Hi guys,
I’d like to present you my current BDK perspective : what is cool, what do I like about playing BDK, and what’s terrible and I wish it never existed. This season, I’ve reached 3600 rio (which is 5x 18 and 3x 17 keys). I didn’t stop because I though it was my personnal skill ceiling, time, lazyness or because I play BDK, but mostly because passing a certain key level, BDK becomes very frustrating (but I’ll talk about this later). On the other hand, I’m 8/8M so far despite my BDK not being my raid main character. Tanking is rarely fun in raid, even in mythic, but it’s not really the main topic here. I played BDK since day one this season, farmed 2/8M every week and got a full mythic vault too. I started to play BDK during S1 dragonflight and never really stopped since then, so if you refer to me to past BDK things, I will not really be able to see what you mean.
First thing first : what is cool with BDK
As I said, I never stopped playing BDK since DF S1 and there is a very good reason for this. No class is really close to the dopamines this spec has to offer. You literally play with death, the feeling you have when you see your health bar drop low and instantly get back to full is really amazing. Having a “timing” spec where your rotation is based on anticipating damage and fast react to it is really cool and entertaining. Also, I’m generally a big fan of “difficult” gameplay. I draw satisfaction from climbing a difficult step, learning something complex, and it’s imo a part of why I love BDK and disc priest aswell. I really think BDK is a difficult spec to master (in M+ and maybe early tier mythic raiding), if not the hardest tank in the game to perfectly play. Moreover, back in DF before global tank nerfs, BDK used to be able to stay alive 100% by himself, which was really satisfying. It is not completely true nowadays but I’ll come back to it later. Theme-wise, BDK is also very cool. I love vampire, blood, and death aesthetic, and being able to play a spec around those themes feels really nice to me, although BDK lakes a LOT of visual animation. (modifié)
Quickly “popular” opinions
The main goal of this topic is pretty much sharing my unpopular opinions and personal takes, or at least unpopular to me. So I’m gonna start by quickly talking about things I think are already popular or obvious to me :
- Please bring Abomination Limb back, this spell is very valuable in BDK especially when it gives free bone shield when gathering a pack
- Give us back a way to stack boneshield before a M+ key starts, it’s a nightmare to hit mobs at an exact timing before the key starts just to get a default bone shield when none of the other tanks require to do that
- Why are Bonestorm and Tombstone “DRW cooldown reduction” buttons and not a correct spell with a decent impact ? As a comparaison point, Exploding Keg is a brewmaster 1 minute CD and is perfectly fine dps-wise, while changing a little your gameplay and having a real defensive value. Pressing Exploding Keg feels good. Bonestorm is far from that and Tombstone is a “sometimes defensive button” in high keys on very specific boss. These are just mandatory DRW CDR buttons and it’s really sad, especially when DRW is litteraly everything for San’layn. Almost every tank dispose of a 1min + 2min offensive cooldown, such as Fiery brand + Meta, Avenging wrath + Divine tol or Exploding keg + Weapon of order. BDK doesn’t answer this archetype (which is not necesserly bad) but has 1 very weak 1min (Bonestorm) and 1 nuclear bazooka (Dancing Rune Weapon) every minute-ish with CDR. It is weird.
- The talent tree is very, very unbalanced. Some nodes are completely broken when others have simply close to no effect at all. I could write an essay about this, but things like 10% haste on boneshield, insane CDR on Vampiric Blood, Purgatory are mandatory and are in anoying spots in the tree. You can add that 3 points for a good offensive cooldown (DRW) is maybe a lot to pay. On the other end you have Relish in blood, Blood feast, Leeching strike, totally dead nodes that have no impact on BDK whatsoever. And last but not least, why is Rune tap such a bad spell to press. I think timing a very short duration defensive is something interesting, rewarding good timing and encounter knowledge, but why is it one talent point and why does it cost a rune ? And finally, why is it this niche ? You can pretty much already have a decent defensive rotation, with AMS, Vampiric blood, Licheborn, IBFortitude and even sometimes Tombstone. It has no space to live in our current state, or very very niche (aka only Mythic Gallywix this tier for me).
- AMZ uncap for raid is great, but it’s a nerf in M+ content. Adding to the Abom Limb loss, I am really struggling to see a good reason to bring a BDK to an M+ content in S3. Our competition (other tanks) have utility in every situation, when the BDK ones are very niche AND will get nerfed. AMZ is sometimes useless (like Arakara), as well as our grab. Other tanks have 3% vers buff (useful anywhere), externals and healing help (useful anywhere), magic or physical damage buff (useful anywhere), etc… and this feels very unfair. I’d like to have a real utility as BDK, in any content I do something like a RAID BUFF, and/or absorb I could put on an ally using PR, and/or a way to heal my friends, idk.
Alright, let’s start the cook
Our pull-making potential is the worst of the game
Every season, I play another tank as an alt so I can have a comparaison point between BDK and what other tanks can do. I played Brewmaster, Vengeance and Pal prot so far, and with some digging on Guardian and War prot, I can tell that gathering 3 or 4 mob packs in M+ to create a pig pull is a nightmare in BDK. The only other tank that has difficulties about it could arguably be guardian, but it’s about threat generation which is not what I’m talking about.
BDK has no mid/long range AoE spells that allow you to efficiently generate threat into a mob pack while going into the next one, things like Throw glaives + Sigils, Keg smash or Avenger’s shield for example. All our options to long-range targeting are bad. The choices you make when gathering a pull are very important because you have 1 or maybe 2 GCD to send per mob pack before going into the next one.
- At mid/long range, you can either grab or Death caress but both are one target, which is bad. You can DRW or DnD too, but it’s suboptimal for DPS, survivability, and even dangerous in some scenarios.
- At short range, you will take melees when arriving into a pack. Thus, you have to choose between Death strike to survive (and 1 target), Heartstrike if you are low PR (2 targets or require DnD which is bad as I said), or sending a Blood boil. This last option remains the main go-to as Blood boil is our main threat generator.
The problem with 1-target spells for gathering is you have to ask your DPS to just afk few seconds to not get aggro from the mobs you didn’t hit, when other tanks can tell your dots dps specs to start doting because they have better gathering tools. It is unfair, not mentioning how it is safer to pull from a mid/long range to avoid gettin melees.
Therefore, BDK is 1. very slow at gathering a pack and 2. in danger, since BDK is a weak mitigating tank by design. This leads to a very frustrating gameplay of having a slow tank that can almost die on every pack he faces when gathering. Have you ever try to do Floodgate or Cinderbrew 1st pull as BDK then with any other tank ? Day and night feeling.
Finally a very important point of this take is Blood boil. It is your main threat generation, but it offers NOTHING defensively to BDK either in damage reduction or ressource generation. It is : the only tank in this case, since most other tanks spells we talked about before are either active tank mitigation or ressource generator. I can even add things like Breath of Fire, Shield of the righteous, Spirit bomb. I recently saw that San’layn will give Blood boil some boneshield if it hit multiple targets, it’s a great start, but it really need to be better. BB should give us RP under specific conditions (during Vampiric or DRW ?), and we need a new spell that deals AoE decent damage at 30rd range on a 10s - ish cooldown.
AMS should be nerfed, and probably red thirst + DRW too
Please note that this part should NOT be read out of the context of the last part of this topic, as they should be paired in my opinion.
This might be a very hot take but playing BDK right now feels like I have nuclear strong buttons and pisslow/bad ones. I talked about the bad ones (Bonestorm, Runetap, I can add Blood tap to the list, Soul reaper too, even Tombstone and Lichborne are very meh). But on the other hand, the three nuclear weapons, Anti-Magic Shell (AMS), Dancing Rune Weapon (DRW) and thanks to Red thirst talent, Vampiric Blood (VB).
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Let’s start with AMS. Part of the reasons BDK is very strong in mythic raiding content is because it can negates any magic tank buster, and even cancel some negative magical effects. The amount of absorb it gives, on a short cooldown, without any talent tree counterpart or GCD, AMS is a completely broken spell. Part of where BDK will be strong or not is, apart from grips and AMZ, if AMS has a value on this boss or this dungeon. Many examples can be found in the recent tier : Diurna or Ovinax for example, or Rookery 2nd boss. AMS is a game-changer spell, where other tanks struggle (but are not often unable to do it either), BDK is literally god. A counter part of this is our (relative) weakness to physical tank buster. Depending on how hard the boss hit, how often the tank buster happen, you can sometimes not have sufficient blood shield and defensives to handle correctly a physical tank buster. Yeah, you really struggle when your most broken defensive ability is useless. Best example for this season is Suleyman, as tanking this mini-boss as BDK is probably one of the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my WoW gamer life. But I remember gettin destroyed by Morchie in DOTI upper too because her melees were lame and I couldn’t get a regular blood shield (it also depends if you parry right ?). Lastly, regular magical damage are very, very hard to get along. Since you mastery has no effect, AMS is 8s long, MOTHERLOAD last 2 boss are very hard for BDK since their autos are magical hits. I would like some balance around that : AMS nerf so we are in danger more often against magical tank buster but something to help us against physical very frequent tank busters (omg rune tap cost no runes ? :3), a way to survive constant magical damage since our mastery has litteraly no effect on it.
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With the TWW changes about Red thirst, VB has a ridiculous cooldown of 30s and even sometimes lower with BL or playing Gift of the sanlayn haste buff. This is bad to me because VB does feel like something you NEED to have perma active, such as Demon spikes or Shield of the Righteous, where it’s supposed to be a defensive cooldown. Our “keep this perma” buff is already Bone Shield. To me, a defensive cooldown have to improve your ability to tank, it should not be the basic needs to tank. A tank should be naturally tanky and sometimes tankier when pressing buttons, not a fine alumette that requires perma defensive to be a decent solid stick. Pushing higher keys is right about this : if you don’t have a defensive 24/7 running, you can kite my friend, cause even if there is “only” 5 mobs, their melees will crush your soul and even one shot you if synchronized. Situation where you are at the end of a pack, half of it is dead, are not a place to breath and prepare for the next pull as BDK because you often run dry of defensive and you are still in danger, when other tank don’t even care. I can’t count how many times I died to 1 templar + 1 paladin at 10% HP in priory. I want improved vampiric blood to be baseline, red thirst to be nerfed, and basic BDK tanking improved (but it’s something I’ll talk about later).
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And finally, the big one DRW. This spell is overpowered. Not only it is by far you best offensive cooldown, especially on San’layn, but it’s a fantastic defensive tool against melees too. Not mentioning the RP generation boost it gives, boneshield management, it even sometimes makes a coffee for me and feed my cat. It does everything you dream of on a relative short cooldown. BDK gameplay and feeling of power is basically pressing DRW, hope it doesn’t bug (Rashanan ^^), and then pressing spells to get DRW cooldown reduction. I think having a big defensive spell being an offensive tool too is not something problematic at its root, but it is in this case. My problem with DRW can be explained in three points.
- One, why does it requires 5 TALENTS POINT (3 for DRW itself, 2 for CDR as Bonestorm and Tombestone ) to be efficient ?
- Second, why is it so strong for Deathbringer too ? Having an entire heroic talent tree making it offensively powerful is a potentially good idea (Sanlayn obviously but Fel scarred for comparison), but I would really like my deathbringer dude to be able to deal damage on itself.
- And thirdly, why does this spell feels like I’m god but I’m not. Rare, very strong offensives or defensives cooldowns are something every tank has : meta, incarn, fortif brew, avenging wrath, divine shield, … but BDK. We have no strong defensive cooldown every 2~3min, IBFortitude being a joke compared to other tanks 2min. We have no very strong offensive cooldown every 3 packs that can be paired with burst pots or trinket. We have DRW. DRW is available every pack, exit the feeling of rarely pressing a good cooldown and the feeling of power. DRW raise you up to a point where you ask yourself “but isn’t what I should feel baseline on BDK ?” and then brings you down to your small state of a knight good for dying cause you have 0.4s to deathstrike or you die hihi. You feel good during DRW, it’s a drug, you want it back, you feel sad when it’s gone, and I don’t mean it in a funny way. It’s really a bad feeling cause ALL your gameplay, ALL BDK aspects are enhanced during it and feels poor without it. Divide its power and up BDK baseline tanking. Idk how exactly. No more CDR or parry, just regular 1min30 offensive cooldown that have your spell rotation changes to optimize it, bye. As a final argument, the only time in M+ existence where BDK was the meta tank (followed very closely to pal prot, so not even THAT meta), it was when … DRW was perma uptime. I think it’s a really good hint.
I am not crazy, nerfing this spells in the current BDK state is a suicide, so please consider reading the next point with it !
BDK is really bad designed for high M+ content
Let’s now talk about the heart of my opinion on BDK : the difficulty scaling of the spec in M+ is absurd. As I said in the intro, BDK health bar yoyo playstyle is fun, but there is a certain point in M+ where it becomes frustrating at best, makes you wanna quit the spec most of the time. The punishing playstyle of the spec in high keys is at LIGHT YEARS from other tanks.
After a certain key level, many boss just one shot you without defensive on tank buster in M+, and this is normal. What is cringe is this happens 2 to 3 times key level under other tanks :). To my knowledge, it’s even the only tank that ever have to cumulate defensives to survive (Gorchomp XD). And this not applies to boss only, it is probably even harder in packs. You are in danger 24/7, on every single pack, you one mistake every 4min available with purgatory and that’s all. You HP drop low 75 times a pack, you have to perma generate RP to survive, Blood boil becomes unusable, you defensvies feel like you are just tanking “normally” and tanking naked is just so hard. Micro kiting is mandatory, being lucky with parry too to not get synch melees, gettin a healer spec than can efficiently help you is very recommeded (basically not monks and holy priest).
Even doing “weekly” 16 keys with friends is a place where you actually have to be focus the whole key, when I can just roll my head on my keyboard as pal prot or vengeance. You are NEVER hidden from a 5 melees synch one shot or a death strike missed by 1 (one) GCD that kills you. Dying to a one GCD fail, the whole dungeon, is actually pretty wild for “only” a 16-18 key range where it should be what you face in 19-20. Let me be clear again : the global difficulty feeling on BDK hit two key levels before other tanks, even 3 if we talk about the meta-tank. And I think it’s not normal. We should be baseline stronger in M+ content.
I know it’s not that easy, because the spec is very fine in mythic raid (even RWF) and for casual player too, but there is something we have to change.
To dig a little bit more than just buffing baseline HP or armor, I think the brewmaster stagger system is awesome on BDK. Actually, the best external (and probably best healer to play with) is pevoker because time dilatation is so good with how BDK receives damage. I also like Will the necropolis, in fact I must like it because the spec would be close unplayable without it. I would like this talent to be better, to reduce more damage if you are low life, and maybe add some “stagger-like” passives or active mitigation.
Finally, I already talk about it but BDK has no big defensives on a “long” cooldown. Every other tank has one : meta, fortif brew, divine prot, incarn. Since M+ is basically gathering massive pulls when everyone has their CDs, especially when BL + pot are up, BDK just doesn’t fit this playstyle because we cannot handle these types of pulls, or we can but it’s way, way harder. Why is IBFortitude so weak, it’s just something I can’t understand. TWW S2 tank tier set gives you free defensives procs and BDK is the worse. You can proc meta on VDH, 50% DR on paladin but only 30% DR as BDK ? What the hell bro. As long as the M+ playstyle is working this way, BDK will struggle to perform unless completly broken by tuning.
Quick fix I would do
- Bring back old Abomination Limb that gives boneshield baseline
- Up Bonestorm, up Tombestone in mob-packs, Up Soul reaper
- Rune tap cost no runes, or refund a rune if it mitigated a certain amount of damage
- Give back 100% Death strike healing as bloodshield
- Raid buff, 3% crit
Mid-terms fix
- Nerf DRW, VB and red thirst
- Add a big defensive on a 2min or more cooldown
- Think of a way to get enjoyable spec in high M+ content. No more yoyo this hard. Something close to monk stagger when low life ? Will of the necropolis buff for blood ?
- Rework some nodes, the obviously strong ones and the useless ones. Gives us a way to get to Gorefiends Grasp without losing tons of tanking or dps
- Easier way to create M+ packs
Thank you for reading !
Tapir-Dalaran