16
Jul

Preliminary 3.2 Blood Spec for DPS DK’s

   Posted by: Skeleton Jack   in PTR, Specs

Heya guys!!  So, it’s time to delve into 3.2 specs and right now we’re taking a peek at potenital Blood specs.  Keep in mind with all posts about specs before a PTR release goes Live, that it’s impossible to perfectly predict the outcome. 

So much has already changed on the PTR that well, there is no telling what the Live 3.2 release will hold.  We’ve already seen major changes to Dancing Rune Weapon and Summon Gargoyle, bonus damage for Blood Strike with diseases (+50% reduced down recently to 25%) and talents, and much more.

What is interesting is that there was the possibility of ignoring DRW originally for a deeper Unholy build for the best possible build available.  ATM those hopes have been dashed, but we will see…

Blood Live

51/0/20 – Considered to be the best “cookie cutter” Blood build currently available.

51/2/18 – Considered to be the second best “cookie cutter” Blood build, it’s DRW is much stronger for burst scenarios.

There are several variants of both of these builds which would allow you to shift points to bring alternative combinations of talents resulting in any of the following:

  1. Blood-Caked Blade
  2. Night of the Dead
  3. Vampiric Blood
  4. Improved Blood Presence
  5. Morbidity

But that generally comes down to both player style, raid needs, and preference.  Outside of those 5 listed talents however, most other talents would be a waste to consider investing into.

Blood PTR

If you’ve not been following the PTR too much they’ve made some changes that shook things up quite a bit, and then “fixed it”, heh.  Originally Blood Strike was going to recieve a +50% dmg bonus from diseases, which when combined with talents and the Glyph of Blood Strike was going to make it better than Heart Strike for single target (ST) dps.

They’ve recently done a few things however to nerf the potential of Blood Strike.  Not only did they reduce the disease bonus damage (50% down to 25%), but they also reverted the talent Blood Strikes.  Bloody Strikes now increases the damage of Blood Strike by 5/10/15% (down from 15/30/45%), while the bonus damage to Heart Strike and Blood Boil unchanged.

Now a side factor here to future Blood builds is the new Unholy Blight.  While it is currently an AoE on Live, it will actually be a 10 second DoT that will be a % of your Death Coil.  Now as Blood does a great deal of DC damage, this is very appealing at first.  Especially when the Glyph of Unholy Blight will now be adding a % damage to the effect.  However they recently nerfed the base effect of UB at 30% (or maybe 40%, I forget) of your DC damage to 20%.

In addition to this recent additional nerf to UB there is a new change to DRW (Live it has like a 11 second max duration) allowing it to last a set 12 seconds with RP left over.  Basically it works like this:

  • Live DRW: Costs all of your RP.  If at 100 RP it will last for 11 seconds w/o glyph.
  • PTR DRW: Costs 60 RP and lasts 12 seconds w/o glyph.

Basically a new build pouring deeper into Unholy for UB (and ignoring DRW) was coming to light.  But with the most recent UB and DRW changes this seems unlikely.  Lastly the original upset with Blood Strike is now no longer an issue.  So long story short.  Not much is changing for Blood.  >.<

Seems kind of a dissapointment almost considering it was shaping up into some interesting directions.  But if things stand as they are, expect Blood to come into 3.2 unscathed, for better or worse.  If anything it’s going to see a bit of a buff to DRW.

51/0/20 – Should remain top dog.

51/2/18 – Should remain…second dog?  (sounds wrong for some reason)

Coming Soon:  Unholy, Frost, and Dual Wield specs!!

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 6:37 pm and is filed under PTR, Specs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

20 comments so far

mystta
 1 

blizzard just gives me more reasons to hate em

July 16th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
 2 

51/2/18 should fall by the wayside, shouldn’t it? The ostensible reason to use RPM was to extend the length of DRW by using 130 RP instead of just 100. But since they’re changing the cost to a flat 60 there’s no longer any reason to have RPM, right?

July 16th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Cubic
 3 

For DRW 2 points in frost will not be needed, but same 2 points also provide more flexability for DS glyph users. If you prefer glyph of the ghoul + 2/2 night of the dead for even more burst, then, of course, those 2 points are complitely useless for you in any way.

July 16th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Tarragon
 4 

All I can say is… good. I use blood for dps and tanking, and don’t have a problem with how I perform. And its never a bad thing to get a tiny buff, ala DRW

And there is a tiny typo on the “second dog” spec. You have it as 50/2/18 where it should be 51/2/18

July 16th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
 5 

2 points into Frost nets you both more burst capacity from DRW and also more leeway with Death Strike. It will still be a viable spec, just not the number one. As I said. Glyphing a ghoul will be a DPS loss.

July 16th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Antipathy
 6 

Why blood worms?

July 17th, 2009 at 3:22 am
Privet
 7 

Didn’t you say that blood worms are bad for raids?

July 17th, 2009 at 7:12 am
 8 

I listed the most commonly accepted cookie cutter builds. I personally still think Bloodworms is a bad idea from a raid perspective, and in a “Live 3.2 Blood” post would again explain as such. This however is just a “Preliminary” delving into PTR versus currently accepted Live notions.

July 17th, 2009 at 9:50 am
epicweed
 9 

Ye keep buffing blood and nerfing unholy. Way to go blizz morons. Unholy is worse then blood atm and they nerf unholy and buff blood makes sense…………..

July 17th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Pheo
 10 

3.1 is currently Unholy > Blood, so I’m assuming you’re making a reference to changes made in 3.2. That being the case, it’s only kinda fair that they give blood a little something, however each side is going to complain regardless until theirs is on top of the damage meters. It’s kinda cold but to say but Blizzard will likely never perfectly balance any of its classes, it’s just something we’re going to have to get used to.

July 17th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
 11 

Blood is not as far behind Unholy as you imply Pheo. In fact it does extremely well in many of the fights, able to beat out Unholy unless there are a lot of adds.

Blood was strong to begin with. The nerfs and penalties imposed on the other specs seem all to be PvP oriented, with bandaids slapped on to hopefully keep them balanced for PvE. As usual, one side of the coin messes up the other side of the coin. Part of the penalty for playing a PvE/PvP focused game.

July 17th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Sathariel
 12 

I’ve been testing on the PTR for a while now and I have to say that I like the new UB. I’m interested to see if UB will be better than DRW when 3.2 goes live. I’m hoping you’ll make a post concerning DW DPS as well Jack.

July 18th, 2009 at 3:42 am
Kurzed
 13 

I know Santa plays a DK & reads your blog so could he make sure dual weild is kick ass, count it as an early Xmas pressie

July 18th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Patrick Johnson
 14 

So the Blood heart Strike/UB Build is Dead now ? i’ve been using it for a long time now, Im gonna have to redo my blood spec to DRW if it really has that much of a dps bonus, also I will try and work out a rotation on the PTR and comment it on here

July 19th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
 15 

The HS/UB build is not dead, however with the buff to DRW I don’t think the two specs will be as close to each other as they are atm. It will be viable, but it “appears” that the distance is growing some. As always, PTR stuff is up in the air.

July 19th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Kelur
 16 

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Thrall&cn=Kelur&gn=Reckoning

Now I threw in that random thing in frost..but it was just because i thought it was the only thing available to increase max blood dps..Would putting points in necrosis be worth even doing? also why no blood caked strike…its going to be multiplied by your weapon speed…so get a slow as weapon with little haste and you got a nice talent..

July 22nd, 2009 at 6:49 am
Demilich
 17 

Something of note on even on live with rpm the max duration of DRW is 18 secs with it glyphed using the full 130 rp. It should be 24 secs with glyph and rpm (cost 40 so 130-40=90/10=9) base time 10s +9s from extra rp +5 from glyph) however it never comes up as higher than 18s basically with the new changes from 3.2 it will max at 17s so 1s lost

July 23rd, 2009 at 6:15 am
Vinnie
 18 

Dear Skeleton Jack,

Just toke over your cookie-cutter build

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jfVMVh0Icfkf0stZfMbhxc:LIGVMm

I was wondering what the BEST rotation fits to this build?

Could you please leave the rotation for me down here or mail it to brouwer.vinnie@gmail.com ? :) )

Kind regard,
VInnie

July 24th, 2009 at 3:53 am
Vinnie
 19 

P.S. , Also the glyphs please :)

July 24th, 2009 at 3:55 am
 20 

yeah for me too! i’m tired of getting blamed for having shitty dps.

February 28th, 2010 at 11:41 am

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