Blood Death Knight Feedback -- Build 21466 -- 13-Apr

Please feel free to reply to this thread with feedback you have on this specialization in the most recent version of the Legion Alpha.

You'll find class designer notes on this build here.

This thread and subforum are for class feedback. We may not be attentive to other threads on this subject. Please confine discussion in this thread to issues related to this spec only.

Thank you!

Hey Blood Death Knights. You may have noticed that Frost and Unholy got some significant revisions to their talents in today’s build. We were in the process of doing the same for Blood when today’s build was made, along with some baseline changes, and most of those changes didn’t make it in in time. Here’s a full list of what’s yet to come in the next build for Blood:

• Blood Strike removed.
• Heart Strike is now baseline for Blood. It hits 2 targets, generates 5 bonus RP, and snares. While in Death and Decay, it hits 5 targets.
• Blood Boil damage increased by 300% in order to let it function as snap aggro.
• Asphyxiate is now baseline for Blood.
  
• It also is no longer channeled, and now has a 45sec CD, down from 2min. (This part applies to Unholy’s as well.)
• Many talents have been changed. Here’s a full list of Blood talents and what’s changing with them:
  
• Level 56
  
• Bloodworms – Duration increased to 15sec.
• Heartbreaker – New: Passive. Heart Strike generates 2 additional Runic Power per target hit.
• Exsanguinate – Unchanged.
• Level 57
  
• Rapid Decomposition – Unchanged.
• Soulgorge – No longer replaces Blood Boil, but Blood Boil no longer applies Blood Plague.
• Spectral Deflection – Swapped from Level 58. Redesigned to: Attacks that deal more than 25% of your maximum health will consume a second Bone Shield charge to further reduce the damage.
• Level 58
  
• Ossuary – Swapped from Level 57. Now triggers at 5+ Bone Shield stacks, and also increases max Runic Power by 10.
• Blood Tap – New: Active. Generate 1 Rune. 2 charges, 1min recharge. Recharge time reduced by 1sec whenever a Bone Shield charge is consumed.
• Anti-Magic Barrier – Unchanged.
• Level 60
  
• Mark of Blood – Swapped from Level 90. Now costs 30 Runic Power, lasts 25sec, has no cooldown, only triggers from auto attacks, and application range increased to 15yd.
• Red Thirst – Swapped from 58.
• Tombstone – Unchanged.
• Level 75
  
• Tightening Grasp – Unchanged.
• Tremble Before Me – Now a fears the target in place, and only breaks on significant damage, like other fears.
• March of the Damned – Unchanged.
• Level 90
  
• Will of the Necropolis – Unchanged.
• Rune Tap – Swapped from 60. Redesigned to be similar to live: Active. Consume a Rune to reduce all damage taken by 25% for 3sec. 2 charges, 25sec recharge.
• Foul Bulwark – Unchanged.
• Level 100
  
• Bonestorm – No longer costs Runes. Now costs 10-100 Runic Power. Lasts 1sec per 10 Runic Power spent.
• Blood Mirror – Unchanged.
• Purgatory – Swapped from 60.

While you unfortunately won’t be able to play with these changes until the next build, we look forward to your feedback on them. Thanks!

04/13/2016 01:16 PMPosted by Tyvi

What exactly are your plans for Blood mobility, snare capabilities and immunities? Because the status quo is just terrible.

Wraith Walk for mobility, Heart Strike to snare, and no immunities (What immunities are you thinking of? IBF's stun immunity?), plus talented stronger snare, AoE fear, or CC-break.

Will Heart Strike be generating bonus RP per target hit?

Not baseline, that's the Heartbreaker talent.

Thank you! Depending on DnD for aoe damage felt awful and this plugs a hole in our toolkit. I'm assuming it's still 2 charges with no rune cost.

Correct.

So this is going to reduce the damage by an extra 20%? Multiplicative?

Additive. Attacked for 100, first charge reduces that to 80, second charge reduces it to 60.

Blood Tap is the preferred rune regeneration talent on live because of the degree of control it gives the Death Knight. Being able to bank a Death Strike for when you need it, or just being able to keep tighter control on runes in general without relying on RNG, made the talent great. Since Death Strike has a runic power cost now, is it possible that you'd consider making Blood Tap give runic power instead of a rune? Say 20 RP/charge? And is this version of Blood Tap off the GCD?

We tried it as RP, and found Runes to be much more versatile. We found that you'd generally rather have the option of which Rune ability, plus the RP ability with a GCD or two delay. (Giving you 1 rune is effectively giving you 10-15 RP as well, once you spend it)

This looks REALLY strong. Blood has traditionally struggled with auto attack damage disproportionately to the amount we've struggled with boss abilities, but I think this might be too much. 100% uptime on an 8% hp heal per melee swing is kind of crazy. 3 minutes was too long of a CD but 0 CD is too little. I'd suggest putting it on a 1 min CD and make it cost a rune instead of RP.

The Heal % will be tuned. Probably halved, or more, since you can keep it up more often. We think it works well as an alternative RP spender.

Part of me is saying THANK GOD, because Blood really needed a way to pass AM checks without misusing Death Strike. But this talent is far and away the strongest of the tier, and significantly devalues Tombstone. Tombstone was going to be our answer to large, predictable bursts of damage but if we have Rune Tap we probably won't need to exchange bone shield charges for an absorb, and can take Mark of Blood for a much larger benefit overall.

Is there any way we can roll Tombstone and Rune Tap into one talent? Maybe take Rune Tap, decrease the base damage reduction and the cost to 0, and allow it to consume Bone Shield charges for increments of damage reduction up to a certain cap? Something like 1 charge for 10%, 2 charges for 20%, etc?

This sounds like tuning feedback; we'll get to tuning. Tombstone and Rune Tap are somewhat similar, but their frequency is intentionally rather different, as is how you setup to use them.

04/13/2016 01:50 PMPosted by Breathìng

No hope for that one iteration of Bonestorm that worked off of consuming Runic Power for uptime the same way Breath of Sindragosa does on live? It's a fun mechanic that's only going to be more fun with the elimination of RNG in our runic power generation.

Also, the tooltip for this ability is a bit unclear; if Bonestorm hits multiple targets, is it intended to heal us for each target hit? So a 5 second Bonestorm heals us for 5% of our HP if it only hits one target, but 10% for 2 targets hit and 15% for 3 etc. or is it going to be that a Bonestorm will always heal for 1% of max HP/second?

We'd like to leave the 'continuously drain RP until you run out' mechanic to Breath of Sindragosa on DKs. Yes, multiple targets causes multiple heals per sec. It's good for self-healing when there are multiple enemies.

04/13/2016 02:02 PMPosted by Jokre

Purgatory will still be mandatory for progress on any boss that threatens the tanks

Purgatory being considered 'mandatory' to some is always interesting to us, since it doesn't actually reduce the healing you need, while its competitors do. It's quite likely that if you took one of the competing talents, you'd never need Purgatory, and would need less external healing.