Is it possible to be DPS as blood dk in wotlk? Currently I’m holding my own in 5 mana as blood dps and usually no 1 or 2 on meters…big Heart Strike and Rune Strike crits are amazing.
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You can, the damage is acceptable, but you won’t ever be able to compete with Frost or Unholy
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I’ve been beating unholy dks regularly on meters.
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You absolutely can.
But you will be yelled at by the meta for being the worst DPS spec.
And 19 out of every 20 guilds wont bring you to raid.
Yeah, in prepatch. Unholy is the biggest scaling spec of all 3, so once we get into Wrath it’s going to pull ahead and by phase 4 it will be one of the strongest specs of any class, let alone DK
Prepatch is genuinely one of the worst times to judge class performance
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I feel like this needs to be repeated for emphasis.
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This is level 1-70 content. As paladin I’ve been doing more dmg than whole groups in 40-60 area, then it fell off a bit after 60, and by 80 all classes even out. Game is balanced for Northrend and level 80.
Blood dk is just not viable as dps on 80, it’s worse than arms warrior. Sure you can play it, but then you bring no haste buff frost brings, no kite value for Gluth, etc. It just has nothing of value.
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is blood dk a tank spec? I look at frost talents and frost stance and it’s also has a lot of defensive talents, i don’t get it. And blood has a lot of pure damage and str talents.
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yeha its odd that blood and unholy presence are for DPS and frost presence is for tanking
Not really odd.
So much changed since first version in wrath beta.
The org concept had blood being about self healing and damage
Frost being about mit and damage with a bit of control tossed in
Unholy being the pet class and the highest damage with your pet able to tank a bit to give your tankyness
The presences still matches that by the end.
All 3 where meant to be able to tank to a acceptable level and dps to a acceptable level which the end result still kept but obv some panned out better at set levels blizzard than adjusted based on that. Blood that most people settled in as the tank spex was adjusted more and more over the xpac to be the go to tank spec and damage scaling was reduced for that reason to not make them to op which was a issue of dk ar the time. Frost was kept with a good balance of both damage tank tankyness but not shining at either (thou still dose well at set scaling points). Unholy was made into the damage pure damage spec as no one tanked with a pet.
In final balance all three specs are able to tabk and dps at a level they are viable to use for progression but not all 3 are optimal. There is significant advantages to the “meta” use of each spec such as blood dks not needing as much healing but at the cost of damage. Or frost/unholy dks being able to do more damage but at the cost of some of there survival. Frost/unholy least in speed runs may end up being the optimal offhand least for naxx where stuff dosent hit hard for this reason as the dps is worth more than the survival and there still quite good enough to tabk.
Prob is in the ops case blood is the one that gives up the most dps for other factors like survival and self healing which is not really ideal when you are a dps and not a offtank. And even as a offtank unless that survival is needed guilds esp with the classic mindset will want that dps as the patch goes on. Ie blood tank on prog than swap to another one of the two once on farm for more dps.
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Sub 70 with bad blues and greens in prepatch in instances.
Blood can dps, it’s better than other tanks are at dps, but, it’s pretty low compared to actual dps come 80.
In any realistic situation, you joining a raid as blood dps will just be seen as trolling, alongside sub rogues and frost mages.
Almost everything is a viable and competitive dps, but blood dps just doesn’t make the cut.
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Yup, I remember when Onyxia got re released our DK was dual wield blood spec.
There’s also old content like this.
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Why would it be odd? Originally, every DK spec could tank.
- Unholy was far worse in that regard than Frost or Blood, useful only for overgeared speedrunning with mass pulls into Corpse Explosion, but its lower core tanking potential was more oversight than intent.
Each had self-sustain (Vampiric Blood, Unbreakable Armor, Bone Shield, etc), be that via self-healing or mitigation. Each had anti-magic (Spell Reflection, Acclimation, AMS/AMZ buffs). Each had unique utilities. Each had significant damage-increasing talents available to them.
The DK specs were originally themes, not merely roles, with multiple uses for and ways to specialize within each specialization. And, for all we know, perhaps the game would be more interesting even now if they’d decided to expand that design philosophy to other classes instead of quickly removing it from DK as well.
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A simple google search would have told you this.
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I’m surprised at the responses here. I played a blood DK dps in the original Wrath, and had no issue pulling 7-9k in 10-man ICC and around 14k in 25-man ICC. I almost always topped the dps meters. Blood DK was the best at single-target dps out of the 3 specs. Frost was tanking and Unholy was your trash-burner (mass group dps). I was upset when Cata adjusted the blood spec to be more tanky.
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So many people here didn’t play the original Wrath. You can DPS or Tank in any spec, all 3 are viable, this is not Warlords of Draenor…
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You dont judge class performance in any prepatch.
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Unholy takes time to ramp up, so they’re great for trash that lives long and bosses. Anything that dies quick will give an edge to Blood and Frost over Unholy. Frost absolutely blows Blood out of the water for shortlived stuff.
This is tangentially related to a question I replied to about Frost Tanking, so I’ll quote myself from that thread:
Blockquote
Frost tanks were the most common ones I remember seeing during normal mode progression from the start of the expansion all the way up through ICC. I think many defaulted to it because a lot of tanking abilities were in the Frost “school” (Icebound Fortitude, Frost Presence, etc.), so it was seen as sort of the de facto tank spec, at least on my server. There were at least a few Kingslayer Frost tanks that I remember seeing around Dal, so you will absolutely be able to clear all normal mode content as a Frost tank.
Blood was for hard modes due to the extra cooldowns. It became the designated tank spec in Cata. I saw Unholy tanks a few times and they were great on add fights like Lady Deathwhisper, but didn’t really stand out otherwise.
All this ignores the private server meta, so I’m sure there is an optimal choice, but that’s what I remember from back in the day.
This applies to Blood DPS as well. We definitely had Blood DPS running around that did well enough on the meters. You’d also see 2H Frost DPS, DW Unholy, etc. There’s a reason 2H and DW talents, as well as basic defensive talents are early in their trees. This was part of the design philosophy that defined the “hero class” concept. All specs could use all playstyles for all roles. Everything else is the meta, so while everything is possible, player/community behavior will dictate your available opportunities for doing so.
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I don’t disagree that Unholy will be top for most of Wrath, but to correct this, both Frost and Blood scale more than Unholy. Unholy drops off in ICC for a reason
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