M+ Tanks in Tears - VDH/BDK Suffering: A Call for Positive Change in Season 2 - IMPORTANT

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
1

Hello fellow tanks (and dps, healers who tolerate us),

As a longtime m+ multi-class tank main sitting comfortably in the top 0.5% m+ players across multiple expansions/seasons, I’ve had the pleasure (and pain) of tanking m+ during TWW S1 on druid, warrior, paladin, vengeance demon hunter (VDH), and blood death knight (BDK). While I’ve always loved the role, I can’t ignore how frustrating and clunky some tank specs have become—especially VDH and BDK.

Let’s talk about Blood Death Knight (BDK) first:

  • It’s bloated. There are so many abilities and resources to juggle that it feels overwhelming.
  • Why on earth does Blood Boil not generate mitigation or runic power? We have to constantly pick between mitigation and threat, and that decision feels punishing.
  • It’s clumsy. Managing heal windows for the past 5 seconds doesn’t feel smooth—it feels exhausting.
  • Squishiness is a big issue. You’re reliant on healers patching you up between your healing windows, which just doesn’t feel great.
  • It is impossible to play the class without having multiple weak auras. Nothing against weak auras, but they feel MANDATORY to even play the spec on +10-12 level.
  • It is so squishy that friends who tanked in Dragonflight are now “SCARED” to tank 10s with their BDKs. But they were tanking many seasons before.

Now onto Vengeance Demon Hunter (VDH):

  • Top self-healing comes from going into Metamorphosis, but it doesn’t feel satisfying because healing from soul shards feels SO underwhelming. Buffing soul shard healing with spirit bomb, soul cleave is a must.
  • You TOOK away the utility with double sigils of fear, grip, silence - fine. BUT give us back the mitigation and self-sustain. VDH is a bleak shadow of what it was in s3, s4 Dragonflight.
  • VDH feels like paper outside of cooldowns. You’re either somewhat tanky during CDs or praying your healer doesn’t blink when you don’t have them. (literally paper with spikes up)
  • Metamorphosis uptime has improved due to hero talents, but I don’t feel safer. If anything, it’s the exact opposite, I feel in danger because I’m thinking how I can’t have a hole in mitigation on that add because during random thrash he just one-shots me mid-key.

Here’s the big picture: compared to warrior, paladin, and druid, both BDK and VDH feel significantly less safe. And even those “stronger” tanks are not as self-sufficient as they used to be. Mitigation nerfs have hit hard, and the added pressure on tanks (and healers) is one of the reasons why so many tanks have stopped tanking in War Within.

I want to spark some conversation because this isn’t just a “me” problem—it’s something I’ve heard echoed across the community. Season 2 is our chance to bring tanks back to a more enjoyable, balanced state. BDK and VDH don’t need to dominate—they just need to feel better. Their whole identity is built on self-sustain which was taken away from them, while reducing their default mitigation to paper - this is not okay.

COUNTER ARGUMENT: Some of you might say that BDK, VDH can still be played at top levels in M+. Stop lying to yourself. Among the top 800 raider io recorded m+ runs, you won’t even find a single BDK or VDH in them. They simply can’t survive it, nor heal through it. It’s not even about utility, the thrash just wipes the floor with them.

Let’s keep it constructive. What are your thoughts on tanking in War Within? What changes would you like to see?

Let’s make tanking great again.

– A frustrated but hopeful tank main (VDH, BDK main in the past)

2 Likes
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VDH can stay bad. They ruined Dragonflight. (They’re actually not that bad in TWW)

3

the thing is for all that matter, +10s they are more than fine.
for the most part blood dks and vdh (outside of df) struggle with high keys because they are self healers, so they takw more dmg but can heal it back. now if the hits get so strong that you have no chance to heal anymore and you just lay on the floor the problem starts.

without block they will just stay squishy. only thing they could do is massively increase amor with active mitigation like iron fur or slap passive drs on it.

the tank design currently is not exactly great in my opinion

1 Like
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They could also increase their HP pool by 40%. It would take a lot more to 1-shot the self-healing tanks. Its the only way I see to maintain diversity and viability at the same time.

I just worry that if they give VDH and BDK more active mitigaiton they would become too OP. So their self-healing would need to be nerfed in exchange. And that would make a BDK a paladin with out a shield and VDK a GDruid with glaives.

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all tanks should get more passive mitigation then the difference between them would be in self healing, aoe damage, single target damage, etc.
now even with paladin is easy to get oneshot if something happenes and you press a button half a second to late. on a 10 with 627 ilvl as a pallytank , when i move if i have no def up i get oneshot by trash. need to be in consacration and constantly pressing defensives. there is no pause, allways full focus and i depend on healer a lot.
joining m+ is a gamble and it happened many times for the group run to finish before last boss or last boss wich made it a wasted time spend and makes me feel meh to join another group
i get it pally is meta for some good player but mostly are not pros and want to have fun in m+ not to be punished for every small mistake

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But that is not specific of VDH or PPala. That is the tank roll in general that is a wreking mess right now.

I disagree. If all tanks get the same migitation, then seasons that are hard the one with the most self heal will be uber meta. And the seasons that are easy the ones with the most DPS will be the uber-meta.

It will make the problem even worse.

I think the other way arround is better:

Draw a line between 2 points: Max mitigation and Max self-heal. Pwarrior and BDK would sit on each extreme. All other tank should sit somewhere on that line. PPalys close to warriors, and VDH close to BDK. And then to balance that out a bit, you tweek the max HP so either end of the spectrum can survive the initial hits (if they press the appropriate buttons).

Max mitigation and low self heal would have smaller health pools. So healer has a larger impact (because he would have to cover for them). The other extreme with self heals would have a larger HP pool. So healers would have a singificantly smaller impact, but you would survive the initial hit and self-heal part of it. The rest the tank cant heal is taken care of by the healer. But the overal HPS required by the healer would be the same (roughly).

And then AoE and ST damage should be the same for ALL tanks. DONE.

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more hp just doesnt scale into higher keys well. so you always need to adjust the hp according to the season
a 40% dr always stays the same.
yes adding more mitigation would make them op etc.
but i am not paid to think about a solution so… :smiley:

8

True.

But it would still be better than what we have now. So if a BDK cant tank anything above a +16 because he gets 1-shot, you give BDK maybe 2 more key levels before he begins getting 1-shot.

Still 1 or 2 bellow PPally and Warrior… but its still better. With out being OP.

9

yes but we saw it with windwalker for years that if it doesnt scale well and they have to manually adjust it every season they are too slow and never get it right which leads to frustration.
i guess, similar to monk they might need to rework vdh and bdk or they think it is fine because they can easily tank +12 which is already above max reward range

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Yes. But a +12 is a bit not OK for me.

Not everyone is satisfied playing at reward range. Some like to push forward. And between the 0.1% cutoff (+19) and a +12 there are a ton of levels where people might want to play their favorite spec.

And if BDKs are getting 1-shot then I consider that unaceptable. And if the solution is for blizzard to babysit these spec and stop delaying these changes to 4 months into the season… I think its a fair thing to ask really.