Hi. Ty for the guide. One question, in what way a reversal of tombstone where it consume RP can help with mitigation on first-time pull as we don't have RP at this time (except in scenario where we can pre stack PR witch is not always doable). Also what are your thoughts about bonestorm+swarming mist ? I tested in on alpha and it feel really strong both defensily and offensivly when dealing with 5+ mobs. Them sharing the same 1m cooldown make this combo prety interesting imo. Ty
Great write up as always, Mandl!
Solid thoughts here, I mentioned how terrible the Frost/Blood changes have been in another post which got some traction.Blood needs to be reset back to how it was in mop, the spec hasn't been fun since mop/wod, but in mop it was its strongest. (It was just busted because of Vengeance/Revenge.) I'm sure they could tune it properly now if they just gave us it back, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that actually enjoys BFA blood dk to an extent that would take it over how it used to be.That said I could see if people liked Legion blood, though, as someone who mained frost/blood for 8 years, Legion blood was "meh" even though it had all the things it was reworked around (Artifact traits) DH suffers from this same effect, as does spriest and firemage. Though, there are plenty of other classes lacking after Legion too.
Ty for answering Mandl
Bone shield is boring to play with all around. It's not "active" mitigation. It's passive mitigation you keep up throughout a fight. I get that it's unique compared to the other tank specs, but it's so boring. Maybe instead you build charges through Marrowrend and you spend charges on Bone Shield so it's actually an active system? I guess that would feel like paladin holy power, but since DKs are the undead equivalent of paladins it would make sense that they had a similar system. Then Tombstone could stay as it is, because you could choose to spend your charges on mitigation or a shield, kind of like warriors choosing between Shield Block or Ignore Pain. I'd also add a passive out-of-combat regeneration to charges--"You recover up to 3 charges while out of combat"--so you can spend them on pull.
Bone Shield isn't our active mitigation though, Death Strike is. However, making say Death's Caress give you like 3 stacks of Bone Shield if used at a certain range would help combat the issue of starting a fight without any stacks.
Played a DK through MoP, Legion, and BfA. I'm honestly perfectly fine with there being no major changes to Blood DK for now since any change be it good or bad is only gonna harm it. Sometimes a spec is just fine with what it used to be and doesn't need any game-breaking changes unless the player base found the playstyle boring. I'm fine with Rune Tap making a return since it was useful during the days of MoP when you had to deal with different colored runes and needed all your runes back up again. Anti-Magic Zone is great to have and Raise Ghoul can be interesting in certain scenarios.I will agree that Ossaury should be practically part of the Blood DK's kit at this point, but then it would come to the trouble of finding new talents to replace it. The only thing that confuses me is what a Blood DK can do with Summon Gargoyle since that too is a baseline. A damage cooldown? ...Seems excessive since we have Dancing Rune Blade.
i'll never understand why classes have weak talents that stay for literally years with no buffs. I can't remember taking tombstone as a talent in any expansion, there was always something better than it, i am not sure.when you pick a talent you shouldn't have to decide between the least worst one
Would it not make more sense for Death's Caress to give a stack of Bone shield, rather then Marrowrend be ranged?
Removed
I gotta say, I don't think blood DK's need many changes, but the ones they announced seem pretty good. I'm still holding out hope that they'll replace death coil with a 'summon dead' RP dump for Unholy....
They need to make Wraith Walk Baseline again
Blizz: *Removes bloat from specs, i.e. pruning.*The players: We want our bloat back!Blizz: *Bloat restored.*The players: I don't want more buttons! Give it to me as a passive!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.