3.1 Blood Tanking Spec(s)Follow

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jcEMqI0IsbMfssZ0xZcth:GihMmV

So I am open to some suggestions and other builds, see what other people are using.

Here is what I am thinking:

Most of the talents are self explanatory, however there are a few I'm on the fence about or I'm wondering how well they work.

Subversion: The 9% crit to our bread & butter attack is pretty nice. But could these points be spent better somewhere else?

Scent of Blood: I do not have this talent, however it has been redesigned for tanking. I have not found myself RP starved, however I usually don't sit more than 60% for long. I have not tested this talent out at all yet.

Will of the Necropolis vs. Spell Deflection: In 3.0.9 I was an advocate of WotN, however they added a whole bunch of stipulations and restrictions that make me wonder if 3points is too steep of a price for it to be occasionally useful. And when it occasionally works, it is still only 15% reduction. Spell deflection did get a buff, so I might consider it now.

Note of WotN: Last night we ran Naxx10 with some of our newer raiders (2 newer healers, 3newer dps, 1 OT), I started out as 12/51/8, and got wiped by Farlina doing the enrage enchievement. I have been healed through 25man enrage achievement with little problems, so I chalk it up to the newer healers. Someone had to go AFK for 5 mins, so I ran back and respecced into that blood build. This time we take out Farlina easily with same healing assignments. So in my blood build, I don't think WotN is that useful. It would appear to be more useful in the frost tree as a mitigation ability, opposed to being in the self healing tree. Just a thought.

Imp Blood Pressence: I have no idea why people skip this as tanks. This is the self healing tree, you need to take every single ability that heals you. Period. VB, MoB, RT, IBP, these all stack up tremendously, and if you skip one ability that will heal you, you have circumvented the point of this tree. You have to take the talents the tree was designed for. If this talent isn't taken, why are you in this tree? Go be frost.

Sudden Doom: I did not have this previously, but now I see it being of great use.

Blood Gorged: I cried when this went to APen instead of Expertise. I use to have it, but not now.

DRW: I used to have this mostly for a great floater point, dps boost, and it did actually heal me a good bit. I could alternate this with VB and get some pretty strong healing. Even if it didn't create threat, keeping myself healed with this was awesome. It is not in the patch notes, however I read they took the healing out of this ability. Is this still true? If it does still heal me, then it would be insanely OP since CD has been reduced, and I will take it in a second. But if it doesn't heal me, there there is no purpose whatsoever.

+1: I put it in epidemic. I found that I really don't need it. I considered putting it in DRW, Scent of Blood, Imp IT, and briefly, for the str, Ravenous Dead.

Glpyhs are VB, DS, and RT. Minors are Pest, HoW, and RD.

Suggestions, comments, and thoughts are welcome! Please do not respond with "I think Frost would be better, yada, yada."

I've only skimmed the OP and the response (and I have yet to even look at the builds) but I have to disagree here. I'm not saying that it SHOULD be taken, but I do think it is a valid place to put points. Since you will Heart Strike 2-6 times (I'm not sure at what point it becomes advantageous to prioritize HS over DS, if you ever do, or whether or not a tank hits this point), a 15% chance on each means many of your cycles will be seeing a free DC. And, with Morbidity and/or the DC glyph, this is 1 30-15% increase in its damage.

I wouldn't scoff at not taking it, but it is far from a bad talent in my opinion. I wouldn't call it mediocre without ample testing.



The thing with blood is that ALL of its damage (but DC and diseases) is physical damage, so it is all subject to the boss reduction (which is something ridiculous like 40%). APen should be much better than Necrosis, because it means everything will be generating more. At least, that is my opinion. The damage modifier is more like a secondary effect when I look at it from a tank's perspective, because you are less likely to be above 75% health all the time (though it isn't a horrible supposition).

Edited, Apr 18th 2009 4:54pm by idiggory

Why didn't you just DS?



It is kinda a pointless discussion (no offense). The talent is what it is, and you should probably be taking it either way.

The effect of both APen and Expertise on the talent is that gearing becomes easier. Personally, I PREFER the APen. Expertise is very easy to come by, even with tank gear. And you find it on more weapons than you do APen (which you DO need as Blood).

However, the consensus from EJ (the last I looked, so a week or two) was that BG was all the APen you needed. That makes gearing a tank WAY easier.

Maybe Expertise would have been more useful anyway. But Parry is something like 15%. You were never getting close to that (I would guess a tank gearing for Expertise could get somewhere like 7 or 8 percent in reduction to parries, do to DR). I would rather get more threat out of the hits I can get passed the parries instead of fighting a losing battle with expertise.

I really so no reason (if you are already 45 points into Blood) to not take BG. There is nothing else in that area range that is as good as it, unless you have managed to grab a tank set with a lot of APen, which is fairly unusual.

[EDIT]

I probably have to agree with him on IBP. 4% on a tank's DpS is NOT alot. If you can do 2K DpS, that is still only 80 health a second. However, I wouldn't necessarily say there are places way better for those two points. But it is far from a ground-shaking talent.

And, since I finally looked at that build...

I think taking RT, IRT and MoB is fairly extreme. Especially when you don't take Hysteria, which is a huge DpS bonus for your highest DpS member every 3 minutes.

Personally, I would still take Epidemic. But that is just me. It IS less important for Blood than Frost or Unholy.

Edited, Apr 19th 2009 2:04pm by idiggory

Yeah, that's... definitely a really stupid way to play a DK, actually. Toss IT and PS every other cycle and throw DS's otherwise, it's a significant DPS/TPS boost.



He explicitly mentioned using it on your highest DPS member. It's a damage boost, and a pretty significant one, for the raid... just not you personally.

Looking at the rest of the build, SD is pretty worthless both due to the low proc rate and the fairly low number of abilities that could actually trigger it. The vast majority of spells that are going to hit the tank are either actually cones, which won't trigger it (or shouldn't, because Blizzard's definition of what counts as direct damage is... variable) or just AE effects in the first place.

Edited, Apr 19th 2009 4:52pm by RPZip

You know what? I had typed out a decently long post in response, but I decided to delete it. You are just too rude to bother helping.

One thing I will note, though, is how about we discuss the irony of ******** about possible flaming when you flame me for things I never even said. Or, better yet, things that you think I said, but quoted text from me that says the opposite.

Oh yeah, and:



You, sir, are an idiot.

The Unholy tree is about pets. Funny thing is that Unholy tanks rarely take the Ghoul or Garg.

The Frost tree is about Frost. But, many tanks don't take HC and/or DC and/or ITal.

The point of the Blood Tree is utility and high single-target threat. You will NEVER heal yourself enough for that to be this tree's sole purpose. It is things like Hysteria, Abom's Might and a small buff to healing that make it good. Just because an ability can give you a small bit of health doesn't mean it is good. And, even if it is good, that doesn't necessarily mean it is the best place for those points.

How about the next time you ask for build advice, you don't flame the people who took the time to help you.

Troll.

What's the deal with MoB and with using Hysteria for threat?

The healing done by MoB is negligible on bosses. When you're under the constant flow of heals from 2 or 4 healers this is like a glass of water in the sea.

The damage suffered from using Hysteria is also negligible, for the same reason.

What I can think of a reason for not using Hysteria is simply not needing it. Threat is a binary thing, you either have enough or not, and if you do have it there's no reason to do more of it. If you don't do enough threat then you could pull hysteria for a boost at least.

No, the other way around; don't use IT and PS in the second rotation.

It's not the topic of the post, but overuse of IT/PS is influencing your build design by making it weaker than it should be. It's a related topic.

Since you brought up that it is a related topic: I do want to back up a second here. I know I said a few posts back that I was doing this every other cycle, but I can't really say I was.

Here is the situation. I had 2 pts in epidemic, and I was running into the issue where diseases coming down (not saying 2nd rotation) I had 2 blood runes coming soon, 2 DRs coming a bit after the BRs, and a FR and UR right now. If I hits the DS, I would have 2 blood runes up for HSs, but no diseases for another 2 or 3 seconds, in which case I would have to use DRs for the IT/PS. So it would of ended up DS, IT, PS, HS, HS, instead of IT, PS, HS, HS, HS, HS.

Isn't 4HS better than 2HS + DS? Also throw in the fact that in the rotation with less HSs, there would be a couple seconds of no diseases.

iddigory wrote:


I think this is an apple to oranges comparison. This looks like a comparison from unholy dps to blood tanking. I would not say that for dps Blood is the self healing tree. And most people consider the unholy tree the magic/aoe tanking tree, not a pet tree.

Edited, Apr 21st 2009 2:13pm by Gikkers

Not really, it is a valid comparison.

Self-healing is the theme gimmick of the tree, along with mainly physical damage and raid utility. People just think about it differently as a DpS than as a tank. I hope you can get that the opinion of something doesn't actually influence what it is.

I can see dogs as a companion, as a pet owner, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a mainly carnivorous quadriped related to the wolf and fox that has a genotypical preference for social interaction.

As the pet owner, I only really care about the social aspect and its phenotype. Since I'll be feeding it store-bought dog food, I don't care about what its diet is in the wild. Its closest neighbors, biologically, also don't matter to me because I am not a research scientist, dog specialist or something similar.

But, the way I think about something doesn't change what it IS.

The Blood Tree is the mainly physical tree that includes high raid utility with increased healing and self-healing. It has some shadow damage.

The Unholy Tree is the one that focuses on magic damage and pets, with limited raid utility in the form of a talent necessary for higher personal DpS. They also focus on conditional DpS and mitigation boosts like Bone Shield and Desecration. It deals mainly physical and shadow damage, with a higher preference on the latter.

The Frost Tree splits Magic and Physical damage about equally, and has limited raid-buffing ability, but it is point intensive. It has the only AoE FU-ability. It deals mainly Frost and Physical damage.

Now, as a tank, I may care about different aspects differently. But that doesn't change what the tree is, just how I use it. Saying that you should be taking every self-healing talent because you are blood is stupid. That is just one small part in the bigger scheme. And prioritizing it completely over the other parts severely weakens the tree as a whole. It is like, in my desperation for high TpS from the Frost or Blood trees, I decided to pass up mitigation talents.

You need a balance. You don't have that.

[EDIT]



Did they add threat to the self-heals? Besides DS, all the others had been threat-less (at least before 3.1 they were).


Edited, Apr 21st 2009 3:44pm by idiggory

Coincidentaly, after the 3.1.1 talent refund, I just decided to give this a shot:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jcEGqI0IsbMbosx0xZ0gh:GihMmV

I picked this build simply to test it out next raid. I have not written off SpellDeflect or WotN off at all, but I am going to see what it is like without them. I also wanted to grab BG to see how that affects my threat.

I was thinking of the same build with WotN instead of SoB, but I will see how this works out. With this guy not taking it, I'm curious as to how useful WotN is now. I'm agreeing with RPZip on SDs low proc rate at the moment, but I have not written it off.




I was definitely under the impression that a lot of these skills do not create threat, however several WWS sheets on EJ.com have categories for threat from things like IBP. If self healing does actually create threat, that would be amazing.

Don't count on it, I have been following that thread on TS and it hasn't shown anything special that makes Blood that attractive, I still put Bloot tanking as a more TPS/Boss tanking spec.

Loatheb has to be one of the worse parses.

Spell Deflect the general consensus is that it sucks now with the change to Blood Barrier, SoB is only needed at 1 or at most 2 out of the 3, you should have noticed that you were sitting at full RP a lot.

The tree is too weak right now outside of singular threat generation.

And you do realize that the threat generated from things like IBF is very miniscule right?

Man... that isn't even 1K a minute. XD

It would be nice if they got threat, but looking at it objectively--they don't really need it. ESPECIALLY now that Oblit has been nerfed. As far as I know, no other spec comes close in single-target threat.

Which, is fine by me. If they can't have each spec be equal, the setup they have now is... okay.

Blood- High ST.
Frost- Good ST, Good AoE.
Unholy- High AoE.

Now that BB got its buff, AoE tanking as Blood isn't nearly as hopeless and/or hard. It WOULD be nice if they got a low-threat RP dump just for tanking though. Like, one that does okay damage but has a low threat modifier and such. But the damage would have to be low enough to keep it from boosting their DpS too high. It would really only exist for that extra oomph for tanking instead of an occasional DC.

And I only think that because, from my point of view, Unholy's ST is much better than Blood's AoE. Especially because DnD is an Unholy ability and the talents most Blood Tanks will take for AoE are in the Unholy tree.

Though, I would like to see each being like Frost is. It would be nice if, while FP is up, the Garg/Ghoul shared some threat or something. And, in FP only, BB COULD get a 1.5 Threat modifier or something. Though it is already pretty damn good...

Sorry, I was talking about HEALING per second. I didn't say that. FP gives a threat modifier of just over 2, so 6K threat = 3K healing, over 4 minutes. 750 HpM.

[EDIT]

Double-Fail. I said Healing per Second... At least I got it right later. >.<

Healing per Minute.

Edited, Apr 25th 2009 6:03pm by idiggory