After the weekly maintenance on December 11, we will apply the following adjustments to Blood Death Knights in the Time Realm:
- While in Frost Presence, the threat generated by Blood Boil and Heart Strike is increased by 85%.
- Bloody Strikes now increases the damage of Blood Boil by 15/30/45% (up from 10/20/30%).
- Sudden Doom gains an additional effect: Casting Death Coil or Rune Strike grants 7/14/20% melee haste for 15 seconds.
- Might of Mograine gains an additional effect: Increases your parry chance by 1/2/3%.
- Scent of Blood gains an additional effect: Blood Boil has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to make your next Death and Decay cost no Blood or Frost runes, lasting 10 seconds.
- Dancing Rune Weapon talent gains an additional effect: While active, your parry chance is increased by 15%.
Developer’s Notes: Blood Death Knights perform well in single-target threat generation and survivability, but are significantly weaker in other aspects of gameplay. Their overall efficiency in 5-player dungeons or during portions of raid encounters where they are not actively tanking a boss has been suboptimal.
This presents a good opportunity to improve the value of deeper Blood talents, while also strengthening both the damage output and tanking capability of Blood DKs. We believe Blood DKs shouldn’t simply be “walking refrigerators” spamming Icy Touch, and should instead possess a more distinct gameplay identity.
In the early patches of Wrath of the Lich King, Blood DK was constantly being reworked and iterated upon. The weaknesses currently visible are largely the byproduct of multiple-layered changes in the final patch environment, rather than intentional original design.
Primary Goals of This Update:
1. Encourage usage of abilities other than Icy Touch by increasing the power of Heart Strike.
2. Improve deeper Blood talents so they remain attractive while maintaining current power levels.
3. Increase Blood DK AoE damage in dungeons and raids, reducing reliance on Death and Decay for threat generation.
4. Provide haste scaling for Blood DPS, without requiring investment in Frost talents.
These changes will strengthen the Blood Death Knights' currently weakest link, allowing them to deal more damage, have more skill options in their rotation, and more reliably group monsters, thus better fulfilling their tanking role.
