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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsLichborne: 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 2 of 2)
Donnicus Mar 16th 2009 12:23PM
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMVh0Isfof0stMZfMhhL0o
I Need more coffee.
Shoot ME.
Orbaz Mar 16th 2009 11:51AM
Woot! That's my toon at the top there! One of my favorite parts of Blood tanking are some of the oh $hit moments you can pull out. Timing your cooldowns with bursts you know are coming, like mattdyne said, really offsets some of the issues healers have with DK tanks. I can handle healing on myself on Loatheb, and being able to heal myself after things like decimate on Gluth has saved me more times than I can count.
Over all after reading up on the changes for Blood in 3.1 I'm pretty excited for whats coming down the pipe, and I'm glad I don't have to spec into lichborne now..
Also at tony, I usually skip over Abom's might also because other classes bring it to the raid. My raids always run with an enhance shaman, so I just shift those two points around.
SpoonDogSVT Mar 16th 2009 12:30PM
Hooray for the viability of the Blood/Ghoul Knight spec! */0/26 has been a great leveling spec, and I was hoping it would be raid viable at level-cap. (see Spoonrea @ US-Sen'Jin).
Warook Mar 16th 2009 1:19PM
That tanking build sort of confuses me. I mean, why would you pass up Epidemic, Abom's Might, Lichborne, or Runic Power Mastery?
Surely you caught the Pesti glyph change (Your Pestilence ability also Refreshes any diseases on your current target. Old: Increases range of Pestilence by 5 yds). This means that after the first disease application, you'll only need Pestilence to keep diseases up on all the mobs, and Epidemic will let you go even longer before you have to hit it again, which frees up space for more Heart Strike, Blood Boil, and Death Strike.
And Sure, Lichborne's nowhere as great a tanking CD as once was, but you can't passup such a useful Oh $#!t macro CD? It makes you undead! That means You, yes YOU! are a valid target for death coil!
#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast Vampiric Blood
/cast Empower Runic Weapon
/cast Arcane Torrent(racial)
/cast Icebound Fortitude
/cast Rune Tap
/cast Lichborne
/cast [target=player] Death Coil
This alone can heal a greater portion of my health. Very useful if the Healer gets distracted or silenced. You could also consider picking up the Blood Tap minor glyph and putting Blood tap in there as well, so as you can have a Blood Boil or Heart Strike available at the end, or put it where Empower is so that you can use this every 3 mins instead of 5 mins.
Here's what I suggest instead:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=jbE0quhIsb0fssZGx0zZ0gh
Auguste Mar 16th 2009 1:27PM
"The Blood tree often gets a bad rap among those not in the know. "
Yep. My total /facepalms are at about 550 now, from pugs telling me to switch out of blood aura for tanking. Blood, while currently a little low on AoE threat is still more than viable. From the sounds of it, it's going to be awesome, (despite the nerfs to our 36 pt talents and blade barrier), in 3.1.
I'd rant about it more here but I'm going to shamelessly plug my blog instead, which is all about blood-tanking.
http://bloodbarrier.blogspot.com
It was very nice to see this post, perhaps at least the readers of WoW Insider will be a little more open minded toward their tanks.
DCoW Mar 16th 2009 1:48PM
The blood tree: you hit me I gain life, I hit you I gain life, you do nothing, I gain life.
I've personally had a love affair with this tree since beta. my current 72 dk can take down the 70 elite runed stone giants (pretty much unsoloable) by herself.
Mark of blood is still awesome for a tonne of encounters, vampiric blood is ridiculously cool too.
I personally don't spec into blood worms or sudden doom since I tank, but blood has a special place for me, kinda like restoration of the druid and the shaman variety.
frankly the rotation is easy enough when you take death rune mastery.
opening aoe pulls are just Death n decay, IT, PS, Pestilence. usually this is followed up by 6 blood strikes which makes great threat for two targets.
gimme a second and I'll make my theoretical 80 build (obviously it'll change when 3.1 comes out but I'm not making any assumptions until then)
....later http://tinyurl.com/dj34hz
also: nothing is much more fun than having your own personal heal button, and rune tap is just that. so much use. :D
Kinth Mar 16th 2009 1:58PM
i wouldent go for corpse explosion in the blood build , ive allways found it to be a useless talent
its damge on the bosses that counts not the damage you do on trash , so id prob swicth it out of one point in outbreak its not much extra damage but its better than something youll never use
but im like ing the blood buffs and if they carry on i can see blood overtaking unholy as main spec for any DK worth his salt
Mindreaver Mar 16th 2009 2:20PM
Here is my problem with blood tanking now, and in the future.
The cooldowns are not up to snuff when you are fighting something with significant ability to produce damage quickly.
This would include most "hard" bosses in the game. Blood will never be better then frost or unholy because of this. The passive 15% less damage would be great if there wasn't an internal cooldown (like the pally talent).
I'm also not sold on the idea that healing your own damage is what a tank should be doing.
I have a healer main, and an unholy DK tank alt. As a healer, I want my tank to blow cooldowns if:
1) I can't heal him for some reason (stun, fear, charm, whatever)
2) There is a boss ability coming soon that does crazy damage
3) Enrage incomming.
I don't want their cooldowns to heal them after the fact. I want them to mitigate the damage coming in. It does no good if after a 25k hit, the tank heals himself 1400. Especially if that 25k hit just killed him by 3k. I want a cooldown that reduces that 25k hit to a 20k hit. Let me heal the damage. Thats why I am here.
Healing damage is so reactionary, it is completely counter to everything about tanking.
Lets say you have 35k health, not a stretch given the tank gear out there. Lets say you take a 25k hit for some reason. You start popping cooldowns, maybe you get back 7k from rune tap, maybe 4k from a death strike, or maybe mark of blood healed you, or Vampiric embrace. In the time it took you to do that, time that you should be worrying about the encounter, movement, threat, etc... the pally has hit you with holy shock followed by a 17k HL, the druid swiftmended, the shaman used natures swiftness, the priest hit you with PW:S and a 8k flash.
They did that because they are watching your health. Thats their job. You'll never be faster then they are.
Maybe in 5 mans, or as an OT when things hit the fan, blood will be fine. But this model isn't MT material. Not compared to a Boneshield or UA.
bod Mar 16th 2009 2:55PM
completely agree and posted as much above when the original idea was suggested. Using runes for healing? What are you not using them for?
Spaztic Mar 18th 2009 3:59PM
What you don't get is that the Blood version of Bone Shield and Unbreakable armor is called Vampiric Blood, not Rune tap. If you had 35k health and then popped Vampiric Blood you''ll have 40k health...now that hit for 25 k still leaves you with 15k, not 10. The paladin who would have healed you for only 17k is now healing you for 23k, the rest of the healers aren't even necessary, because your regular deathstrikes topped you up for the rest...you know, that useless 1400 heal +35%...
Gilanis Mar 16th 2009 4:35PM
I've been Blood DPS for a while now, and for the most part, these changes didn't mess with my build much. The points I had in Blood Aura will be getting moved to Improved Death Strike, and the point I had in Shadow of Death will go somewhere.
Anyone else miss Shadow of Death for the +% to Str and Sta?
I mean seriously, I had +13% Str from talents alone, and then there was the fallen crusader proc. /sigh
The Good old days, they are a changing.
Dielantha Mar 16th 2009 5:11PM
Enhancement shaman bring Unleashed Rage which gives the same raid wide benefit as SV hunters or Abom's Might.
rabb1t Mar 16th 2009 7:47PM
I've always been primarily Blood speced (it has lots of abilities I would have loved as Warrior back in the day). I have two questions/comments.
Q1: Why do people always take Spell Deflection?
Me, I read the fine print on here "... chance to... direct damage..." and I go "hum". I'm not running logs or anything, but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of direct damage spells coming at me. Although I haven't raided in Lich yet (and it's been years since I've played classic) it seems like most boss attacks are AE based - dragon breath, stomps, etc. - which would completely ignore the talent. Is this not the case?
Q2: Splitting to Frost for Frigid Dreadplate.
I have always split out into Frost to build up to Frigid Dreadplate. I'm curious why people seem to completely ignore it when they are talking about splitting into Frost and seemingly ignore it on builds which aren't maining Frost. Is it just because a 3% chance to be completely missed is tough to track? I mean, I think about things like a boss doing a 5k burst damage, it goes off, woot for not being hit at all by that 5k damage. Seems to make sense to me, but most ignore it. Why?
Gilanis Mar 16th 2009 9:39PM
rabb1t as for your questions, i've never taken either, i play a blood elf so if i have to deal with casters i use on of the many silence or interrupts we have, I see spell deflection as a blood tanking thing, sorta like frosts spell resist.
this is my current spec, it may seem weird, but I duel-wield so it functions well enough.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/deathknight/talents.html?tal=0355001503003313231201013500000000000000000000000000000230200305023100000000000000000
as for the frost, i've never specced into it.
censorman Mar 16th 2009 11:24PM
There are so many people who claim blood can do awesome dps, but I have yet to see a recount ss and the spec?
Thanks in advance.
joeblack Mar 18th 2009 11:08AM
http://wowwebstats.com/rvo5gaacpgtxy?s=262994-302501&a=x23bea9d
Spaztic Mar 18th 2009 1:00PM
What juice are you all drinking? Blood is totally viable right now for tanking...the patch is going to nerf it, big time. Currently, glyphed Vampiric Blood can be kept up during 50% of the fight and is just as good if not better than Bone Shield or Unbreakable Armor, provided your base health is high enough. All three of those talents are getting nerfed. Will of the Necropolis right now rocks, as it gives reaction time to healers, when damage gets heavy...making it work only once in 15 seconds makes it go from being a somewhat useful talent for those Oh S**t moments, to being a complete waste of 3 talent points. And Improved Blood Presence...hello people, that's how it works right NOW for tanks. Blood aura lets you gain 4% health from damage you do even while in frost presence, minor, but whatever. The "improved version" does the exact same thing if you are in Frost presence, (tanking). The change will only benefit those who dps in Blood presence, since right now, blood aura and blood presence doesn't stack the healing benefit.
And the arguement that I shouldn't use Rune Tap because I should be generating threat instead......Do you really think healing myself for 10k+ generates no threat? You've never heard of heal agro? That's 10k+ heals with the threat bonus from Frost Presence added to it, not threat reduced like healers have, done instantly with only a 30 second cooldown. I don't care to calculate exactly how much threat that is, but it's definitely not zero. I pull over 6k threat per second on average without even trying hard before using rune tap. Using a rune tap every now and then when things get dicey does not make me lose threat whatsoever, it only helps.
Usdom Mar 21st 2009 7:51PM
Death Knights need NERFS not buffs. They have to much resistance to everything and giving them more self healing just going to make it worse. Death Knights in general are on blizzards list of greatest fuck ups ever.