Why does everyone (icy veins, wowhead and so on…) advice you to run Superstrain on Blood DK?
Why not Gorefiend’s Domination (with Red Thirst <3) or Crimson Rune Weapon? Those two seem like far better choices for a tank.
I know that nowadays everyone seems to be obsessed with damage and damage alone, but tanks should tank first and foremost, not deal damage. Yet we started to rank tanks based on the amounts of damage they can dish out and then we complain that you need to kite these and these packs of mobs on higher keys.
Blood DK dmg, alongside some other tanks are undertuned, and superstrain gives not only damage (that ws nerfed in beta to boot, yay DK nerfs), but more Rp thanks to frost fever.
Because Fallen Crusader with 15% strength and a bit of healing with a 50% - 60% buff uptime is just generally better if you can manage your runic power properly.
Gorefiend’s Domination provides basically 0 DPS, but otherwise is a solid defensive option. I don’t actually know how much RP/min this generates, though. If you can get Vamp Blood down to 45 sec CD it should be good, but the actual usefulness depends on how often you actually cast Vamp Blood.
Bryndaor’s Might is basically in the same boat as Gorefiend’s, but instead of providing a panic button it just makes you more efficient. 6 RP/cast, so with 10 DS per minute you get 60 RP/min. More casts more RP.
CRW is extremely good right now for any sort of dungeon content or raid fights where you can lose Bone Shield charges consistently. It basically lets you use DRW on every single M+ pack, which is kinda insane for damage, RP generation, survivability and general convenience.
Superstrain gives decent damage and anywhere from 30 - 60+ RP/min completely passively and works while not actively tanking. In addition it goes on the chest giving you a lot of armor and stats from the ilvl. It’s boring as hell, but a solid all-rounder. It also helps with kiting due to the additional DoTs providing both damage and RP, which none of the other legos do.
My aim with Gorefiend’s Domination would be to turn the Vampiric Blood from panic button to something with nearly 100% uptime - so basically at every mob pack which would make you nearly unkillable as the healing and shielding it provides is insane. That’s why I am asking. Yes CRW seems awesome as it provides damage AND SURVIVABILITY. Whereas Superstrain seem to provide only the damage. I myself have crafted the superstrain on behest of wowhead/icyveins but now looking at the other powers I feel I made a mistake.
One more thing that comes to my mind is
If it would be possible to build a quasy passive damage mitigation tank using the Crimson Rune Weapon legendary with Tombstone talent (i know it sound silly :D) but the aim would be to build a raidboss tank that does not rely that much on self healing but more on passive damage mitigation from big shield and constant 40% parry chance provided by DRW lego and using Marrowrend far more often than Heart Strike. But that seems like a severe dps loss to me as well just a thought.
that was not my point, Superstrain is run because of the free bonus passive damage (that has been nerfed hard since beta mind you, since we did to much dmg )the runic power from FF is just a bonus.
It’s not supposed to be a panic button to begin with. You should be cycling all your CDs as needed. Gorefiend’s turns it more into more of a panic button, but you still shouldn’t be using it as one because using VB properly should let you avoid a panic to begin with. That said, it should have a similar uptime in M+ as DRW, which is nice, but DRW is simply better because it makes you more powerful in every single way (especially with the conduit), not just defensively.
Superstrain provides similar defensive capabilities as other legendaries on top of offense though. Gorefiend provides a big defensive on demand (which you will be using on CD anyway) while Superstrain provides a steady trickle of RP that scales with pull size, plus some sustain via leech.
You won’t have CRW up all the time even with Tombstone, though, no matter how hard you try. Using Marrowrend more often is also not really good as you are essentially sacrificing DPS and RP for more BS stacks because Marrowrend has a 5 RP opportunity cost per rune spent if those runes were used for Heart Strike instead even without Heartbreaker. With Heartbreaker it gets even worse.
Tombstone will also bring you below 5 BS stacks almost all the time, which will kick you out of Ossuary for a while, which may cost you another 5 - 10 RP if you are forced to DS to stay alive.
TL;DR:
In the end, what Tombstone really does is it lends you time (in the form of a shield, RP and a few GCDs), but you have to pay back those GCDs afterwards, with a hefty interest rate because you will be losing 2 - 10 RP every time you Heartstrike without Heartbreaker on top of the 10 - 20 RP opportunity cost of Marrowrend and 5 - 10 RP emergency DS cost if you have to DS outside Ossuary. It just a huge scam, really.
Because frost fever gives you 5 runic power every so often per enemy, while virulent plague does good sustained damage, and both help you with threat due to the overall DPS increase.
Blood DK’s only weakness is the generation of his Runic Power bar, with superstrain you’re mitigating that one weakness by a good margin, especially in aoe pulls.
Yeah, it’s probably the best one still. Now the Crimson Rune legendary is competitive but dancing rune weapon is kinda useless vs casters and magic damage and even bosses like the last one in Necrotic Wake where parry doesn’t even work against his attacks.
its such a big diference from before CRW leggy got buffed
not only does it make it more safe, it is also more smooth start of a pack, each pack, plus DRW refreshes the bones duration instead of having to use 2 runes
DRW also doubles ur attacks and blood boil giving a nice boost in aggro on mobs pull
just a thought.
)the runic power from FF is just a bonus.