Blood Death Knight Hero Talent Showdown in The War Within - Deathbringer vs. San'layn

The War Within Posted 2024/08/18 at 11:37 AM by Mandl

Not sure what Hero Talents to play for your spec in The War Within? Check out all the released articles in the 'Hero Talent Showdown' series:
Hero Talent Showdowns in The War Within
Blood DK
Frost DK
Unholy DK
Havoc DH
Vengeance DH
Balance Druid

Feral Druid
Guardian Druid
Restoration Druid
Augmentation Evoker
Devastation Evoker
Preservation Evoker
Beast Mastery Hunter
Marksmanship Hunter
Survival Hunter
Arcane Mage
Fire Mage
Frost Mage
Brewmaster Monk
Mistweaver Monk
Windwalker Monk
Holy Paladin
Protection Paladin
Retribution Paladin
Discipline Priest
Holy Priest
Shadow Priest
Assassination Rogue
Outlaw Rogue
Subtlety Rogue
Elemental Shaman
Enhancement Shaman
Restoration Shaman
Affliction Warlock
Demonology Warlock
Destruction Warlock
Arms Warrior
Fury Warrior
Protection Warrior

For more information on Hero Talents coming in the War Within, check out our Hero Talents Overview.

The War Within Hero Talents Overview

Visceral RegenerationIncite TerrorBlood Death Knight in the War WithinSan'laynVampiric BloodDeathbringerReaper's Markraw damageHero Talent Showdown: San'layn vs. Deathbringer San'layn

Strengths

Weaknesses

San'laynEssence of the Blood QueenVampiric StrikesometimesDeath StrikeGift of the San'laynVampiric StrikeHeart StrikeVampiric BloodVampiric StrikeEssence of the Blood QueenVampiric BloodEssence of the Blood QueenVampiric BloodVampiric StrikeBlood-Soaked Ground Deathbringer

Strengths

Weaknesses

DeathbringerReaper's MarkMarrowrendReaper's Mark

Death's Messenger reduces the cooldown of Lichborne by 25%

Each rune spent and regenerated (either passively or through spells such as Consumption) grant a total of 10% damage reduction against all types of damage thanks to Rune Carved Plates. This is riddled with bugs, which we will talk about later, but you can play around almost every single one of the bugs.

When Reaper's Mark detonates, Soul Rupture causes all enemies near the marked target to deal 5% reduced physical damage to you for 10 seconds

The last and arguably the most interesting defensive value is Wither Away, which causes Blood Plague to tick every 1.5s instead of every 3 seconds.

What's Changed? San'laynlast reviewed itEssence of the Blood QueenVampiric BloodInfliction of Sorrowcompletely redesignedDeath and DecayVampiric StrikeEssence of the Blood QueenVampiric BloodVampiric BloodsignificantVampiric BloodGift of the San'laynVampiric BloodVampiric StrikeEssence of the Blood QueenVampiric BloodVampiric BloodsomeVampiric StrikeConsumptionVampiric BloodInfliction of SorrowVampiric BloodVampiric BloodEssence of the Blood Queenseven GCDs inside Vampiric BloodEssence of the Blood QueenVampiric StrikeEssence of the Blood QueenVampiric Bloodpunishes youEssence of the Blood QueenVampiric StrikeVampiric Blood3%1%Essence of the Blood QueenVampiric Strike

It cleaves outside of Death and Decay, and cleaves five while Death and Decay is active, but Dancing Rune Weapon copies do not cleave at all

Vampiric Strike is shadow damage. This means that Bloodshot does not affect it, but unless you specifically did not talent into it, you lost almost nothing - the AP value on Vampiric Strike and Heart Strike are virtually identical, and the armor coefficient/loss on most enemies is 30% while Bloodshot is 25%

Deathbringerlast time I reviewed this treeReaper's MarkReaper's MarkSwift EndPainful DeathSwift EndReaper's MarkPainful DeathSwift EndReaper's MarkReaper's MarkSwift End1.5ExterminatethreeReaper's MarkSwift EndAnd the Winner Is...

Class Fantasy & Visuals: Deathbringer (Winner)

This isn't very difficult, San'layn doesn't have any. Vampiric Strike uses the Condemn animation and The Blood is Life's spawned Blood Beasts are recycled Underrot models.

Fun & Rewarding Gameplay: Deathbringer (Winner)
Deathbringer lets you decide, on your own terms, how to spend your resources and cooldowns. It rewards you for it and actively encourages you to make healthy decisions around every element of your kit and every resource.

San'layn, on the other hand, robs you of flexibility around Vampiric Blood, actively punishes you extremely heavily for holding it, locks down your talents, locks down your resources and forces you to arbitrarily ignore certain resources at different points in the rotation, all this for very little benefit.

Difficulty: San'layn & Deathbringer (Tie)

The difficulty increase is there for both Hero talents, but happens at different points. San'layn actively forces you to enter and exit Vampiric Blood at relatively fixed times and punishes you for failing to set these windows up. Meanwhile, Deathbringer actively adds an additional spell every 45 seconds, which also has a small amount of set-up tied to it. The set-up around Reaper's Mark has the potential to trip new players way more than expert players, however, since it is tied to Death and Decay (the second biggest contributor to Reaper's Mark stacks).

The difficulty spike is the highest on the opener for both Hero Talents; while Deathbringer get to juggle yet another setup button on their opener, San'layn players are strongly encouraged to cast Vampiric Blood right after Tombstone and Bonestorm have been cast and to, literally, just spam Vampiric Strike, using Death Strike only to keep Coagulopathy rolling.

Defensiveness & Utility: Deathbringer (Winner)

Very simple, really: 10% reduction to all damage taken + 5% phys after Reaper's Mark detonates + 30s reduction on Lichborne + 100% bonus healing from Blood Plague vs. 5% physical DR and the meager self-healing from Vampiric Strike (which got cut by 2/3 during beta)

Leveling: Deathbringer (Winner)

Once again, very simple: Deathbringer's only condition is one mob lasting 12 seconds every 45 seconds. If you have more than one mob, as long as one is left alive, Reaper's Mark will happily jump to it if your marked target dies before detonation. Exterminate's buff does not even have a duration, meaning that you can change zones entirely with it if you so desire.

With San'layn, until level 75 at the earliest (when you unlock Gift of the San'layn), the entire tree may as well not exist. Every level thereafter, every moment you hand in a quest, change area, idle for a bit, run out of mobs, run out of things to do and cannot cast Vampiric Blood or Vampiric Strike to refresh Essence of the Blood Queen? Game over, you get to rebuild your stacks from scratch. Infliction of Sorrow is also particularly underwhelming when levelling, and the proc-on-a-proc gameplay of The Blood is Life means that you often spawn blood beasts that explode on thin air.

Mythic+: Deathbringer (Winner)

For all of the reasons stated in this article, Deathbringer is the net winner here. Flexibility, a well-rounded toolkit and a set of talents that empowers you instead of locking you down makes it a very clear winner for Mythic+. Probably the easiest solution to making San'layn less problematic in Mythic+ would be to "freeze" Essence of the Blood Queen's remaining duration while out of combat, but on the whole, the entire hero talent tree needs a second look.

Raid: San'layn & Deathbringer (Tie)

...Or, more specifically, it will boil down to numbers. Neither Deathbringer nor San'layn offers a particular mechanical edge when it comes to raiding, and most of the weaknesses of San'layn apply significantly more to Mythic+ than to raiding. Drastic loss of uptime at the wrong moment can obliterate San'layn's performance, but this has to be evaluated on a fight-per-fight basis.

Parses will be determined by Deathbringer players successfully highrolling additional Reaper's Mark marks thanks to Painful Death, but this will be wildly inconsistent. Consistent damage, something which matters a lot more on progression, could see either San'layn or Deathbringer at the top. Right now, this is Deathbringer, but a single tuning pass could upend this.

Best Overall: Deathbringer (Winner)

With much regret, I cannot offer a solution to "fix" San'layn without fundamentally overhauling at least half of the tree. It provides restrictions where Deathbringer provides flexibility, weakness where Deathbringer provides resilience, and punishment where Deathbringer simply allows you to start over afresh 45 seconds later without holding any grudges against you for screwing up. The issues are not related to tuning, and would actually be magnified with tuning. Making San'layn oppressive numerically like it was on early beta would only make things worse, as it would pigeonhole players by punishing them even further instead of fixing the underlying issue: restrictive design.

Hero Talent Feedback San'laynextremeEssence of the Blood QueenEssence of the Blood QueenDancing Rune WeaponVampiric Striketwiceunholyblood DeathbringerReaper's Mark

Reaper's Mark's sub 35% auto-explosion is both actively harmful in terms of damage and unpredictable rotationally, as it actively robs you of potential stacks you would have gotten had it not exploded. It makes no sense from a gameplay perspective, interacts negatively with the entire rest of the kit and likely could do with being removed outright. Even its immediate sibling effect, which causes a mark to travel to a nearby enemy, clashes with it

Rune Carved Plates's implementation is extremely convoluted and requires death knights to not immediately spend their runes. The trigger effect that checks if you have gained or lost a rune triggers when you deal or receive damage, or get healed, and it does so by checking whether your available rune count is equal to the last value it registered. As such, it is possible to completely miss on two stacks of this by pressing Heart Strike immediately after gaining a rune, as seen here. As its duration is very short (5 seconds), this can be the difference between keeping both debuffs at 5 stacks or losing both debuff stacks entirely. If you cannot reimplement this to trigger off rune gains themselves, consider doubling the duration of the buffs to allow players to recover from this

The behavior of Painful Death is also buggy and actually bugged positively. Instead of providing two Exterminate stacks, reducing the cost of Marrowrend by 1 Rune each, it instead grants one stack of Exterminate that then re-applies as Exterminate (1 Rune cost - 50% reduction). This is yet another massive advantage in favor of Painful Death, and while it actually adds depth (the first Marrowrend gets used immediately, the second gets used during a gap in Death and Decay and while Dancing Rune Weapon isn't up), it feels like it just adds even more power on top of an already impressively unbalanced choice node.

Base Blood Death Knight Gameplay & TalentslotMarrowrendExterminateExterminateDancing Rune WeaponReaper's MarkExterminateVampiric BloodVampiric BloodVampiric BloodShould You Play Blood Death Knight in the War Within?enjoyableCatalystAcherus Death Knight communityHero Talent Guides for the War Within Launch

Blood DKFrost DKUnholy DK

Havoc DHVengeance DH

Balance DruidFeral DruidGuardian DruidRestoration Druid

Aug EvokerDevastation EvokerPreservation Evoker

BM HunterMM HunterSurvival Hunter

Arcane MageFire MageFrost Mage

Brewmaster MonkMistweaver MonkWindwalker Monk

Holy PaladinProtection PaladinRetribution Paladin

Discipline PriestHoly PriestShadow Priest

Assassination RogueOutlaw RogueSubtlety Rogue

Elemental ShamanEnhance ShamanRestoration Shaman

Affliction WarlockDemo WarlockDestro Warlock

Arms WarriorFury WarriorProtection Warrior

Comment by DaemerThis is a shame, I really hope San'layn receives buffsComment by ThePrefessionalI wanted to like San'layn, as it seems like a mini bloodlust with the haste buff. But the NUMBAS with Deathbringer are so satisfying!Comment by MagmyWith how San'layn ended up, I wish Blizzard would have scrapped it entirely. They should have made Riders of the Apocalypse the Blood/Unholy tree and had it be the passive hero tree option. Frost/Unholy should have received a tree that revolved around an ability to summon a Frostwyrm guardian for Frost players looking for a pet option.Comment by KestevavildSurprise, surprise.

Every Hero Talent Tree review finds out that the _main_ feature of this expansion, ~75% of the Hero Talents are completely unusable mess, like it was designed by people who started MMORPGs 3 months ago. It's deeply worrying what's happening in the current development team. Why is Ian Hazzikostas not fired yet? What's going on?

This company will go bankrupt in the next ~4 years, you can screenshot this comment, Microsoft will merge Blizzard name and IPs into their own company, because Blizz can't make quality products anymore.

This is not my opinion, this is factual observation.Comment by AsherrTheRedThe Wowhead picture makes me miss swarming mistComment by Concernedthese are all so goofy.Comment by nanito14Why not release all the guides. I bet the one I main will be last one and when I'm already level 80.Comment by SnowyjoeWhat are those wings from the header picture?Comment by astleyt07With how San'layn ended up, I wish Blizzard would have scrapped it entirely. They should have made Riders of the Apocalypse the Blood/Unholy tree and had it be the passive hero tree option. Frost/Unholy should have received a tree that revolved around an ability to summon a Frostwyrm guardian for Frost players looking for a pet option.Comment by DrakknfyreSurprise, surprise.

Every Hero Talent Tree review finds out that the _main_ feature of this expansion, ~75% of the Hero Talents are completely unusable mess, like it was designed by people who started MMORPGs 3 months ago. It's deeply worrying what's happening in the current development team. Why is Ian Hazzikostas not fired yet? What's going on?

This company will go bankrupt in the next ~4 years, you can screenshot this comment, Microsoft will merge Blizzard name and IPs into their own company, because Blizz can't make quality products anymore.

This is not my opinion, this is factual observation.Comment by Cycore21955Unfortunate that San'layn releases in the current state but alas the beta cycle was too short once again to deliver a finished expansion feature. A good half of the Hero talents are woefully unfinished and needed more time in the oven. Here is to hoping that Blizzard will iterate and rework Hero talents over the coming .5 and .7 patches so we can eventually enjoy fun and thematic San'layn gameplay for Blood.Comment by ToneriPlease release the guide for Unholy !Comment by MandlWhat are those wings from the header picture?Screaming Black DragonscaleComment by rarehunter122This is a shame, I really hope San'layn receives buffsComment by Jakohonestly even though Deathbringer is jsut the all around better hero talent, i feel like im still going to play San'layn and somehow make it work just because everyone is deathbringer and show people it works lmaoComment by SnowyjoeWhat are those wings from the header picture?Screaming Black DragonscaleComment by melasomaBeing forced to use Weakuaras to be reminded of perfect timing sucks. Shame to dump San'layn like that.Comment by selkie47This really brings to light how much we NEED new animations. Sanlayn COULD be super flashy and amazing but without new graphics, it sounds boring no matter what the talents bring to the table.Comment by WizeGuyWoWSurprise, surprise.

Every Hero Talent Tree review finds out that the _main_ feature of this expansion, ~75% of the Hero Talents are completely unusable mess, like it was designed by people who started MMORPGs 3 months ago. It's deeply worrying what's happening in the current development team. Why is Ian Hazzikostas not fired yet? What's going on?

This company will go bankrupt in the next ~4 years, you can screenshot this comment, Microsoft will merge Blizzard name and IPs into their own company, because Blizz can't make quality products anymore.

This is not my opinion, this is factual observation.Comment by Kestevavild

It is LITERALLY your opinion and it is wrong.https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2492858-By-the-numbers-Ion-Hazzikostas-is-the-worst-game-director-in-MMO-history