So, I’m out of practice. Haven’t really played blood as my main in a few expansion. I got used to a prot warrior, dps dh, etc… where I’m gcd capped or mashing things constantly. Now, I have a really bad case of twitchy fingers where I’m wanting to mash something on every global, which leaves me rune starved… I do it without thinking. If I don’t I feel awkward like I should be mashin something. Kind of an ocd thing. Would be so nice if i could spam heart strike and ds until my fingers are blue, but that ain’t happening. Any tips for anyone who has made a switch?
I just made the switch a few weeks ago from Prot Warr to BDK and am having all of the same issues you are having. Things that helped me improve are:
- Planning for damage intake and pooling runic power. This feels weird coming from a GCD locked tank like warrior, but when you know the damage is coming and save death strike for those high damage intake moments, it feels much better.
- Still having trouble with rune starvation, but I find that my issue is pressing Marrowrend too often. Also it helped me to get a weak aura where I can track the time left on my bone shield stacks. If you work on only refreshing when it’s about to expire or you’re below 6 bone shield stacks it will help your rune issue.
- Opening up on packs with no RP and no bone shield sucks, but it helps if you have dancing rune weapon to get started. At the end of a pack, it’s smart to try to pool some runic power and refresh bone shield stacks so you’re ready for the next pack.
I’m still learning myself, so input from more seasoned DK’s would be great too 
I do press marrowind too often, or heart strike when I only have one rune and I got plenty left on my bone shield. Glad to hear I’m not the only one.
I really like that idea. I will def try that.
Edit:
One of the biggest questions I have is how many runes to I need to sit on before I burn a heart strike, how much runic power do I need to cap. I’m used to saving energy on an assassin rogue, but I know that I need to try to hang around a certain amount of energy and that helps. So, I’m not sure where that threshhold is on a dk.
I’ve not done much very high level tanking so what I say might be worthless for you:
I pretty much do always have something to cast on GCD each time. I try to just follow what’s suggested by the skill and talent tooltips. Like I don’t DS unless I’ve cast BB at least once to gain the extra damage. In a boss fight, I don’t DS until I take a hit first, since the shield and % healed is based on how much damage we just took.
I try my best to not needlessly cast marrowrend. Usually sitting around 7-9 charges seems to be fine.
Vampiric blood is by far our real life saver I’ve found. With r3 vision in a minor slot, VP with DS (even if you haven’t taken a big hit already) can keep you alive through most things.
Timing AMS for large magic damage is always a good idea, especially this week with bursting. DKs can just AMS before a pack dies and save the healer having to spot heal them.
Just keep doing what you’re doing; you’ll realize the gaps in your technique.
You sound like me! I have started out as a Blood DK for the first time since Wrath I think, and it feels very foreign.
I was doing some M+'s last night and I felt very RP Starved, turns out it was due to casting inefficient Marrowrend.
You want to be having at least 3~ runes on recharge at any given time.
Not sure if this is relevant for yourself, but for me I found I was not using my Cooldowns enough, I still have the mindset of “oh no” buttons, as opposed to generic damage mitigation and damage cooldowns. Might help, not sure, but it was something I was having issues with
Nerayla: Does AMS stop Bursting? I thought that was a % based damage and not a magic mitigation, that’s interesting.
Get 6 ranks of twilight devastation and top charts in dungeons!
I got keystone master in s2 on my DK (m+15 or higher in all dungeons) so I can offer some advice.
Never press marrow if you have more than 7 stacks or 6 if you have the azerite that can proc an extra stack. Its a waste of runes and thus a waste of damage and healing. This is huge, learn this right now. You only really need 5 stacks though to get the reduced DS cost.
Always keep 3 runes on CD, its the most that can recharge at the same time. More than 3 is fine but never less than 3. Don’t sit on 4 or 5 available runes.
Always keep 1 Bloodboil, at least, on CD. Don’t sit on 2 charges.
Don’t just mash DS because you have the RP for it. If you’re going to over cap, sure, press it. Otherwise save it, pool it, wait for a big hit. DS scales off damage taken in the last 5 seconds and resets when you press DS once. Wait for a boss or mob to smack you hard, wait a couple seconds for a followup hit then press it for maximum healing. But again don’t over cap your RP.
ilvl > than everything. Traits, stats all that are garbage on DK so take your biggest ilvl all the time. Sockets are worth about 5 ilvl and if you have two items that are the same ilvl then crit > vers > mastery = haste more or less. Its been a while this might be slightly off.
Choose generic azerite traits over DK ones whenever possible. It socks but they are better. BDK azerite traits blow hard.
Make sure DnD is down before spamming HS into a group of mobs. It will hit more things, do more damage, more threat and generate more RP. Even wait a couple seconds if you have to for DnD to come off CD or pool runes for HS. It’s worth it.
Basic rotation assuming you don’t have any marrow stacks for a group of mobs. (Don’t press DnD unless its a free proc on single target fights)
DnD
Marrow
BB
Marrow or BB
BB or Marrow
HS
See how this gets 3 runes on CD and recharging asap? That’s big for your overall damage, healing and survivability.
Remember, don’t EVER press marrow if above 7 stacks. This is a massive no no. Only exception to this is if there is a boss mechanic whwre you have no uptime that takes so long you will drop your stacks or need to refresh between packs of mobs.
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There is a Bone Shield Help weakaura that will give a sound and visual notification when you are using Bone Shield incorrectly or using Deathstrike at the wrong time. Helped me immensely get the pacing down after switching from prot Warrior as well
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I will def look that up tonight. Thanks. Is that the name? Bone Shield Help?
They can’t hurt ya if there dead!
I believe so yes.
It’s on wago called bone shield help:
Play a sound when you do a bad marrowend
Still trying to slow myself down, came from tanking on druid which is just you are doing everything you can to generate and dump rage within the globals.
Getting better, but need to install a bigger reminder on my stack timer for bone shield so I’m not hitting it too early. Getting better with those death strikes though.
Smorkfists advice above is solid, follow that.
Couple little suggestions/tweaks:
Blood is at its weakest when pulling, unless you make sure you’ve refreshed boneshield at the end of the last pull. You always want to make sure you’ve got enough time on boneshield to start the next pull.
If it drops off between pulls it’s really really bad in mid/high keys and means you can basically die in the first few seconds of the pull. Why? Because you’re taking absolutely huge damage, but you can’t do much about it as your first few globals need to be getting boneshield up, getting threat and getting DnD down.
You will not believe how spiky bloods health is in higher keys. You go from 100% to 10% to 100% constantly. Any poor play or wasted globals can mean death. The healer can’t do anything about it, you’re your own healer.
If you do let boneshield drop, use dancing rune weapon or icebound on the pull to survive that first few seconds. Another trick you can use is gripping one mob to you, immediately marrowing it to get boneshield up before everything is on you. This can be dangerous with threat, but if it saves being globalled it’s your only choice.
You also want to pool runic power between pulls. Ideally you want to go into the next pull with boneshield up at 6+ stacks with plenty of duration, and with plenty of runic power and runes. Makes it 5x easier.
Lastly the stat priority is commonly accepted to be vers > haste > crit, with mastery being a fairly dead stat. Ilvl does trump pretty much everything though. You might drop 5-10 ilvl piece with crit/mastery for one with vers/haste for example, but it’s negligible.
Our traits are so bad that I don’t even bother re-traiting to blood ones. I just tank in Unholy gear as it makes almost zero difference. Ridiculous situation, but there it is.
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That’s the one thing I’ve never liked about blood dk is our spikiness. I would be nice if we got an armor boost and could make mastery count more. Having a steady, “useful” blood shield could help smooth that out.
That’s coming to some extent in shadowlands. Bigger blood shields, it being a bigger % of our healing in the logs i’ve seen. But this is the problem with Blood’s core design. There’s a small armor buff, which is needed, but they really can’t give us much more, as we can’t have both good mitigation and insane self healing.
Perhaps if they removed will of the necropolis or w/e it’s called, or toned it down a lot, we could have better base mitigation. Right now the balance problem is above 30% health we’re absolute paper, but we just don’t care as long as we don’t die. Will of necrop saves us and massively slows dmg intake below 30% and we just deathstrike back to full. Deathstriking for a 800-900k heal in a single global is kinda broken. It’s fun, but unless they change these core mechanics of the spec, we HAVE to be this spiky and this impossible for healers to help.
And to me, I think they need to tone down our self healing, lower the power of will of the necropolis like you suggested and push for more steady mitigation. I would, of course like to see the self heals stay, but, when the healing is based on damage taken it’s also adding to our spikiness because then you’re wanting to hold off. If it had a steady percent healed, you could still incorporate death strikes, but with the added armor, blood shield, you could even things out quite a bit.
Edit: right now I’m in kind of a pickle. Lore wise I love the death knights. My heart so to speak belongs to Ebon Hold. From a mechanics perspective my monk is funner to tank on and much easier. And I love tanking. I’ve loved the idea of blood way back when wrath was brand new. So, I really don’t want to switch specs… lol. This expansion is horrible on alts.
I’m just leveling this character now and learning DK, so obviously take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Would it help smooth out Blood if Death Strike would instead prevent some damage and siphon some health like a HoT?
So if Death Strike was going to heal for 100, maybe instead it would prevent the next 50 damage and put a HoT on us that heals 50 over X amount of seconds.
It does, to both of those.
Yeah it’s interesting how they’ve gone with healing scaling off damage taken for the two main “heal tanks” (veng/blood). They sort of have to though, it’s how other tanks mitigation works, 75% damage prevented is more at higher key lvls, etc.
It’s just really hard to balance when it gets extreme. Like mentioned, we basically don’t care how much damage we take as long as we don’t die, as we can just heal it back. It’s a strange way to play a tank, but very fun.
I don’t see how anyone finds Brewmaster fun to be honest. Played WW and Brew in S3 and it’s the most boring tank i’ve played in BFA (haven’t tried Guardian). Keep Ironskin up 100% time, keep Rushing Jade Wind up 100% time and after that you can pretty much just mash your face on the keyboard.
There’s been whole statistical breakdown posts on peak of serenity about how using purifying vs not using it at all has no noticeable impact on healer attention required. Just feels like you’re doing nothing most of the time. Even most of your self healing is just from a passive buff the healer gets.
To be fair though, I find prot warrior very one dimensional too. Just don’t like not having much control over your own life. That combined with being very spammy.
I decided to have my monk for rp and my bear for a lazy tanking night when I’m exhausted. Blood is fun, but not when were a liability when we get one shot if we make a mistake.
Besides the problem of extremes, I wish they would speed up spec. Haste is good because it makes us smoother. To me, if I have to get a certain amount of haste to make the “rotation” smooth, then that’s a design flaw. I would rather stack things like mastery. But, like i said in the op. I’m use to mashing stuff quickly. lol. To each his own right?