I would have to disagree, the new positioning exacerbates the issue with BDK major throughput talents being spread too far apart - some of them key to proper performance, and having too many useful talents in gate 3, leaving no free points to spend on utilty.
Previously, Gorefiend’s Grasp was basically mandatory to pick because it was on the path to the good stuff. Now not only it’s skippable, its pathing further down leads through either GG’s tax talent (Tightening Grasp), or to a talent with questionable benefits (Blood Tap). They will be deemed bad picks not because they are bad talents, but because there are few others spread all around.
As a reminder, Blizzard posted the following back in April (post is now removed):
*The above post was removed from original topic, but can be seen quoted on Wowhead.
This was a noble goal that a lot of us anticipated with hope, but as of current build we have reverted to what we had to begin with, just rearranged.
Here’s an example of talent pathing from an M+ perspective:
Gate 1:
You need to spend 8 points to open Gate 2, but you will likely spend 9: you need to take 2/2 Imp. Vampiric Blood or Imp. Heart Strike to enable Dancing Rune Weapon, you can’t skip Ossuary due to its undeniable value. The 9th point would be Ossified Vitriol, which is potent by itself, but more importantly is required to path toward Rapid Decomposition.
Gate 2:
You need to spend a total of 20 points to enable Gate 3. You immediately spend 3 points on DRW, and another 3 Hemostasis, Imp. Bone Shield, and Reinforced Bones. If you spent 9 points in Gate 1, the tally is now 15, leaving another 5 to spend before Gate 3 opens. You will want to reach Coagulopathy (and Sanguine Ground in G3), and Rune Tap isn’t really a tempting pick since it remains unchanged from DF. Also, you likely want Rapid Decomposition, so now gotta buy either Perseverance of the Ebon Blade or Relish in Blood, neither of which is particularly strong. We’re at 18 points - 2 points. There are options now, but let’s say you want GG, so you pick it after picking Heartbreaker: Gate 3 is now open.
Gate 3:
Now we have 10 points left… Let’s pick that Sanguine Ground. We also have Rapid Decomposition and Coagulopathy, so Consumption feels like a prime pick - with the follow-up talent, so we can have its cooldown reset every ~1 minute (1.1 RPPM). 7 points left. We probably still want that Tombstone for Insatiable Blade shenannigans and to enable Shattering Bones.
We’re at 5 points to left distribute, and we still have options such as Red Thirst (mandatory for San’layn), Iron Heart + Bloodshot for stronger DS, Heartrend and Purgatory*, maybe even Bonestorm if Blizzard makes it work with Insatiable Blade. So if we want 3 capstones, we’re done. No points left for Tightening Grasp, or Voracious, Bloodworms, or the new Bloodied Blade, which looks very tempting.
I get it, its not like all the talents listed are mandatory, but you would be passing on potentially significant throughput. Moreover, if you want to pick up more utility, you’re more likely gonna pass on capstones than the mid-tree talents, and that just asks to be called bad design - capstones should be the most powerful and worthwhile talents you strive towards, and currently for the most part they are not.
Following up with current analysis and testing of the Blood Tree, as per the requested guidelines:
- Generally Blood tree now feels like it lacks cohesion - it looks like you can always take a path that ignores defensive options and cherry pick offensive ones.
- Having options is good, but we all know that oftentimes extra damage trumps extra defensive, throwing more work on the healer’s shoulders. This is expecially evident in M+ - we need to bring more damage to make sure you finish the run in time.
- Consider changing pathing and positioning talents in a way that players need to go through offensive and defensive talents and avoid situations where there is a choice between the two.
- Red Thirst feels like it should either be a final capstone, although I’m not sure if it wouldn’t better be just baked into Vampiric Blood, as this talent is just too good to pass up (especially for San’layn) - I would just say it’s mandatory in all builds.
- With bad timing, Bloodshot becomes useless if the shield drops before we can follow up with second Death Strike. My suggestion would be to make (1) abilities that activate Blood Shield deal additional damage (synergizing with new Consumption/Blooddrinker when talented into Carnage), or (2) upon removal, Blood Shield deals 25% of the damage it absorbed as AoE damage, reduced beyond 8 targets.
- Bonestorm is a capstone, but doesn’t act like it - especially if it doesn’t interact with Insatiable Blade. It might need increasing it’s CD to 2 minutes, but needs to be tuned so it shines when it’s used.
- To my knowledge, Umbilicus Eternus is a dead talent. There are ways to make it quite a potent shield, but the shield is just a nice bonus at best, given how the BDK plays around self healing that increases with damage taken. It might as well be moved to early gate 2 or just completely removed.
- Leeching Strikes, Blood Tap, and Blood Feast are still too weak to be considered viable.
- Leeching Strikes’s healing is too low to be noticable, whereas making it too high would put it at odds with Death Strike. This talent’s functionality could be baked into another talent for a thematic (if barely useful) feature, maybe Heartbreaker or Improved Heart Strike.
- Blood Tapis unlikely to see play as we are not resource starved and he benefits of an additional on-demand single Rune are low. It should probably be more like Brewmaster’s Black Ox Brew, simply giving all Runes back as well as a hefty amount of Runic Power (the CD would probably need to be increased accordingly).
- Blood Feast suffers from the Death Strike centric play, where our healing comes in a large chunk from our hard hitting ability. Also AMS is often used preemptively to prevent damage, making this feature worthless.
- Not a Blood talent, but Death Pact is still a dead trap-talent, especially for Blood. At 2 min CD it chould just work like Druid’s Renewal - on demand self healing with no drawbacks. It could even be upped to 2.5min for all its worth.
- At the moment, the confusing talents is Insatiable Blade and how it interacts with Tombstone and Bonestorm: Tombstone activates IB, Bonestorm does not, yet both spend Bone Shield charges. Is it an oversight that lasts a few builds now, or working as intended and just not reflected in the tooltip appropriately?
- Interestingly, Blood doesn’t have a lot of choice nodes at all - just Tombstone/Mark of Blood and the new Consumption/Blooddrinker.
- For as long as Tombstone was put in the same node as Mark of Blood, the latter has been a dead talent. It is sad, actually, as it is very thematic. I was thinking Mark of Blood would better work as a passive (applied by Death’s Caress, for instance).
