I keep losing aggro and am hyper squishy. Like worse than Monk squishy. Do the Devs just want us not playing DK this exp or something? Still leveling from 79 to 80 but it feels horrible in leveling dungeons. Blood Boil does not snap aggro and Vamp Strike doesnt cleave which means the procs make trouble in mob control.
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Bdk feels bad. BDK still has the worst mitigation, but my deathstrike outside VE can only partly heal the dmg intake. The class is still weak and button bloated on pull. Changing hero talent from VE to DRW makes it feel clunky. I have to spend at least 3-4 gcds on tombstone, bone shield, marrows end beforr I can start spamming HS.
In short, it’s not worth playing BDK this season. Our counter the part, the holy sons paladins are shining brightly.
The openers for blood DK feel super busy in my view. If they could take one of these skills off the gcd, it would be an absolute godsend - my pick would be DRW, but bonestorm or tombstone would be ok too. Death grip coming off the GCD would also be amazing, though that’s a somewhat separate issue.
To OP: You shouldn’t really be losing aggro after the opener, but I also find the openers a bit dicey. My suggestion is basically always open up with death and decay, and remember that popping tombstone or bonestorm inside your death and decay makes your bone splinter explosion thing do a huge amount of bonus damage. The two of these is usually enough to grab initial aggro for me. After that you can go for a blood boil and start heart striking - heart strike will cleave to a lot of mobs inside death and decay. Death strike doesn’t, but hopefully your cooldowns can keep you safe without death strike until you have established aggro.
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imo bdk need to have mitigation or shield before pull
then death caress, dnd, heart strike, blood boil.
death caress with bone shatter talent while standing on dnd can do passive aoe to help with initial agro
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Blood DK is in a pretty terrible spot right now.
It was mediocre before they nerfed death bringer. Now they have completely cooked its damage, and the survivability is awful on high keys.
Devs tried to fix the erratic HP spikes at the end of DF but have made the whole situation worse by nerfing death strike and changing how it works.
Easily one of, if not the worst tank specs right now.
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Developers wanted to eliminate heath spikes by increasing our mitigation and lower our healing. They barely increased our mitigation but nerfed death strike into the ground. Welcome to “D” tier.
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BDK is ridiculously weak atm. I am over geared for +3 and still will get passed on. Invited to a group yesterday, second I got in healer bailed, no words. Two seconds later I get kicked no word, this was for a +3! If you do not effectively alternate your Def CD you will die, and you most likely already have a pally or warr pulling Aggro if you go Salyn. I have tried both hero specs a lot, death bringer used to give you damage you needed to maintain aggro, but didn’t have as many oh crap buttons with the death cringing hits we take. I have stopped running my BDK as a tank until they get something to really help.
Dusted off my Resto sham in the mean while 
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Blood dk is no where as bad as you’re making it out to be lol. A plus 3 is ez work for a blood dk, they prolly don’t even need any heals.
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Current BDK is the best raid tank and the worst M+ tank. For me the biggest issues are GCD bloat on pull, dealing with being resource starved, and generally low mitigation vs high end fort trash pulls - getting white hit to death sucks.
That being said, I don’t have an issue with threat generally. I open with DnD, usually follow with tombstone, and then a blood boil. I pop a defensive on each pull because I can’t afford to death strike until my third or fourth gcd. I also like popping DRW on pull so I have insta high parry and a triple blood plague into consumption is good threat.
I typically always have DRW, VB, or wall running during a pull. I also use Throng’s finger and tombstone as good on pull shields to give my death strike rotation time to get chugging.
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Brewmaster is the worst m+ tank, and it isn’t even close. Blood is middle of the pack right now and doing okay, but could use a bit of love in upfront defensives
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I definitely agree the the GCD bloat. For how spiky its health is, Blood has too many things to do when setting up on pull. Once set up, it’s manageable, but as I push into higher keys, I definitely feel the risk of getting globaled in some of these packs.
I don’t like the current state of button bloat, but I’m thinking to pick Rune Tap back up to help mitigate this. Costing a Rune is a bit pricey, but I think that points more towards some of Blood’s resource generation issues. I personally think Marrowrend costing two Runes is a bit much considering some of the recent changes to how Blood tanks.
Why cant they have DRW not require a target? I want to be able to precast it before a pack so i have fresh GCD, and can open with double blood boil to hold aggro.
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This is one of the few suggestions I can get behind. Always feels off to need a target for drw
Na, blood is dead last on performance right now in M+. I think it’s a close pack until you hit 12s though.
I like to open with tombstone and Finger for a fat 10m shield and some snap threat.
Blood would really benefit from Runic Corruption for rune regen.
Makes us so much less dependent on Haste.
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It looks like ur missing an important talent. Grab consumption, gives you 2 runes on a 30 second cooldown. You won’t need blood tap anymore.
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Consumption instead of blood tap? hmmmm…
Means I lose blood feast, and it means i take tombstone, so it adds more buttons than my current keybinds…
I second this. Consumption resets are god tier when paired with reduced marrow cost from exterminate.
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Tombstone is kind of mandatory as well for the cd reduction it provides for dancing rune weapon.
But as always if ur not doing mythic raid or high keys it’s fine to play ur preferred way.
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