Blood dks heal alot. Ive seen blood dks do as much as 160 million healing or so in a m+ run. The not fun part is how much their HP rubber bands. The deaths they suffer most often comes from not knowing if I need to hastly heal them up or its just their nomal rubber band hp bar. I put forth the idea to reduce the healing a hair and increase the base line tankyness instead.
And yes I know the other tanks hp bars rubber band too. DK is just the most extreme in my opinion.
I hated healing dks until I added their resource bars. If they have 1/3 of a resource bar, they are fine. If they are less than 1/3 throw heals. Pretend their resource bar is their life bar and 1/3 resource bar is full life. Anything over that is extra. If they die when they have enough resource to death strike it isn’t my fault. I will throw PoM/renew on them to keep them from having to death strike too often, but I won’t use big heals on them unless they don’t have resource.
If a BDK is good, you might not need to target them with a single healing spell the whole run. I am not kidding as silly as it sounds. In 21+, it’s a different story and they’re going to need some heals - especially with low runic power, as the poster above mentioned.
If a BDK is bad, even a 10 can be torture.
and the other problem with blood dks we need at least 5-6 mobs on us to generate the RP we need and Sanguine Ground helps out
You gotta track their runic power. You don’t heal blood DKs based on their health alone. You heal them based on their health and runic power. Even when they’re low and low runic power, usually just an external will get them through.
I love healing blood dks (probably my favorite), my brother (who tanks for me) mained one for years. They are the most fun bc they either don’t need you, or they desperately need you. He always thought it was funny to see if he could give me mini heart attacks in M+.
It also matters what week it is… On tyrannical weeks, you can forget we exist… On fort weeks, we struggle just a bit more, but yes, I always tell my healers to watch my RP bar, if it’s super low and staying there, I’m struggling and they need to be ready to jump in.
Gonna agree with a couple of people above me, you have to track a couple things then you will feel a lot better healing them.
First, runic power either a bar or I actually have a Weakaura telling me how many Death strikes they can used based on power. At least one they’re good, if they have enough for two you can basically go full dps mode.
Second, and this is something you may do already for other tanks is cooldowns. Knowing when they have icebound, lichborne and PURGATORY (if they do) is huge, like really huge.
“I don’t like how somebody else’s class works. Please change it to make me, somebody who doesn’t even play the class, happy.”
It just needs to be tweaked. They’ve been in good spots before.
In lower ilvl content they don’t even need healers and we can just baby sit the dps so there is that at least.
Now what is really annoying is how DHs tank and mitigate by running out of my barriers lol.
isn’t is same as demon hunter, who also tank via spikey self-healing
If a bdk is actually dieing this season to the average pulls he is bad. Also just watch the runic power that is how you can tell what they need from you.
The DH tanks have actual visible animated character defensives you can see them run through & soul shards ripping out in purple poofs from mobs. So you can estimate a little better what point in their rotation they are enacting. DKs are way less visible in animations of spells. DK and warriors are the hardest to track, monk is so-so. Bears have a zillion shields, and pally and DH have plenty of visual spells popping.
I agree with the OP. The spikiness is a drag. 5/6 tanks when they get that low you’re panicking. And then on this one you have to factor in some other resource?
I’d either do what the OP suggests, or make Death Strike cheaper and make it’s heals a HoT. Something to normalize the wild swings.
Im not a fan of the spikeyness either, but a good DK wont need much healing, if any.
I think its a matter of healer class on this one. I always find DKs super duper easy to run with. Shield them prior to each mob so they have time to build runic power and they can usually handle the rest. I think my monk is the healer I struggle most with on healing them. My disc priest bubbles and just let them fly. I haven’t played shaman heals in almost 9 months but earth shield & earthen wall used to be more than enough. Is that not the case any longer?
On a bdk you can basically entirely ignore their health bar. Only thing that is relevant is runic power. Along with possibly helping them on pull.
Other then that just ignore them, thats what all my healer friends do, while occasionally guving me a dr.
Hot-take: BDK Blood Shield should only absorb 50% damage. Smoother damage intake and healer gets to play a larger role in helping keep them alive.
You can say that’s too similar to IP or Stagger but those mechanics work well.
You only need to watch them at the start of the pull when their RP is low. Once they get going whether they live or die is completely in their hands.
Watch the runic power
If its low you need to heal
Also use omnicd to track their cd availability.