Lichborne: The Rise of Blood in 3.1
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Mar 16th 2009 at 11:00AM
The Blood tree often gets a bad rap among those not in the know. It's a decent leveling tree, but it's generally considered not to have the tanking power or AoE DPS Potential of Unholy or Frost. By all indications, that has changed in 3.1, especially in the latest patch. Not only have many key Blood talents and skills received key buffs or changes, but the very nature of Armor Penetration has changed, with the 25% benefit buff making Blood's mostly physical damage dealing style well suited to take advantage of the change. This is quite a shift from just before 3.1, when many were afraid disease-less Blood would be wiped out and leave the tree with no viable hassle-free DPS specs.
Blood DPS
Blood DPS can now safely use Death Strike as their standard Frost/Unholy Rune dump thanks to the buff baseline buffs and the new Improved Death Strike talent, which in alone solves a lot of Blood DPS problems, since you're no longer locked into 13 points of Frost for Annihilation. This allows heading into the Unholy Tree, where one can pick up major useful talents such as Morbidity, Epidemic, and Master of Ghouls, resulting a build that might look a little like this. This build benefits from grabbing extra strength, Death Coil damage, disease duration, and spell hit in Unholy, which would be near impossible if Blood still had to grab Annihilation. Since Death Coil will be your main RP dump and you'll be shooting off free Death Coils due to sudden doom, you'll want the damage and the extra chance for them to hit.
Some people have been a bit concerned that the Tier 8 4-piece bonus doesn't cover Death Strike, but don't expect Blood to fall behind too much because of that, because it does apply to Heart Strikes. That's really the secret of the build. Death Strikes are just there to generate Death Runes for Heart Strikes -- or, if you're AEing large groups, Blood Boil.
The two major disadvantages kept by Blood DPS are needing to babysit the Ghoul (since you won't be able to afford Night of the Dead) and the tightness of their rotation, needing to spend as many runes as possible on Heart Strike before Frost Fever and Blood Plague fall off. The former problem - is the perma-ghoul worth it for Blood DPS when it will die so easily - is probably one that will need some further exploration, and the latter shouldn't be as much of a problem thanks to a few points spent in Epidemic and Death Strike not removing diseases like Obliterate did without Annihilation. Overall, if Blood goes live looking close to how it does now, it should be a very tempting tree for DPS.
Blood Tanking
One of Blood Tanking's major weaknesses has always been that it's the weakest AE tree. That is pretty much gone as a problem is 3.1. The new disease-less Blood Boil is actually working remarkably well as a snap AE aggro tool, enough so that you shouldn't really need to worry about heading 21 points into Unholy to grab Unholy Blight. A Tank build like this should work pretty well both for survivability and threat. If you have a Frost DPSer in your raid who can cast Improved Icy Touch, all the better, you just freed up 3 points.
Also nice for Blood Tanks is the new buff to Scent of Blood. The latest iteration gives 10 runic power per a charge and can be activated by dodging, parrying, or simply by taking damage. Preliminary tests on the PTR are placing it at almost always up in multi-mob situations, and up enough to provide 2-3 runic power per second on average on single target fights.
This should make it a lot easier for Blood Death Knights to keep chaining Rune Strike and cement their place as solid single-target aggro holders. Of course, Scent of Blood is also conveniently low enough in the tree that Frost and Unholy tanks can take it, but Blood will probably still find it the easiest to take, as they'll probably have 3 spare points on the way to getting Will of the Necropolis and Heart Strike easily.
Speaking of Heart Strike...
There are some Death Knights who are asking for a new secondary effective to Heart Strike now that Blood Boil is an effective AE damage and threat tool. There's certainly a good argument for the cleave being less useful than it once was, but it's also useful to keep in mind that it wouldn't be the first time Blizzard has left a strike without a useful secondary ability, such as when they removed the HoT removal from Plague Strike.
Overall, even with that less useful secondary mechanic, Heart Strike is still a very fine damage dealer. Blood is a tree that's currently headed into 3.1 stronger than ever, and if you haven't taken a look at it lately, you might want to strongly consider a second one now. I'm probably going to keep on with Unholy, but at the same time, all that health recovery and a Dancing Rune Weapon churning out Blood Boils is just looking way too juicy for words..
Welcome to Lichborne, the new class column on the new WoW class, the Death Knight, where we discuss speccing for solo DPS, basic defense gear and Heroic defense gear for the Death Knight tank, Heroic DPS gear, and basic Death Knight statistics and mechanics. You might also want to check all the other articles in our Death Knight category and our Death Knight directory.Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Talents, Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
tony Mar 16th 2009 11:15AM
I don't like the blood tanking build you have up. You skip abomination's might, which is a fantastic raid-wide buff that detracts little from your build (only wolf-using hunters or MM bring that buff that I know of).
Also, while blood boil "may" be ok for aoe aggro, why would you skip unholy blight which was just placed on a silver platter for you. Unholy blight is hands-down the best tanking tool because it will grab adds that were initially out of the relatively small range of blood boil.
tony Mar 16th 2009 11:18AM
As an example (i would shift some points around myself, but this gives you the basic idea)
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=03550205303033002010221013001050000000000000000000000000205230305000010000000000000000&glyph=000000000000&version=9614
Kassu Mar 16th 2009 12:00PM
I'd like to know what makes the author think that Death Strike would be a method of DPS and not a tool for tanking and PVP.
Do you have any numbers to justify it? The upper half of the Unholy tree on the PTR is currently a pile of meh for a blood build, it seems ridiculuous that taking them over Annihalation would up your DPS.
Would just like some numbers and not just pure theory.
DeathPaladin Mar 16th 2009 12:24PM
"Do you have any numbers to justify it? The upper half of the Unholy tree on the PTR is currently a pile of meh for a blood build, it seems ridiculuous that taking them over Annihalation would up your DPS."
The Unholy Tree: Vicious Strikes is not ideal. Virulence is not ideal. Epidemic loosens up the rotation. Morbidity increases the damage of our primary rune dump. Ravenous Dead is amazing even without Master of Ghouls (+3% strength), and increases our DPS across the board. Necrosis adds a little bit of shadow damage to our autoattacks.
The Frost Tree: Runic Power Mastery increases Dancing Rune Weapon uptime. Improved Icy Touch and Black Ice improve only our Icy Touch and Frost Fever, which is a miniscule portion of our DPS.
Death Strike: 75% weapon damage. With Improved Death Strike, it becomes 105% weapon damage. With the Glyph and at least 26 runic power (not hard to accomplish), it becomes 130% weapon damage.
Obliterate: 80% weapon damage. With 1 disease, 92.5% weapon damage. With 2 diseases, 105% weapon damage. With the Glyph, 125% weapon damage.
The top tiers of Frost is actually more of a talent point waste for Blood than the top tiers of Unholy. You need to effectively spend 8 points on nothing in Frost to even get access to Annihilation. On the other hand, if you spend 2 talent points in the tree you are speccing into anyway, and use the necessary glyph, Death Strike hits harder without consuming the diseases.
charityluck Mar 16th 2009 3:59PM
Mr. tony :D
"Unholy blight is hands-down the best tanking tool because it will grab adds that were initially out of the relatively small range of blood boil."
blood boil sits at 20 yards while unholy blight sits at 10. with
i agree with the abom's might if you use the 4 herat strike rotation you should always get a good proc. imo lose the imp icey touch, one into corspe explosion and the last 2 points into abom's might.
Alluin Mar 16th 2009 3:24PM
I think enhance shammys bring the buff as well.
mattdaye Mar 16th 2009 11:16AM
I've been bloodtanking for a few months now and I can easily say its effective and worthwile. Albeit I did it to use in solo/2-3-manning instances and bosses where healing would be in short supply, and so I could easily swap on pvp gear to do some BGs, I found it quite effective.
death knights, being evasion tanks, take some big damage at random intervals throughout a fight. if the healer is not ready you can take a major blow and then be left in a bad spot. blood neutralizes a lot of this by giving you the ability to make a macro out of vampiric blood and rune tap to gain HUGE amounts of health back and a buff to overall HP and now your death strikes for a few seconds heal for incredible amounts.
you effectively get to counter your own classes' weakness with blood.
p.s. i really wish rune weapon generated threat for the user, i know dpsers would hate it, so maybe one that gains threat and one that doesnt using the same charge? oh the pipedreams i have
bod Mar 16th 2009 11:47AM
I think your logic is wonky for 3.1, we'll no longer be avoidance tanks, we'll have comparable avoidance to warriors and pallies with a 5% "block makealltanksthesame equivalent" out of blade barrier. You should be spending time managing your pulls, adds, threat, cooldowns and thinking ahead, not self healing....imagine a pally tank had to pull out holy light all the time? You'd know you'd be in trouble
omenscourge Mar 16th 2009 11:17AM
I had good success testing this blood tank spec on the PTR
http://omenscourge.blogspot.com/2009/03/ptr-blood-tank-spec-details.html
It was pre lichborne nerf which will free up 6 points to move around in blood or unholy for more threat producing talents.
Here is how it performed
http://omenscourge.blogspot.com/2009/03/ptr-blood-tank-results.html
Given the latest changes I beleive blood tanking will be fully viable and likely prefereable to Unholy, if for no other reason it will buff Unholy DPS since you will be one less person fighting for ebon plague.
Matchu Mar 16th 2009 11:18AM
Thanks for the information, as a current blood tank I had been reconsidering a move into unholy. But looks like it'll be worth sticking out as blood.
Robert M Mar 16th 2009 11:19AM
What is the rationale of the improved healing in blood presence with Improved Blood Presence?
Are you supposed to be tanking in Blood Presence or is it more designed to be a talent like rogues and feral dps druds have where they receive improved healing?
omenscourge Mar 16th 2009 11:25AM
@ Robert,
Improved blood presence will apply its healing effects to you regardless of what presence you are actually in.
Therefore, you can benefit from it's self healing while tanking in Frost Presence.
Robert M Mar 16th 2009 11:35AM
Thanks!
The tooltip says "While in Frost Presence or Unholy Presence, you retain 4% healing from Blood Presence, and healing done to you is increased by 10% in Blood Presence."
I thought the 10% improved healing might only apply in blood presence.
tony Mar 16th 2009 11:35AM
My thoughts on IBP is that if you need it, the problem may be either with your gear or tanking ability or the healers ability to keep you up. While the healing from blood presence is good for soloing, its healing is minor given the incoming damage in a raid or heroic situation, and those points could be much better spent in mitigation or threat-producing talents. Especially adding the vamp blood cooldown and others, it just seems unnecessary.
Chuddy Mar 16th 2009 12:31PM
Another user responded to what I'm doing. I love going frost but still having the blood presence active. Make soloing elites easy money. The worm dudes in Dragonblight give insane xp per kill and take very little time to go down. :)
mastercontrolcast.wordpress.com
DeathPaladin Mar 16th 2009 11:43AM
The permanent ghoul isn't vital. If you are not skilled/patient enough to babysit a ghoul through the AoE damage, then getting Master of Ghouls is a waste.
Not speccing into Master of Ghouls also frees up a major glyph slot (because Glyph of the Ghoul is mandatory if you have Master of Ghouls), which is huge considering that Blood DKs already have 3 or 4 other viable ones.
An alternative is to take a couple talent points from the example build (say, Master of Ghouls and Corpse Explosion, or Corpse Explosion and 1 point from Epidemic) and throw them into Runic Power Mastery in Frost. The Death Strike glyph caps at 26 runic power, but those two points are still an indirect DPS increase since it increases Dancing Rune Weapon uptime by 6 seconds at full runic power.
Sedition Mar 16th 2009 1:00PM
I'm glad you mentioned that. We're not f-ing hunters or warlocks, but apparently if you want to have high DPS you need the stupid ghoul.
It was great for leveling but I think it's ridiculous in dungeons.
DeathPaladin Mar 16th 2009 3:10PM
From what I've read, if you are willing and able to babysit the ghoul, then you can do more DPS than without. If you can't or won't babysit, then you'll probably do less DPS than if you just skipped the ghoul entirely (mostly because you'd have Glyph of the Ghoul hogging one of your major glyph slots that would be better occupied by Dancing Rune Weapon, Blood Strike, Death Strike, or Dark Death).
Donnicus Mar 16th 2009 11:45AM
For The Blood DPS Build that you have I like it but IMO you edge just a bit more DPS by taking Runic Power Mastery thus adding another 30RP=6sec more of DRW. Here is the changes i made.
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMVh0Isfof0stZfMhht0o
Now you still get to take the PermaGhoul thus not losing the extra DPS/potential OhShite button with Death Pact. The only things that I did, as AutoAttacks being the lowest percentage of our DPS, is I took 1 point out of Necrosis and dropped CE mainly because I dont like it and the only use I ever get out of it is PvP and sometimes to pick up trash, other than that to me its a waste of RP most fights.
Donnicus Mar 16th 2009 12:18PM
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMVh0Isfof0stZfMhhL0o
Forgot to click link to this build.
My bad =)