How To Improve As Blood Death Knight - Dragonflight 10.2.7 (2024)

Last updated on May 07, 2024 at 11:20 by Mandl and Panthea36 comments

Because you can have 3 Runes recharging at the same time, any time you areholding 4 or more runes, you are effectively capped on runes and wastingpotential rune regeneration. There is never a point in your play where it wouldbe valuable to not cast anything, or where you need more than 3 runes saved up;always keep 3 runes on cooldown.

Similarly, every point of Runic Power you generate when already at maximumRunic Power is a fraction of a lost Death Strike. Since the amount of Mastery: Blood Shield you gain when casting Death Strike is calculatedfrom raw healing and not effective healing, using Death Strike at fullhealth is an offensive and defensive gain compared to overcapping RunicPower - and this is before we consider talents such as Coagulopathy!

The only extreme case where overcapping Runic Power is the solution is if Bone Shield will expire before the next global cooldown - which impliesthat a leading chain of failures happened previously. To give you an idea, thisscenario only occurs if:

1. You decided to hoard Runic Power (this guide recommends floating yourself at70-75 Runic Power to avoid this)
2. You ignored — or didn't track — Bone Shield's expiry time until thevery last GCD.
3. You somehow realized this at the very last moment rather than realizing qafter the fact (or, better, well in advance), indicating that whatever tools youuse to track your resources need a severe rethink

Due to the bonus Runic Power provided when spending a rune on Heart Strike over Marrowrend, it is advisable to spend theminimum amount of runes to stay over 5 stacks of Bone Shield. Eachinefficient Marrowrend is 20 Runic Power wasted (with an additional 4 per extra target thatwould have been cleaved, if Heartbreaker is selected). This may notsound like much at first, but it means that two incorrect casts robbed youof a Death Strike. This is one of the biggest issues for new BloodDeath Knights and something we actively recommend logging and verifying gameplay for.

The vast majority of boss abilities are predictable and can be specificallyplanned for. Once you know your raid's strategy for a boss, you should developa plan for what cooldowns you will use on what abilities, throughout the entireencounter. Trying to use cooldowns on the fly dramatically increases the chancesyou will be left without a cooldown available and be killed by a threateningability.

Cooldown planning also helps to avoid reactive cooldown usage. Most defensivecooldowns provide vastly reduced benefit as an emergency button, used whenalready at low health. The goal in cooldown usage is to activate your defensivecooldowns immediately before the first attack in a period of high damage, wherethe benefit will be maximized.

Healers (and some other specializations) have access to powerful, targeteddefensive cooldowns, which are normally referred to as external cooldowns orexternals. You need to remain in communication with your healers and be readyto call for them to use their external cooldowns on you when necessary. Thesecooldowns can be incorporated into your cooldown plan discussed above as needed.Use an addon such asExorsus RaidTools keep track of external cooldowns available in your raid.

The healing provided by Death Strike scales on damage recentlytaken, so landing your Death Strikes during a window of time immediatelyfollowing large spikes of damage is key to effective use of your Runic Power.You should not be using Death Strike unless you are going to get the maximum benefitfrom the healing or because you need to dump Runic Power to avoidcapping.

In addition to maximizing the raw throughput of Death Strike, youneed to make sure you are prepared to use Death Strike as soon as possible afterlarge spikes of damage. Your goal is to heal yourself fast enough that you do notdie, but slowly enough that you do not snipe your healers. If you take too long toreact, the value of your Death Strike is effectively wasted, since it will onlycause the flood of heals you receive from your healers to be mostlyoverhealing.

In most situations, your Bone Shield will continue to be refreshedin duration as you add stacks, due to melee attacks received. However, in encounterswith large periods of time off target, encounters without melee attacks, andencounters with prolonged periods of off-tanking, you can easily go 30 secondswithout having cast Marrowrend to add new stacks. Allowing BoneShield to expire can be catastrophic — it takes a full set of 6 Runes torecover 9 stacks of Bone Shield, leaving you starved of both Runes and RunicPower for several seconds.

It may be tempting to think of the only job you have as a tank to besurvival, but taking additional defensive tools at the expense ofdamage is a common trap newer tanks fall into. Your damage still contributes tothe death of the boss, and each additional defensive measure taken will providediminishing benefit over the last. This is true of talents, gems, enchants,trinkets, and consumables.

In addition to the general effect of lower damage output on killing the boss,reducing your damage output too much in favor of unnecessary defensive toolswill expose you to threat issues — both from your co-tank and from yourDPS. In most situations, if you are having difficulty holding threat, you shouldconsider what you need to do to increase your damage output.