Feedback: Death Knights

In Development The War Within Beta Test
23

Blood Drinker, in its current state, is a subpar talent that I would never use.

Nothing it does is worth the button press because it is a channel. It either needs to do more (specifically damage and healing) or be changed in other ways.

The damage reduction and RP are fine, but the damage dealt isn’t very impressive and the healing is laughably low (3.4% of max health, or around 1% health per second of channel). The fact that it contributes to blood shield is pointless given the tiny heal it gives.

Assuming you don’t cancel the channel to Death Strike, there is a very high chance that you would die channeling this ability while tanking a boss (or only use it in raid when the other tank has aggro).

2 potential solutions:

Option 1) lengthen the cooldown to a minute, increase its damage by 150% and its healing by a significantly larger margin, maybe heal for double the damage it deals.

This would make the button feel impactful and be a great way to grab threat on boss pull or to bolster threat on taunt swap.

In this scenario, the Carnage talent would need a change along side this, something like chance to reduce the cd by 5 seconds instead of just resetting the cd since a full reset would be far too powerful.

Option 2) Leave everything about it alone, but make the ability a passive channel like Spinning Crane Kick so that a BDK can use any ability while it channels.

This would raise its effective damage significantly since it just consumes 1 global and would allow the player to react to a significant health dip by death striking.

As it stands, this iteration of Blood Drinker is underwhelming for a tier 3 talent. The only use case I see for the spell is a fight where you regularly need to be at range from the boss, otherwise its just not worth the button press.

1 Like
24

Pally jelly? Lol

1 Like
25

No, just concerned about the PVP ramifications of giving DK a permanent 100% movement speed boost.

Remember when rogues could have a permanent 60% movement speed, but they had to renew it every 4 gcds and even that was too broken for the game?

2 Likes
26

Vampiric Strike only works with dark transformation. Using runic power abilities never triggers the strike to occur.

27

It doesn’t work in BGs and instances fyi.
I don’t remember this but Rogues poisoning dotting you then running out of melee range, vanishing etc. with 160% movement speed does sound awful. I doubt this will matter based on the DKs kit. In todays WoW movement is higher its not going to hurt to have a DK chase down a frost mage who would otherwise get away via blink when he is ganking somewhere.

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Did some skirms and saw some dks using it just fine.

Also, dk shouldn’t be complaining about anyone’s mobility.

29

Feels kinda tuff to use all of the new (old) bdk actives with sanlyn while trying to keep stacks up and use resource. Might just be because haste levels are low? Eitherway I am not a fan, feels like another buff to juggle, I deff have more than enough of those now. Could use a better visual for when Vamp Strike actually procs. Red sword icon becomes other red sword icon is not visual enough. Deathbringer feels great to play, and I love the visuals. Deaths Messenger/Expelling Shield node is entirely useless and should be replaced with something better. Pressing ghoul once every 2mins is a chore, making me do it 30 secs sooner is just more chore I dont want. It will live inside a macro. Same thing with Death’s Bargain. Death Pact is super unapealing since it gives heal absorb. Kind of a bad oppertunity cost, maybe swap it for a dot, Dks love dots. Eitherway Rune caaved plates is the only real choice on this node.

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On a paler horse needs to use the actual death charger and/or horsemen mount. I dont want to see the shadowlands mounts i want to see the awesome horsemen mounts

5 Likes
31

Make Insidious Chill apply via our diseases. Does not change our raid viability at all, since most auto dmg in raid is done by bosses, but it helps out M+ toolkit out a lot. Also helps Bdk survive autos better in high M+. Could be good change.

1 Like
32

Festering scythe just feels bad. It almost needs to be its own button like frostscythe is or be a passive that automatically applies wounds to nearby targets.
I dont want ANOTHER button for unholy.

So making festering strike become festering scythe when the talent is selected and tune it to deal reduced damage or apply 1-2 wounds to x number of targets

10 Likes
33

The sad part is that it also isn’t even worth taking. They’re better off just removing the node and either making it something that functionally enhances wound build or drop it entirely.

34

Frost has too many random buttons in DND/horn/erw/dragon/pillar/breath/chill streak/etc

Should really see some condensation there.

Tracking icy talons stack isn’t interesting gameplay

1 Like
35

Pretty sure it’s a placeholder.
Horse feels bigger also, maybe that’s me.
This might be a good time to mention different races wanting slight differences in a horse. Kul tiran makes regular horses feel like a my little pony.

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Blood Tree Feedback

General

Overall an improvement compared to the previous version, especially the capstone level is more interesting now. Unfortunately, the Blood tree still lacks build variety. At their best, the new (Dragonflight) talent trees introduced and reinforced distinct builds with diverse play styles (e.g. Frost with Breath and Oblit). The Blood tree still suffers from building out the base kit of our spec to make it functional, with a few points left over to spend on talents with mostly numerical differences depending on the situation. The play style is mostly identical and builds will continue to largely share the same talents. In a most generous interpretation the Blood tree has two themes with “Bones” and “Blood”, however there is no clear structure to these themes and no clear synergy for building more heavily into one or the other.

In-depth talent feedback:

  • Death’s Caress: I personally hate the current implementation. I gave the same feedback during the Dragonflight Beta. I don’t like that Death’s Caress competes with Marrowrend for Bone Shield generation and is more efficient at it (in terms of Bone Shield/Rune spent).
    Suggestion: Rework Death’s Caress to make it a more useful tool for setting up pulls at range (e.g. remove Bone Shield generation or at least reduce it to 1 to make it less efficient than Marrowrend, remove the 6 sec cooldown, Death’s Caress should apply Blood Plague to all enemies around the target)

  • Crimson Scourge: Death’s Echo makes Crimson Scourge proc much less frequently than it did in the past. Death’s Echo is a mandatory pick in all content due to how much power Blood obtains from standing in Death and Decay. As a result Crimson Scourge has very low value. All talents tied to Crimson Scourge (i.e. Perseverance of the Ebon Blade, Relish in Blood) also have very low value.
    Suggestion: Rework the proc condition for Crimson Scourge or change all talents that are activated by Crimson Scourge to instead be activated when casting Death and Decay.

  • Ossified Vitriol: Considering how infrequently Blood presses Marrowrend and how little damage Marrowrend does, a 75% increase in damage is not going to change much. (e.g. a more interesting talent would be to reduce the cost of Marrowrend by 1 Rune for x seconds after losing n Bone Shield charges)

  • Rune Tap: This talent suffers from either being not required and therefore inefficient to use or required to live and feeling bad to press.
    As a general comment on button bloat, abilities should have a bit more weight to them in order to justify a key bind. The new iteration of Blooddrinker is an example of how a 20% dr is implemented well. Rune Carved Plates is another example of a passive version being a better alternative.
    Suggestion: Rework Rune Tap to be a more interesting active or passive talent, following similar design to Blooddrinker or Rune Carved Plates.

  • Blood Tap: Same issue as Rune Tap, this ability needs to be more involved in order to justify a key bind.
    Suggestion: Rework Blood Tap to be a more interesting active or passive talent.

  • Blood Feast: Extremely weak, the healing effect is practically useless.

  • Bone Collector: Presumably the intent was to reintroduce the Bone Shield generation to Abomination Limb, however this implementation is just worse with the added clunkiness that it requires targets to be further than 8 yards away. This talent also introduces a very unhealthy incentive to use Death Grip to generate Bone Shield.

  • Gorefiend’s Grasp/Tightening Grasp: Having access to a silence adds some much needed utility for Dungeons.
    Gorefiend’s Grasp often feels clunky to use due to the necessity to target an enemy (or the player). I would prefer if this ability was ground targeted with a proper reticle to aim it more precisely.
    Side note: It would be nice if Death’s Reach also increased the range of Gorefiend’s Grasp.

  • Reinforced Bones: Presumably the intent behind Reinforced Bones was to make Bonestorm usable without depleting all Bone Shield charges, however that’s not how Bonestorm currently works on Beta. The armor increase is fairly small.

  • Mark of Blood: This talent has never been taken partly because it is located in a choice node with Tombstone. Tombstone’s interaction with Insatiable Blade is too powerful to ever not take it, it therefore makes no sense to have any talent be part of a choice node with Tombstone. Even if Mark of Blood was a separate talent it would be extremely weak and clunky to use and should simply be removed to reduce button bloat.

  • Bonestorm: I really like the idea behind the rework, however the current implementation does not work as I had hoped. First of all, Bonestorm currently consumes all Bone Shield charges, it should be capped at 10. Additionally, Bone Shield charges consumed by Bonestorm currently do not trigger the cooldown reduction of Dancing Rune Weapon via Insatiable Blade (similar to Tombstone).
    When this talent correctly reduces the cooldown of Dancing Rune Weapon it will be an incredibly fun addition to the spec.

  • Blooddrinker: I really like this new version of Blooddrinker, especially the damage mitigation part is interesting.

San’layn Feedback

I like the fast paced nature of this Hero talent.

  • Vampiric Strike: The base proc chance from Death Strike seems very low, it is practically impossible (read: very luck dependent) to maintain Essence of the Blood Queen outside of Vampiric Blood. With Red Thirst and Improved Vampiric Blood it is possible to maintain max stacks of Essence of the Blood Queen indefinitely. Thus, random Vampiric Strike procs currently feel rather uneventful.

  • Vampiric Speed: When reading Vampiric Speed, most people might imagine a vampire leaping at its victim’s neck in the blink of an eye. For Death Knights it means walking at a mind-blowing 145% movement speed, up from 135%.
    Would it really be too much to ask for Death’s Advance to make our next attack (Auto Attack or Heart Strike) to function similar to Shadow Step and make us appear next to the target?

  • Blood Beast: In my opinion summoning minions does not really fit the theme of San’layn, and I especially dislike the chosen model for the Blood Beast which is more reminiscent of an Old God infestation rather than a vampire spawn. The spawn rate is also rather low.
    Suggestion: Replace the model with something more vampire themed (Frenzied Ghoul, Vampire Bat) or blood themed (Living Blood)

Deathbringer Feedback

The gameplay loop of Reaper’s Mark together with aiming Wave of Souls, stacking Reaper’s Mark and finally finishing with Exterminate is fun.

  • Rune Carved Plates: It is easy to maintain 5 stacks (10%) of magic DR with little rotational awareness, it is practically impossible and counter intuitive to maintain 5 stacks (10%) of phys DR . The added problem of the phys DR is that it activates with a 8-10 sec delay, making it less useful at the start of the pull when it is required.
    Suggestion: Make both effects proc from runes spent or make phys DR tied to runes spent and magic DR from runes generated. The maximum DR value should probably be nerfed to 5% in order to be more in line with other Hero talents.

  • Death’s Bargin: Low value for Blood especially due to proccing on cooldown with a relatively long cooldown.
    Side note: Death Pact should be removed or at the very least made passive to combat defensive bloat and action bloat.

  • Expelling Shield: Low value, this would need to reduce cast speed by 30-50% to be useful.

Blood Tier Set Feedback

In general, Tier sets being more generic and less rotationally impactful at the start of the expansion is fine. However, the current implementation of the Blood tier set introduces a degenerate reward mechanism that incentivizes players to cap Bone Shield charges at all times in order to maximize damage.

  • 2-Set: The passive proc chance is very low, on average this results in an additional 0.35% damage reduction in single target. Unbroken is not granted when consuming Bone Shield charges with either Tombstone or Bonestorm.

  • 4-Set: Piledriver granting up to 10% damage by keeping Bone Shield at 10+ stacks results in degenerate gameplay. This 10% damage buff is also much larger compared to other tank tier set bonuses.
    Suggestion: Change the 4-Set to increase by 1% per active Bone Shield charge, up to 5%.

7 Likes
37

Rune carved plates has some issues for blood.
First: when you need it most (on the pull), its not there. A potential fix would be for Reapers Mark to apply 3-5 stacks of each. Or change it to only stack to 3 and the effect to 3%, but you can never go below 1 stack
Second: if you ever have any forced down time, you loose it all (same issue with Coagulopathy). Increasing the duration of coag and RCP to 10 sec would really help. Or instead of loosing all your stacks when the durations is up, you only lose 1. (do this with Coag or make coag longer or something, i hate it). Also, have the free marrowrends from Exterminate count as spending runes

1 Like
38

PVP - Reduce udk overall damage by 20-30% and self heals from death strike 40%.

39

NOTE: I previously posted this in the DK specific forums, but to help keep feedback condensed here ill just add this as well.

Hey there. I just want to take some time and make a post of my thoughts with the current state of DK on alpha. My perspective is that of a CE raiding and Mythic Plus dps dk.

Rather than getting into each and every talent, I plan on just highlighting certain aspects that I feel could use some further attention for various reasons. Overall I’m very happy with the direction and shape the trees has been taking (I’m looking at you doomed bidding). Thanks again for the great work that’s been put in.

Class Tree considerations

Soul Reaper: I’m very excited to see this talent move up to be more accessible for most situations. I really enjoy the portion of rotation in which we plan to have runes and GCDs available to press the button the second it comes off cd because the damage is worth it. Basically, I like hitting this ability…when it triggers the secondary damage. I wish we had more options for talents to make it possible to press Soul Reaper more than we do. This could be accomplished in a couple different ways:

  • A talent that increases the health range to trigger soul reapers secondary effect.
  • A talent that allows procs to reset the cd of soul reaper and trigger the secondary effect outside of the >35% health range. Similar to the warrior talent Sudden Death.
  • A talent that allows us to reset the cd and stack multiple soul reapers on a target at the same time.

When looking at soul reaper from a Frost perspective (specifically obliterate builds) , I know I personally feel as though it is conflicting mindset inside of our pillar windows. I feel as though spending runes for soul reaper while trying to maximize the number of pillar buffed obliterates we put out is not a great feeling. A couple ideas of how to accomplish this might be:

  • For Frost spec allow Soul Reaper to cost either 1 rune or x RP.
  • During Pillar of frost, remove the cost of Soul Reaper.

Other notes on Soul Reaper: I wish we could get some type of visual or auditory effect to really hammer home the execute damage. Something to make that button look and sound as good as it can be to press.

Control Undead: This talent really needs to be fixed to allow for Unholy DK to use it to deal with Incorporeal Affix and ideally also the Afflicted affix. It was a stated desire to make affixes not solely be the burden of healers, but we have specs (Unholy DK and Warriors) that are unable to assist or participate with these affixes at all.

M+ Utility: Dragonflight saw the increased emphasis on utility and raid buffs in high end M+ keys when it comes to compositions. I feel that DK’s really fell behind compared to other classes when it came to M+ utility, with the biggest place we could overcome that is with Control. Some different ways that I feel like this can be accomplished include:

  • Adding a talent that provides silence to enemies damaged by Abomination limb.
  • A choice node with assimilation that turns Anti Magic Zone into an AOE silence for the duration. Thematically it is an anti magic zone…

Or the other option is to provide us with a raid buff. Thematically a mastery buff or a magic damage DR would really accomplish that goal.

Death Strike and Improved Death Strike: Death Strike really should just be moved to baseline and Improved Death Strike should be the top of the “Blood Column”. Improved death strike offers a level of skill expression for a DK to recover from mistakes and can be some of the most exciting moments in raid/keys surviving through damage via death strikes. Death Strike and Improved Death Strike at the moment feel as though they are two point taxes to get back to what we had before Dragonflight. In a lot of ways this feels like a two point talent that just has two different nodes.

Unholy Spec Tree

Unholy Blight: I think unholy blight needs to be looked at with the idea of turning it into a passive. Our openers in keys with the bursting sores set up as well as the rest of our cd’s is incredibly bloated. Turning this talent so that it simply adds the Unholy Blight effect in an AOE around the DK and the Ghoul during Dark transformation would help reduce the button bloat. Also the mawsworn hero talent point desyncing Unholy Blight really compounds the issue. Its just not very fun to hit. Changing the talent to increase the duration may feel better comparatively
Festering Strike: While this is a rotational spell, I think there is room to iterate in the spec tree to make this feel satisfying to hit. Currently we occasionally hit this button and it gives us wounds when our passive wound generation fails. Lets be real honest, Festering strike is a pretty boring and unfun button to press. Despite having three talents ( Improved Festering Strike 2x, Reaping) this button does no damage and generally feels like a tax to press.

Festering Scythe feels like a great attempt at making the button feel better to hit when we have to. I think we can take this a step farther. I think there is room to have a choice node with Festering Scythe that focuses on ST. Blood happened to introduce a talent very similar, Ossified Vitriol, that I believe would be really beneficial to the UH DK rotation.

  • Every Festering wound popped and Sudden doom proc used increases the damage of your next Festering Strike by X%.

A talent like Ossified Vitriol for UHDK would make each press of Festering strike feel more impactful. It would also allow us to be able to build into a more funnel oriented build for AOE, letting us priority target a single mob with large festering strikes.

Defile: If we are going to continue to use this spell in any meaningful way, the visuals ABSOLUTELY need to be dealt with. This is an accessibility issue in every sense of the word. If it means we have to glyph it to take on the visuals of Death and Decay, please. It’s outrageous this has not been dealt with.

Raise Abom and Super Strain: I really hope there is thought to having Raise Abom apply its own set of Virulent Plague as well as Superstrain when talented. In disease oriented builds this will really set the talent apart more than just being a 1.5m Army replacement.

Frost

For the sake of clarity, all of my points are in regards to Obliteration builds.

One Handed Strength Weapons: The biggest issue with playing frost in my opinion is outside of 2h Obliterate builds, we have to farm two additional weapons to be able to play the second DPS spec of our class. This is compounded by the fact that the only classes that can loot 1 Handed Strength weapons are Prot Warriors, Fury Warriors (though most loot spec Arms to AVOID one handers, Frost DK’s, and Prot Paladins. I really wish there was consideration to adding Strength to some of the appropriate agility one handers to allow for trading in M+ and increase the chance of farming the items.

Icecap and the pain of downtime: One of the biggest issue with Obliteration builds is the constant uptime required, even outside of cooldowns. Everytime we aren’t reducing the CDR of Pillar of frost, we are losing out casts of CDR throughout the fight. This feels incredibly punishing for a spec especially when our damage outside of pillar feels downright sad. I don’t know if this means we need to shift the benefit of icecap to increased damage for the next frostscythe or some other way to shift damage away from pillar and Obliterate.

Runic Spending Abilities: For Obliteration builds, runic power spenders feel like an after thought, with many of the abilities hitting pretty weak. I don’t know if its possible to have Frost Strike and Glacial advance scale with runic power spent in a similar manner as Warrior Execute does with rage and Feral Ferocious Bite with energy. I think increasing the damage of the runic spending abilities, it will help balance the damage profile of Obliterate builds outside of Pillar of Frost windows and to spread the damage away from Obliterate.

Obliteration builds as a whole: Just as a note, I really truly enjoy the 2h obliteration style of builds. I think those big huge crits with obliterate feel great and thematic for frost DK. Having a lot of on demand st damage for totems and priority adds in M+ feels amazing. My biggest issue is the high apm for a build that feels like it should be slower and more methodical.

Thank you for taking the time to read my feedback and keep on doing great work. Despite the length of this post, I really think the tree so far is so much better.

7 Likes
40

Random thoughts on Death and Decay:

  1. With the introduction of Unholy Aura (talent) can we remove the placement restriction of Death and Decay by making it an aura around the death knight that follows the player?
  2. Can we utilize existing visual graphics from Commander Springvale (Shadowfang Keep) to make spec specific Death and Decay for Unholy Death Knights, and a blue variant for Frost Death Knights?
12 Likes
41

Blood DK almost exclusively. Lot of feedback here, thanks in advance for actually reading it. :slight_smile:

I enjoyed both Deathbringer and San’layn, for different reasons, and that was actually very impressive to me and I did not expect that at all. Very nice job!

One quick upfront ask so its not buried in the post - can the Runeforge requirement be removed like it is in MOP Remix? Deathbringer and San’layn will likely use different runeforges and going back to Acherus every time I need to change specs is going to be extremely annoying. Please remove this requirement and ease that pain. OK on with the feedback…

Bugs

  • Bonestorm’s consumption of bone shield charges is triggering Shattering Bone, but it is not counting towards Ossified Vitriol, nor Insatiable Blade (which is probably a good thing, more on that below).

  • There was no buff or change to heartstrike icon whenever my death strike proc’d a vampiric strike. I had no idea when that was about to happen. I think it’s important to know when that is about to happen so you can extend a buff stack if you know your next heart strike is actually a vampiric strike. I only saw it become vampiric strike when I used Vampiric blood.

  • Bind in Darkness does not change Blood Plague’s damage to Shadowfrost. Still shows “Shadow” in the combat log.

  • Dark Talons does not change Death Strike damage to Shadowfrost. It is supposed to change runic power spending abilities to Shadowfrost but does not for Deathstrike.

General Talents

  • Having to spec into ghoul to get cleaving strikes feels bad, and having to spend 2 ghoul points to get death’s reach also feels bad. Death’s reach is very useful in PvP and also PvE since it gives you a longer ranged taunt on a boss, which is quite nice for a wheelchair tank. Please make Death’s Reach a choice node with control undead. That would allow me to skip the enfeeble node at least and take Death’s Reach in most content scenarios unless I really needed Control Undead.

  • Soul reaper’s new position makes it a must-take in most situations. I’m not sure how I feel about that. As blood it means more execute damage, which means its essentially a must take for any single target fight situation, but it also means less runic power since a heart strike generates a lot more RP than soul reaper. Still feels like an awkward ability, maybe have it generate 5 extra RP if the execute explosion goes off? Still wouldn’t be as good as a heart strike but at least it would be in the right ballpark.

  • I hate unholy ground’s existence and the entire stand-in-your-death-and-decay mechanic family. I have to do it because the benefits are too good, but it feels uninspired and like a bad version of the Consecrate protadin mechanic. I think you can do better. Unholy ground, Shattering Bone, Sanguine Ground, Blood-soaked ground, and Cleaving Strikes all require this, and it is not fun, especially for a class that already feels slow and immobile. Please figure out a way to not have this be a thing.

  • I’m not sure when I would ever use unyielding will. Maybe if it didn’t have the cooldown increase it might be a useful situational talent. With the cooldown increase it’s a big opportunity cost to take, which feels bad for the very bottom of the tree.

  • Vestigal shell seems like it’s a pvp talent awkwardly misplaced in the class tree. The inconsistency makes it completely worthless to me in raid situations and it only affecting 2 allies means its not consistent for M+ either. Maybe i’m wrong and its a great M+ talent, but this feels dead. I’ll try it out in M+ but it is very unappealing for a bottom-talent.

  • Osmosis needs something more. Maybe +2 seconds on AMS duration in addition to current effects, or absorbing some % of the AMS absorbed damage into healing. Just not quite worth taking in its current form.

Blood Talents

  • Consumption is great, both the blood plague tickrate buff and especially the 2 runes makes it a must-take IMO. 2 Runes refunded on-demand every 30s is just too good to pass. A+ talent. It’s not giga damage or anything like that, but no rune cost, aoe damage to help with snap threat, runes to help with rune economy, and faster blood boil ticks all make it great for getting AOE threat and fun to use rotationally in single target. It has fantastic synergy with Deathbringer. IMO this shouldn’t even be a choice node, it’s that good and is a great button to push. Please dont gut this thing it’s a perfect ability.

  • Blood drinker still feels terrible. I like the changes to it and its definitely the right direction, but the problem with it is the channel. I consider death strike a “defensive” for blood, and standing there doing nothing while it channels not even being able to death strike or generate any other resources feels awful. Compared to consumption this is not even a choice. Spend a rune vs gain 2 runes plus the opportunity cost of doing nothing for 3s is nowhere near worth it. The runic power gain needs to be increased and I think the runic cost should be removed, and maybe allow death strike to not break the channel so you can do something productive during the effect, or use it as a defensive before a big boss hit. Maybe make it a debuff on the target that drains health instead of a channel effect. This ability also seems like it should be off the GCD if its primary value is defensive. If it’s off the GCD and you can do other things during it, then I can see it being a competitive single-target defensive alternative to Consumption for certain raid bosses.

  • Carnage is underwhelming. The resets might save you 15s on average. The contribution to blood shield is a cool thought and I like that direction, but at least for Consumption, is almost nothing unless you’re hitting a ton of stuff. Given what else you’re competing with at that level, Carnage isn’t particularly appealing in its current form. I would recommend adding “adds a charge to Blood Drinker and Consumption” so you can realize the reset benefit. A second charge on Consumption would also make it great for snap threat in aoe situations (Bonestorm also helps with this).

  • I do really like the idea of more things contributing to blood shield, especially for large AOE pulls, I think there should be a talent for blood plague damage to contribute to blood shield. That adds more value to mastery and helps make the class less likely to get globalled in large pulls.

  • Swap Voracious and Heartrend. Voracious has synergy with Purgatory to help heal off the shield with a bigger deathstrike and leech. Heartrend has no synergy at all with Purgatory. It could also use a little love, especially if it is to stay at that spot in the tree. It has a low proc rate and a low value rate. Also not sure if vampiric strike is triggering heartrend.

  • Whole far left side of the tree is unappealing, unless you dont need gorefiend, in which case Rune Tap has value. Leeching strike should just be replaced with something else, especially since Sanlayn exists, you’re already rolling in healing from various other sources, especially if you take Voracious, so leeching strikes is just a drop in the bucket of healing and not worth talenting into when more RP for when heartbreaker is right there.

  • Rune tap should give more RP if you use it. Its a purely defensive ability and I feel it would be much more useful if it generated some significant RP. In that way you could use it early in a pull for some DR and to get some RP to be able to death strike more quickly. So recommend having Rune tap give you the 20% DR, but also generate another 30 or so RP. Then Tap-> Deathstrike could be a thing, and that would be a much more compelling talent.

  • Blood Tap I can see some value for, but with the haste levels of San’layn and Consumption existing its a hard sell, and as we get more haste from gear its value decreases. There are too many better talents exist to warrant taking this one. It is more accessible now at least so its an option, just highly contested at the slot. Nothing too wrong with it, just we have better options that provide more consistent value.

  • Coagulopathy and Sanguine Ground are must-take talents that give too much easy damage to pass on, especially for Deathbringer with Wither Away, big synergy with Coagulopathy. Sanguine Ground is just yet another reason to stand in D&D, I already have Shattering Bone, Unholy Ground, and cleaving strikes as good reasons to do it anyway, so Sanguine Ground is a must-take becuase its effectively free damage and healing for doing what I’m already going to have to be doing - standing in the D&D. I wish that were not the case, but these two talent points feel mandatory.

  • Due to the cdr of DRW with losing bone shield charges, Tombstone and Bonestorm are mandatory or we miss out on massive CDR on DRW. Bonestorm (if it is a bug that it currently isn’t) is potentially a massive 50-60 seconds off DRW, bringing it to a 1m cd all by itself. Note above that it was not actually granting the CDR on DRW currently, which I presume is a bug. Tombstone is another 30 and gives a nice chunk of RP and defensive value w/ shatter damage. We can’t pass on this talent, so making it a choice with mark of blood is rather pointless without massively buffing mark of blood to have some sort of similar CDR effect, or change how bone shield interacts with DRW.

  • One option to fix this CDR problem with tombstone/bonestorm and DRW is to remove the CDR based on bone shield charges and instead just reduce the cooldown of DRW to a consistent and expected value (like 1 minute). That would instantly remove the need to take Tombstone but it would still be valuable for the burst of Shatter damage, RP, and absorb shield. It would also make DRW more consistent to use whether we were actively tanking or not.

San’layn

  • This hero talent spec felt very frentic to play, constantly burning resources as fast as I could to sustain the CDR on vamp blood and fuel the buffs. That actually makes it feel very fitting - you’re hungry, downright ravenous to consume resources to fuel your need - this felt perfect for a vampire-themed spec! I enjoyed this, please keep this, having played it I actually enjoy it.

  • My expectations were very low for this tree from earlier reviews I had read, but I was pleasantly surprised in how it felt. It felt GOOD to have such high vamp blood uptime and such a flow of resources. From a raid tank perspective I expect I would feel nearly invincible with that level of death striking and such high vamp blood uptime. And the resource frenzy of the theme would have me with the foot on the gas and never stopping. It sort of sucks burning vamp blood on CD because I wont necessarily have it for a boss mechanic, but for those situations I could work with my co-tank to have things line up better, so I think I can work with it, or use icebound or something else instead.

  • I also like how this tree buffs death strike, making Rune of Sanguination, Bloodshot, Hemostasis and similar effects more valuable, but it turns Heartstrike (a physical attack) into shadow damage, which seems like anti-synergy with bloodshot. I like the aspect of san’layn that its more physical based but that’s really only true for death strike.

  • Newly Turned is…interesting. The shield is nice to offset the opportunity cost of runic power to battle res, but I generally don’t want to battle res unless I absolutely have to due to the runic power cost. I need runic power to survive, and spending it on a battle res when I could spend it on a death strike is not a decision I want to make. Newly Turned makes it so that opportunity cost is not quite so bad, and giving myself and the target the shield makes it a preferred battle res. In general I would like to see the runic power cost of Raise ally reduced or removed. Newly Turned makes it better but I still get a lot more value out of a death strike than a 20% health shield. Also vampiric speed seems like a better all around choice because I’m guaranteed to get value out of it, while newly turned only has value if someone dies AND I am the one to bres them. That makes it so I’m only going to take this if I’m in a M+ group and I am the only battle res, and that’s only to make it so I am less likely to die trying to battle res and offset the runic power opportunity cost.

  • Bloody Fortitude seems useless to me, as I rarely get the killing blow. The extra DR is kind of nice but Will of the Necropolis exists, and so does blood draw, and I’m probably taking both. More leech is also somewhat useless but it is at least consistent value. Bloody Fortitude, for blood, should have something like 1s CDR on Icebound Fortitude when you lose a bone shield charge. That might make it worth me taking over the leech and get tangible value out of it. For Unholy perhaps it could get 1s CDR whenever a festering wound is consumed or something similar.

  • Blood beast. I never really notice this thing. It’s just sort of there and randomly helps me I guess.

  • Sanguine Scent though is great, and can definitely help keep the buff stack rolling between packs or mobs by helping us proc vamp strike more as things are about to die. This is obviously the go-to choice for me to sustain the buffs in M+ and even in raid, becuase I’m definitely using Rune of Sanguination with San’layn, so even more death strike execute value is golden. I don’t see why I’d take the blood beast buffing one becuase blood beast is too RNG to rely on, I’d rather have better chance of getting vamp strike and extending the buff stack for more consistent results.

  • It was not obvious to me when I got the vampiric strike buff outside of vamp blood, seems to be a bug.

  • Infliction of Sorrow was…odd. I liked the big damage numbers when it goes off, but seeing as how vampiric strike outside vamp blood is very inconsistent and rare it’s very random. It’s also awkward becuase when it does go off it removes blood plague and there’s a lot of interactions with blood plague and having to unexpectedly re-apply it outside the usual blood boil rhythm was a little jarring. Maybe make it so it doesn’t remove blood plague, it just makes it flare up and do the damage. Losing the blood plague there doesnt feel good.

Deathbringer

  • This hero talent tree felt great all around. Very satisfying. Not as frentic as San’layn but instead very methodical, rhythmic, with large satisfying damage adds.

  • The 30s talent on Reaper’s Mark has tremendously good synergy with Consumption. Not only does it line up perfectly cd-wise, but it also gives you a few extra runes to help build reapers mark stacks, and the blood plague damage speed up also helps build reapers mark stacks. These two abilities are perfect together and makes for a nice 30s rotational setup.

  • Deaths bargain is not interesting for blood. Rune carved plates is very interesting for blood. I had no problem maintaining the 5 stack of magic damage reduction, but the physical reduction was rather difficult. Its easy to spend runes but keeping the physical stack requires generating runes and that is mostly fixed, and 5s isn’t long enough time for a rune regen to tick in some cases. I think this buff should be at least 6s, maybe 7. This problem will probably go away on its own with more haste, but I think 6s instead of 5 would help make it more consistent. One contributing problem is that 3 runes are regenerating at a time and marrowrend consumes two runes, so you have two runes regenerating at the same time and then 1 regenerating different from that, so keeping your 3 runes regenerating far enough apart to keep the buff stack up is not really tenable. Once the exterminates start rolling and you get free marrowrends this somewhat alleviates itself as the three runes are more likely to be offset, but still requiring them to be offset to maintain the buff is kind of silly.

  • Swift End feels like the obvious choice for blood given the synergy with Consumption. Painful Death doesn’t seem like a significant enough tradeoff to take. I think the damage really needs to be cranked up to make that a compelling choice. That or perhaps Painful Death also applies reaper’s mark to a second (or even 3rd) nearby target. That might make it appealing.

  • Same with Wither Away - Wither away very useful to build those stacks and helps with aoe threat greatly. Wither away + consumption is very fast ticks of blood plague which really stacks up the reaper’s mark somewhat reliably to 40 even with low haste. And that’s probably OK. However, in single target boss fights I can see dark talons being better for some really hard hitting deathstrikes since they are shadowfrost (once that bug is fixed).

Overall I was very pleasantly surprised. These changes are on the whole a big step in the right direction and the two hero trees feel good to me as blood. Thanks for reading this far!

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Dude I don’t think condensation is the correct word you’re looking for LOL