Anyone has tips for healing Blood DK’s? I’m disc- the jumping of the healthbar just stresses me out and makes it so hard to focus on the group. Like how do you know when they NEED heals? Is it just experience?
Honestly, even as a blood DK I couldn’t tell you, I just hit Death Strike whenever possible and it usually isn’t a problem. I would say if they are below half health for more than three seconds or so, but I’m not actually a healer so, take that with a grain of salt. Or just dust them with a dot heal. (hot? is there a term for that?) or two every so often.
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Pain Suppression on big pulls, otherwise just ignore them.
Tank survivability is not a healer job these days.
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They really only need help at the start of big pulls. Once they get some runic power they’re basically self sufficient.
You could also track their runic power with an add-on unless you’re good at watching their resource bar on their character frame.
If they have runic power then you can basically ignore them. I’ve run with a lot of good DKs who never need healing, but it’s scary watching their health bar fly up and down.
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Track their runic power/DRW and you should be good. If they have runic power, they are fine regardless of what their health bar does (unless they get one tapped). I use a weakaura to give a better indicator of their runic power. Their life is completely in their hands as a blood dk, their isnt really a whole lot you can do to keep them alive. Just keep atonement on them and pretend their health bar doesnt exist (unless out of runic power).
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Same as above, I just watch runic power and go from there. Once I knew to do that, panic subsided a lot. 
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This is PERFECT. Thank you all! I do have their resource bars where I can see them :). Round two tonight!
As a disc priest and a blood DK player, you’re overthinking it, ha.
Just throw them the occasional shield/renew to keep atonement up. As other have said, throw a PS on them at the beginning of big pulls. If a DK tank dies, it’s 100% their fault. Need to manage bone shield, defensive CDs, and runic power better. Know limits with pull sizes. It’s not the responsibility of a disc priest to keep a DK alive when the whole playstyle revolves around self healing.
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Just spam PWS on cooldown on them and heal via atonement. They’re almost entirely self sufficient and require little input from a healer.
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Same for VDH and bdk, pain supp on the very start of known scary pulls because that’s really the only time they are weakest.
Bdk literally need to track their runic power and main cooldowns. The only thing you ever do is keep your maintenance/trickle healing on them and nothing else. They don’t need a healer. You basically just bail them out of a bad situation if they mess up.
If they have no runic power and no cooldowns, then you try to heal them. Bdk has 2 states, about to die, and full health with a massive bubble. There’s almost never any in between. So runic power is their real health bar.
Also really helpful to track all tanks active mitigation. Demon spikes, bone armor, iron fur, shield block, shuffle, shield of the righteous. Makes it extremely clear when a tank is screwing up and is suddenly tissue paper and youre constantly panick healing them.
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Everyone- I just want to thank ya again. I’m kind of a little anxious, so really enjoy learning about the differences in tanks to help me prepare!
Pain suppression on the first part of larger pulls, rapture shields, power word barrier (even though they will freak and immediately run out of it). If you are cycling through these you should have them for most hard pulls. learn the dungeons and figure out which pulls are heavy and where the spiky damage comes from and plan CDs accordingly.
All that said, if they die its usually the fault of the spec or getting overzealous on the pulls (or dps/tank missing interrupts thereby making pulls harder than they need be). As stated, they rely heavily on runic power but an issue mostly relegated to higher keys is the fact that they are limited by GCDs…this is what generally makes them struggle with insanely high keys…they can have all the RP in the world and it won’t make spamming death strike go any faster. If they fall over, oh well, probably not your bad.
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The only time you need to worry about them is when their runic power is low, otherwise they can heal themselves much better than what we can. Source: blood dk, and disc priest, alts
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I just cackled lmao. Thanks for this
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