Q/A (Ask off-topic questions here)

This is where I’d like to consolidate non post related questions. For example if you have a question about bone shield, but there aren’t any recent blog posts regarding bone shield, you could ask that here. This is essentially tweeting to me without the 140 character limit.


44 thoughts on “Q/A (Ask off-topic questions here)

  1. The current Blood DK theorycrafting is changing every few days. I’m trying to decide how much I should prioritize Bonus Armor over Stamina. Is it worth using a non Warforged Bonus Armor Trinket over a Warforged Stam Trinket? Is there anyway I could determine stat weights for myself? Maybe add a section on using SImcraft to come up with your own optimized stat weights?


    • Stam is not what it once was for us. Unless you truly need the EH (such as if you are very under geared) then you should avoid stacking too much stamina. I would take the bonus armor over the stamina 99% of the time.


  2. Does the mitigation stat priority change when tanking a group of mobs? I ask this because I’m mainly interested in tanking Challenge mode dungeons wherein the bosses usually aren’t that scary but the trash packs are.


    • The normal survival priority generally applies to AoE as well barring some exceptions (it really just depends on how much damage in the trash pack is spell and how much is physical). If you are having issues in cmodes due to trash though, then stats probably aren’t the issue. Instead look at how you’re using cooldowns and stuns on trash packs. If you are doing REALLY fast times, then your group should be very aoe damage focused so nothing lives too long and you can chain CDs and aoe stuns for the entire pack.

      If you are NOT going for really fast times and are just going for the cmode daily, then CC always helps make trash packs easier.


      • I asked because I want to optimize my gear as much as I can before I start going for golds. But thanks a lot for the reply!!


  3. Reniat, I was wondering if you would recommend macroing Outbreak into Plague Leech. Say, having Outbreak as it’s own separate ability, but having my Plague Leech ability always macro’d with Outbreak being cast right after.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Well the major problem with this idea is that since they are both on the GCD you can’t macro them together in the first place 😛

      Even if this DID work I would highly recommend you not do this for a few reasons, but the primary being that in ANY multi target situation this leads to wasting 30 RP every time you use Plague Leech, since as long as there are 2 targets you can always just reapply diseases on the Plague Leeched target with a Blood Boil.


  4. Hello, thank you for your writing. I found this blog via icy-veins, which has been a great site for me as I struggle to level all 11 classes to max – have’t touched some classes in years!

    I read and got my DK ready but found during my first instance that Outbreak has a big cool down and hadn’t been informed how to apply my diseases otherwise! I felt very silly and was scouring my spell list during trash pulls to pull out Plague Strike and Icy Touch.

    I feel the guides are mostly about raiding. I would love (LOVE!) some advice for tanking instances, which is where I spend most of my game time. How to use Death and Decay? How to best apply diseases and spread them without Outbreak? How to keep the pace up?

    Thanks again!


    • Dungeon tanking is very similar to raid tanking in terms of the “how”. You are basically just using an AoE rotation constantly on trash, and a single target rotation on bosses (usually).

      Trash is very AoE oriented, so making sure you are dropping Defile whenever its up it important. Applying diseases without outbreak is best done simply with Icy Touch and Plague Strike, followed by a blood boil to spread them around. I plan to do a post in the future (probably after finals week when I have time) that covers all of the 5 man dungeons, that may help you a lot too, but the simple guide should get you enough of a starting point to start tanking dungeons.

      Liked by 1 person

    • Uh, I suppose I just looked at this in the wrong way, mainly due to being pissed at getting a strength trinket with a crit proc (not too great for mitigation). All stats are ‘useful’ for us, just not favourable. Essentially this only applies to personal loot (coins too); but with how dps have a very select loot table (1-2 items per slot) and the tank tables having quite a number of items (3-5 items in terms of neck, rings, cloaks, trinkets). I’m just saying that, as dps have their perfect loot tables, do you think we should be forced to mingle our loot tables (despite maybe an upgrade) where we can simply switch our loot spec if we wanted a select item, rather than the rng factor of more loot.


  5. Hey Reniat,

    A fantastic blog you have here. All of the information provided really helped me get my Blood tanking off the ground. I wanted to show you the UI I made, which was inspired by your UI post. I made a couple of personal tweaks, while sticking to your UI philosophies.

    Thanks and keep up the great posts!



  6. Have you or anybody else seen any type of numerical stat weights for us as BDK? I know there is stat priority lists for us as BDK but for example on my shadow priest I managed to find a thread that listed stat weights numerically which has drastically helped me calculate which pieces of gear are better etc.. I appreciate any input you may have regarding this topic!


    • Tanks don’t really have stat weights, because we don’t have one goal. DPS have stat weights because they can sim over one variable: damage. We have to consider damage and survival, and what stats weight in just survival by itself depends on a lot of things.

      To put it another way, Person A has identical gear to person B, but values damage output a bit higher than person A. He is going to have a different hypothetical weight than person B, even though they value the same stats and have the same gear. He just values damage stats a bit higher.

      Now take person C, who has the same ilvl as person B and values damage vs survival the same, but he has a lot more crit just because of the gear drops hes gotten. He is going to value damage stats less than person B because he is naturally heavy into dps stats and under his ideal dmg/survival philosophy hes going to want to get more mastery, so the weights are again going to change.

      Tl;dr, there are a LOT of things going on with stats for tanks that simply prevent us from getting a single set of static stat weights, or even weights from a sim given a set of gear. You just have to make a judgement call.


  7. Started dk tanking towards the end of SOO and have really appreciated ur forum/blog/podcast appearance content.

    I was wondering if you could do a post on what to look for in ur raid parse on say warcraftlogs as a blood dk?



    • that’s a fantastic post idea. I am currently balancing raiding mythic and finish the school semester, so blog posts are gonna be a little sparse for another week or so 😛

      but I will definitely write this idea down for later.


  8. Hello sir ! How are you ?

    New changes occurs on the enchant Mark of Blackrock “Blackrock changed from 30% to 100% chance. Must be <60%HP after the hit. (Previously required you to be <50% HP prior to the hit)"

    Giving that Bonus Armor is better for us than Strength, my third grad calculation capacites give me this enchant better than Our Runeforge to a certain level of stuff, I'm right ?


  9. I was looking up guides and stuff, class specific and general tanking ones, and when it comes to stat values people talk about what gives more mitigation and what gives more dps. I’m not that hardcore of a raider, but after watching mythic butcher tries by top guilds it made more sence to me – dps check is horrific, encounter requires raid to sqeeze any dps possible. It’s also clear that u cant sort of make a deadline after which u stop focusing on survivability and start getting dps as a tank – to much things matter – your own comfort, healers, raid dps and so on. But could u, as obviously more experienced player, give some hints on that? Thanks ahead and sorry for my bad englando.


  10. Dear Ren happy xmas raiding and the end of school 😉 Im curious as to your thoughts about multistrikes viability as a rng based but probable gain in mitigation not just dmg im aware at some point you stated u would write a seperate post about it when u have time so i figured i may drop what i know to mayhap help give you some probable info dispite the fact u may already have it in mind. At present I have set myself up as BA>Multi >=mast>verse>haste>crit and find the addional rp gain from multistrike auto hits(currently 2 30% chances at proccing) (netting 15-30 addional rp) for extra uses of dc which grants stacks of 3% max hp at 30 seconds per stack(seems to be inderpendent timers per application) to always end up with minimum EH, More blood tap charges per unit time to use for DS to cover a greater degree of coverage saving cds for when i need them so i always have something rolling out.

    In the hypothetical iteration of healing with DS for 100k and gaining a shield of 50k at 50% mastery the 2 30% chances( i use 30% as a number due to it being the multi i currently posess) gives me a chance at gaining nothing or an additional 30-60% of the aforementioned healing and sheilding double dipping with each other. It would also be funny if DC usage multistrikes gave addional max hp but alas that would be rather stupid since the % hp gain from it scales with things such as ungylhped vamp blood death pact and dreanei racial. but i can has dreams 😉

    I am aware that 90 verse is 0.79% dmg and healing gain and 0.35% dmg reduction/ im unaware of how well or badly it scales, or how much haste would be needed to shave say .5 seconds off our rune regen ontop of the fact haste is generaly devauled due to PL and BT dispite us losing 20% regen speed from blood prez, and i am aware that crit while being 100% converted to parry is actually quite lackluster.

    now i have done no indept math over the course of any given boss fight to get any soft grasp of a decent uptime with multistrikes becuase to be quite frank im rubbish at it.
    any light you can shed on anything i have posted stats wise would be greatly apprciated, =) I will however wait upon your multistrike blog post with great antisipation my apologies for spelling and grammer im not very good at typing ><

    and once again wish u the best this festive raiding season.

    Regards Kelestrixx.


    • Hey man I just realized I never replied to your post. I actually just posted a write up on multistrike, so hopefully that answers your question. I promise I don’t try to ignore comments on the blog 😛


  11. So, I was wondering if you could give a bit more insight as to the stat priority.

    I have been tanking since Cataclysm and a lot of my knowledge of the class is obviously secondhand, and just mix and match/trial and error. I care enough to know the numbers of the class, I guess my proficiency in the spreadsheeting isn’t where it should be. Anyways, I feel like Strength is way too high of a priority for you.

    For DPS oriented blood, I don’t have a problem with your lower stats but the higher up it would be Bonus Armor>Multistrike=Mastery>Strength. Now, Bonus armor would be >Str not necessarily out of a purely offensive need but because it has the 2 fold benefit of giving you defensive and offensive boons. Multistrike would be on par with strength to me because you’re getting the percentage benefit of Runic Strikes. Mastery obviously to me is higher than str because while not getting a %based increase you’re receiving a %based increase to AP per point of mastery in addition to our usual mastery. I just think that the Icy-Veins guide that you were a part of could use some work.


    • Do you have any math or sim profiles to support your claims? Thoerycrafting is more than speculation.

      For example, your claim that Mastery>str for offensive value. Yes a scaling stat (mastery) will eventually beat out a static stat (strength), but that doesn’t make it better automatically for all levels.
      In fact mastery won’t give the same amount of AP point for point as strength until 11,000 attack power.

      Here is the proof:

      1 mastery rating = Attack power * +% boost from mastery.

      +% boost from mastery = (mastery rating/combat rating)/100

      total ap from mastery per point = (mastery rating/110)/100

      Strength is a lot easier to model. It’s just a 1 to 1 conversion.

      1 str = 1 ap.

      So now we can find at what point the two give them same AP per point by finding what attack power you need to make 1 rating worth 1 AP.

      1 AP = (current AP)*(mastery rating/110)/100

      1 = currAP*(mastery rating/11000)

      1/(mastery rating/11000) = currAP

      11000/(mastery rating) = currAP

      11000/(1) = currAP

      CurrAP = 11,000

      And this is before you even consider things such as FC, which has an uptime of at least around 58% and is usually in the 65%-75% range and provides +20% strength.

      While I appreciate the feedback, if you have claim that something in the guide is wrong, please provide evidence to support your claim.

      Liked by 1 person

  12. I appreciate the clarification, btw. I get the idea that Mastery becomes more of an offensive benefit at higher AP but I guess I take issue arguing absolutes of Blood tanking. Yes, technically Strength is going to give you more attack power overall, but putting it above mastery even in a DPS oriented setup is borderline futile.

    Liked by 1 person

    • While I write up a full response w/ proof and such, remember that blood shield is still based off the heal size of death strike, and also that death strike’s heal size is now based off AP, and finally consider that in current gear strength gives double the AP per point of mastery.


  13. Sorry for continuing to reply instead of editing(can’t find the button). Another thing I see is the futility of going Strength before Mastery anyways for a DPS oriented setup. Right now, you got an option in a trinket(Tectus’ Beating Heart) vs. a Mastery trinket(Evergaze Arcane Eidolon). The Str trinket gives an obvious procced crit, Mar’gok trinket procs Bonus Armor. The fear I see is maybe more inexperienced people being misinformed and going with Tectus trinket cuz strengths, not realizing the Mar’gok trinket will probably net more offensive stats overall due to Bonus Armor proc.


  14. I see a lot of BDKs gemming, chanting and gearing multistrike over everything else, even using dps trinkets over those with bonus armor. Got any thoughts on that?


    • Defensive wise multistrike doesn’t give as much as mastery would. It gives you Runic Power back which evidently smoothens our rotation and damage intake (seeing that we need 150 RP to get an extra DS out). That said it’s basicly a matter of sacrificing survival for dps, since multistrike is imo our best dps stat. I’m not a math king myself but I bet Reniat has some more detailed information on both stats defensive and offensive wise. And to maybe add another question to the board, if multistrike gives back runic power = blood taps = runes, then where is haste in the story? Since they will both give the rune regen a boost, how much stronger would haste be? or vica versa.

      To answer your last question, prioritizing Dps trinkets over Bonus armor trinkets is pure to UP the dps. Which you will see mostly on farm bosses. Ofcourse the dps trinkets give somewhat defensives back, but they won’t overtake the tank trinkets. (apart from maybe tectus, because stamina is not really that great)


  15. Hey Reniat, I just watched the FinalBoss panel, and the fact that BoS was a single target increase came as a surprise. I really love this ability, and I’ve been using it on Mythic Twins and Tectus to pull some crazy dps, but I didn’t realize that it was good enough to be a single target increase over Defile.

    Here are my questions:

    What is a solid MS % to be at for a decent BoS uptime? Fully raid buffed I’m at 32% (1100 raw), and I’m wondering if that is enough to see a substantial increase from BoS.

    Am I missing some source of RP? BB and DS are my main sources, with MS procs being the last addition. AMS can be used, but not always. Is there something I am missing?

    I’m curious as to how you use BoS alongside ERW. The timings don’t line up well, but ERW can extend BoS for an extremely long time, so how do you manage this?

    Finally, what are your tips for keeping BoS up when you don’t have ERW up?



  16. Multistrike vs Mastery. After seeing the math, it gave me a great understanding of how this all goes together. However, my only concern is now the basic concept of tanking(damage mitigation vs damage dealt) , or the idea that if Mastery is best for survival, how much Mastery can one get before seeing less returns (the difference between 5% mastery at 50% vs lower sets of mastery, 5% at 30%), and how much of an increase to damage is Multistrike per point vs Mastery. In short, if one has 50% mastery for a full set of Mastery gear, would changing 10% of that towards multistrike be a worth while damage increase for a raid set up?

    Summery: When is the damage increase from switching from Mastery to Multistrike worth while, and is the damage increase notable?


    • There isn’t really any (attainable) point where you should stop going for your desired stat yet. We are getting closer to the point where we can have too much multistrike (due to capping all the time), but were still not quite there.


  17. Hi Reniat,

    I saw your BDK Basic and Advanced Tanking Guides on the WoW Forums, and really enjoyed reading all of the material you have posted. Currently I’m raiding on my Mistweaver Monk, but am in the process of leveling my lv 90 BDK. I know a lot of what you say comes down to personal preference, but are there any macros (specific to Blood) or addons (specific to Blood) that you recommend?

    Currently I have…
    Tiny Frames
    MSBT (Mike’s Scrolling Battle Text)
    Tell Me When

    I’m sure there are Rune Management Addons out there that would at least help visually- but do you have any macros you can recommend for a novice BDK? Thanks in advance, hope to hear from you soon!



  18. Now that 6.1 is on the horizon, what are your thoughts on the changes to the lvl 100 talents? I don’t like the idea of losing dot-spreading damage if I take NP or DnD damage for taking Defile. I was under the impression that our lvl 100 talent choice was mostly for the sake of dps anyhow, but now that the damage component has been removed, it feels like a useless tier. More than that, I feel punished for taking two of the three talents!


    • 6.1 didn’t really change much for us. BoS is still the best talent for us in t100 IF you can get the tick count required to be a gain over Defile. I’ll explain more in my next blog post, which should be done tomorrow or friday.


  19. Hi Reniat,

    I have a question regarding the t7 talents.

    Since WoD I played with Defile, which I am very confident with since it is pretty straight-forward, self-explanatory and thus delivering good results while being easy to handle.

    Not too long ago, most of the high-achieving role-model BDKs (including yourself) picked Defile as their t7 talent. But browsing through WoWProgress these days shows that the wind has changed and now most of the succesful BDKs (including yourself) seem to favor BoS over Defile.

    This development made me try BoS, but by now I am left confused and unsatisfied with the results as this simple switch of one talent seems to have a very large impact on the whole playstyle.

    1. PLAYING with BoS:
    When using BoS, we are no longer using Defile, so the rather weak Death and Decay comes to mind – but should we use it? Also it seems pretty obvious that Death Coil won’t be used, since the RP we used to consume with DC are now consumed by BoS. Instead we need to use CoI with the Icy Runes Glyph in order to generate more RP to increase the uptime of BoS. This can sometimes be very confusing, since it usually consumes a Death Rune, which we usually want to spend on DS – the whole playstyle seems to become a lot trickier when using BoS.
    -> Can you share some light on how to execute a proper playstyle with BoS, which skills to use when etc?

    2. UPTIME of BoS:
    I read that it is possible to have a 100% uptime of BoS by using CoI with the Icy Runes Glyph, but my best result was keeping BoS active for about 45seconds on a training puppet. To me it seemed that the tricky part is using Outbreak for 30RP after having used PL – usually spending the 30RP on Outbreak ended the Uptime of BoS within 1-3 seconds.
    -> How long should BoS at least be active wo make it worthwhile? Is it mandatory to have a 100% uptime on BoS?

    3. REQUIREMENTS for using BoS properly:
    Many playstyles are only useful if some stat-requirements are met.
    -> Are there certain stat-requirements that improve the performance of a BoS-playstyle?

    Kind regards!


    • I’m currently writing a post about BoS, but to sum up your questions quickly:

      1. the SUPER basics of BoS are – don’t cap rp, and don’t waste runes. Use CoI when you are very low on RP and don’t have BT charges or a lot of runes at your disposal.

      2. Don’t use outbreak glyphed when using BoS. either use CoI and plague strike to apply diseases after PL, or don’t glyph outbreak.

      3. You need lots of multistrike and a decent amount of haste. At least 1000 multistrike and about 500 haste, but this isn’t a hard rule and you may need more/less depending on how well you mange your resources.

      The questions you asked that I didn’t answer are a bit longer, but should be answered by my next post that is almost done being written.


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