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Crimson Scourge

Crimson Scourge
Requires Death Knight (Blood)
Requires level 10

Your successful melee attacks on targets infected with your Blood Plague have a 10% chance to make your next Blood Boil or Death and Decay cost no runes.

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Physical

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

n/a

Cost

None

Range

0 yards (Self)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

0 seconds

Effect #1

Apply Aura: Modifies Damage/Healing Done
Value: 50%
Affected Spells:

	Blood Boil

Effect #2

Apply Aura: Proc Trigger Spell
Proc chance: 10%

	Crimson Scourge

Effect #3

Apply Aura: Modifies Periodic Damage/Healing Done (22)
Value: 30%
Affected Spells:

	Frost Fever		Blood Plague

Flags

Passive spell
Cast time is hidden

Guides

Blood Death Knight Guide

Warlords of Draenor Death
Knight Changes

Comments

Comment by Traumatina

Awesome talent for AoE tanking, not so much for single target.

Comment by mitydk

This ability is designed to be used in conjunction with Scarlet Fever. SF provides a 10% damage reduction debuff on the target, and is applied by using Blood Boil. The debuff lasts for 30 seconds. When it falls off you need to use a Blood rune to cast Blood Boil to reapply the debuff.

By PSing a target that already has BP on it (refreshing BP every 21-33 seconds depending on epidemic), you will get to BB for free, allowing you to keep Scarlet Fever on your target for the cost of one GCD. Obviously designed for single target tanking, with an added utility for AoE tanking as well, although not significant utility as the damage from BB is laughably low at 85, but who knows, maybe BB will get buffed.

You basically get one free blood rune every 30 seconds during a boss fight in exchange for 2 talent points, as you always will have to keep the 10% damage reduction debuff on your target in Heroic modes until the encounter is trivialized.

Comment by Skruf

In patch 4.0.6 the effect of this talent can be triggered by any successful melee attack, so no unholy rune is wasted anymore (and no blood rune when used to refresh Scarlet Fever).

Comment by Yorgl

I don't think Pesti is considered as a "melee attack". But for HS, your maths might in the good direction
However, as it's 10% proc chance, I'd say that

with one target there are (1 - 0.9) = 10% chance (obvious ^^)
with 2 : (1 - 0.9²) = 19% chance
with 3 : (1 - 0.9^3) = 27% chance

So basically, in AoE, HS gives you 27% proc chance.

I agree this is great, but to say that it's OP, I don't know. Have you seen the insane DPS of Rend + TC for a war :-) I would call that a good synergy at best.

Also : awesome HUD alert is awesome !

Comment by yesitisi

Alright, since I'm sure there are a lot of you out there who are still determining whether to spend your two talent points into this or not, I'll voice out my opinion/facts about it and let you all decide for yourself. =)

I personally find this spec almost necessary to keep a proper blood "rotation" going all the time, and I'm proud to say I use it.

The +40% damage to is great for aoe no matter how you put it. This is used for aggro or plain extra damage when you or your group needs it.

The proc however is the more useful part of this spec. This spec has been nerfed slightly in a patch I don't remember offhand as Blood Boil no longer gives the 10% damage reduction (). This nerf still did not effect the less commonly known aspects of this spec.

~~Unprocced Blood Boil gives 10 runic power ONLY when it hits a large number of targets, possibly 5 or more.~~ When this is procced, Blood Boil will ALWAYS give 10 runic power as long as it hits at least 1 target. This means that this is a great source of runic power that grants 10 without depleting any runes. Runic power can be used when you need to interrupt a target with Mind Freeze or can be stored and used in a to refresh rune cooldowns via Runic Empowerment.

Another and far less considered effect of this is the use of a GCD. For DPS or healers, a GCD used on a fairly useless ability is a wasted GCD that can lower your damage/healing and can wipe a raid. As a blood DK, "wasting" a GCD on this not only grants 10 runic power but you also spend a possible second of downtime using an ability instead of twiddling your thumbs. It is this ability that often jumpstarts my rotation if Runic Empowerment or Scent of Blood doesn't work in my favor. Even when not out of runes and runic power, this can let you use your tanking abilities more (you know, Death Strike?) and save your blood runes for times of more needed AoE threat or the loss of .

Now, I know most people look at the requirement for to be on the target and look at that and say "yeah, that's not happening". I can happily say that this requirement is highly underestimated. If you ONLY use Outbreak, this disease will be up on the target 33/60 seconds of the fight, which is over half of it for those bad at math =D (assuming you specced fully into anyway). The proc can proc off of both melee attacks AND melee (aka "Requires Melee Weapon") abilities -Edit: and taunts!-, which means you will have plenty of opportunities for procs during those 33 seconds. A noteable effect is that this combined with Blood Boil and spamming in AoE results in massive procs, as proven in an earlier post. Using Plague Strike to refresh the duration of Blood Plague works too, however I wouldn't suggest it as it spends a rune you could use on a Death Strike.

On a single target this procs for me on average anywhere from 1-5 or so times during each Outbreak, even with a 3.8 speed weapon.

Comment by bobthesnake

If you have the gear, swapping to dual wield on AoE fights will increase your dps/threat, and possibly mitigation!

If you dual wield, you will see Crimson Scourge proc much more often, at the loss of around a huge 40% Death Strike, Heart Strike and Rune Strike damage, but in AoE fights of 8+ targets most of your damage will be: Death and Decay, Blood Boil and diseases. The damage of Death and Decay and your diseases is uneffected by dual wielding. Therefore: more AoE threat!

Now, you might see a slight increase in your survivability on ANY fight, this is because when you're dual wielding you'll be able to eat up your Scent of Blood procs much more quickly. This will give you more Rune Strikes, which will give you a higher chance of proccing Runic Empowerment which = more death strikes/mitigation.

Also, if you ever have all runes on CD and no runic power, you will almost certainly have a Crimson Scourge proc due to all your extra melee attacks, which will grant you runic power, which will let you cast more rune strikes, which will let you cast more Death Strikes = mitigation.

A further small plus to dual wielding is more bloodworms!

Crimson Scourge

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