As we venture to Amirdrassil and tackle Fyrakk, Blood Death Knights will be able to gather a new set bonus, with a brand new set of interactions and a couple of interesting playstyle changes. Today, I'll attempt to break down the impact of this set. It's not all blue skies and rainbows, but there is a significant salvageable core to this set; it is also the first time in Dragonflight that a Blood set manages to shake talents up, and we'll cover this in detail.
The Set
灰烬腐朽 can currently be extended to a maximum of 10.4 seconds (30% of its duration as a bonus, the standard pandemic mechanism for debuffs).
We have already
extensively covered why tier sets relying on
白骨之盾 charge loss are impossible to balance (and lackluster, gimmicky, and jarring as a player due to the inability to interact with
白骨之盾 short of showing your back or relying on a single use of
墓石 once per minute) when the Vault of the Incarnates set was showcased. The 2-piece relies entirely on this, which is disappointing, to say the least.
The proc chance appears to be either in the 10-15% range, or 2ppm; as we get more data, we'll figure out the exact details.
墓石 appears to have a 50% chance to trigger the effect, making it pretty consistent with being a 10% chance. Needless to say, this effect is boring, and actually harmful for reasons we'll cover in detail as we discuss the implications of the set on gameplay.
On the other hand, the 4-piece is interesting. It is both the first time we get a set that interacts directly with the use of a capstone talent (two of them, in fact!), and it stands on its own as a unique set bonus. This set effect is dynamic, interesting, is purely driven by the player's actions instead of being a boring proc, and actually encourages players to change both playstyle, priorities, and talent builds.
Gameplay Implications
The Elephant in the Room: The 2-Piece Bonus
The 2-piece bonus is probably the biggest letdown of the expansion in terms of set design for Blood Death Knight. Rotationally, it is extremely gimmicky, as it manages to tie every single negative element of a proc all at once together: it is a reactive proc with a short duration tied to a filler spell (
心脏打击) that can reliably hit only a fixed amount of targets (2 or 5 depending on whether you get a proc while
枯萎凋零 is on the floor) that itself is tied to an event completely outside of your control: a boss successfully meleeing you and you losing a charge of
白骨之盾. The proc chance itself is ludicrously small, the effect is tiny, the magnitude of the buff is tiny, the conditions of application with the 2-piece bonus are ludicrously finicky, and it has every problem debuffs like
烈火烙印 have defensively.
This is made even worse by how other abilities also apply this debuff with a massively higher uptime potential than this 2-piece, and cause you to often waste precious procs of
Death Knight Blood 10.2 Class Set 2pc (such as on the opener when playing
憎恶附肢. It is a net loss to delay
墓石 in order to gamble at a 50% chance for more
灰烬腐朽 uptime... but it sure looks appealing, doesn't it?).
A couple of changes slipped past during the 10.1 patch and buffed the damage
灵魂收割 does when copied by
符文刃舞. In 10.2,
灵魂收割 gets buffed by a further 20%; while this was listed as an Unholy-specific buff on the patch notes, its implementation as a direct buff to
灵魂收割 outside of spec choice is
fantastic, as both Blood and Frost were struggling to justify picking
灵魂收割 outside of super niche scenarios.
Our tier set seems to be intended to whammy on this even more by essentially guaranteeing 100% uptime on
灰烬腐朽 in execute. As
灰烬腐朽 has a default 8 second duration, and
灵魂收割 has a 6 second cooldown, you can very reliably get 100% uptime on a single target just by hitting
灵魂收割 on cooldown - which you should be doing if you pick the talent anyway!
The fun part is when multiple targets are close together and in execute at the same time. We will know closer to raid testing if the raid features encounters that do so. If there is such a fight, it is possible to maintain
灰烬腐朽 at 100% uptime on 3 targets by tab-targetting
灵魂收割 between targets, and letting your
心脏打击 and
血液沸腾 passively extend them with no real constraint or rotational change outside of keeping track of which
灰烬腐朽 needs to be refreshed next.
If you decide to play
灵魂收割 in an environment with more than one target, we strongly recommend that you bind
灵魂收割 as a mouseover ability rather than a target-cast ability. The reason for this is that you will very frequently juggle casts between targets (every 5-10 seconds depending on resources), and as this is the only cast you need to actively alternate targets for, it is easier to just bind it so you can cast it on a nearby target without having to select that target.
You absolutely should enable an execute target health tracker module on Plater if you use Plater. If you don't, find a way to easily find out which targets are below 35%.
This is where things get potentially unintended, potentially very fun, and potentially very
unfun yet once more for the 2-piece bonus. Each and every single tick of
憎恶附肢 refreshes
Death Knight Blood 10.2 Class Set 2pc, and pandemics if it possible (up to a maximum of 10.4 seconds). This means that, even if you do absolutely nothing during
憎恶附肢, for
22.4 seconds, you are guaranteed to have
灰烬腐朽 on all targets nearby before you even consider the extensions from casting
血液沸腾 or
心脏打击 (which you absolutely will do). In real world testing, this means easily upwards of 50 seconds of continuous
灰烬腐朽 from a single
憎恶附肢 cast on all targets as long as you do not have more than 5 targets engaged.
Once six or more targets are engaged (or if your management of
枯萎凋零 or your runes needs improvement), things get progressively less fun, as
心脏打击 is target-capped to strictly 5 targets. As our brand new 4 piece's refresh/extension mechanism works off both
血液沸腾 and
心脏打击, in this situation, each
血液沸腾 will extend all
Death Knight Blood 10.2 Class Set 2pc debuffs (which are currently on all targets thanks to
憎恶附肢), while
心脏打击 will only extend
灰烬腐朽 on the 5 (or 2 if you weren't in
枯萎凋零) targets hit by
心脏打击.
As a result, we strongly recommend two UI changes if you play this tier set in Mythic+, as some dungeons have an exceedingly large number of high density pulls (Waycrest in particular). Now is the perfect time to clean up your Plater profile, or to set up Plater. Make sure that:
- 血之疫病 is only visible once (not at all is also an option once you are familiar with your rotation, as you do not interact with 血之疫病 directly in any way, shape or form) instead of the 1-3 copies you get depending on whether 血液沸腾 was cast during 符文刃舞
- Unnecessary/passive debuffs are not visible on your target
- You are able to track 灰烬腐朽 on enemies, and be able to quickly discern copies of 灰烬腐朽 needing to be extended slightly compared to others in large pulls. The best way to do this is to push this debuff as the highest possible priority on nameplates and to make it bigger than the rest
Build Choices
The choices and trade-offs you were used to on the Blood tree do not change much;
活力分流 once again gains a bit of power, but not enough to mandate it as a default choice, especially considering its significantly higher skill cap.
Instead, we'll focus on the class tree, where all the fun decisions will happen.
Single Target
We chose to highlight the build variant without
活力分流, as it forces a non-trivial utility choice. This choice is better explained in depth on the upcoming talents page for 10.2. There are two options for this - you can play what you played in 10.1.5 with
死亡回响, or you can gamble on a significantly higher skill cap variant without it for a
relatively minor gain (this can be optimized further on APL in favor of not playing
死亡回响 - it's just a conservative minimum).
The set gameplay is very simple and does not change from 10.1 if you played a build with
灵魂收割 already. Below 35%, your goal is to always keep a rune ready to never delay casting
灵魂收割 while using
灵界打击 at least once every 8 seconds. It sounds easy, but the reduced runic power gained by sending a rune every 6 seconds into
灵魂收割 complicates matters significantly.
Closer to 10.2, the rotation page will be fully updated with an in-depth single- and multi-target priority list for execute phases.
2-4 Targets
This is where the fun begins. You now have two
more options in addition to being able to forsake
死亡回响: you can forsake
符文武器增效 in order to pick
灵魂收割 and
憎恶附肢 simultaneously.
This is a net gain on 2-4 targets with varying value. The goal is effectively to gain 40-50 seconds of
灰烬腐朽 uptime on all targets with
憎恶附肢, while sniping execute targets with
灵魂收割 whenever possible in order to maintain 100% uptime on
灰烬腐朽 on anything that has reached execute range near you.
We defaulted to the options with
死亡回响 for simplicity - you can easily drop it and put the point elsewhere.
For completeness, the
灵魂收割+
憎恶附肢 variant is currently ahead defensively and offensively in these situations, but this is only when played optimally and with some basic assumptions (long-ish fights for a decent opportunity for
灵魂收割, basically). Again - when 10.2 is released and the guides get fully updated for it, I will walk you through all of these choices in a lot more detail.
More Than 4 targets
Above four targets, it is absolutely advised not to pick
灵魂收割 unless you have a significant opportunity to leverage it (such as a damage amp phase on a priority target, or most other targets being pad). As such, we simply default back to the build you were playing in 10.1, with
符文武器增效 and
憎恶附肢 as capstones.
Verdict & Closing Thoughts
Mechanically, the 4-piece is a success. It is by far the most interesting element of this set, and warrants keeping. It is mechanically interesting, promotes build diversity, actively encourages proper play and rewards you - albeit very weakly - for it.
The 2-piece, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. It is the literal culmination of everything you should not do when designing a set bonus. On the upside, the proc chance is low enough that you likely will not notice the difference if another boss like Rashok shows up, as you will literally not be losing
白骨之盾 charges anyway.
In terms of raw power compared to Aberrus, this set needs a lot of love to be something worth caring about, as it is significantly weaker than our Aberrus set defensively, while also being much more restrictive.
吸血鬼之血 had no damage source conditions, especially not when the application is strictly capped at 5 targets or on a 2min cycle.
吸血鬼之血 procs were also ~4x stronger in magnitude defensively than
灰烬腐朽 (if you assume that the damage is sourced properly from a target you can apply
灰烬腐朽 to and that it is currently applied), and while you
can keep a single proc of
灰烬腐朽 from the 2-piece rolling for upwards of 20 seconds with near-perfect play, you are neither guaranteed to get a proc when you want it, nor be able to spend it, and its defensive impact (10% damage reduction on damage sourced to the target it applied to) is weaker than any of our cooldowns.
Probably the most jarring feeling about this entire set is that, barring two technicalities (the 2-piece and 4-piece bonuses applying the same debuff), it feels like the two effects were designed independently, or the 2-piece bonus was designed as an afterthought. It, in turn, punishes players who play around
灰烬腐朽 copies applied by
灵魂收割 and
憎恶附肢, since the procs they get while
灰烬腐朽 is already on target will either go to waste due to the debuff being capped at such a low duration, or contribute in a very minor fashion to a trifling amount of additional uptime on
灰烬腐朽.
So, yeah.
灰烬腐朽 is weak, the 2-piece is jarring and punishes players who play around the 4-piece properly, and this set feels rushed and disjointed. The 4-piece is really nice, though - please keep that part!