So I quit back in WoD and returned for Shadowlands and dusted off my long time main- a Blood DK. I have always considered myself a student of the spec and tried to learn as much as possible about it.
Since I came back I have read everything I can find about Blood to get myself caught back up. As expected the results were all over the place- particularly when it comes to secondary stats. Some say versatility is the best, some say haste, some say mastery is worthless, and some say mastery is really good. This makes sense as different playstyles and content played have always made people prefer different stats.
The part that I find confusing is that everything I can find says that crit is terrible for blood and I just don’t get why. Avoidance (dodge and parry, not the tertiary) has always been great for reducing total damage taken against everything but the odd mage boss a couple times an expansion. It does lead to a more spikey damage profile, but Blood has the tools to overcome that.
In addition to avoiding the damage all together crit/parry also-
-Plays in strongly with voracious, lichborn, and blood plague’s leach.
-Makes boneshield last longer. The more attacks that don’t land the less runes that have to spent on marrowrend. This allows more heartstrikes and more runic power.
-It makes cooldowns like DRW and Swarming Mists stronger. The more avoidance you have the better it gets.
So please help me out here. From everything I see it looks like crit should be a fantastic stat for Blood. So why is it so universally disliked? Is there something I’m missing, or is it just a matter of people parroting what others have said?
Thanks in advance for your time.
Its not a bad stat, same with mastery.
Vers and haste are just better.
since blood doesn’t get a rune generating passive from runic power spenders it needs more haste.
Since blood has relatively low armor compared to other tanks it needs the vers to mitigate more while buffing most of your healing.
I was hoping the PvP gear would be “okay” for blood PvP. Versatility usually is pretty yuck compared to haste for swifter runes.
you’re gearing wrong if you’re avoiding vers for haste… you want as much of both as you can get for all content as blood
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As I understand it, Crit. typically has superior physical damage reduction and damage output, but Vers. is far better for magical damage reduction (can’t parry spells).
Probably good to have gear sets ready to go based on what you are going to tank.
And Haste generally means more runes for more abilities, definitely want.
For pretty much all PvE application Haste=Vers>crit>mastery.
For PvP crit=vers>haste>mastery.
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Blood gets to double dip from verse as it increases healing done of Death Strike (which increases the absorb shield) and also increases the absorb shield amount on top of that.
along with providing permanent damage reduction magic/physical at all times, Even if Blood could get back Runic Corruption all that would do is lower the feasible amount of haste needed however Verse would have no DR (outside of the stat DR Implemented in SL). every point of additive damage reduction also given by verse is better than the previous point.
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not quite, Its fine to avoid vers for more haste. I mean the top m+ blood dks are prioritizing haste over vers. They’re pretty even but more haste is just more fun, a much smoother rotation.
I just build haste on every piece, whichever of the other 3 stats as a second. None of them are bad, they all scale each other (directly or indirectly).
Haste>ilvl>everything else imo.
That said, I could never imagine myself hard stacking crit… Youre just not gonna get enough parry to ever get the consistency of versatility or mastery.
Crit simply holds PvP value and thats all.
Reason being…
+35% DS damage(Deaths Certainty)
+1% DS damage per 1% of targets missing health(Rune of Sanguination).
+8-40% DS damage(Hemostasis)
Equals, massive Death Strike crits. 7-24k depending on the targets current health/hemostasis charges.
No need to prioritize Haste since you can assume you’ll be getting kited and wont have the uptime to justify haste stacking. Stacking crit just increases the odds that when you do connect, its a valuable connection.
But again its ONLY a good stat for PvP
I ran Blood in just a rando bg last week expecting to get trucked. I was astonished when I actually started killing people… alot. (I think they were surprised too, lol!) I am seriously considering investing more focus into blood pvp just for fun.
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I need to check this out some time 
It’s surprisingly amusing! I dunno how viable it would be for arenas but in random bgs, it works just fine.
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I had no issue pushing to 1400 with it.
Aiming for atleast 1600 this week.
Definitely recommend running with a Ret Pal.
you bring mediocre damage.
HIGH execute damage.
tons of CC.(Grips, Chains of Ice, Stun, Silence, ranged interrupt)
2 Auras that are actually quite impactful.
The only issue is finding players willing to give you a chance.
The stigma of Tanks in Arena sticks, even when they’re viable.
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crit’s “bad” because… you’re a tank, not dps. secondary stats are better for mitigation and getting rune power to use skills. agro doesn’t work like it did back in vanilla where you needed crit to hold because it was basically whoever does more damage gets focused.