I’d love to hear your thoughts on what’s needed to improve the Death Knight right now. I’m currently leveling up my second one on the Horde side, alongside another Vengeance Demon Hunter.
Even at lower levels, there’s a huge difference in how smooth the VDH plays versus how “clunky” the Death Knight feels. You could replace the VDH with any other tank.
So I’d just like to list what my “wish list” would be if I could choose. This mainly concerns QoL changes, but I’d also love to hear what you think is needed to bring him up to the performance level of the other tanks in high M+.
-Remove GCD from Deathstrike.
-Remove rune cost from Death and Decay; it’s already limited by the charges.
-Integrate Marrowrend into Heart Strike and keep the rune cost at 1.
-Let Death´s Caress apply 6 stacks of Bone Shield, but with a longer cooldown.
-Passive talents like Cleaving Strikes or Ossarium should be baseline in the skills.
Those are the first things that come to mind that would make tanking smoother—at least in my opinion, they wouldn’t make it overpowered. Of course, feel free to comment if you completely disagree.
right now im one key away from resilient 17s and what i am starting to notice is that sometimes the damage i take is so big that i dont have time to do my basic rotation. im just frantically spamming heart strike and death strike to stay alive. there is just no time for blood boil or marrowrend/deaths caress since they dont generate enough runic power
i dont mind dk not having any crazy movement or jumps when compared to other tanks since we get a lot of immunities. that feels like a nice trade off. but there is definitely a reason why they call us the wheelchair class
anyway here is my list:
-remove GCD and rune cost from death and decay. it no longer gives runic power
-red thirst: increase the cd reduction to 2.5 seconds per 10 runic power
-dance of midnight: remove the rng element and instead reduce dancing rune weapon cd to 1 minute(yes its boring but 10x better than randomly proccing a defensive while i dont need it)
-reduce deaths advance cd to 40 seconds(with speed enchants we are doing ok but sometimes there are small gaps that are quite awkward)
-remove the consumption talent(low dmg reduction + cant use death strike + channeling just feels bad to use as a tank)
-increase all threat generation by 50%
Thats too short , but we were able to have a 60sec DRW in TWW and DF, at least in M+ in raid mire about 70-75 sec but that was ok since nothing was able to kill us. On 45 sec they would need to reduce DRW Power
It was about 45 sec in tww. Bonestorm, tombstone consuming charges plus mobs hitting you. You could have bigger drw uptime in tww than now with apex talents
I hope they remove marrowrend, worst button to press in the game by far. If they want some lazy change, just make Heart strike gaining a bone charge instead…
Outside of the Dancing Rune Weapon (DRW) window Blood does quite bad damage imo. Therefore, 45 seconds DRW would be nice so Blood would be more effective damage wise as well. Obviously the DRW damage should be decreased a bit if the CD is halved but it should still give some kind of damage boost. Because DRW provides extra parry this would mean buff for the defense as well.
For me, Blood DK should embody the fantasy of an immortal meat shield. It shouldn’t be a tank focused on avoiding damage through constant parries or dodges : that’s the identity of other tanks.
A Blood Death Knight should stand there and take the hit. The gameplay fantasy is not “I avoid damage,” but “I survive through it.” Death Strike should be the core of that identity: you absorb massive amounts of damage, mitigate just enough to avoid being one-shot, then heal yourself back up through sheer necromantic resilience.
That’s what makes the spec unique and satisfying thematically. Enemies should feel like they are fighting an unstoppable undead wall. A Death Knight shouldn’t fear death, dodge away from attacks, or rely on RNG avoidance mechanics to survive. The class fantasy has always been:
“I am death itself. I endure. I decay, regenerate, and keep advancing no matter how much damage I take.”
Right now, the spec feels stuck between two identities: Blizzard still pushes avoidance mechanics like parry through DRW and Bone Shield, while the real fantasy of Blood DK is enduring overwhelming damage and recovering from it through dark magic.
I think the spec would feel much better if Blizzard leaned fully into that “undying juggernaut” fantasy instead of trying to make Blood DK play like a standard avoidance tank.
Based on my experiences with BDK through the years, this is what I would like to see.
Gameplay improvements:
BDK feels especially bad during the gathering phase. Give BDK a pulsing AoE damage effect, to more easily gather. Yes, we got mist, but mist is bound to DRW and you dont want to use DRW while you gather. It is for when you are ready to plant. Fix: A return of Bonestorm, to also generate Bonearmor as you do this would be ideal. Another fix would to make GrippyHands do AoE damage (again).
BDK feels less in control of your healthpool, your healthbar is not your own, in higher keys you constantly feel overwhelmed. Dangerous damage intake isnt exhilarating, it is punishing. The best option to solve this, is to revert to Death Strike always healing based on the damage intake taken as a total (not a pool that can be spent and wasted).
BDK takes a lot of damage, all the time (if RNG isnt on your side). If you are not supposed to heal it back, BDK needs mitigation to soften this weakness. Boring as it is, the fix is to try to make BDK function more like other tanks. Where instead of being a selfsustained tank, you are one healers top off, as is also the directional goal. Easy fix: Make bloodshield a partial absorb on all types of damage and increase the size of the shield coverage. Making it a 50% absorb, or permanent “upkeep based” mitigation, would make BDK feel less volatile compared to other tanks from a healer perspective. It would also soften the impact of the bad Apex RNG rolls you will have (that will kill you, as the healer gets used to buff being up, then it is gone - splat).
Now to the big one, the request that really should be heard and pushed: REWORK THE APEX TALENT FOR BLOOD DEATH KNIGHT. If failing that, if you must keep the damage part aspect of it, then at least remove the defensive value from it. Move that “planned” value into the rest of the kit.
It is extremely frustrating to have your pull feel safe or simply have it fall apart, just because the apex decides to not go up or not.
Then you got the whole aspect of the procs simply overlapping, making it feel even worse, when you afterwards have length of time of dead space. Even if you try to be kind and say that the idea to react to a proc uptime is fun gameplay… I personally STRONGLY disagree to that, a tank defensive value should never be this up to RNG. The parry RNG alone is enough. We dont need RNG with RNG follow up.
One can only hope that we are heard and something is done. Yet, based on how BDK is a spec that either works in M+ and then is immortal in raid, or is a spec that is dead in M+ but fair in raid… yeah, I would not have my hopes up.
I love BDK. The idea of it. What it used to be and feel like. Now it is like watching a former shadow of itself, something fading, the spec feels like it is sunsetting. It might be time for a full rework. One where the devs decide and stay true to their conviction of:
BDK being a selfsustained tank or simply just another warrior under a different skin.
Either way, the choice being made is very much needed. This half state is terrible to be in.
