Blood DK is pathetically weak... Worse than Ever Before!

Classes Death Knight
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Never before has the Blood DK been so squishable.

You literally need to use all of your defensive cooldowns on pulls and as a part of your active rotation. Which means when you need an actual defensive cooldown, you don’t have one.

The damage is nothing compared to other tanks… seems to be about half of what a warrior tank does.

Aggravation? What Aggravation? You need to taunt things 3 times just to take them off of a Demonhunter who is only a few item levels higher than you are.

I have to say, I used to really enjoy playing the DK as a tank. It was a great tank when Frost was the tanking spec. It was a great tank when Blood first became tanking spec. But right now, it has never been so pathetically weak and useless. It is practically a very weak melee DPS.

Death Strike mechanics are very bad. If you don’t have runic power left over from the last fight, you are at risk of being killed on the next pull… If any DPS uses root or snare or pushback on the mobs you are attacking, you are at a high risk of being killed. You have to ask the other players not to use such talents and spells, because if you are not constantly using Death Strike, then you die, and the group gets a wipe-out.

So Bone Shield has to always be at 10 charges, Vampiric Blood and Dancing Rune Weapon must always be on cooldown, and you can’t take your eyes off of these spells for a second… Lichborne and Icebound Fortitude are weak and don’t exactly give much of a shield. But also there are no “True” tanking trinkets, as all the trinkets give strength and damage buffs… where they should give stamina and shields.

Healers tell me that they hate - HATE - healing Blood DK because the health goes up and down so much, and they never know when the tank needs support heals. The “tank” that is… but with such mechanics the Blood DK is really a healer which can only heal itself. Which has very low damage, and very low threat generation, and very poor survivability.

In comparison to other tanks, Blood DK is not a tank at all.

I have also spoken to other players who only use their DK for tanking and they concur with what I am saying here… So why when I come here to this forum, do I not see an array of topics saying so, and why does there seem to be no call for the Blood DK to be buffed and reworked to some extent?

This is not down to a player’s ability. Using a Blood DK is not for the feint hearted, it is far too squishy. It is not enjoyable to play at all.

In shadowlands season 1, Blood DK was not “meta” and I had an hard time then to get top DPS players to join groups because they simply did not want to run with a DK tank. But now, it is far worse than it was then.

So why is nobody complaining and why is nothing being done to fix it? A DK joined a raid group I made a few days ago, as a DPS, they were top DPS! So is it just another case of class/spec bias? Did Blizzard spend a lot of time and money on re-working the DPS Specs of the DK, so now they don’t want us using them as tanks?

Blood DK is Pathetic. All round, Horrible to play. Please Fix it!

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Here take my build your welcome. you want tankyness here you go. im legit amazing at Deathknight tanking. i did all 15 key’s and higher and i could not die at all. this is the best build that i made in my opinion. even in shadowlands i couldn’t get killed. and im top dps and for healing. Deathknight tanks are stupid Strong. and that doe’s come to some knowledge on how to use them. and yes i don’t need my buffs either. XD. just play with that and you will notice how silly strong it truely is. even people added me because i’ve wiped dungeon’s clean by myself XD. and yet the healer struggle’s to heal 4 people. this build is top notch. i even have friends that want me and only me to tank because i have over 200k to 300k shields and my highest self healing btw is over 100k per second. just bare that in mind :). good day and goodluck. just learn how it all works :slight_smile:

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I get that this is basically a rant, yet calling BDK weak is very missinformed. So I will do my best to break it down.

While your health will dip and dive, that is of no matter for BDK. Heck, as long you don’t get oneshot, the more your HP gets chunked the better for BDK survivalbility. General points to your post are:

  • A BDK does not need healing, just support.
    Note: Tell healers to not heal you at all, just passive or HoTs. Advanced; tell them to watch your Runic Power bar, you are above 40 RP, you are fine.
  • A BDK must use a single defencive CD on pull. If a BDK got none and no RP, the tank must wait to pull. Raid tanking trinkets are excellent as gapfillers.
    Note: Nowdays Dancing Runic Weapon will be up and ready in no time. If you must pull without CDs and no bones, you can use Death and Decay slow to soften the initial part of the pull for great effect.
  • A BDK does have lower DPS than most, yet it’s abilites got some of the best threathmodifiers in the game. Dropping Death’n Decay and getting hit having bones shatter will when combined with a bloodboil keep threath to most but the most outlandish burst scenarios. A 50k BDK can hold a 500k DPS.
    Note: Remember that Dancing Rune Weapon doubles your inital burst for threath managment on those huge pulls.
  • Yes, tanking CDs are meant to be used for premium efficeny as a tank. This goes for all tanks. You can argue that using your kit is not fun - yet, well, personally, I find it to be fun pushing the buttons.
    Note: If you are in the situation where Bone shatters so fast that keeping it up becomes a thing you worry about - you are pumping DPS and getting DRW refreshes out the wazoo. It is the dream.
  • In comparisment to other tanks: BDK is arguably THE best PuG tank, for both kinds of content. It is the third best premade tank in m+. It is the best raid tank for progress and for easy reclears.
    BDK compared to the other tanks are standing solid as a mountain.

The damage issue, is real, and being addressed. Not because of any treath issues, but efficeny issues. Blizzard is aware of this, BDK is getting regular minor buffs to get it more in line with the rest. Fair point. Not a dealbreaker by any means.

BDK might feels squishy if you are unexperienced with the class, yet any veteran BDK knows what they truely are: BDKs are immortal demigod tanks that simply dont give a f. about what is thrown at it.

If you want a different tanking style, I highly recommend that you try warrior or guardian druid. A more straightforward and simple playstyle, and both of those are meant in a good way. Warrior might be my 2nd favorite tank after BDK.

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I have played DK as a tank only (never used it as a dps) Since Lich King!

And even with the two lovely replies, i maintain that it has never been so squishy, and weak… let me explain why…

The style was not originally but has become “im nearly dead, im at full health, im nearly dead, im at full health, im nearly dead, etc…”

And you are always at risk of being Dead-Dead, when any dps locks mobs in place, uses pushback, or the mob just likes to jump around like the horse people in NO do. Because you have to spam Death Strike so much to stay alive.

One wrong move, one miss of Death Strike, and you are dead. It is pathetic, and I call that weak.

This isn’t fun, it is a yo-yo. Never saw the fascination with yo-yos tbf.

It did not used to be like this. It used to be strong, without being so bound to Death Strike Spam!

Also, you used to be able to infect something with plague and that was enough to really pee it off and have full threat.

It is weak, and it is not fun to play anymore because of this Death Strike mechanic, low amount of runic power, low health pool… Lowest Damage of all tanks, meaning lowest threat.

When speaking about the Warrior Tank in recent patch-notes, blizzard said “we want tanks to feel powerful!” Well I think tanks should only do about 1/4 of the damage of an equally geared DPS, and a small fraction of the healing of any equally geared healer. But then they should have enough health and armour to sustain damage, and very high threat generation from that very little damage.

The thing that should make tanks feel powerful, is command of the mobs and high health and armour to sustain damage. Not high damage and healing output.

I see some tanks solo like 5 - 10% of a boss, when they should really not be able to do so. All healers are weak compared to how they used to be, because all tanks have been given these self healing abilities - which should not be so powerful. A powerful self healing ability does not mean the tank is strong, it means it is broken, dysfunctional.

A tank that needs 2 healers (the regular healer + the tank themselves healing) to stay alive in a 5 man dungeon, is weak, pathetic.

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All I can do is to repeat the if you feel you are squishy, then you are unexperienced. Yet I will answer your following arguments.

So playstyle:

  • The specs goals has changed, currently it is yo-yo mastery the spec. As I already suggested, if you are not into that there are more classic and standard tanks to chose from. Warrior probably is what you are looking for. As a certain Orc said, Times change.
  • BDK does not need to do deathstrike spam, if you do, you are playing it wrong. Weave in bloodboils, Heartstrikes and Marrowrends to build RP to then spend as needed.
  • The caster mobs in Nokud is not scary in themselves, it is the mortal strike effects in the pack where you want your allies to help keeping those debuffs on you under control. Once your DRW falls, the roots and knockbacks help you out a lot there. Simply grip in a caster mob and use it as a platform when that happens.
  • BDK got a huge efficent health pool. Do remember you got Will of the Necropolis. Now combine that with all the health % combat modifiers and it is one of the largest among the tanks.
  • Play with Purgatory. Trust me. Use it as a tool to get used to playing to be immortal.

Now, you clearly did not read what I wrote or you dismissed it. Repeating that BDK got threath issues. They do not. Please read what I already wrote about threath modifiers. Key being Damage Per Seccond =/= Threath Per Seccond.

Blood bringing a playstyle and kit that allows your groups to be built different than other tanks are great for the game. It shakes up the meta. The healer becomes more a support/dps role than a pure healer. Now that is in my mind cool and neat. Healers that want to go more pure healer can go with a different tank. Different strokes for different folks. Now, not sure if you are trying to say that you are - but you kind of did - No, BDK does not require a healer on top. If you do, you fail at playing the current BDK. What you need is support. Something that is totally different.

Finally, about what you feel. I can’t argue against if you should feel that way. Yet I can argue and confirm that most BDKs that enjoy and excell with the current playstyle feel and are immortal demigods of tanking. If you feel weak as a BDK, it is because you are weak. Not BDK as a tanking spec.

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No, what you can do instead of pretending to know better with the polite use of the word “unexperienced” is actually try to understand what I said.

Tanks did not used to need so much “self” healing that they do more healing than the actual healer does. They should be able to take a lot of damage… Damage which doesn’t need such spam healing. Either tanks have to spam heal themselves or healers have to spam heal them. And all this is because blizzard want tanks to be able to solo everything. Which actually makes DPS and Healers redundant.

You don’t seem to understand, the basic concept of a tank is not to do high damage, or to heal, it is to sustain massive amounts of damage by default.

Blood DK goes just a few seconds without using Death Strike, or without Bone Shield, or a defensive spell active, and they are dead. That is not sustaining damage. So what is it? Weak, pathetic, squishy, not a tank but a self healing melee DPS.

I understand that people who like to have an “I win” card will object to what I am saying, but I am calling it how it is.

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Problem is you say things basically like “if warrior do not use shieldblock, they die! They are weak!” True they do, but if you call warrior weak you will get lynched for your stupidity. Being a bad player that don’t understand their classmechanics and how to play around them, doesn’t cause the tank to be weaker or stronger. It is a personal issue only.

So your points hold little to no merrit other than how you feel about it. Your feelings here are missplaced and far from the reality of the situation.

If you want a high damage mitigation tank - that is what you want - play warrior. It is exactly what you are asking for.

As I stated, I can’t really argue about how you feel. You feel what you feel. But don’t try to fool yourself into calling BDK weak.

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Blood DK has some issues for sure, but I wouldn’t call us weak. We are just kinda mediocre at the moment. Main issue is low dps compared to the stronger tanks, and taking crazy amounts of damage at the start of pulls.

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What you describe looks like how the DK is meant to be…

Tell Healers they have to worry when DK tank has low runic power, because you won’t be able to launch Death Strike and heal yourself.

Low damage and very poor survivability is player’s fault… I don’t count anymore the times I have ended a boss ALONE in MM+, soloing its last 10-15% lifepool :sunglasses:

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Idk as blood I can pull a lot off packs and speed run dungeons, healer doesn’t even need to heal me, maybe make dnd and abomination limb off the gcd and we have smoother gameplay. But otherwise the class feels nice in my opinion.

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