DK was my main in Wrath, in fact by the end of it I was blood/blood dual spec for tank and dps. Blood can dps in the same way subtlety rogue or frost mage can dps. With enough time and a good enough group, you can eventually clear ICC, but you’ll contribute significantly less to the raid than you would as frost or unholy
If someone wants to blood dps then sure go right ahead, but they should do it with the understanding that they’ll get frequent comments of “trolling” and be denied more than a few pug invites
Out-dps’ing players in a random dungeon environment won’t translate to meaningful dps.
Blood has quickly accessible cleave from heartstrike, and the mobs dying as fast as they are now combined with the unholy DKs not scaling yet means you will probably get out higher damage in the short term. As soon as unholy can get a good gargoyle for a whole fight you’ll be dusted regardless of the scaling. The problem only gets worse as they start to pick up gear, eventually leaving you at the bottom with the phase 1 warriors.
Generally speaking they can yes the issue is gonna come in the fact that this isn’t regular ‘Wrath’ its Classic where the community is hyper-focused on optimization and clearing as fast as possible, people will see you playing Blood Dps as ‘trolling’ versus just being a playstyle you prefer. Blood’s OPTIMIZED for Tanking and it’s part of why I dislike they used 3.3.5 DK’s which were so very clearly balanced in prep for Cata and not meant to be used meaningfully in Wrath content. Its why having DK’s at the very least from ICC launch patch would’ve been better IMHO
I will say starting out its gonna suck as Wrath raiding had a lack of armor pen which is what Blood DPS relies a ton on so they are in a very similar situation as Fury Warriors atm where the DPS will be very middle of the pact you’ll do more Damage then Sub Rogues or Frost mages though. By TOC and ICC you’ll be a middle of the pack DPS
It should be noted while its not Optimized a Blood DPS will have no problems hitting DPS checks even for Heroic encounters. Just find yourself a guild that’ll take you and you’ll be good to go.
It’s not only possible it can be very decent at 80. When Wrath launched, it was blood and unholy. Nobody played frost. At 80 blood will out DPS unholy on single targets but unholy will shine on AOE pulls. As for PVP…blood will Lich Slap unholy…lol Im betting this go around a lot of retail players will roll frost. Bottom line, Play what you like. Blood WILL hold it’s own.
Blood dps was completely viable in all of wrath. In fact most of us did blood dps/blood tank. Especially when hit/armour pen capped.
All three specs was fine for both dps and tanking. If it was all magical damage taken then you tanked as unholy. Hell even dw unholy was capable with the right set up. But it mainly came down to play style then.
But yes blood dps was a normal build and will be a normal build and will perform well scaling great.
Until they redid the trees for DK and Blood became the tank spec. You can DPS in it, but you’ll be way behind everyone else. Frost and Unholy can tank, but nothing serious.
We’re going in with the final balancing patch. Anyone DPSing as Blood past Outland is trolling.
I don’t remember the specific patch, but DKs got revamped in Wrath. Blood DPS was the go-to spec until mid-late Wrath when they made a number of balancing changes. It’s why Blood used to be the #1 DK spec for DPS early, but wasn’t by ICC.
Of course, we gotta optimize the fun out of everything, let people play what they want without demanding x y and z for a 12 year old expansion. Yes we know everything about wrath, yes we know what’s optimal but how about we ignore optimal for fun for a change yes?
Rune strike is awesome. How does one parry without holding aggro?
Check WCL’s for Blood DK if you’re truly interested. They aren’t split from tanking/DPSing yet, and you’ll see 99% of them held zero threat on every boss. Wouldn’t call it a viable option long term, but if you enjoy the playstyle and have others surrounded by you that support it, go for it.
They aren’t tho Blood DPS is fine to play as its just a case of it being sub-optimal until ICC, if a Guilds willing to put up with that than by all means a Blood DPS can do fine and clear content they aren’t gonna be some hindrance on a raid.
I will say you should just off-spec as Tank tho. To your comment Blood DPS was still being played in 3.3.5 and even still doing ICC heroic during that time but by the time of ICC Armor Pen stacking was easy as hell versus early Wrath where a 3.3.5 Blood DK is gonna struggle. (Obviously back then Blood wasn’t as overtly reliant on Armor Pen and had stuff like Dieaseless Blood until Blizz decided players were having too much fun.)
It wasn’t until Cata that they gave the killing blow to Blood DPS entirely. (Also as an FYI Blood DPS is the defacto leveling spec from 55 to 80 so to say past outland is very dumb.)
Needs to be said but there is nothing inherently wrong with Optimization its just if you are a person who has a preferred play style and it doesn’t line up with those types you should be informed that you may have a bad time.
There are plenty of casual raiding guilds that’d take a Blood DPS which is what this person elected to not say tho.
As a word of advice to anyone who wants to play Blood DPS and be taken seriously make sure your pre-Raid BIS stuff is armor pen there is some of it from Rep grind blues and Heroics it’ll make people take you a bit more seriously and actually assume you’re dedicated to the spec versus being a troll.
This isn’t optimizing, this is doing half the damage of all other dps.
Wrath is quite optimized and all classes and specs are viable, but blood is just not a dps spec, you’ll do about half the damage of frost and people won’t really want to do content with you. But for outdoors content you go ahead.
Saying blood as dps is fine is like saying prot pala as dps is fine. It’s not. It’s a tank spec.