Blood: New tier sets and patch notes are very underwhelming

Classes Death Knight
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The new tier set basically means that we will be getting the 6% vers buff slightly more often and the new 5% crit buff. Is that really it? I guess its not the worst since its stats that will help me survive, but considering that blood is widely considered to be the worst tank at the moment I expected some experimenting similar to the cleaving death strike that was tested on a tier set and then rolled as a new talent. This was a missed opportunity.

Patch notes gave us the Umbilicus Eternus change which is great, but its a shield not a % reduction of damage so in higher keys it will quickly get outscaled again.

Everything else looks underwhelming. BDK hp is either at 100% or soon to be at 100% after I press death strike. Im sure that all the leech, permafrost and other small heals that got buffed will feel nice, but none of them address the elephant in the room: blood dies to one shots..

Honorable mention: Dance of Midnight needs a complete rework.

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There is very likely going to be some tuning on the numbers, as 100% seems set dangerously low and sounds like just a baseline number without tuning in mind, most likely they are going to bump that number up drastically.

What makes me say so?

Currently your crimson DND are about 1/3rd of all your DND casts. DND is around 3-4% of your overall total, in a standard M+. For simplicity let us use the lower nice number, 3%. 1/3rd of 3% is 1%. 100% on 1% is 1%.

Clearly they do not intend that to be the whole deal. Lets do more napkin math. You will auto attack 15% faster, equaling in best case theory “15% more procs”, let us ignore how Crimson works [you cant gain a stack of crimson while you are affected by DND] to make the argument clearer, let us give it the benefit of the doubt. Chance of getting a proc is increased from 25% to 30% chance, 20% more procs from frequency.

This means in total you would see an increase from the baseline proc rate equaling 1% of your overall, to 1% x1.15 x1.2, for a simple number of ~1.4% more damage from DND damage alone.

Does that still sound quite low? Well, because it is. Very likely they will increase the bonus from 100% to 300%, making the set go to ~4% more damage increase in your average key. In this best case world.

Conclusion:

They can make it do damage that is worthwhile. If they buff DND set part enough, then we might even see San’Leyn get some value from their (extremely garbage) talent that reduces the duration of DND by half (allowing you to get more crimson procs).

Is the tierset as it currently stands, boring, uninspired and not at all impactful? For sure.

Can they save the DPS value it brings? Absolutely.

There is basically just as big of a chance as the %DPS increase it currently is, that this wont get buffed by stupid numbers. Either through more damage into DND; or into the crit bonus and auto swing speed added. Lets give the devs the benefit of the doubt to try to make this less ‘feels bad’ before release.

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Quick add, they might fear a world where you want to stand outside of your DND at all times, to activate Crimson more often. Effectively making DND a no-go-zone for your character.

I don’t know.

It seems to me this tierset is just trouble, one way or another.

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The only Thing we can do is give a LOT of feedback just like we did with the removal of Abomb limb.

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Ok, playing the no-go-zone, crimson scourge, minmax build and method. The DND value ends up at a 11% overall, up from 4%, so if you play it this way you will squeeze out quite a bit of damage from the tierset. About 6-8% area. Instead of the 3-5% area.

A lot better than I expected, using the standard BDK way of play.

Does it play godaweful, as you got to position to never stand in or drop DND such as you stand in it?

Yes. It plays horrid.

Yet the damage potential is there. With DND being as much as 18% of the damage on mass AoE. 5% on ST.

That is a lot of damage!!! :dracthyr_yay_animated:

Now, disclaimer: Is this making up for the DPS loss from not playing standard and standing in your DND? :dracthyr_comfy_sip: Just barely, if not outright no. I just want to give people some false hope.

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It’s kinda funny, both Blood/Frost got really bad sets, but Unholy is a strong winner, that extra damage during executes in raids and M+ will be impacfull.

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There is no way you gonna play no-go-zone when tanking trash, you will just starve of RP because your HS would hit only 2 instead of 5 targets, losing massive amounts of RP.

That’s a very polite way to put it!

The saddest thing is that they’re very likely not to bother with redesigning this degenerate tier set, they would just buff it and force upon us this ugly, degenerate, counter intuitive playstyle.

The only hope for BDK to be bearable to play would be some unintended glitch that they might not notice.

After what happened, when they announced Desecration Talent rework for unholy only, applied it to Blood as well, got a feedback 1-1.5 months before the patch release and didn’t revert that change to Desecration, that made it from good, fun talent into a dead garbage - after that I just regard that worthless excuse of a dev a hidious troll and until they’re gone, not expecting anything good for us, at least not anything intentional.

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There is no way to save it with this Tier Set. As mentioned in other comments Crimson Scourge does not proc while standing in DnD and leaving DnD just for a 5% higher Proc chance is never worth the Sacrifice even if buffed by an additional 1000%. You lose your AOE heartstrike ability and with that plummet your Rune generation. Bloods biggest weakness is sustaining Big Aoe pulls (without DRW) and not being able to Death Strike in a Big Pull from Lack of Runes is a guaranted Purgatory/Death.

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Always feels bad when people tag you, only to not engage with what you wrote, and repeating your own talking points back to you :dracthyr_tea:

Now counterpoint to the previous stance; being pro Tierset potential:

If you buff the tierset dam bonus to 200%, you just bumped the tierset from a +5-8% to 10-16% overall DPS in the no-go build. A buff of 1000%… I get what you are getting at, but keep in mind, this scenario is why it CANT be buffed to be useful while you are in it. So you got change your mindset from what is to what could be.

The tierset, as I pointed out, isn’t working if you are not going out of your way to play BDK as something else. Might be their goal, we will see.

Based on the numbers and how the tierset actually functions; that will all be set by how the devs re-tune the tierset. Currently it is in a no-win situation. That will change. Either through total rework or doubling down into function.

If they double down on the Crimson Scourge procs being impactful in a way where more is better (stronger buffs, more damage, what function it is currently pushing), then we will reach a point where the optimal way to play is not standing in DND to get said procs.

Honestly, it is the only thing that makes sense from what direction we are seeing from what they have shown. It is the only way to look at this tierset and make it work. The only logical path.

Keep in mind:

  • If they buff the crit bonus, defensive value goes up, even if you dont stand in DND.
  • If they increase frequence further, Crimson, will cower parts of the RP loss from not cleaving heart strike (and more likely, it will be tuned around raid damage intake, where you dont even need more RP. Raid is king for class design, remember this)
  • If they buff the raw damage, it simply just becomes worthwhile from a pure damage perspective (even if it is not a tanking one)

If their goal is raid viability, raw damage works, as you are not playing the same game as if in M+ where the DS economy matters more.

:dracthyr_heart:
No hate, I only try to logically explain the reasoning that makes the most sense for what I am seeing being brought to the front. If you build a cookie factory, I expect it to produce cookies - even if it used to be a lemonade stand

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Your Statement is correct if you play around it. But like i said A LOT has to change for BDK defensive wise for this to be worth doing for a as you say 10-16% overall dps increase because like i mentioned this DPS gain comes at a massive cost of not having enough runes to heal yourself back up. Also you need to have in mind that playing this way is a gamble because you are not guaranted to have a crimson scourge proc while you are actively trying to avoid DnD. Combine this with the RNG of your Apex Talents and you get a class that is completely reliant on RNG to survive a pull and also now do DPS.

You are also very optimistic in your call that things will change for Blood with reworks.

It will not. They have been ignoring Blood in every patch since The War Within. We only get small armour buffs and our tiny little self healing buffs that are not Death Strike.

This is completely backwards to their initial goal of making Blood Dk more viable in High key enviroments like they said they would do in S1 Midnight.

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Hell yeah I am, because I played Fury Warrior and BDK for so long that not being directly punched in the balls with a rusty fork stuffed potato is seen as a big W :dracthyr_yay_animated:

Again, the point I brought up feels ignored, that being - we are tuned for raid potential, not M+.

Also, I feel it necessary to repeat this:

It is all stinky doodoo water. This is very true. We all agree it stinks as it is.

Yet we can argue up and down, left to right, till the fat lady sings. In the end it comes to what they focus on and what we see pushed.

I am pretty sure you agree that the tierset is built and designed in a way that forces this unwanted gameplay loop of the ‘no-go’.

Also, they have ignored BDK and, in actuality, made sure that BDK wont perform well since the DF Fyrakk Solo tank disaster scenario. Where we went from raid to raid, with BDK being able to Solo tank and trivailise Mythic Raid encounters (once gear level was reached). They purposefully avoid this at all costs.
This means that BDK as it is designed, cant be good in M+, as that would equal being too strong for raiding.
As you saw with the recent raid rewards pushing m+ people into the raid. That is enough of statement for us to know what stance they have taken on the whole what content matters (the most) for the game design.
BDK could work in M+, they just decided they dont want it to.

Back to topic. This tierset tho, is 100% either a dev that doesn’t know how Crimson works or a dev that want to push a ‘no-go’. Either it is so weak that you dont gain anything from it. Or it is so strong that you play around it (no-go). This is my core point and something I blast and harp on, till either:

  • They make it so Crimson can proc even when in DND
  • They double down in making the Crimson proc so strong that it just works

(… or a total rework and scrapping of the tierset)

They never had a goal of making BDK more viable for High Keys. This is the same as they said they wanted to make Fury Warrior more viable, while they nerfed it down in an environment where the spec was underperforming.

THEIR PR TEAM THAT WRITES NOTES IS NOT THE SAME TEAM THAT DOES BALANCE. They do in fact not communicate and the PR team does in fact not understand the game at all. They write what sounds the best, not what is factual. If I had to guess… no, I wont go on a rant about this issue. It is one of them volatile themes that nothing good will come out of.

My point in this last section: What they say =/= what they want or will do, this is known :dracthyr_nod:

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I agree 100% with this, but also isint it encounter (raid) problem ? Like give bosses some debuff to apply tank that they couldnt solo tank it. There was bosses where only brewmaster also solo tanking it. It shouldnt be tank tunning problem but rather raid encounter problem.

Also i still couldnt understand how blizz devs neglects all feedback, data and just simple logic that last 8 seasons blood dk is one of the worst m+ tanks and cant find its space. Lack of raid buff, tankiness. Even when blood dk damage was good (tww s2 because of tier set) it still was very mid.

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