Does anyone have any tips for healing DKs? I’ve been trying to run 16+ and every time I get a DK tank it feels like I blink and they die. Some people have told me to just let the DK heal themselves, but that never seems to work.
You don’t heal them. They heal themselves and if your giving them any attention at all you’re doing it wrong; this goes for all tanks at that key level BTW. As I tell the groups when they ask me what healer I want, the healer isn’t there for me so I have no opinion.
If your DK tank can’t keep himself alive then just leave that group and find another. Healers are in high demand so you have more options.
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There isn’t really a whole lot you can do to save them. If they are dieing it is generally because they are pulling more than they are capable of handling. The spec is designed to keep themselves alive, so if they die its usually going to be on them and not you. The only other thing I could recommend is to track their runic power, and treat that like their health bar instead. If they have low/no runic power w/o DRW up maybe toss a heal their way, or better yet an external. Hopefully that helps.
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There is a Blood DK healer WeakAura. It tracks the DKs runic power so you can know when they are in trouble and need help.
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The only way to die as Blood DK is to be AFK
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While this is one of the correct answers (also just watch the resources on their frame), the only real thing you can do for them is give them an external. Healers aren’t really designed to do 100k hps on single target.
Typically the only time I’m at risk is when I pull and didn’t have bone shield up, no RP and probably also got hit in the back.
There are some individual tank hits that catch me out sometime on trash or I just don’t have a CD for on bosses, but half of that is still just me being unprepared.
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Try apping to anything above a 17 as Rsham. xD
But I duno, I don’t feel like if I do literally zero healing to my tank that it’s going to end well. I’m trying to push higher keys than I usually do though, so anything that conserves mana is fine with me. To which degree am I supposed to take that seriously? I see a lot of support for that statement so now I’m concerned that I’ve been needlessly healing tanks instead of DPSing. Lol
as others have said they should require basically no healing and the only indicator will be the rp bar. Once keys get higher the damage intake is high enough that your not going to save a bad blood dk. If they don’t react properly they’re just going to die.
The only time a BDK needs external healing is if they don’t have enough Runic Power to [Deathstrike]. Other than that, the first few seconds of every pull is the toughest part for them, so on especially dangerous pulls it’s good to start with an external defensive as well. Fortified weeks are the worst for BDKs or so I’ve heard.
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I get into most keys I apply to as an Rsham, it really isn’t that bad being an off-meta healer.
I play 5 of the 6 tanks, no monk, and I went to 3.2k+ last season, that’s all 24s and a few 25s timed. There isn’t a single time I ever thought I needed a healer in a pack and thousands of times I’d be sitting there in my home shaking my head at the OOM healer letting DPS die because they think I need heals. Tanks just don’t need your attention and if they do then they’re just bad and need to learn the hard way.
Fact is that damage going towards tanks is so astronomically high that even if you tried to heal them your kit, and the game as a whole, just isn’t built for tank healing. You can’t possibly expect to do the 400k+ HPS sustained that Blood does to himself in hard pulls much less do that and keep the DPS and yourself alive. At the end of the run your tank should be dead last on your healing done meter and should be somewhere around 80%-95% self sufficient.
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I joined an 18 this morning and had a tank and 2 DPS literally leave the group just because I joined. lol I don’t think playing one is that bad, but definitely starting to feel like a 2nd class citizen over here. xD
Man, I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATED healing BDKs back when I healed keys. Even the great ones still gave me mini heartattacks when their HP kept constantly dropping to almost dead before they’d hit 1 DS and go back up to full. Definitely my least favorite tank to heal.
Ironically, I’m a BrM in keys now and I’d say we’re probably almost as squishy as BDKs now and do mega self healing too to survive.
It’s always the mid-end players that are the most sweaty
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Jokes on then, I joined another 18 ToTT and we missed timing it by like 2 mins. Coulda been them if they played their cards right. 
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DK health does tend to be a little more spikey, so they’ve always been among the most likely to die rounding the mobs up.
But yeah in a 16 a DK should be able to sustain himself.
I main a brewmaster but typically get over 2K each season on 3-4 of the tanks, and all the tanks don’t really need to be healed in 16-20 keys if they know what they’re doing. Even the lower sustain tanks (like BM but our sustain is better now than some previous seasons).
Only exceptions to this is some bosses on tyrannical weeks after we’ve cycled CDs for over 2-3 minutes (typically this happens if the DPS all die and the tank/healer finish a boss from 40% hp or something) or if there’s a bunch of sustained damage when we aren’t in range to hit stuff - And I can’t think of a boss/pull that’s an example of this in the current season.
They won’t want to admit it, but if a tank is dying in a 16 from mobs that they pulled themselves (meaning no DPS trained 5 groups on top of them) - the tank is doing something wrong on their end.
It kind of goes both ways. You need to reach an understanding between each other.
imo, just throw some HoTs or smaller heals on them. Don’t bother throwing big heals on DKs. See, the small heals might look small, but if we’re consistently getting, say, 10k HPS per second, that means it’s 10k DTPS we can not panic over. To be more efficient it’s better to heal when low or right after a big hit, but if you can’t trust the healer, you can’t get too low. And if you can’t afford to get low you might be out or Runic Power when the big hit does come, which will hurt efficiency again (if not kill!).
Personally, I work best either with consistent low-healing, or no healer at all, because both situations allow me to plan ahead.
If you want to be amazing, just grab a Weak Aura to show you how many Death Strikes a DK has left. If the number is 0 and the health is low, throw everything you have at them. Absorbs and % protections are great if used preventively (this is even more important as keys get higher since it can get to a point where the DK simply lacks the iLvl to survive long enough to Death Strike it).
Unless we are unable to death strike, big heals will be wasted on us. HoTs and bubbles are always good. Anything passive is good, really. Which is why we work so well with Disc priests.
Answer is you don’t heal them. The thing with blood dk is it’s a coin flip when you invite them. If they are good they are gods, if they suck they die. There really isn’t any in between with blood dk. You either know how to play and rock or you don’t and suck. I’m only 2799 io this season but I invite healers to my keys for whatever dps comp I am running. If I need heals I messed up, and no one else. However as others have pointed out, the initial pull is the worst, however good blood dk’s know how to work around that and mitigate that. Sometimes you get a lemon and there isn’t anything you can do. Like others said, just leave the group and find another one. Hope this helped.
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If they die it’s their fault. When I am tanking on my DK I literally pull what I know I will keep myself alive through. I’ve been tanking 15s at a 441 ilvl with my DK without issue. I’ll throw the occasional riptide, Earth Shield, or even hard cast a heal if it looks like it might help on a DK tank when I am healing, but for the most part a good DK keeps themselves alive a bad DK dies. lol.