Blood Death Knight State on Shadowlands Alpha - Lack of Changes, Talent Choices, Legendary Review

Posted 2020/07/04 at 3:57 AM by Mandl

Introduction - Another expansion with minimal changesAbout the authorsCatalystAcherus Death Knight communityNnoggieWhat Has Changed?The GoodRune of the Fallen CrusaderRune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle

Rune of Hysteria - extra maximum RP and more RP from runes on a hasted 3 RPPM proc chance (on 0% haste, 37% uptime)

Rune of Sanguination - a 1% damage increase to Death Strike for every 1% of the mob's HP missing, along with a 48% heal when you fall below 35%, once every 5 minutes

Rune of Spellwarding - 3% magical DR and a 10% max HP shield 3 times a minute. This proc is increased with haste.

Rune of Unending Thirst - the most questionable rune in PvE. All effects - haste and healing - are a 10s proc on enemy death. This is, evidently, less than ideal in raids, and very questionable in M+

Rune of the Fallen CrusaderRune of the Stoneskin GargoyleRune of HysteriaRune of the Fallen CrusaderRune of SpellwardingRune of SanguinationG'huun

Talent choices that depend on the fight profile (Voracious will be picked for pure survival and is actually good, now. Bloodworms will stay as the default due to it being the only talent on the row to provide DPS)

Talent choices that depend on your level of haste (Rapid Decomposition provides a pretty decent buff to blood plague, now. At higher haste scenarios, or where you are capable of getting more stacks out of it, Hemostasis will remain the go-to pick)

Talents that are no longer flat-out garbage. Mark of Blood might finally see some use outside of abusing it in ashran or helping your co-tank handle pa'ku!

10% extra armor from Bone Shield, bringing us up to 50% and effectively counteracting the surprise nerf of 8.1

As part of the unpruning, we recovered the following abilities: Lichborne, Anti-Magic Zone, Raise Dead (and Sacrificial Pact), and Chains of Ice so we no longer have to be in melee to snare stuff. In particular, Lichborne will likely allow you to immune and negate a variety of raid mechanics, making it much stronger than it initially looks

We also recovered Rune Tap. More on that below, however.

Blood Tap is back, providing an additional source of runes. Since it is off the GCD, however, it leads to a bit of APM bloat, something which could have been done baseline by bringing in an equivalent to Lucid Dreams.

There is now a healing option for when you are not in melee range, as Death Coil allows you to heal undead targets. Hit Lichborne, then coil yourself. The amount of healing you get from Death Coil is significantly weaker than if you had spent the runic power on Death Strike

Raise DeadSacrificial PactThe Badon pullneverThe UglyRune TapevercannotWill of the NecropolisOssuaryOssuaryOssuaryTombstoneBlooddrinkerHeartbreaker2onceHeartbreakerTombstoneRune TapTombstoneDeath PactDeath PactCovenantswildlyKyrianSpecificShackle the UnworthyGenericSummon StewardNecrolordSpecificAbomination LimbGenericFleshcraftNight FaeSpecificDeath's DueDeath and DecayexactlyDeath's DueGenericSoulshapeVenthyrSpecificSwarming MistGenericDoor of Shadowsliterally anywheredisgustinglysubstantialwasLegendary effects

Bryndaor's Might provides a RP refund when Death Strike heals you for slightly more than its minimum. Simple enough, throughput fueling Death Strike is always good, especially considering how central this spell is to our arsenal, both defensively and offensively

Crimson Rune Weapon likely has a missing multiplier in spellData and will very likely reduce by 3s, not 30s. The reduction is nice - the rune regen during DRW is a bait effect reminiscent of Lucid Dreams (the major), which will lead to resource overcapping during Dancing Rune Weapon and slightly degenerate play (you will have an incentive to go into DRW with nearly no RP). A strong feedback point on this would be to make it grant haste - nobody likes having extra runes without the GCDs to spend them

Gorefiend's Domination was a lot stronger in Legion than it will be in Shadowlands considering the number of multipliers we had on Vampiric Blood (Vampiric Fangs being the main driver). We'll see how it is, but right now, Vampiric Blood is nothing to write home about, and as a result, I don't expect this effect to be particularly desirable, especially considering the contenders.

Vampiric Aura - Do you like M+? Do you like your party members requiring EHP for certain hits? You'll likely be stuck with this one as a result. It is never fun as a tank to have to wear something for your group to be able to do stuff. This set bonus worked in Dragon Soul because it only really had value in the raid. With the advent of M+, and the fact that you are choosing this instead of other gains to your personal throughput and survival (Bryndaor's Might) as opposed to just "getting it", this item effect feels like it will be oppressive and choice-inhibiting

Superstrain - the main point of this is that Frost Fever has a chance to grant 5 RP every time it deals damage, along with just being more damage. Likely strong, but not necessarily gamebreaking

Death's Certainty will likely see play in M+ due to Death and Decay cooldown reduction, assuming the dungeons are as oppressive as they were in BfA

Item - Death Knight T15 Blood 4P BonusItem - Death Knight T16 Blood 4P BonusConclusion

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Comments

Comment by Barblyu

Good write

Comment by LeucienWeavr

Hi, Sickntwisted here from Acherus; Mandl helped me(With only minor complaints over how bad I was) change my mindset on what it meant to be a decent BDK and helped me go from idiot to, well, a massively better performing idiot. If there's ever anyone I'd trust to put out a good synopsis on what's coming for BDK, it's him.

That said, General Draven is looking particularly spicy for Soulbinds(Choosing between a 15% shield after teleporting and borrowing movement buffs from allies is gonna be tough), and i'm particularly interested in the conduits; I can't wait for this guide to be updated once we have even more info!

Comment by Darlik

One of the most bored class spec in the game.

Comment by Denalian

it leads to a bit of APM bloat

Are you serious? Complaining about stuff being off the GCD is the dumbest thing I've heard. It literally just gives you more flexibility with your resources when you need it. This is exactly what we need.

In particular, we are the only tank requiring up-close-and-personal access to a mob to be able to get our active mitigation up.

Wrong. Brewmasters are changed to work in the same manner for Shadowlands.

Comment by Ardensolis1

I guess they didn't consider popping the new Rune Tap on pull to mitigate that first melee hit?

Anyway I main a Blood DK and I've never had any of these "problems."
The changes (what few of them there are) only seem to make us stronger, as this piece points out.

But yeah Ossuary should 100% be baseline.

Comment by Tomaotabc

In particular, we are the only tank requiring up-close-and-personal access to a mob to be able to get our active mitigation up.

Comment by Loare

I guess they didn't consider popping the new Rune Tap on pull to mitigate that first melee hit?

Anyway I main a Blood DK and I've never had any of these "problems."

Comment by Thanatasgr

Week in, week out we get these posts doing some in-depth analysis of a spec. Week in, week out the TL;DR is 'yea the changes are nice but there's still a ton of problems that need to be ironed out'.

Personally I still feel like the old rune system would serve the DKs better. It had more interesting choices in what spell you cast when. I liked maintaining Frost Fever and Blood Plague as a rotational element. I also think the specs could do with a bit more crossover. And overall the talent tree for BDK feels uninspired and boring to me.

Comment by Endurion

If I am not mistaken, the unmitigated 1st hit is problem for other tanks as well. The live version of SotR could be poped beforehand but with changes on Shadowlands, you have to generate 3 holy power to do so. Warriors have a similar problem with rage generation and bears are probably tanks who are without the AM at the start of the fight for the longest time. So the tanks who can jump into the fight with active AM are litterarly just Dhs and to some degree monks (whit their changes in Shadowlands).

Comment by Mandl

Hey guys, author here. The article got published when I was asleep. I'm here now, though!

In particular, we are the only tank requiring up-close-and-personal access to a mob to be able to get our active mitigation up.

Wrong. Brewmasters are changed to work in the same manner for Shadowlands.

Iirc barrel smash gives them isb, which is a ranged attack unlike marrow rend, unless they changed that ability, and that change isn't a great one, I think tanks should be able to put up they're defensive ability before engagement (boneshield, sotr, isb, demon spikes)

IsB is gone in shadowlands, yeah? It's not available for brewmasters on the alpha. There will likely be a state of BrM article later covering exactly this.

Instead, they get Shuffle. That effect can be acquired through BoK (which requires you to be in melee), keg smash (15yd range) and SCK (8d range, so 2yd more than most mobs).

So, no, brewmasters do have one and a half way of getting their AM up before a melee hit. I did check my sources ;-)

That was not my complaint, actually. My complaint was that bringing an entirely new spell for this, when you could have accomplished the same thing by removing the rune cost on rune tap or brought lucid minor in as a passive effect, feels like a clunky change.

As an additional point, based on tuning in alpha, a scenario where you are rewarded for making split-second blood tap decisions does not actually exist. You're still bound by the changes brought by the new rune system - in particular, as a blood DK, unless you massively fuck up your rune economy, your incentive is to be on < 3 active runes, not on 0. If it were zero, or if we had the old rune system (something I completely agree with Thanatasgr on, and something which the original blood tap worked wonderfully well in), then those split-second decisions would exist.

In all honesty, and I didn't mention it because I didn't want it to get nuked from orbit, right now, there is a strong case to be made on alpha for macroing blood tap into marrowrend. That's really, really sad, and highlights the weakness of it combined with the new rune system.

I guess they didn't consider popping the new Rune Tap on pull to mitigate that first melee hit?

Anyway I main a Blood DK and I've never had any of these "problems."

This is something I'm confused about as well. Rune Tap baseline looks like it's designed to cover this issue (I'm also aware that the newly buffed Bone Shield DR is superior to Rune Tap, but it's still someting). However, I do think it's worth mentioning this is absolutely an issue for DKs though, especially in M+, and it's painful to deal with at times.

I'm just skeptical that the author puts Rune Tap as an "Ugly" change. I would have massively welcomed baseline Rune Tap in Mythic N'Zoth, where my issue wasn't really building enough RP but smoothing the damage so I don't get 2-shot by Harvesters in a small window. Rune Tap would have been amazing in Mythic Queen's Court, when you can't heal for 5 seconds but you're getting chunked by heavy white hits. Rune Tap is great for situations where you can't melee something to heal back up, etc. There's a lot of skill expression and agency that goes into Rune Tap which I feel the author hasn't addressed here, even if it appears to complicate the rune/RP economy a bit.

Essentially, the reality of PvE is that there will be several moments of downtime such that you're not pressed to perfectly manage your runes/RP, but rather you just need to survive burst damage.

If it was the same rune tap, I'd agree with you - rune tap is 50% stronger on live than it is on alpha. At that level it would both make a difference, and be cost-effective to use. At that kind of power level (30% DR vs 20% DR) I am 100% in agreement with you, and I would have listed it as a good change. It would have been a fantastic additional tool to handle mechanics (you mentioned QC, I'll give you another one - fetid).

A 20% DR rune tap is a different beast. It is much closer to the natural swing delta of most mobs (10%), for a start.

I should have highlighted the rune tap use on pull, though. That one is my bad, @Ardensolis1. It does not fundamentally change what happens after pull, but it is something I should've mentioned. I'll get the article edited.

Comment by Arkthugal

Here's my feedback: I don't have enough keybinds for them to add TEN new buttons to the spec.

Comment by Mandl

Here's my feedback: I don't have enough keybinds for them to add TEN new buttons to the spec.

Not all new buttons need to be bound to be easily accessible. Here's a small list:

Death Coil will likely not be something you bind. Right now, in terms of effective use, there really isn't any. Even though its base AP multiplier is slightly bigger than death strike, the spec aura ( Blood Death Knight ) has a +132% multiplier on death strike and not on coil. This invalidates all possible uses outside of torghast and/or ranged healing pot when you also don't have sacrificial pact up
Lichborne and Anti-Magic Zone will see some situational use and will therefore benefit from being accessible, likely on a modifier somewhere
Chains of Ice will rarely, if ever, see play outside of PvP
Blood Tap can be macroed into a bunch of other things. Assuming nothing changes, you'll macro it into marrowrend and, quite literally, be 95-99% of the way to optimal play with it (yes, this is a problem)
Raise Dead and Sacrificial Pact are valuable to have somewhere

The covenants you will likely pick are 2min cooldowns, and you're losing some abilities compared to BfA (essences in particular - if you played the right essences you lost either a 2min bind or a 30s 2-charge spell), so the main spell should not cause bloat. The utility/generic spell, however, likely will.

Comment by Schattensang

This is why, back then, we were advising blood death knights to never, if at all possible, engage Orgozoa first.

So... I guess I was one of the weird BDK to actually ENCOURAGE that I engage Gorgonzola, because it was far easier for me to gather the adds, than it was for our other tank. Granted, we didn't have any form of misdirect, so that didn't help at all. But it still was one of the more enjoyable bosses for me. I just like that dancing healthbar, also a reason why I chose BDK in the first place.

Crimson Rune Weapon ... the rune regen during DRW is a bait effect reminiscent of Lucid Dreams

Is that some kind of bug? Because the tooltip says, the bonus to rune regeneration will set in AFTER it fades. So you wouldn't want to go into DRW without runes, but rather go out of it without runes. Which is a far more reasonable playstyle anyway, to maximize rune usage while DRW is active.

Also concerning Vampiric Aura, I don't really see it as that useful for the group. Sure it's nice enough to give your Party (not your raid otherwise I would think differently about it) 15% more maxHP and 15% more healing received, but in all honesty, when your party needs an additional cooldown like that, you are usually running keys, that are borderline impossible to survive with the reactive playstyle BDK just has.

In all honesty, most of the legendary traits aren't that exciting for me. Gorefiends domination will help with getting Vampiric Blood as often as I have gotten used to in BFA, and the Crimson Rune Weapon is kinda interesting, but that's honestly still nothing I would call "exciting".

Totally on board with Ossuary being baseline. Just too much of a hazzle to NOT take.

Comment by Panthea

Comment by Schattensang

Why didnt you use crucible on 2 (or any aoe ability) and taunt one? Adds always spawned from the same directions. 2 on the right 1 on the left. Seems a bit odd to me.

Whilst it wasnt a death sentence to start on the boss. It wasnt optimal either as all other tanks had an easier time.

Thinking about what crucible was.

But I used Death Grip on the far add and Gorefiend's to get the other two adds. Also one of the main 'problems' was, that I was that stupidly dedicated tank, that farmed M+10 keys to fully prepare for raiding. So I pretty much outgeared the second tank by quite a lot. And our DPS were that weird bunch, that put add damage at way too high priority, so as soon as another bar popped up, it instantly got blasted, making it hard for the warrior to pick all of them up.

Comment by Sarthorius

Well, Blood Tanks will now have a 'pre-fight' use for Rune Taps at least. The very first hits of a fight on you can be very important for the longer term. If you charge in a pack of mobs without it (as in live) those white melee swings can screw you up pretty fast, before you build enough RP for DS. Most tanks have this 'issue', even Prot wars for example. DHs, on the other hand, can charge in with the spikes on, giving them 'time' to mitigate properly.

Those split-seconds of a beginning of each fight are important to every tank. RTap baseline and off GCD is better, even if nerfed, than nothing.

Always the GCD thing, and I bet is thing, the change on BfA (to all classes and specs), that is one of the worst changes, and I still don't see much change on that, in Shadowlands. So many spells and skills, overall, that 'shouldn't' be put in GCD...

Comment by verbsarewords

it leads to a bit of APM bloat

In particular, we are the only tank requiring up-close-and-personal access to a mob to be able to get our active mitigation up.

Wrong. Brewmasters are changed to work in the same manner for Shadowlands.

wrong. kegsmash.

Comment by verbsarewords

the only things, based on the reason why they added spells to the gcd, that should be on the gcd are combat cds. things like grip or heals or utility shouldnt be. i have a feeling we will see some of those be removed, but which and how many are unclear.