This feedback will focus mostly on âhow the talents will play and impact rotation/gameplayâ and âhow these new talents would affect existing talentsâ. The perspective is from a Blood Death Knight who primarily does Mythic+ Tank Theorycrafting for the specialization and higher-end Mythic+.
Vampiric Strike + Incite Terror + Gift of the Sanâlayn
The 10-15% base proc rate is relatively low, especially compared to the 100% heart strike conversion rate during Vampiric Blood with the capstone. When also considering the additional 100% effectiveness during Vampiric Blood, the benefits are highly concentrated around our cooldown window (and the spillover buff duration after the cooldown window is over). The full talent tree indicates that the buff probably functions like Festermight (or maybe Iron Fur) with regards to stacking and refreshing (given the Incite Terror node). If it functioned with normal stacking and refreshing rules, it would be possible to maintain 100% uptime at full stacks with the full tree active given the potential cooldown and uptime of Vampiric Blood when the appropriate talents are taken, which is a good time to mention the synergy with Red Thirst and Improved Vampiric Blood in the baseline Blood tree; these two talents are staples in Mythic+ content, but see more limited use in Raid content, though, given the lack of meaningful talent decisions in the Blood tree for raid, creating a few more significant talent nodes wouldnât hurt.
The marginal 3% maximum health heal is relatively insignificant for Blood (but flavorful), while a single Vampiric Strike providing 1.5% haste for 20 seconds has more of a real impact. Granted, given the normal Death Strike vs. Heart Strike vs. Blood Boil considerations with the Blood rotation, the nodes are unlikely to alter the core rotation unless purposefully wasting RP for more Vampiric Strike throughput becomes preferable to the normal pattern of prioritizing Death Strike throughput over Heart Strike throughput.
Turning an otherwise purely defensive cooldown (Vampiric Blood) into an offensive cooldown is something that might not be a good thing in certain aspects. But if we are assuming 2/2 Red Thirst, it can be a short enough cooldown that maybe it wonât be bothersome to play. However, this would make our two strongest defensive cooldowns also being tied to significant offensive benefits. Some could argue this was in place for the patch 10.1 tier set bonus, but that was a relatively trivial offensive benefit.
It is also worth noting that, depending on how the buff stacking and refreshing works, this creates something of a haste positive feedback loop; proc rates increase with haste, haste increases with more proc rates, and effective extension increases with haste. It also boosts the effectiveness of the haste-scaling part of our kit, in general, relative to the non-haste scaling portion. Probably not anything on the level of Shadowlands Season 3 or 4 Blood Death Knight, but it is worth pointing out.
Newly Turned or Vampiric Speed
As Blood, using Raise Ally has a few pain points, at times. (1) The tankâs position isnât always the best place to spawn, (2) using a global cooldown for 30 RP without any personal healing can indirectly kill you (a BDKâs RP bar is their second health bar), and (3) some specializations can resurrect allies at higher health levels. A 20% shield is better than nothing, even if it isnât even close to the healing of the lost Death Strike, while healing an ally at full health completely removes one of the potential disadvantages listed above. So, this is a decent quality of life talent, though as Blood I would still rather someone else perform the battle res if I am in any personally dangerous situation. The loss of a Death Strike in dangerous situations is still a steep price to pay if it can be avoided. This is also the only talent that Iâm going to pick on for having a name that can probably be improved (Maybe something transfusion related, instead? Iâm more of a math guy, so someone could probably think up something cleverer than me).
Vampiric Speed is a nice solid utility bonus. There is little else to say about it and, unless you are the only battle res available in your group or are in a PvE situation where movement speed has little value, I suspect this will largely be the option taken.
Blood-Soaked Ground
A talent node similar to Sanguine Ground and Unholy Ground. The dynamic of standing in ground effects for buffs is something that is a little divisive in the greater death knight community, to say the least. Thereâs certainly some amount of skill expression involved, but I think it is fair to say that people are never a huge fan of feeling like their player movement is excessively being constrained, particularly on melee classes. I donât think there is any special insight I can provide on this topic that you wonât hear elsewhere, itâs a mechanic that never really feels particularly satisfying when any forced movement is involved, even if Iâm not bothered by it too much personally.
Vampiric Aura or Bloody Fortitude
The reintroduction of a weaker form of Vampiric Aura from Legion is interesting, though the personal 3% passive leech means little for Blood. Still, it could be a decent group healing cooldown in Mythic+ content. This has some amount of synergy with Unholy Endurance from the baseline class talent tree.
The exact mechanics of Bloody Fortitude are a little uncertain with regards to the damage reduction, though Icebound Fortitude is basically your third-string defensive cooldown as a Blood Death Knight since its total uptime is very low at baseline. The cooldown reduction doesnât change the situation much even in Mythic+. Even if we assumed a 15 second cooldown reduction every minute, that is still a weaker version of Acclimation from the class tree and doesnât fundamentally change defensive usage. This also assumes we get cooldown reduction from enemies we donât get the killing blow on, which is, unfortunately, not how Deathâs Reach is currently working in the baseline talent tree. âKilling enemiesâ bonuses have a habit of not being particularly useful, but, if we did want to make a competitive effect, we would at least want to make sure that you donât need the killing blow, itself, to get the bonus (Adjusting Deathâs Reach to work this way would be nice, too). This has some amount of synergy with Acclimation from the baseline talent tree.
This is a more ambiguous choice node, which is probably a good thing.
Infliction of Sorrow
The parity between how this operates with and without Gift of the Sanâlayn active is a bit odd.
Baseline, this allows for the player to accelerate and amplify Blood Plague damage (healing too?) on all targets hit with Vampiric Strike, which puts a gameplay emphasis on reapplying Blood Plague whenever it is consumed given the large damage increase potential. Proc rates are likely low enough in this mode where we will be able to reapply Blood Plague pretty reliably after consuming it. Itâs not impossible you would want to refresh Blood Plague going into a Vampiric Strike (and then reapplying it shortly after) depending on overall resource dynamics (especially with the added rune regeneration from a later node), but something like that is hard to predict without tool updates. In any case, fishing for more damage throughput in this manner is going to negatively impact the playerâs RP economy, though the exact tradeoff we are looking at here is not known at this time.
During Gift of the Sanâlayn, the immediate bonus damage done is significantly less and provides less pressure to reapply Blood Plague in general. Iâm wondering if this is even preferable, throughput-wise, to the full Blood Plague consumption with more damage, though the alternate where we consume Blood Plague faster than we are capable of re-applying it through Blood Plague would have its own oddities.
In both cases, this increases the value of Rapid Decomposition and Coagulopathy (due to their increased Blood Plague damage), which are two talents that are currently taken all of the time in all content mostly due to Coagulopathyâs high power level and weak pathing competition.
Frenzied Bloodthirst
The increased stack count doesnât change any of the previous discussion, while the increased Death Strike damage doesnât do much gameplay-wise and only has obvious side-effects such as increasing the value of RP generation and Death Strike damage-scaling talents (Runic Attenuation, Empower Rune Weapon, Heartbreaker, Bloodshot, Ossuary, Improved Death Strike, Hemostasis).
The Blood is Life + Pact of the Sanâlayn
Well, pets are thematic to Unholy and Blood has Bloodworms, so I guess a fusion doesnât hurt theme-wise. No real gameplay implications baseline, while talent implications are minimal.
Pact of the Sanâlayn, when taken, does give an added incentive to increase shadow damage throughput for the appropriate window. If Bonestorm ever saw the light of day again (which could easily be a separate discussion), there may be some incentive to line it up with a Blood Beast; a similar story to Abomination Limb, except Abomination Limb actually sees use right now. Depending on the tuning, this would make Abomination Limb, Bonestorm, Shattering Bone, Soul Reaper, and Coagulopathy stronger in the baseline talent trees to some extent. But without more information it is hard to say just how important these âshadow damage pet bombâ windows might be and how much we would play around them.
Visceral Regeneration
Blood Death Knight has very minimal rotational downtime, to the point where it doesnât take too much additional resource regeneration (through baseline talents or otherwise) to have more than we are able to spend. In most situations, excess resources means we are mostly dropping Blood Boils from the rotation. So, with more rune regeneration (a potentially significant amount), weâll be gaining more Heart Strikes (and subsequently Death Strikes), while losing Blood Boils. This isnât necessarily a bad thing (and Blood would never fully drop Blood Boil usage), but something to keep in mind.
Similar to the 10.0 tier set bonus, this has downstream implications of buffing talents mostly related to Heart Strike, Death Strike, and Rune taxing talents (Heartbreaker, Improved Heart Strike, Rune Tap, Bloodshot, and Heartrend) and nerfing talents related to Blood Boil as well as further rune regeneration (Hemostasis and Blood Tap). Nothing crazy, but downstream effects nonetheless.
Sanguine Scent
It is hard to say which effect of this talent is more impactful off-hand or how this compares to Pact of the Sanâlayn. A 25-30% proc rate on Death Strike is still low relative to what we are getting in Vampiric Blood windows as far as Vampiric Strike throughput is concerned, so, chances are, the guaranteed critical strikes is the main perk here. Likely no major gameplay implications and this only ends up buffing Heart Strike related talents for the most part.
Summary and Opinions
I think this hero class likely meets any class fantasy/thematic goals. The main gameplay considerations appear to be the effects of loading more rune regeneration into Blood/Unholy (For Blood this generally means less Blood Boils and more Heart Strikes/Death Strikes), which is counterbalanced with DoT consumption considerations from Infliction of Sorrow (which might draw out more Blood Boil casts despite elevated Rune levels). Existing concerns with buff effects tied to standing in Death and Decay are still on the table. Turning a purely defensive cooldown (Vampiric Blood) into something with offensive perks might be something to keep an eye on, since sometimes that can work fine and sometimes less so. The effects on the valuation of the baseline talents are likely major in a few places, most obviously with anything Vampiric Blood related. Meanwhile, the kit is also somewhat biased in favor of haste, whether intentional or not.
My personal opinions on this hero class are somewhat dependent on how the stacking/extending mechanic works with the main buff, so more information on that would be nice to know. But the idea of having a hero class for blood centered on haste- and rune-empowerment with DoT interactions doesnât seem too bad. It just makes me wonder what the differentiating factors are going to be between Sanâlayn and Deathbringer from a Blood perspective. So, in a lot of ways, it might be easier to provide feedback on Sanâlayn after seeing Deathbringer (and vice versa).
Uncontrollable Frenzy