Blood DK nurfs + Overall Tank nurfs =?

[Kalaen-black-dragonflight (Kalaen)]

These are probably too many negative changes for BDK to be a good idea S1. Thoughts?

@Kaivax

Tank durability can cause some other problems as well, especially in challenging endgame content, that we want to work toward improving.

• Enemy damage has increased to challenge tanks, but if it’s increased too much, it gets spiky and puts tanks in significant danger if their defenses ever drop. This can lead to tanks getting killed rapidly, seemingly out of nowhere. We feel this is unsatisfying and would prefer tank damage to generally be evenly distributed, but still threatening over time.
• If tanks are not threatened enough, then the most challenging part of endgame content can become keeping DPS and healers alive, often against high burst damage. Making tank survival a more involving element of group gameplay could give us some freedom to ease up on the threat to other group members.

To address the above, we’re making reductions to tank durability and self-healing. This will allow us to smooth out the damage tanks and parties take while retaining the challenge of keeping them alive over time. We’ll take those changes into account in encounter tuning as well.

Tanks will take more damage overall, but shouldn’t die significantly more often.

To increase the overall damage tanks take and their reliance on healers, we’re primarily increasing the percentage of damage they take, after mitigation, from steady damage sources like physical attacks. We’re making fewer reductions to each class’s defenses against burst damage or other threats that are currently most likely to be lethal to them. Encounters will be tuned with this in mind so the character of tank damage changes, but the lethality of it doesn’t significantly increase.

Tank damage intake should be steady and not too fast.

One of our goals for these changes is to smooth out the rate tanks take damage to reduce surprise, spiky deaths. Healers should have time to respond to tank health and tanks should have time to use self-heals like Word of Glory or Celestial Brew. For some classes, we’re increasing their passive defenses to compensate for decreases to more active or reactive defensive mechanics. Tankbusters will still create challenging moments that reward tanks for planning and smart use of cooldowns.

Tanks will still have strong answers to threats or periods of danger, but less sustained self-healing.

Tanks should have autonomy over their own survival and will still have cooldowns or emergency self-heals like Renewal or Impending Victory. But the healing of continuous effects like Elune’s Favored or Indomitable are reduced, so tanks must have more of a partnership with healers to restore their missing health once it’s lost.

Healer gameplay should not be dominated by tank healing.

Healers play a critical role, and keeping tanks alive is part of what they bring to the table. However, healers contribute to the success of groups in many ways, especially in dungeons. They sustain the group, dispel harmful effects, and respond to burst damage, all while doing mechanics. Tank healing should not demand so much that it interferes with their other roles. It may take some iteration to get the balance right on this, where healers feel essential to tank survival but with their attention not overly demanded by it.

@Kaivax

Blood Death Knight

Death Strike is a powerful ability that allows Blood Death Knights to mitigate a percentage of any form of damage taken in the last 5 seconds. In a way, Death Strike works like a retroactive shield block. Instead of reducing damage up front, it “mitigates” the damage you took from a hit by healing you. If used in succession, Death Strike can affect a single hit multiple times, which would be comparable to blocking a hit, then going back in time and blocking it again, in some cases restoring yourself to higher health than where you started. In The War Within, we’re changing Death Strike to only heal the death knight for a percentage of damage taken from a given damage event once, to make it scale more like other tank mitigation mechanics.

We’re also reducing Runic Power generation somewhat and reducing some of the mitigation death knights get from high-uptime cooldowns like Enfeeble and Dancing Rune Weapon, but increasing armor from Bone Shield. Overall, death knights should take damage more smoothly, and they will remain one of the strongest tanks for encounters with high magic or periodic damage.

• Death Strike can now only heal the Death Knight for a percentage of damage taken from a given damage event once. Death Strikes that heal the minimum health amount do not count as using damage events in this way.
• A new aura, Coagulating Blood, shows the amount of recently taken damage that will be used to calculate the value of your next Death Strike. The aura description lists the value as a flat amount and the number of stacks shows it as a percentage of your current health.
• Blood Shield’s cap is now 50% of the Death Knight’s maximum health (was 100%) and the cap is no longer temporarily increased by Vampiric Blood.
  • Developers’ notes: This should not affect how much Blood Shield Death Knights are able to generate while actively tanking, but will reduce how large a barrier they are able to accumulate while off-tanking.
• Rune of the Fallen Crusader now heals for 4% of your maximum health (was 6%).
• Runic Attenuation now generates 3 Runic Power (was 5).
• Enfeeble reduces damage dealt to you by 12% (was 15%).
• Null Magic reduces magic damage taken by 8% (was 10%).
• Bone Shield increases Armor by 100% of Strength (was 80%).
• Leeching Strike now heals for 0.25% maximum health for each target hit (was 0.5%).
• Dancing Rune Weapon increases Parry chance by 35% (was 40%).
• Each active Dancing Rune Weapons generate 3 Runic Power when mirroring Heart Strike (was 5).
• Everlasting Bond increases Dancing Rune Weapon’s duration by 6 seconds (was 8 seconds).
• Blood Drinker reduces the damage the enemy deals to you by 15% (was 20%).
• Bonestorm heals you for 2% of your maximum health (was 3%), up to a maximum of 10% (was 15%). Bonestorm damage increased by 20%.

[Çharming-stormrage]

Yep blood dk is finished.

Its going to be a re run of shadowlands season 1 where in tanks had to kite.

Even though they said “tank gameplay should not include having to kite” They made 20 changes above that that very highly indicate that its in fact going to be the case.

Tanks are already getting destroyed pretty hard in my beta experience anyway.

[Dreadmoon-saurfang (Dreadmoon)]

I’ve always noticed Blood DKs generally start as the lowest or bottom ranked tanks at the start of every expansion, then scale up well later on.

I guess we wait on the first few weeks of these changes to see the outcome and whether Blizzard adjust the changes depending on Blood DK performance.

[Kalaen-black-dragonflight (Kalaen)]

@Çharming-stormrage

Yep blood dk is finished.

Its going to be a re run of shadowlands season 1 where in tanks had to kite.

yea, pretty much what’s going to happen is nobody is going to play BDK, just like SL S1. That’s why I was gold parsing- nobody else was playing it lol

[Bremmen-sargeras]

That’s about when I hit KSM as blood. I remember getting nasty whispers as well…

[Inquisition-moon-guard]

Interesting that you can no longer double tap DS for the same amount of healing, they’re really going to have to beef up our other sources of healing to compensate. The math isn’t mathing in my head, might bump the value of Red Thirst and Umbilicus to keep us healthy via other means.

[Meatyboi-emerald-dream]

Yeah I’m super bothered. I’ve outgrown 13s on my blood here, and can take the damage from 14s just fine, and would need a 15 to actually start sweating.

As far as math goes, at 100% health, it’s too late and I’m in danger of dieing. Blood shield has to be to up. So now it’s going to be optimal to wait 5 seconds between death strikes, that means blood shield will fall off. And now blood shield is gonna only cap at 50% max health??? Absolutely unacceptable, I routinely get up to 100% blood shield on fort weeks. That talent that makes consumption contribute to blood shield better put in some work. Especially since 1st season of the expansion means secondary stats are lower, so no where near the levels of mastery we have right now.

The healable part of the health bar isn’t large enough for the goal of letting the healer contribute to survivability, and I don’t think the meager increase to bone shields is going to alleviate that. I think reverting the 50% blood shield cap, and buffing mastery to compensate for nerfing Death Strike into the ground is in order. Idk now the talent tree is going to feel even more restrictive because now I feel like I can’t afford to not take Foul Bulwark, Hemostasis, or Voracious to prop up blood shield.

[Floweret-stormreaver]

Watched beta key streams last night and blood dk was doing well. Too many people are dooming about these changes.

Remember, dungeon tuning could make these changes mean nothing or be super impactful.

@Meatyboi-emerald-dream

So now it’s going to be optimal to wait 5 seconds between death strikes

This isn’t correct. Taking damage buffs your next death strike. There isn’t a time limit on it. You still use death strike exactly how you should before the changes.

[Parsalian-proudmoore]

@Floweret-stormreaver

You still use death strike exactly how you should before the changes.

Unless they reverted something this is completely untrue.

[Luxu-exodar]

I think maybe you did not read the original post.

First of all, there is always a time limit on Death Strike. Damage taken more than 5 seconds in the past is not used in the heal calculation, so DS must be timed carefully.

This change is saying that you may now only heal for one DS worth of health per hit. Now, if I take a 1 million damage hit, if I have planned ahead and have sufficient RP, I can DS two or three times and heal almost fully. With this change, if I take a 1 million damage hit, the first DS would heal me but any subsequent DS would not heal back any of that 1 million damage. Much less overall healing.

This is a fundamental change and absolutely obliterates the value of good RP management for defensive use.

[Xëø-wyrmrest-accord]

Want to touch up on DS healing with new changes…

Say you get hit by 1mil damage, then an Auto for 200k… Will the first DS heal for the 1mil then the 2nd DS for the 200k hit…?

Or does the 200k hit override the 1mil hit (since its the most recent) so the first DS heals for the 200k hit and the 2nd DS heals for min hp…?

OR… Are we just now adding a 3rd resource bar… where we pool Damage taken, then a DS clears such pool…

[Floweret-stormreaver]

You shouldn’t be double tapping death strike though. Anyone doing this is playing incorrectly and will be punished more for doing it.

[Floweret-stormreaver]

@Parsalian-proudmoore

Unless they reverted something this is completely untrue.

Please don’t spread misinformation.

I’ve seen your posts enough to know you’re a clueless contrarian. Stop trolling people by misinforming them.

[Luxu-exodar]

Yeah, this is just not true.

First off, there are some cases where you want to dump RP in anticipation of entering DRW.

Secondly, there are cases where doubling up healing with consecutive uses of DS is beneficial, especially if you have the foresight to know that you are about to take a big hit or enter into a low-DTPS phase where defensive RP is less valuable.

Do you play BDK?

[Meatyboi-emerald-dream]

@Xëø-wyrmrest-accord

OR… Are we just now adding a 3rd resource bar… where we pool Damage taken, then a DS clears such pool…

It’s this one fam. So if you double death strike the second one is trying to drink from a recently emptied pool. The pool overflows at 5 seconds.

[Candikong-illidan]

It continues to be clear that nobody at blizz plays DK or has ever played DK. They obviously have no clue how the class really functions or what the players actually want. Still have DnD cleave on the DPS specs and this class has the worst damage mitigation, which is made up for by self healing. So the clear answer is nerf the healing… GJ Blizz!

[Parsalian-proudmoore]

@Floweret-stormreaver

Please don’t spread misinformation.

The irony of this is you’re wrong. I love the forums.

@Luxu-exodar

Do you play BDK?

I’d save yourself the trouble, that person is constantly wrong about gameplay. No use arguing with a blue parsing warrior.

[Floweret-stormreaver]

Double tapping death strike will overheal you and you should be using heart strike to get more RP for the next time you need death strike and to keep your runes available<4 or blood boil to stack up hemostasis.

@Luxu-exodar

Do you play BDK?

Yes

[Kalaen-black-dragonflight (Kalaen)]

@Floweret-stormreaver

Please don’t spread misinformation.

you’re a clueless contrarian. Stop trolling people by misinforming them.

Flag this Flowery troll as trolling and move on.

[Nevermore-hyjal (Nevermore)]

The no double dipping on DS recover healing making it more optimal to wait till you’ve taken enough damage feels bad.

I hope they implement something to make it so we never wind up in a situation where we stop pushing buttons because we don’t want to DS till we’ve taken damage but we cant spend runes either because we are out or will over cap RP

Maybe making it so you can only consume as many Coagulating Blood stacks as it takes to bring you above 90% HP would be in order. Making it so you can still bank on having them if things take a turn and you’ll always get value.