An easy fix for bdk would be reverting Bone Shield to reducing damage by 20%. This new (since bfa) “armor stacking” is just useless for us.
Yeah, the good old days (WOD). When if the entire rest of the raid died, a blood dk could still solo the boss until enrage.
Dk needs a damage buff. I believe we are the lowest at the moment and it really shows with aggro control. Even a simple buff like spend 3 runes and get a blood boil proc would help immensely.
Our defensive builds are really low DPS
However, Deaths Certainty+Runeforge of Sanguination is competitive with VDH and Prot Pally(On bosses).
The only complaint i really have about this spec, besides it being completely ignored relative to PvP, is that we’re the only tank spec that has to bounce around multiple builds inorder to be optimized for X content.
Whereas the other tanks all seem to have a default “This is always the best, in every situation” builds.
I have multiple builds with BiS so its a non-issue for me, but i can see why lesser geared folks, or extremely casual people feel at a disadvantage. Walking into a bad week of affixes, and only having 1 Leggo in your toolkit can potentially be really bad, if you NEED SS, or Phearomones, and you have nothing but Deaths Certainty for example, a Necrotic+Fortified, or Bolstering, youre gonna have a bad time.
And on the flip side, if your guild is progressing on H or M Sludgefist, and you only have SS, and no Deaths Certainty you arent going to be pulling your weight relative to DPS, in a fight where DPS is very important.
BDK is strong, really strong. It just doesn’t have a one size fits all build.
Honestly…just increase our threat gen from healing and we could be better…
…or make a crazy passive that makes other party member heals add threat to us?
Hard to say on it right now. Dropped my SS to take CRW and didn’t have any issues with threat in any groups tonight, but not exactly making huge pulls with bolstering + storming either.
Now, threat never felt like it was getting away, and on a few pulls I ran off to let some debuffs fall off and reduce incoming damage from some harder hitting mobs.
I do wish they would have just made it baseline for DRW to add stacks of boneshield rather than having it as a legendary though. It feels like something we SHOULD have had all along.
Think it’ll be a bit better next week to see how things fall with a lot of the changes since the affixes won’t be as miserable.
I did switch out a ton of crit/mastery and bumped my haste up by about 6% which has helped things to feel quite a bit better overall.
We’re still not great, and I can imagine us falling a bit more behind the other tanks as even warriors got a 10% across the board damage buff with 9.0.5 so we’re still going to be falling very light in the damage category.
DRW does sorta give boneshield charges though. You DRW into a marrowrend and you get double the stacks.
Blood just needs some juice pumped into Death Strike and Blood Plague. I also think an additional charge of Blood Boil wouldn’t hurt for snap threat on aoe.
I just use big cds in the start of pulls , to
Minimize damage during ramp up . LikE IBF or vamp blood , Terrible pulling a large and pack , and losing half your HP in 2 seconds . So I negate it done with CDs till i can get my DD going and DS some . Just a pro noob tip .
Only thing i would do is return Runic Corruption to blood (unholies rune regen passive) and see how that fills out.
or just make our taunt stronger and lower the cooldown on grip
The one thing I would like is for Death’s Caress to do 5X its base damage to mobs that don’t have Blood Plague on them. It would then do its normal damage to targets that have Blood Plague so that it’s not prioritized over Heart Strike. This would give good instant threat when used on adds and give a reason to use it on single target pulls instead of BB.
1 Like
I don’t seem to have a problem keeping threat in heroic raids or M+ (granted I’m working on 12s, not 15s). Part of this may be that our hunters are misdirecting to tanks to help, I am definitely less “sticky” than in last expansion, and the uncertainty of that doesn’t add anything to the gameplay when I’m already managing the field, pulls, staying alive, and trying to damage stuff. The only plus is that our guardian druid has a harder time peeling stuff off me, but I think that supports the idea that threat is a problem for all tanks and the last buffs to threat didn’t do enough.
Like the OP, I took Night Fae. Unlike the OP, I have Superstrain legendary and my character is built for maximum damage instead of toughness. I do more damage, survive easier, and heal more than the other tanks I work with, but I’m certain I would have a harder time staying alive than a more defensive Blood DK. Also I out damage the lower geared dps. 
This isn’t to say that this is the best setup. I think it shows that some legendaries, soul binds, and conduits could use buffs. There should be more variety in our choice of loadouts that is viable.
I think lowering our CD on grip would be a bit imbalanced
w
If you have a hunter misdirecting then not having threat issues should be a given - I assume your rolling with the Guardian druid as your co-tank?