BDK [Feedback]: M+ Focus

Classes Death Knight
1

Hi, just a post with some feedback about current BDK for those interested.

BDK feels too squishy, and not in the fun bouncy way. You simply go from safe to dead all the way from 100% HP. This is not made better with how iffy self-sustain feels as BDK outside of CDs, and the San’Layn ‘Infliction of Sorrow’ gameplay loop - that feels counterproductive to how BDK “should” be played.

Let us ignore that BDK damage is bad and feels bad, even if it can perform “ok”, it is doing so playing in a way that feels off and counterproductive to being a tank. If you don’t get what I mean, play some San’Layn, you should see it immediatly how it feels just ‘off’.

I stress the point above not because it is something that will stick through after this season; but because there is a chance it could. It plays bad and feels bad. DONT BRING THIS GAMEPLAY FOWARD INTO MIDNIGHT IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM. Please consider to rework or remove this mechanic from San’Lyn completely.

Honestly, all I want is going back to the high-dopamine high risk gameplay of old prenerf(rework) BDK, where you could do the back to back Death Strikes and be efficiently immortal as long you didn’t get oneshot. Finding that sweetspot of mobpulls that brought you just close to death, but never dead. This gameplay was fun! This minmax gameplay was what really gave BDK flavor and uniqueness. Now it is just a worse option than mitigation tanks. Cooldown reliant and just Shadowlands Lore tier fun.

So please, remove the Death Strike “consuming” the damage taken value to heal. Revert it to just be based on the timeframe and allow the immortality gameplay to return.

This is the first last season where even with a silly amount of haste, BDK just feels… tame… boring. There is no actual insane gameplay to do, all I can do is play around my CDs and not my core sustain mechanic. Again, it just feels worse and unfun.

This kinda sums up my experience of BDK this expansion. It has been unfun and so much worse than previously. While there has been some attempts to make things fun, the problem lies with BDK at its core and how it seems to be hamstrung by how “immortal” becomes a problem in the raid environment.

I get that BDK solo tanking the last boss of the Mythic Raid on farm looks problematic. Yet, by “fixing” that problem, you also broke BDKs legs when it comes to having fun in M+. I don’t want a world where BDKs overgearing irrelevant content (yes, late mythic raid is irrelevant content) should be punishing every single BDK in all other content.

All I can do is ask and pray that the Devs reconsider the bland and boring path they chose to bring the spec down.

All I want is to have silly fun on my BDK in this video game again.

All I can do is hope that something is done to make it so.

2 Likes
2

San layn is so bad. Its just funny they dont wanna buff bdk because its gonna be too op for raids. Like they can change encounters and debuffs and etc. Brewmaster also soloed mythic kill. That blizz stubbornes makes me crazy like doesnt giving raid buff to dks that puts blood to big disadvantage, taking our toolkit and just giving aura buffs. I hope they do proper rework for bdk in midnight i really do

1 Like
3

Yeah this season BDK feels extra squishy in M+. Too many trash mobs have insane damage, even doing more than tyrannical bosses. There is also too many design flaws with the spec, so when you run into situations where you have some weakness, it feels so much worse than other tanks.

  • Bone Shield running out between packs from prolonged RP events. This also affects the Essence of the Blood Queen stacks we need to build and maintain with San’Layn. It’s incredibly frustrating to have this feedback loop where you get punished for not hitting anything for 30 seconds. No other tank has the same problem.

  • Too many things to prep at the start of pulls. We need to hit Blood Boil to get fast aggro on larger packs at the start of pulls, yet it does nothing to help our survivability. It doesn’t help with all the mobs this season who leap or teleport around, so you can’t Death Strike them. It takes too many GCDs to get things going from scratch, and you have to choose between generating enough threat or surviving.

  • Having to stand in DnD as a core mechanic is annoying, and frankly it doesn’t fit in M+ where you have to move constantly. We are the only tank with a gimped cleave ability that requires DnD to hit 5 targets, which isn’t even that much. This also adds extra globals to our opener, where we are most susceptible of all tanks to getting one-shotted. Cleaving Strikes is a band aid fix to a problem that never should have been there. Heart Strike should hit 5 targets by default, regardless if DnD is down or not.

  • Losing Abomination Limb really hurt the spec. It was a tremendous help when doing larger pulls, as it solved several problems like bone shield generation and aoe threat. Just deleting it without any compensation was a slap in the face.

  • Tombstone and Bonestorm are both underwhelming, and it feels like they only exist as cooldown reductions for Dancing Rune Weapon.

  • Speaking of Dancing Rune Weapon; why does it have a GCD?? None of the other tanks has a GCD on their offensive abilities, except Monk. Meta, Incarnation, Avenging Wrath, Avatar. All off the GCD

2 Likes
4

To be fair, it slightly does, if you’re San’layne at least. It gives you 1 bone charge (which you will quickly lose ofc, but still) and it gives you stacks of hemostasis for stronger deathstrike healing.
My favorite part is that when you do big pull with BL, blood boil is simply not enough to keep threat, dps will rip threat off you, abomd limb used to solve this problem both keeping threat and dragging mobs, a moron dev removed it from us.

Not only it has GCD, it also costs 3 talent points, while pally’s wings cost 1 talent, VDH’s demon form costs 0 talents, warrior’s avatar costs 1 talent, but class talent, not spec talent, which is free.

I won’t be suprised if in midnight, instead of fixing bDK, they will instead do 5th rework of frost DK or 10th rework of bm / mm hunter, while bDK will catch some another side effect nerf, becoming even more mangled class.

1 Like
5

Guess you have never heard of Wazocutie. Doing +19 in time but for you BDK is apparently ‘‘horrible’’ lol. Last time I checked max key is still +20 so other tanks don’t seem that great either…

6

It’s all relative, and I didn’t say at any point that BDK isn’t viable. I’m used to my HP bouncing up and down, but it feels squishier than normal this season against trash melee swings. Once you get everything rolling, it’s fine, but the level of effort you need to put into not getting rekt in the opener is absurd when I compared it to my Druid or DH. Blizzard shifted a lot of damage away from tyrannical bosses and tank busters, and instead regular melee swings hit much harder.

It’s too many core design issues with how we generate resources at the start of a pull, and we are the only tank that has to make a choice between generating aoe threat and surviving. The fact that we need DnD down for Heart Strike to hit 5 targets is absurd and outdated.

Exactly. If I don’t have DrW ready, there is a good chance I get chunked down and proc purgatory during the time I lay down DnD and press 2xBB, before I can actually start my “normal” rotation.

A couple of things they can do to address some issues:

  • Heart Strike hits 5 targets by default, regardless of DnD placement.
  • Bone Shield lasts 1 minute to keep it from dropping because of RP events in dungeons
  • Remove the GCD from Dancing Rune Weapon
  • Baseline Gorefiend’s Grasp, or better pathing in the tree
  • Death Strike has a 15y range. Not being able to heal while kiting out of ground effects, or because mobs randomly leap or charge is getting old.
7

Guess I even chatted with Wazocutie about state of blood DK, and he / she is not happy at all about the current state either.

We’re discussing the specific flaws of current blood DK that not only make the spec weaker than other tanks, but also simply unfun to play or make you feel like a liability, where every other member of the group has to cover your numerous flaws, while other tanking specs, like pally, vDH and warrior, carry the group with their numerous strengths.

We’re also discussing possible solutions to fix those flaws. If you think you have something useful to contribute to the discussion. please do so. Otherwise spare us from “I see some DKs doing 19s, therefore DK is fine” shallow arguements.

2 Likes
8

Yeah this is such a pointless thing to argue with. You can’t look at what a few, extraordinary player can do with the spec, despite it’s flaws. Look at the bigger picture, and realize it’s the least played tank overall in the +7 to +20 keystone range, by a solid margin. Paladin, Warrior and DH make up for 72% of all the tanks in that range.

The only reason to think BDK is in a good spot right now, is if you’re doing trivial content for your gear/skill level, or you haven’t actually played one of the stronger tanks. My VDH which is 15 ilv behind feels way stronger. Even my Guardian Druid feels way better to play, with super smooth damage intake. There are niche situations where you can cheese some mechanics with AMS or Death’s Advance, but it’s not enough to make up for all the downsides BDK has right now.

9

My thoughts exactly. The issue does not only lay with San’layn, it’s persistent in Deathbringer too. BDK on first pull feels super soft, even more than veng dh. I still love the gameplay but all you need to ruin your day is try prot paladin or prot war, playing bdk after that is just painful.

1 Like
10

Yeah I take my BDK praises back, now I see Yoda timing multiple +21’s but BDK still stuck in +19’s lol. That is just bad.

11

I play all tanks and I main BDK since BFA until TWW (I’m mainly M+ player)

BDK it used to have its niche, immortal tank with barely any utility and okey damage and I was really happy with its placement between tanks

But with nerfs to all tanks then the removal of abomination limbs later on it became budget version of Pally without the utility a paladin brings

Whomever is in charge of BDK development is a certified idiot and they need to be promoted to customer if you know what I mean

1 Like
12

Recent blue post with Midnight Alpha changes:

Midnight Alpha Development Notes - Wowhead News

Blood
Developers’ notes:
Going into Midnight we had a few pain points with Blood Death Knights that we are looking to address. On initial pull, Blood has an incredibly long ramp up time to both get their defensives rolling but also their offensive power. The main culprit is due to how we turned Boneshield into a damage throughput resource because of the existence of Shattering Bone and Insatiable Blade. Going into Midnight we have removed Shattering Bone and re-distributed its power into Blood’s baseline damage abilities for a more consistent throughput that doesn’t require all the hoops to jump through to start dealing damage.
On the topic of Boneshield, we’ve also reduced the number of abilities that deduct from it such as Tombstone and Bonestorm. As a tank you have a lot of things to consider in your role and adding what was essentially a third resource to spend felt like it was slightly too much. Not to say we can’t explore this design in the future, but we will need to be much more cautious and deliberate with these ability designs to ensure its not encroaching on the already existing resource system of Death Knights.

The other notable change for Blood is focused on making them more reliable in high end Mythic+ keys. Blood historically (outside of the very strong Sepulcher of the First Ones tier set) has been great at low to mid-level keys but started to fall off at higher end keys where their Death Strike healing can’t overcome the damage they start to take. To alleviate some of this we’ve made a pass on Death Strike and all its modifiers to reduce its overall healing but at the same time we’ve re-distributed that power into their baseline defensives, talents, and Boneshield. The goal being to make their damage intake a little more predictable at higher keys and prevent them from “falling over” before they can start to get their other defensives rolling. We love that Blood has carved a niche for itself as the self-sufficient tank and we don’t want that to change.

We look forward to hearing your feedback to the above changes as well as the other changes not mentioned as we continue into Alpha and beyond.*

  • Apex Talents: Dance of Midnight
    • While Dancing Rune Weapon is active, when you parry you have a chance to make your next Heart Strike free and deal 150% increased damage.
    • For each Dancing Rune Weapon active your damage is increased by 4/8% and your damage taken is reduced by 2/4%.
    • When you consume a Rune you have a chance to call a Dancing Rune Weapon to your aid for 6 seconds.
  • New Talent: Deadly Reach – Death Strike hits an additional 2 enemies.
  • New Talent: Lifeblood – Death Strike heals for an additional 20% of its healing over 5 seconds.
  • New Talent: Bloodmist – When you cast Dancing Rune Weapon, you become enveloped in a blood mist that surrounds you for 8 seconds, increasing your Parry by 5%. Deals Shadow damage every 1 second to enemies within 10 yards. Every time it deals damage you gain 2 Runic Power, up to a maximum of 10 Runic Power. Deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.
  • New Talent: Boiling Point – Heart Strike has a chance to make your next Blood Boil empowered, dealing 50% increased damage, and echoing after 3 seconds.
  • New Talent: Plague Infusion – Your Blood Plague critical hits have a chance to reduce the cooldown of your Blood Boil by 0.25 seconds.
  • New Talent: Sanguinary Burst – When Blood Mist ends it deals Shadow damage to 8 nearby enemies, healing you for 15% of the damage dealt. The damage is increased by 2% for every 1 Runic Power spent while Blood Mist was active.
  • Consumption has been redesigned and is now an Empower ability – Empower the runes in your weapon, reducing the damage you take over the duration and unleashing a devastating attack that deals Shadow damage and consumes up to 75% of your Blood Plague instantly from enemies in front of you.
  • Insatiable Blade has been updated – Dancing Rune Weapon’s cooldown is reduced by 30 seconds and now generates 5 Bone Shield charges.
  • Heartbreaker no longer grants extra Runic Power from Dancing Rune Weapons.
  • Abomination Limb is now available as a choice node with Gorefiend’s Grasp. No longer deals damage.
  • Gorefiends Grasp cooldown reduced by 30 seconds and it now silences enemies for 3 seconds.
  • Everlasting Bond duration increase reduced to 4 seconds (was 6 seconds).
  • Voracious now increases Death Strike Healing by 5% (was 15%).
  • Bone Shield Armor increased by 25%.
  • Improved Bone Shield now also increases the maximum stacks of Bone Shield by 2.
  • Blood Fortification now also increases your base Armor by 35%.
  • Carnage no longer affects Blooddrinker.
  • The following talents have been removed:
    • Blooddrinker
    • Blood Tap
    • Bonestorm
    • Heartrend
    • Mark of Blood
    • Ossified Vitriol
    • Reinforced Bones
    • Rune Tap
    • Shattering Bone
    • Tightening Grasp
    • Tombstone

I’m almost afraid to get my hopes up, but these are indeed very welcome changes, which address many of our core problems.

13

A lot of changes are either pure tuning or part of their overall tank design philosophy, so really hard to assess until we test them, but at least we have something to discuss.

  • what I liked:
  1. return of ABOM LIMB, blood exlusive ability, although without damage. Best change by far.
  2. they acknowledged struggles of blood DK in higher keys.
  • what I didn’t like:
  1. they didn’t acknowledge blood DK’s issues with lack of utility (we weren’t very sought after tank even when we had both Abom Limb and Gorefiend’s grasp)
    1.1. They didn’t change / delete such hopelessly underwhelming talents like San’layne Vampiric Aura, Vampiric speed and Bloody Fortitude.
  2. Dancing Rune Weapon still costs 3 talent points for no reason (Pala’s wings cost only 1 talent points for comparison).
  3. Instead of unnerfing and making Blood Beast impactful again, they doubled down on that boring, unfun talent “Infliction of Sorrow”, baking one of the worst tier set bonuses we recently had into hero talents. Again, we’re suffering because it’s Unholy spec, which is in their focus, not us.
  4. They didn’t address our issue of keeping AoE threat. We still have nothing but blood boil to try and keep AoE threat.
    5.DnD 130% damage increase won’t be enough to make it threat snapping ability* even when we’re static, and when we’re gathering packs, it’s threat generation is minimal to non-existant.
14

I agree 100%. But now how i see they removing a lot of defensives and etc. Our AMZ getting little bit bigger value in m+. But still what we need is 3% haste raid buff and i could say with proper tunning we are ready to go.
Long time i didnt say but at least i love that blizz acknowledge BDK m+ and making more oriented towards it. If devs sees problem, its very big step

15

I agree with you threat generation in AoE is massive issue and sword dance cost 3 talent point instead of 1

16

Having only 1 dps CD on 90 sec cooldown could be though in a world with 120 sec, 90 sec, 60 sec and 45 sec Dps burst windows. lets hope base rotation have really good aggro.

17

I hope they will change DRW to 1min or even 45sec. Too many talents are tied to DRW and 90 sec Cooldown is too big. Also where is raid buff ? We getting abonimation limb (which is nice) so all thouse disaster changes are revert somehow, but still we lacking (dps DK also) raid buff. And 2min abonimation limb is too long there is no point to take it over gorefiend’s gasp

18

Please include this, please don’t ask, please do it.

My repeated suggestion:

  1. Now all you need to do is remove Marrowrend and make Heart Strike generate Bone Shield stacks on a single target and Blood Boil generates them in an AoE situation.

  2. I’d love to see a Dancing Rune Weapon combat animation in DnD - the DRW repeatedly cutting through the entire DnD area of ​​effect like a sword from Sire Denathrius.