.  And obviously more Crits for DPS.

 

Fallen has a 15% strength uptime of 70% and its like a pocket healer that randomly hits you for a 200k heal 15 times a boss fight.  Imo it performs much better than SSG statistically.

Edited October 20, 2016 by Sniz

[Aegis 27]

5 minutes ago, Rylad said:

On Il'gynoth you can use it for when you tank 1 round of the Nightmarish Fury from the Dominator Tentacles.  I would also use DRW for the next Nightmarish Fury, if you tank it for more then 1 round.  Since it seems you have a warrior tank as well, I would try to have you be on the Dominator killed first, since you don't have as many mitigating defensives compared to Warriors.  On Ursoc it's definitely good to have Blood Mirror for the later part of the fight when you're taking massive damage, or if you mess up the taunt rotation and get both Overwhelm and Rend Flesh.  On Nythendra I would take Bonestorm for extra DPS, since you really don't get hit hard at all on that fight.

Regarding Fallen Crusader vs Stoneskin, you get the 15% STR buff with very high uptime, so that usually negates the 5% perma buff.  The armor of course is nice to mitigate physical abilites and melee damage, but usually that's the easiest stuff to heal up from with multiple DeathStrikes.  Unholy Strength seems to be between 5%-10% of my healing done per fight, so it's definitely nice to have.

My raid uses lust for the second set of dominators (after first eye phase). Will try blood mirror this week and see how that works out. 

Ursoc, if you look at logs, I somehow get both buffs multiple times during the fight (4 times this week, I received overwhelm even when the boss was on my co-tank). Will try blood mirror there next week.

I'll probably try swapping out ssg for FC this week in mythic+ runs and see how turns out. 

Thanks for the input, keep it coming! <3

[Shells 64]

52 minutes ago, Aegis said:

Ursoc, if you look at logs, I somehow get both buffs multiple times during the fight (4 times this week, I received overwhelm even when the boss was on my co-tank). Will try blood mirror there next week.

The Ursoc fight is, in my view, the most challenging one get right as a tank but once you get it down its grand. 

 

I found myself getting both debuffs too a few times which with our current raid wide gear level leads to wipes. 

[Aegis 27]

9 hours ago, Shells said:

The Ursoc fight is, in my view, the most challenging one get right as a tank but once you get it down its grand. 

 

I found myself getting both debuffs too a few times which with our current raid wide gear level leads to wipes. 

I dunno, from a tank perspective, i found ursoc on heroic to be pretty much a walk in the park, once i started IGNORING BLOODY DBM which suggests i taunt the moment the other tank has overwhelm. 

I guess i'm lucky in the sense that i'm geared enough to be able to stand one stack of rend and two stacks of overwhelm simultaneously without kissing the floor. I'm pretty sure if i was at about 850-ish it would be a wipe.

Personally, I found Xavius and Elerethe to be harder just because there's so much going on. Having to keep track of dreaming healers to call for dispels on Xavius while simultaneously keeping track of two debuffs and the position of every other raid member is annoying at times.

[Sniz 60]

3 hours ago, Aegis said:

I dunno, from a tank perspective, i found ursoc on heroic to be pretty much a walk in the park, once i started IGNORING BLOODY DBM which suggests i taunt the moment the other tank has overwhelm. 

I guess i'm lucky in the sense that i'm geared enough to be able to stand one stack of rend and two stacks of overwhelm simultaneously without kissing the floor. I'm pretty sure if i was at about 850-ish it would be a wipe.

Personally, I found Xavius and Elerethe to be harder just because there's so much going on. Having to keep track of dreaming healers to call for dispels on Xavius while simultaneously keeping track of two debuffs and the position of every other raid member is annoying at times.

Xactly right about Ursoc. DBM does not promp the MT to taunt back for the second overwhelm after the OT gets rend.  It gets worse and worse after that.

 

[Shells 64]

Your kinda lucky there alright Aegis , I do think that the gearing helps alot with that, not just your gear but your dps and healers gear too, it all adds up.

I can imagine Xavius and Elerethe to be a pita to keep track of alright. 

Way we handle the healer dispells is we let the tank to be dispelled called for dispelling and the healers work it out themselves who will do what.  Now, as we have yet to see this in heroic it might get interesting......

 

As Sniz pointed out DBM timers are terribad on that, we tried to swop when a debuff fell off last night but it still got a bit messy even on normal. No one was in any danger of dying but it wont work in heroic. 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/NCkv91FnVTyRgPrh#fight=19

 

I did some playing with my own gear after the raid to drop some haste, sob, and beef up versa and mastery/crit a bit more. Will give it  a  whirl on Sunday and see how it goes. 

[Aegis 27]

So these are the logs for my weekend normal run:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/yFZx1n4b9gYJ3Vrw#view=rankings
 

I made some changes, noticeably swapping out SSG for FC (can't tell whether there's any difference, unholy strength accounts for about 6% of my total healing - will see how it works on heroics next week).

I also dropped haste to about 26%, so my stats now are 20.58% crit, 25.79% haste, and 32.47% mastery. I want to get my crit abit higher so that i'm at at least 20% parry, but don't have the gear with the right stats for it (finally made use of an 870 ring i got like 2 weeks ago)

In terms of talents, i dropped purgatory entirely, and swapped between a couple of others (e.g. tightening grasp for il'gynoth - other times it's MotD, and swapping in Rune Tap and Tombstone specifically for the Cenarius kill). It felt pretty smooth, blood mirror seems to be fun to play with, and yes, it did push me up the damage rankings quite a bit - in terms of overall survivability, the only time blood mirror seemed to noticeably help was on the xavius fight when i got up to 8 stacks of the stacking debuff in P2 (co-tank and healers for this run were pretty new, so dispelling was abit wonky - i got MCed at about 15%)

I don't really feel like there was much difference in the fights, but then again, i know i'm severely overgeared for normals. Do take a look at logs and make any necessary comments - anything constructive or any areas for improvement would be greatly appreciated.

Oh, a side note: what happened to tank rankings in warcraft logs? Did they FINALLY realize that KRSI is a horrible metric? Sucks that we have to go through mutliple steps to view EHRPS in logs, but oh well, beggars can't be choosers.

As always, thanks for the input! Cheers!

[Aegis 27]

Oh, a side question on Trinkets: I'm running with an 885 phantasmal echoes, and an 865 grotesque statuette. The question in my mind is whether it might be better for me to run with an 865 Unbridled Fury (the ursoc trinket with crit, and on-use bonus armor and increased hp) in place of the grotesque statuette, simply because with our artifact weap, crit seems to be much more valuable than mastery.

(btw, if this is off topic, feel free to move it somewhere else)

[Shells 64]

I like the ursoc trinket with the echo, I think its a good combo. Having on use or on need bonus armor and health can be great. You might get more milage out of a dps trinket as your as overgeared as you are. 

(Feel free to send me any of your gear your not using lol)

[Aegis 27]

2 hours ago, Shells said:

I like the ursoc trinket with the echo, I think its a good combo. Having on use or on need bonus armor and health can be great. You might get more milage out of a dps trinket as your as overgeared as you are. 

(Feel free to send me any of your gear your not using lol)

LOL. I wish I could =( I've got all this gear that I can't use, and that I can't bring myself to vendor on the off chance that it may be useful in the future (yes, I'm a hoarder).

I also like having another small cool down, since as a blood dk we get very few cool downs and mitigation in general. 

Edited October 23, 2016 by Aegis

[Aegis 27]

On 10/20/2016 at 9:55 AM, Aegis said:

So, i've cleared Heroic EN, but I feel like my performance is seriously lacking, based on logs - my ping is on the high side cause i'm playing from Malaysia, but the thing is that in terms of actual in-game performance, i feel that i'm doing fine - no serious spikes that i can't handle, fights feel smooth - but my parses are absolute dogshit. any comments or feedback would be very much appreciated.

Logs for first full clear of EN Heroic:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/xQfDc26CdgZB91h8/

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/JdQX4WjN2VLk6HrM/

 

Logs for second full clear of EN Heroic:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/xQfDc26CdgZB91h8/

 

My toon's armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/saurfang/Aegisblade/simple

Thanks in advance!

@Drtain go crazy, bro =)

 

edited: latest heroic logs:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/yNm2dpTaBcgbYP96

Edited October 31, 2016 by Aegis

[Morridin 0]

Hey Aegis, allow me to add my experience to your topic, even though I haven't cleaned HM yet (missing Cenarius and Xavius ^^).

Compared to my War tanking with me I take a LOT (around 30-40%) more damage than him, but I manage to balance it back with the healing I provide, and depending on the encounter, having the legendary that buffs AMS is priceless.

From my point of view, Ursoc is not that challenging once you get the taunting routine started with your other tank, and if DBM screws with the calls, I suggest you try out BigWigs, it has yet to fail this encounter ^^

For the several trys we made on Cenarius, and with keeping in mind that I was on adds duty, it was pretty managable, even without swapping to Rune tap.
 

As far as I am concerned, Renferal is the encounter I hate the most, mainly because it's messy as hell, and I don't play in a very disciplinated roster (and I love it, but yeah, sometimes it has its drawbacks ^^) so usually P2 gets hectic very quickly ^^

Also, for the stats priority, I'm trying to go for more Vers than crit (not very successful at the moment given the amount of haste-vers plate loot in the raid) but I believe it could help smooth even more the damage we take, given that crit scales pretty badly :/

Anyways, hope you'll find this somewhat useful, have a nice day/night ! :)

[Drtain 74]

@Aegis(xavius)

Could have used one more blood mirror, unless you don't get the the boss first then ignore that but you had 3 casts when u could of had 4. 98.7 uptime on dot while this is super like nit picky it's possible to get 99.9 i do it often atleast as unholy. You didn't have a 100% uptime on Bone sheild you had 95%, and only a 75%on the 5 stacks of bonesheild which increases your haste which is really nice.. While yes rune tap isn't needed to be cast off cd but honestly i suggest you cast this much more often than 6, 6 is pretty low with it's 25 second cd it's not a big cd. Everything else was pretty good.

 

SO TLDR: Bone shield could have been slightly higher. Your up time on your Haste buff you get from having 5 stacks of bone sheild is only up 75% of the time which is could be rather useful (maybe it's not haste? i thought i gives haste, but it does reduce the cast of deathstrike by 5 runic so that's still helpful. Better Rune tap management.

Edited October 31, 2016 by Drtain

[Aegis 27]

18 hours ago, Drtain said:

@Aegis(xavius)

Could have used one more blood mirror, unless you don't get the the boss first then ignore that but you had 3 casts when u could of had 4. 98.7 uptime on dot while this is super like nit picky it's possible to get 99.9 i do it often atleast as unholy. You didn't have a 100% uptime on Bone sheild you had 95%, and only a 75%on the 5 stacks of bonesheild which increases your haste which is really nice.. While yes rune tap isn't needed to be cast off cd but honestly i suggest you cast this much more often than 6, 6 is pretty low with it's 25 second cd it's not a big cd. Everything else was pretty good.

 

SO TLDR: Bone shield could have been slightly higher. Your up time on your Haste buff you get from having 5 stacks of bone sheild is only up 75% of the time which is could be rather useful (maybe it's not haste? i thought i gives haste, but it does reduce the cast of deathstrike by 5 runic so that's still helpful. Better Rune tap management.

Thanks for the look through. Will look at blood plague again, but I was dreaming tank in first phase, possible that the dot fell off when I had to run out for dispels . 

The haste buff is up from 1 stack - at 5 stacks if ossuary is talented, your death strike is 5 rp cheaper. 

For rune tap, I was trying to save it for moments when I was actually in danger - I know I should try to keep one charge on cd at all times, but not quite there yet =(

And as add tank in p1, when I also take boss, bone shield stacks drop pretty damn fast. And the damn tick from the dot on me also reduces a stack each -which really sucks.

Thanks for looking through. The blood plague thing is definitely fixable, as is the rune tap. Not sure about bone shield, will have to look at that again. 

Edited November 1, 2016 by Aegis
grammar =(

[Aegis 27]

22 hours ago, Morridin said:

Hey Aegis, allow me to add my experience to your topic, even though I haven't cleaned HM yet (missing Cenarius and Xavius ^^).

Compared to my War tanking with me I take a LOT (around 30-40%) more damage than him, but I manage to balance it back with the healing I provide, and depending on the encounter, having the legendary that buffs AMS is priceless.

From my point of view, Ursoc is not that challenging once you get the taunting routine started with your other tank, and if DBM screws with the calls, I suggest you try out BigWigs, it has yet to fail this encounter ^^

For the several trys we made on Cenarius, and with keeping in mind that I was on adds duty, it was pretty managable, even without swapping to Rune tap.
 

As far as I am concerned, Renferal is the encounter I hate the most, mainly because it's messy as hell, and I don't play in a very disciplinated roster (and I love it, but yeah, sometimes it has its drawbacks ^^) so usually P2 gets hectic very quickly ^^

Also, for the stats priority, I'm trying to go for more Vers than crit (not very successful at the moment given the amount of haste-vers plate loot in the raid) but I believe it could help smooth even more the damage we take, given that crit scales pretty badly :/

Anyways, hope you'll find this somewhat useful, have a nice day/night ! :)

Yeah, we take more damage than warriors. Our mitigation works differently. 

Ursoc is a pretty easy fight, I just ignore dbm and keep an eye on my co-tank's debuff.

for elerethe, I seriously feel it should be one-tanked. The reason for this is that I've already had to one tank p2 multiple times, and it's definitely doable. The spiders may be a minor issue, but that can be solved by moving the boss for it. Only other issue is the link. The dps who gets linked will likely die. Aside from that, it's very possible, in my opinion.

i tried versa on gear, and I hated it with a passion. Just find it to be a very boring stat. Crit imo is better cause of the synergy with artefact traits.

@Morridin - one thing to look at when comparing logs with other tanks is that you shouldn't be focusing on total damage taken - better to focus instead on EHRPS (effective healing required per second) - this accounts for your self-healing, and is an option you can look at under the 'damage taken' section of the logs. Warriors take less overall damage because they can block/parry stuff, as well as IP acting as a 90% absorb shield when it's up - this is balanced out by our strong self-healing (and to a lesser extent our blood shields, but those are honestly horrible right now).

Edited November 1, 2016 by Aegis

[Sniz 60]

25 minutes ago, Aegis said:

Yeah, we take more damage than warriors. Our mitigation works differently. 

Ursoc is a pretty easy fight, I just ignore dbm and keep an eye on my co-tank's debuff.

for elerethe, I seriously feel it should be one-tanked. The reason for this is that I've already had to one tank p2 multiple times, and it's definitely doable. The spiders may be a minor issue, but that can be solved by moving the boss for it. Only other issue is the link. The dps who gets linked will likely die. Aside from that, it's very possible, in my opinion.

i tried versa on gear, and I hated it with a passion. Just find it to be a very boring stat. Crit imo is better cause of the synergy with artefact traits.

I dont get the poo pooing of crit that im seeing recently. (Discord et al). Really really well geared tanks are linking their stats saying they get crushed and have like 15% crit..?  The replies are "crit sux", "crit is for dps".

People, crit is for parry which beyond Skel Shat and beyond the full mitigation (allowing heals to catch up) SAVES RUNES.  Whats the point of moving crit into haste if all you're doing is requiring yourselves to use more marrow-mend? Its a wash.

Crit/parry = more runes for HS = more DS

I realize im preaching to the choir here with you Aegis. Lol

Its just another instance of over-simming, taking only raw numbers into account, and sacrificing playability. 

We've all been there. Getting hit by multiple mobs, bone shields dropping fast, health dropping, needing a marrow but its on cooldown and at the same time needing to HS to get Runic power.  Its a slippery slope.  A robot might wait for marrow, whereas many real players wont (or cant! What if the healer is on the move and cant get you; what if there is a dps about to go down?) So a real player will go off rotation and HS for a crucial DS, but leaving themselve critically low on bone shields and fighting to catch back up.  Maybe even popping a defensive too early.

Im not saying stack crit, but it seems 20-22% parry is a very nice "base" that I would say is absolutely required.  Worry about other stats after that.

[Aegis 27]

7 hours ago, Sniz said:

I dont get the poo pooing of crit that im seeing recently. (Discord et al). Really really well geared tanks are linking their stats saying they get crushed and have like 15% crit..?  The replies are "crit sux", "crit is for dps".

People, crit is for parry which beyond Skel Shat and beyond the full mitigation (allowing heals to catch up) SAVES RUNES.  Whats the point of moving crit into haste if all you're doing is requiring yourselves to use more marrow-mend? Its a wash.

Crit/parry = more runes for HS = more DS

I realize im preaching to the choir here with you Aegis. Lol

Its just another instance of over-simming, taking only raw numbers into account, and sacrificing playability. 

We've all been there. Getting hit by multiple mobs, bone shields dropping fast, health dropping, needing a marrow but its on cooldown and at the same time needing to HS to get Runic power.  Its a slippery slope.  A robot might wait for marrow, whereas many real players wont (or cant! What if the healer is on the move and cant get you; what if there is a dps about to go down?) So a real player will go off rotation and HS for a crucial DS, but leaving themselve critically low on bone shields and fighting to catch back up.  Maybe even popping a defensive too early.

Im not saying stack crit, but it seems 20-22% parry is a very nice "base" that I would say is absolutely required.  Worry about other stats after that.

20-22% is nice. I would go as high as 25% parry when our ilevel goes up, to be honest. 25% parry/25%haste then versa>mas seems like a decent place to start. Haste up to 30% would be nice, but not as necessary - i'm at 26% now, and everything is fine and dandy. i'm able to tank mythic+2 (and some +3s) without a healer (4 dps, zerg boss)

[Sniz 60]

EHRPS (External Healing Required Per Second) is a decent tab to use when judging yourself verses other tank classes.