Topic
Blood - What is the developer's design goal?
Community Manager
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Are you content with the current clarity of DK design? Many Death Knights are literally playing the class incorrectly and have to use outside sources to learn how to get their mitigation up to par with other tanks. As I mentioned earlier, playing a DK can ask a lot of the player. One thing that players new to DK tanking should watch out for is that you don't always need to use Death Strike the instant that it cools down. Death Strike’s healing depends on damage recently taken, so it is more powerful when you’ve just taken a chunk of damage and not when you’re sitting at 99% health. Are you satisfied with the signature strike (Heart Strike) being on such a low use priority? Heart Strike a good use of Blood Runes in some situations, so it looks okay for now. Are you content that DKs are willing to dump 5 talent points for lichborne? Are you content knowing that there is very little to do with the remaining 10 talent points after a DK finishes their talent tree? There are plenty of utility choices available to DKs in all three trees. If DKs want to invest the talent points in Lichborne to help improve their survivability a bit, then that’s fine. Are you content with RE and other quirky mechanics that DKs are working with? DKs are able to game RE procs by sitting on their blood runes, forcing additional FU runes for Death Strikes. This goes against the design of Blade Barrier, but more importantly is still more powerful. We anticipated players sitting on some runes in order to make it more likely that runes they want get refreshed by Runic Empowerment. We don’t mind this behavior as a more advanced strategy. Above all, are you content with the current DK QoL? DKs have been moaning and groaning about a number of things. Many are trivial. Many just want to be heard. Many don't understand what they should be doing. Does the DK tank class feel polished and smooth to you? We’re pretty happy with Blood tanking overall. Many of the recent changes in 4.0.6 were really just quality of life issues, not overhauls to the core design. The core of Cataclysm Blood design was to take more damage but offset that with more self-healing. That’s not an easy thing to balance, but we think the results have been good overall. We're pleased to see Blood DKs out there successfully tanking all the content. |
#21
3/2/2011
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Neat, a blue post. Are you guys addressing all of the tank's issues? I see Blue posts for paladins, warriors, and DKs...
:D |
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Edited by Vedranna on 3/2/11 7:35 PM (PST)
yaa that is what i thought communism; second thought I canceling my account as a reply to this post; it may not stay canceled but this completely unacceptable, voting with my wallet. |
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While I appreciate the response Daxxarri, I am disappointed by it too, ah well.
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Quick question what QoL issues where addressed in 4.06? I know of the disease thing (which hardly improved are QoL) was there anything else?
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Yeah me too. The only issue that's still bugging me is: Outbreak helps with this, and having diseases up helps with threat in general. On the other hand, if you’re specifically in a situation where you've got solid aggro on a mob and you only care about your survival, then it's probably a good idea to prioritize Death Strike over disease reapplication. If you need to handle more than one creature, Pestilence can help by letting you use Blood runes to spread diseases. Keeping diseases up is not a threat issue, it's a mitigation issue. |
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Yeah the problem is, DKs are an incredibly unfun spec to play for tanking. I hate tanking on my DK because it feels so much like I'm fighting against the game. I can't use diseases because I lose mitigation, if I hit anything that isn't death strike, I lose mitigation, if I accidentally use one of the death runes from my spec passive on something that isn't death strike, that's also bad and it's playing like a spec that wants to just mash one button but is doing its best not to.
----- Attack tables, diminishing returns and you! http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1869253719 |
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I'm not going to be cancelling my account not retiring my DK.
My position on it remains what it was before. I dislike tanking on my DK. If my guild needs a tank to make the raid happen I'll do it, however only if no other choice is available. If it gets to the point where I'm expected to tank more often than not then I'll consider retiring my DK and try out another class. This isn't because I want buffs its cause I'm tired of watching everything but the actual encounters designed by blizzard in order to maximize my survival, a rune addon, custom power auras, my intake of damage (not just my health bar but the actual amount of damage I'm taking per hit) a blood shield tracker plus all the other usual stuff most tanks watch during an encounter. It's a bit unreasonable. I'm not even going to go into the all the other foolishness that goes into maximizing surviabliity with a dk with the current mechanics, I'm sure they will be repeated (again) for you to read. |
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Yeah blood shield stacking is there that's true, but yeah timing death strike with addons is still alive and well I'm afraid. |
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I'm not sure if you understand the problem. The design of the tree--Blood Rites, Crimson Scourge, and Blade Barrier--works counter-intuitively. A new player might think: "Oh, I should spend my Death Runes that I get from using Death Strike on more Heart Strikes. After all, why else would I get Death Runes?" Wrong decision. Or they might think, "Hey, I have a Blood Rune I need to use soon to keep up Blade Barrier. I'll use that on Heart Strike, since that hits harder." Once again, wrong decision. Or, a player might, as you mention, forgo using DS when at 99% health, waiting to try to time at that perfect moment when DS will provide the maximum mitigation--once again: wrong decision. While I appreciate the new communication philosophy (which is indeed much better than the Blog format), I think you need to take another look at the spec, and maybe polish some of the more counter-intuitive parts to the class. I have a guildie who's a new Blood Tank. He's played tanks before, and has been playing since BC, and was upset at how squishy he seemed to be in heroics. I tried to explain what worked better for mitigation purposes. He was deeply confused at how counter-intuitive that felt. |
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Zarko, at this point we are just screaming into the wind. They have had over 150 pages of this kind of reasoning and they dont see it, understand it, or probably have even bothered to play it. At this point any reply we say is wasted breath and effort. |
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Edited by Arcdeek on 3/2/11 8:23 PM (PST)
Daxxari, it's nice to finally see any sort of comment on Blood, but much of what you've written just seems grossly divorced from reality as most Blood tanks and theorycrafters see it.
Stacking blood shields does nothing to alleviate DS timing constraints. You respond to a comment about our healing not scaling by saying it is scaling (when it's going primarily to overheal by most accounts). You mention utility in all three trees, but the fact is that we can justify wasting five points to get Lichborne because there is literally nothing else worth taking. I and many others have written about the issues at the core of the "modern" Blood tree, numerous times. It's counter intuitive, it doesn't scale well, it's built around a hodge-podge tree full of vestigial DPS talents and abilities, it is unfairly punishing to average players while being on the brink of overpowered for those who know how to abuse it, and it requires significant out of game research to play well. To have all these concerns replied to with a blanket "working as intended, you're just supposed to work harder than any other tank" is honestly kind of insulting. |
yes. and in order to mitigate that damage we rely on armor, of which ours is the lowest of the tanks, and Blood shield, which requires us to death strike, even if we're at 99% HP...... it's this eternal struggle of Survival Type A versus Survival Type B..... no other tanks have to make this choice...... and you're cool with it.... what? |
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Edited by Judgesyou on 3/2/11 8:08 PM (PST)
You might be rounding up loose mobs, for example, or trying to get very solid aggro on something that needs to be DPS’ed hard. In those cases, using other abilities might help you meet the objective more efficiently, and doing so involves making effective choices as the situation demands. This really stood out the most to me. The DK is blowing runes and GCDs to round up loose mobs, giving up survivability because they can't use DS (at least it used to do aoe threat). The other three tanks are still getting to block and Savage Defense. You mention utility in all three trees, but the fact is that we can justify wasting five points to get Lichborne is because there is literally nothing else worth taking. I agree. What utility is a tiny bit extra DnD or disease length? Lower DG cooldown is nice, but not mutually exclusive to Lichborne. Lichborne leaves 4 points, of which can go to DG cooldown, free interrupts (what I picked), disease damage, or disease length. um. About covers the whole blue post :( |
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Edited by Slanidh on 3/2/11 8:08 PM (PST)
And Heart Strike - the name is misleading. It sounds like a devastating single target attack, like Execute maybe - like you're stabbing your enemy right through their chest. Instead its a cleave.
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