3.1 DK Patch Notes (updated 3/26/09)Follow

Cool, thanks for the advice.^^

Is it me, or is 51/13/7 going to make a comeback with the oblit and disease changes for blood.

You're probably right Dilbrt, I just can't see myself ever going unholy. Blood is just too much fun for me.

51/13/7 was one of the previous Blood DPS builds that focused on keeping diseases up through Oblits. Standard Blood to DRW, Frost until Annihilation, then Unholy for Epidemic. Was okay, but 5x/0/2x tends to put out much more dps.

Given the changes for HS/BS, DS and Oblit for disease damage bonus modifiers would have to test it out a bit to see if it would be a viable spec.

[EDIT] Or were you referring to his personal spec? 21 Unholy without picking up Summon Gargoyle is a little confusing.

Edited, Mar 31st 2009 10:55am by Jornam

Rune tap vs mark of blood is really just preference.
On most bosses you won't really gain that much out of it due to slow swings, whereas a free hp pot every minute is pretty imba.
You'll need to take two of the following three skills just for filling :

1. rune tap
2. Mark of blood
3. vampiric blood

Vampiric blood is pretty much better then both rune tap and mark of blood.
If you know your going to drop low (infections at grobbulus, for example.) popping a vampiric blood doesnt only mean you increase your hp and thus the amount of damage you can take, but it also helps the healers in topping you off more quickly.
Now, in current content it doesn't really matter, but saying vampiric blood sucks is just flat out wrong.

I'm sorry but I seriously disagree. Glob after getting poisoned, dropping out of Malys vortex, decimate, got an enraged blaze on me, on and on... there are several circumstances when it's very useful to have VB (which IS in fact something of a fill point even with 3/3 Blood Worms) in addition to a healthstone. Not to forget that this saves the potion cooldown for some haste when BL/Hero is called, which is a DPS increase albeit a very small one.

On the other note: I've healed regular and heroic raids and the times mentioned above (and several others) are exactly when we appreciate the help. Raiding is a team effort.

You should discuss with your healing lead any advantage self-healing can have for your raids' encounter schedule.

Any raiding DPS DK should consider the value of every talent point allocation in terms of team success. Period.

Rune Tap seems to me (and I don't have a window into the minds of the developers) to be put in as a tanking trick and/or for leveling. It feels very much like some sorta Lay on Hands to me, which is great for leveling and for tanking and can be useful for DPS who may not get other "ohsh*t" buttons but have the points in blood.

For deep Blood builds there is a floating point and one of the three mentioned are taken to keep moving through the tree. Of the 3, VB is a sensible choice giving back more health (with the buff effect) than a 1-point RT. Honestly, MoB in practice seems weak and I don't really know many Blood DKs that take it over VB. Maybe it needs to be reviewed, but I tried it for a while and the heal-lead and tank-lead at the time both told me to "not bother." It's effect just wasn't enough to matter much. Sounds good on paper, not so great in practice. But, again, perhaps this would need to be reviewed.

This thread is getting waaaay off-topic. Sorry guys.

Or the targets could be insta-healed back to full health, not take serious damage during the 20 second widow, and congrats, you may only have healed him for ~4% (with the rest being overhealing.)

Seriously, tank healing is one of the easiest things to do on non-gimmick fights, and if it's actually hard on a fight, then 4% on every swing(which on most bosses is not only slow, but will be dodged/parried often, not to mention a lot of mob' charges are overhealing)certainly won't make the difference between wiping or downing.

Runetap, on the other hand can be a blessing, if you know how to play your cards.
You see, I see alot of those tunnel visioning deathknights who think all they can do is dps, and that wasting a 3k strike for 10% health is bad, as supposedly 'their brought along to do damage'.

Newsflash: you don't do damage when your dead, and your raid certainly won't thank you for hogging up their b-res.

In current content, it doesn't matter, because really, druids can keep full stacks of lifeblooms rolling on everyone who is suspecting to get damaged, priests can shield and renew, shamans can just spam chain heal, without one of them ever running oom.

Once we get into ulduar, where heavy aoe damage is being thrown around, it might occur that you're taking heavy damage, and that the healers can't save you on time because they were busy healing someone else.
It's in those cases that a dk that would pop a Vamp.blood + rune tap combo could save him.
Sure, it can ***** with rotations, but well, I'd rather have to reset my rotation then die and be useless the whole fight.
And no, your not gonna pop a health potion, because you should be using +haste potions everytime they are off the cooldown.

No offense iddigory, your probably a good guy and all, but you're really selling RT short, and what bothers me even more is that you talk all about it not mattering, while you haven't even done a heroic instance, nevermind a lvl 80 raid (especially with raids being puggable atm.)




Edited, Apr 2nd 2009 2:19pm by NeroSeekerOfSouls

Meh, you're probably right. My dislike of RT began looking at it from a tanking perspective (I have never really liked the ability because of that)--no threat on an ability that was only so-so in a so-so tree just soured it for me.

Plus, all of my experience with Blood is outside of groups, where I was actually getting hit, so MoB was incrediblyt strong (making me like it). I recognize that there is a difference, but it can sometimes be hard to completely separate personal like and dislike from the actuality (why I have to fight myself not to take Corpse Explosion and On a Pale Horse in Unholy builds--both are so pretty but to useless in 95% of PvE scenarios). When the recommended EJ DB build didn't take RT, I took that as confirmation of my presupposition. NOTE: (I think I would look much fonder on Rune Tap if it didn't take 3 points to improve it and/or a glyph to make it truly useful for utility. I liked that MoB helped the whole raid, not just yourself, like VB and RT).

I can see why, in a fight where the damage is guaranteed, that Rune Tap would be better. But I still have a lot of trouble approaching it. If you put MoB on a boss just before he AoEs (it is an instant ability, so if the AoE has a cast time you can possibly react), that is 4% less healing for each target hit. I see how it is more situational, but it just seems golden to me for the fewer situations it does work. I am NOT a DpS Blood DK nor an endgame healer, so I could easily be mistaken here. It just seems good.

Then again, many talents/abilities seem good when they just aren't.

So, I'll concede the two points about VB and RT. If I was making a Blood DK, I would probably still take MoB. But, I'll accept that I was wrong in judging RT to be (possibly far) worse than it is.

And one last note directed at Arex, I still really want to know why your build didn't take Garg or DRW. Was it a specific event-based build? Or do you just dislike those two abilities for some reason?