526 Blood DK New to Stormreaver

[Hip]

Hey Heman, thanks for your replies.

I would strongly encourage you to explore add-ons like Magic Runes or CLC DK. I have used them both in the past and find them extremely useful for tracking the availability of Runes. From your current UI I can't see an easy way for you to know what runes you've got available and how you could therefore maximize your DS/Blood Shields.

You may also consider using Blood Shield Tracker as a means for helping you decide when to use DS for creating a maximum Blood Shield.

From your logs I'm seeing a few things I like.

I see proper/liberal use of IBF and DRW which is good. Too often do I see tanks pooling larger CDs and wasting them.

However I am seeing extremely low use of Rune Tap, Vampiric Blood, Trinkets and your Ghoul/AoD CDs; whats the deal there?

With the 2pc bonus your Rune taps are free and you hardly use it. When you do a large portion of it is often going into overheals.

Vampiric Blood use is low and it's a 1 minute CD, this should be used almost on CD when actively tanking.

You are still hanging on to that Jade Warlord trink when there are viable options available for purchase with VPs that would be big upgrades. Not only that but since you do have it the "on use" portion of that trinket is a nice boost to Mastery and you're leaving it off the table, why?

A substantial portion of your Death Strikes and Blood Shields are going into overheals, this doesn't show me mastery of tanking/survival. I can appreciate the damage you are taking is lower and that many DS's may occur while not actively tanking so the numbers can get skewed.

I don't doubt you have no issue surviving the current content you're facing, but the step-up in challenge to where we're at is huge. What I'm seeing in your logs and with the tools you're using doesn't show me you're ready for a challenge of that magnitude.

Let me know your thoughts.

Hip

[Hemanjar]

I had swapped my Jade Warlord out for the Ji'Kun trinket for much of the past few weeks but didn't notice an increase in survival at the cost of the stamina. I have the JW use bound to my DRW so when you see DRW used the trinket is used. I do that for the Mastery proc to combine with double DS. Army of the Dead a lot of times I cast prepull and so it doesn't always show up in the logs. I have tried using them mid fight but my avoidance is not that high so when I'm channeling I have a 2:1 chance of getting hit. Over healing with DS is probably due to my preference of keeping a blood shield up and active (usually around 80%) our Palladin OT tends to be a touch squishy so I never knew if I'd get to wait to see my stacks fall off before tanking again. Rune Tap I'm incorporating but to be honest it's been so underwhelming in the past that I never really got used to using it; I am working it into my rotation (last night I kept it on CD). I'll give you a quote from a healer last night; "Are you a resto DK?" I was #2 in almost every fight last night in HPS and total healing. I didn't realize my vb was that low, I'll be sure and incorporate it. I usually reserve it for high periods of damage such as rockfall on tortos or >6 triple puncture on horridon and of course I probably use it most on megaera. I have no doubt that at this very moment my logs look shit for being ready to tank 25 man; unfortunately blizzard has made 25s almost unreachable due to the shared lockouts (if you're not a 25m tank already). I can't emulate the need to blow cds in 10 man when I take virtually no damage now. I track my runes the way I have from day one before there were a billion addons. I only recently starting using anything other than DBM and Bartender. I don't like a lot of add ons and the blood shield tracker add on lags behind the actual blood shield you build it's why several dk tanks I know and talked with use Weak Auras it's much more real time.

[Estarriol]

I can't say for the particular weak aura you use and I've never raided anything particularly difficult on my DK, but I haven't seen the slight lag as a big isuue. It serves to give an indication, but it's generally pretty easy to have an intuitive sense for when you would get sizeable heals. As for runes, have you tried arcHUD? It can be a bit faint, but I am fairly happy with its ability to show runes.

I think Hip's got the survivability questions covered, but I've noticed there hasn't been much of a discussion about your unique utility as a DK. How do you, as a tank and as a DK, use your toolkit to assist your team? How do you help to assure the success and survival of your friends?

One of the biggest transitions for me going from an exclusive 10m background to 25m was the necesity of not only using my personal cooldowns well, but also making thoughtful use of the cooldowns of others. Any thoughts as to how you could approach this particular challenge?

[Hemanjar]

I have not but I will give it a try thank you for the suggestion. As far as using other's cooldowns as the GM and raid lead of a group with sub-par dps it was often up to myself and the other officer to come up with creative solutions to the boss fights. While 25m is a different type of raid 10s present a problem in initial progression due to the lack of DPS. You have 2 tanks and 3 healers a lot of times which leaves only 5 to dps. One thing I did on Durumu to get our first kill was have both palladins take Clemency to give them each a double BoP and we had our prot pally go ret and I solo tanked durumu. I'm not sure if this is exactly what you mean.

[Estarriol]

It kind of answered one question. Using multiple BoPs is really a staple at this point, but BoP is not the only thing paladins can offer you, especially with Clemency. Did you take advantage of the Hands of Sac available to you? What about other CDs in the raid group (pain suppression, Ironbark, Vigilance, etc)?

[Hemanjar]

We didn't have any of those, I get Might of Ursoc from our druid so that I count as MY cooldown not his lol. Our Holy pally sac'd on heavy damage sections but tbh I'm not sure how often b/c we had really bad people at the maze they would sac them often.

[Tinymanz]

It kind of answered one question. Using multiple BoPs is really a staple at this point, but BoP is not the only thing paladins can offer you, especially with Clemency. Did you take advantage of the Hands of Sac available to you? What about other CDs in the raid group (pain suppression, Ironbark, Vigilance, etc)?

GUARDIAN SPIRIT!

[Hemanjar]

Was used when it was needed and not only on me. It is not my practice to tell people how to play their class. If we had a situation where we planned to use certain healer or other cool downs then we would call for them but normal moment to moment I depend on a player to know what is coming. Exceptions to this were once we had our palladin tank die due to a stupid mistake on Ji'Kun but instead of wiping it I told the healers to save CDs for when I called for them. At the 5th TR I called for IronBark on 7 I asked for Guardian Spirit and 9 I got HoS/IBF/MoU plus a full blood shield (625k at the time) and was taken to 90k hp; then I USED VB plus my #14 trinket and told the priest pally to flash heal. They did and we killed the boss; so yes I will call out for CDs when I need them but if it's a normal mechanic that happens each and every week no I won't call for it.

[Hip]

Whats up Heman, I don't want to discourage discussion in this thread if people are finding it's helpful, but I wanted to update you that we are going to continue our search for a Blood DK in a different direction. Good luck with your search for a new raid team and thanks for looking us up.

[Hemanjar]

No problem good luck