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Blood Death Knight in Shadowlands - Tank Strengths, Best Covenants, Soulbinds and Legendaries
暗影国度
由
Mandl
发表于
2020/11/20,04:09
Shadowlands launches on November 23rd / 24th and all classes will be getting new toys to play with -- from Covenant abilities, to Conduits and returning Legendary effects! This article, written by Mandl and Panthea, will provide details on the current state of Blood DK in Shadowlands, to help you to prepare for the upcoming expansion!
Introduction, and a Disclaimer
Hey!
It has been four months since the last
state of blood DK article
, and we thought we'd bring you a status update and a way to get a pulse on the spec. A lot has happened since then, with the introduction, tuning and re-tuning of covenants legendaries, the introduction of soulbinds and dungeon buffs, and a plethora of other effects. We'll use this as a chance to synthesize all the changes and bring you a bit of insight on the strengths and weaknesses of the spec going into Shadowlands.
As usual, this article is brought to you by Mandl and Panthea, and has been reviewed prior to publication by the Acherus minion squad,
Darkmech
, and
Nnoggie
.
A caveat before we get into the meat of the topic, however. There is still one week of beta, and there will very likely be changes both in that week, and in the weeks leading up to the release of Mythic Castle Nathria. As such, even though this article will likely be
mostly
accurate, last-minute changes may happen; the actual Blood DK guide will be kept up to date to reflect these.
Check out all our Shadowlands Launch Opinion articles by our Class Writers and members of the community! Click on any of the colored specs below to see what articles we've released so far.
These guides were meant to give you a preview of what's to come in the expansion, but don't worry -- our full Shadowlands Class Guides will be updated soon!
Blood Death Knight
Arcane Mage
Assassination Rogue
Frost Death Knight
Fire Mage
Outlaw Rogue
Unholy Death Knight
Frost Mage
Subtlety Rogue
Havoc Demon Hunter
Brewmaster Monk
Elemental Shaman
Vengeance Demon Hunter
Mistweaver Monk
Enhancement Shaman
Balance Druid
Windwalker Monk
Restoration Shaman
Feral Druid
Holy Paladin
Affliction Warlock
Guardian Druid
Protection Paladin
Demonology Warlock
Restoration Druid
Retribution Paladin
Destruction Warlock
Beast Mastery Hunter
Discipline Priest
Arms Warrior
Marksmanship Hunter
Holy Priest
Fury Warrior
Survival Hunter
Shadow Priest
Protection Warrior
What Has Changed for Blood Death Knights?
Since July, compared to other specs, we have had a very limited set of changes during this beta cycle aimed
specifically
at us; instead, we have largely been affected by changes aimed for the entire class, some positive, some negative.
Spec changes
:
埋骨之所
was made baseline, and
活力分流
took its place as a talent. This is a
huge
change, as it opened up the talent row and enabled a choice between
猩红余味
as a relatively passive RP generation talent, and
活力分流
as a high-risk, high-potential alternative.
We have had no bugfixes, no real baseline tuning outside of zeroing our spec aura (
鲜血死亡骑士
), and one of our biggest vulnerability is still very much alive - our inability to get
白骨之盾
up before taking the first melee. We can band-aid it with
符文分流
on pull, as the rune would be wasted either way, but that is what it is: a band-aid to a core spec problem.
Blood Death Knight Levelling Perks
If you are already level 50 and ready to go to the Shadowlands, you can look forward to the following levelling perks as you get acquainted with the new zones:
At level 52,
心脏打击
(Rank 3) increases the damage of
心脏打击
by 20%
At level 54, you gain an active ability:
牺牲契约
. We'll come back to it later, but the short and sweet of it is: it is a DPS cooldown, or a defensive cooldown used at a
very steep
offensive cost.
At level 56, you gain
强化吸血鬼之血
(Rank 2), increasing the healing received during
吸血鬼之血
by 5%, and increasing its duration by 2 seconds.
Finally, at level 58, you re-acquire
埋骨之所
. This is why all the guides still mentioned staying above 5
白骨之盾
- we knew it would come back.
Some of these perks are unimpactful at best; however,
埋骨之所
and
牺牲契约
are real rotation-influencing effects. As such, you can expect a small learning curve (and, in the case of ghoul sacrifices, an understanding of pet damage and its opportunity cost, since it isn't a free spell), and maybe a couple of changes to your habits.
Blood Death Knight Covenants, Soulbinds and Conduits
Covenant Abilities
Three of the four covenant abilities for Blood Death Knights were reworked since we last spoke. As such, we're going to go back over them, before going in depth on the impact of changes and additional systems tied to your covenant choice.
Kyrian
失格者之梏
's spread behavior was reworked and baked into the spell itself instead of the conduit - each rune-spending attack now has a 50% chance to spread the debuff at current duration to a nearby target without it. It still works primarily as large single-target hasted (!) DoT with very little mechanical or rotational interaction other than a slight incentive to attempt to spread it early if there are targets nearby. The spread happens within 8 yards of
you
, not your target.
扩散
, the associated potency conduit, increases the duration of the DoT by 3 seconds, and massively increases its damage. Simple, effective, a must-have if you can find a potency slot on your soulbind.
召唤执事者
provides a potion that can be used to clear bleeds, diseases, curses and magic debuffs, and has been moved to be its own cooldown as opposed to sharing the space with potions. Due to its potential as a full cleanse, it is easily the most impactful signature ability if you can find something impactful to cleanse. A lot of raid bleeds were whitelisted to ignore this, but there are still a few... and there is the entire space of mechanics present in Mythic+.
The steward also provides vendor, talent swaps and a bunch of other things, but those are mostly convenience now that most of the game-breaking bugs with it in PvP have been ironed out.
Venthyr
云集之雾
has had no fundamental change; it still provides 9 ticks of damage (one on use, eight extra, one every second). Each tick, you get 3 RP per target hit, up to 5. The effect itself is not target-capped when it comes to damage, and the effect is not hasted. It is still a decent source of damage that scales linearly with target count, a decent source of RP even on single-target (although it feels
much
better to press in AoE), and overall, a strong, versatile covenant ability. Oh, and you also get 10% dodge during it.
绝对黑暗
has seen a slight change: instead of increasing
云集之雾
damage and dodge per conduit rank, it now only increases damage, and grants a flat 3% extra dodge.
暗影之门
ranges from excellent to nearly-worthless. In Mythic+, you will abuse it to skip packs, teleport through mobs, teleport behind mobs, teleport behind what you think are line-of-sight obstacles, and generally, have a bunch of fun. In raids, its utility is... slightly less useful. In turn, you get the same pathing issues as what warriors, vengeance demon hunters and a few other classes have to contend with: the legendary No Path Available message.
A couple of soulbind traits change this ability to provide a 15% shield, AoE disorient on arrival, root/snare removal on use, and a bunch of other extra gimmicks. Overall, the drawback of it is the 1.5s cast, but honestly, it will see some use even with that.
Necrolord
憎恶附肢
has received a number of mechanical changes. It still deals AoE damage around you, and it still attempts to grip anything further than 8 yards from you. However, it can now only grip the same target once every 4 seconds, and the first grip performed per cast of the spell grants 3
白骨之盾
instantly, and another 6 during the cast. It still has a way too long cooldown to capitalize on soulbinds or use it every pull, it still deals a decent amount of damage per use, but the bone shield charge is
extremely
clunky and annoying.
Furthermore, the way you gain the following 6 charges (that they added
four days to launch, and without warning, BY THE WAY
) will lead to waste. Due to it having the same cooldown as
符文刃舞
and
符文刃舞
lasting 4s less than
憎恶附肢
, you will very likely want to go all-out on damage during
符文刃舞
.
But
you don't gain the charges to trigger
埋骨之所
until 7s in.
But
by that point, you'll very likely have capped RP already.
So
you end up having to either cast Marrowrend early in order to get
埋骨之所
, thus wasting charges to gain damage, or you delay and lose damage for 3 bones.
And to "pay" for this, we lost 26% AP on a spell that already matched
云集之雾
, thus making it strictly worse.
Four days to release, by the way.
残暴之握
, the associated covenant conduit, does exactly what we expect of borrowed power related to death knights: it simply dials the number a bit higher. No rotational or mechanical impact, just... flat damage.
血肉铸造
is a 4-second channel that generates an absorb shield equal to 20% of your max health, ticking during the channel. If you’re next to a corpse, the absorb shield can scale up to 50% of your max health. Each tick snapshots your maximum health. You cannot dodge or parry during the channel. As such, you'll likely rarely, if ever, use it in combat, and this massively reduces its usefulness (along with its
ultra super long
cast time).
Night Fae
消亡之债
has been almost entirely redesign as a more maintenance-heavy version of itself. It still replaces
枯萎凋零
; however, the buff/debuff pair is now applied by hitting enemies with
心脏打击
while both you and your target are in
消亡之债
, thus limiting the DR debuff present on them to a theoretical maximum number of targets (largely due to
心脏打击
being target-capped at 5 targets), and greatly increasing the maintenance overhead of this ability. You will now want to use
心脏打击
just before
消亡之债
fades, in order to guarantee as long a runway as possible until the next
赤色天灾
proc, and you will sometimes need to hardcast
消亡之债
without a proc if the RNG gods are not on your side.
Fulfilling the fantasy of "this just does more damage",
凋零之地
simply increases the damage of
消亡之债
.
灵魂变形
is, in all intents and purposes, a travel form with a 15yd blink attached. It locks you out of your abilities during it and cancels the moment you try to cast anything else, so unless you plan to kite for a while, you're going to find this button unattractive. A lot of the good PR related to it stems from a bug persisting during most of beta, where you were able to keep on casting during it.
Soulbinds and Conduits
Allegiance to a covenant grants you access to three potential soulbinds, which we will cover in the full guide, as there is quite a bit of information to go through. Their usefulness ranges from large DPS increases (
锯齿护肩
) to party buffs (
身先士卒
) and even additional passive effective health gains (
岩石效命
), along with modifications to each and every signature ability on each and every soulbind. Your Kyrian phial can make you immune to debuffs for 8 seconds (
晋升之瓶
); Door to Shadows can now be used to clear movement-impairing effects (
看好脚下!
), and Soulshape can be changed to stun instead of blinking (
荒猎冲锋
) Irrespective of who you decide to bind yourself to, you may have a small amount of customization for the encounter...
...If it weren't for conduit slots.
Conduits
are the Shadowlands equivalent of Azerite traits, providing a chance to slot in a power that modifies an existing ability in some way. They are split into three types:
Potency
conduits generally amplify your throughput in some way
Endurance
conduits are aimed at your defensive abilities
Finally,
Finesse
conduits modify your general utility spells
Each soulbind tree has pre-defined slots for each type, and this, due to tuning, naturally forces you to pick a conduit you may not
want
to pick because the trait below it is just too good, or to avoid a conduit slot because the power below it is just that bad. There are examples of both.
To make it even worse for our spec specifically, we need to drill down and go over the non-choices at our disposal. We'll do so quickly, as most of them are pretty straightforward. We'll be comparing them at
Rank 7
, equivalent to Mythic Nathria:
Potency conduits
:
绝对黑暗
,
残暴之握
,
凋零之地
,
扩散
: these potency conduits are tuned properly (as they are shared with DPS specs) and provide what you expect of them: a noticeable amount of extra damage.
衰弱痼疾
: At rank 7 (Mythic Nathria), this provides a
1.8%
increase (stacking 3 times) to
血之疫病
, which itself is a 8% AP spell. Even calling it a small increase is marketing spiel, and it makes
深可见骨
look appealing, which I didn't think would be possible until now.
凋零之疾
: At rank 7 (Mythic Nathria), provides a
24%
increase to
心脏打击
.
Due to tuning, you'll be picking your covenant conduit (
绝对黑暗
,
残暴之握
,
凋零之地
,
扩散
), and actively trying to avoid any other due to the
very
sharp difference in tuning. As I said: woefully undertuned and woefully underutilized, especially considering that this is supposed to be a flagship feature of the expansion.
Endurance conduits
:
鲜血羁绊
: Since when do you tap after the damage happens? With its initial tuning, it could look situationally appealing, but Blizzard decided to nuke it from orbit. It is now wholly irrelevant.
硬化骨骼
: At high ranks, this turns
巫妖之躯
into a minor defensive. In my opinion, the effects should have been swapped -
巫妖之躯
should've provided flat DR (10% or so) with the conduit providing the leech. It's still a nice endurance conduit, and does what it says it should do.
无餍食欲
: Whoever designed this, I have no words. When was the last time you needed a
purely defensive
,
healing-oriented
increase for when you... min-heal with
灵界打击
? Boggles the mind.
血肉之盾
: What is a potency conduit doing disguised as an endurance conduit? Seriously, 3s of
符文刃舞
is nice, and the extra HP is also neat, particularly since it lasts for a short while after
符文刃舞
fades. It is a good conduit, but it is one of those cases where you clearly see that this forced separation of purpose doesn't really make sense.
强化护壳
: Situationally awesome if you can make use of the extra duration/radius for
反魔法领域
, useless if you cannot. Likely to be used a lot in raids more than in Mythic+.
Very similarly to potency conduits, there is an order to this.
血肉之盾
provides both offensive and defensive throughput, so that's a no-brainer on generic terms; evidently, if you cannot parry during
符文刃舞
, you gain no value out of this defensively. Beyond this, the higher the rank, the more appealing
巫妖之躯
looks. Beyond that, you can make a situational use case for
强化护壳
, but that's about it, really. Another underwhelming section to the underwhelming system, where nothing really matters.
Finesse conduits
:
凛冬坚韧
: At rank 7 (Mythic Nathria), this provides 30s of cooldown reduction on
冰封之韧
. What is an endurance conduit doing in the finesse aisle, again?
飞逝之风
: Could see some use if needed. The problem is that Finesse slots are
very
limited in number, and the next conduit kind of takes precedence...
灵魂抽取
: At rank 7 (Mythic Nathria), this provides 16 RP per successful interrupt.
This should be baseline
. It is oppressive in choice, and a guaranteed pick the moment interrupts are concerned; it is too good offensively and defensively and completely eclipses the competition.
无尽之握
: With this, you waste a Finesse slot to save yourself from hitting
心脏打击
after
死亡之握
. Completely useless until rank levels not found for another two tiers, where the slow will actually be big enough to consider.
You can explore this system in depth, along with the myriad of non-options it provides, in the soulbind calculator linked below. The soulbinds themselves have a "theme" of sorts, and, sadly, there's still some
wildly
better options than others.
Shadowlands Soulbind Calculator
Choosing a Covenant
Now that we have covered all bases, we can finally answer the burning question: What covenant should
you
pick? The answer, unsurprisingly, is
not
Necrolord
.
Every other covenant has an appealing array of utility, damage and spells that make you do what you do slightly better, with an option to go more defensive or offensive on some of them. None of them falls particularly behind, although Venthyr shines more in Mythic+, while Kyrian still has the edge when it comes to raiding, even after the partial whitelisting of debuffs in Castle Nathria, owing it in part to Pelagos and Kleia providing competitive options. While Pelagos focuses on raw buffs through
战斗冥想
and
放下过去
, Kleia focuses on group utility and provides a
very
interesting catch:
晋升之瓶
upgrades your
静谧之瓶
into a full immunity to debuffs for 8 seconds.
In light of the changes to
放下过去
, it is worth noting that Pelagos was not good "just" for the vers. His entire tree is a large amount of buffs that can be acquired at
no cost
: you do not need to make a choice between a good generic trait and a bad one for the mastery buff, nor for what is now magic DR, and you are free to make any choice you like elsewhere at no cost other than if you want an early finesse. Every other Kyrian soulbind has you making very large sacrifices to pick good traits. With Kleia, you end up sacrificing either 8% crit or the phial immunity to pick up a potency conduit for
扩散
, on top of having a very weak tree overall thanks to the repeated nerfs to
骁勇打击
driven by healers gaining massively more throughput from this than us. Meanwhile, with Mikanikos, you sacrifice the
entire tree
to pick him to start with, as his stuff is even more lackluster than Kleia. This trend will likely be true for every other Pelagos-toting specialization.
We would also recommend to go more towards Venthyr/Kyrian than Night Fae, as
消亡之债
is a significant rotational overhead, but that is a slight recommendation. The Night Fae covenant is still competitive, even with this limitation, when managed properly.
Regardless of the option you pick, we compiled a bunch of common paths for all four covenants. Feel free to inspire yourself from these, and have fun on the last few weeks of beta left with them. When Shadowlands goes live, we'll touch base again with an in-depth debrief of each covenant:
This assumes you can interrupt your target!
If you cannot, and it can be slowed, pick
尼娅的工具:锉刀
instead. Niya is a
really
polarizing soulbind, in that, if you can do one or the other, her throughput potential is amazing. If you cannot, she is, largely, worthless as
尼娅的工具:草药
does not proc from most of our self-healing.
Blood Death Knight Legendaries
Back in July, we only had an inkling of the legendary system: most of the effects were untuned, the runecrafter was inaccessible, and we had no idea how they would fundamentally work. Four months later, we have a lot more information on these.
The results were... hit and miss. Most legendaries were worked, reworked, retuned, tuned again, reworked again, and in the case of
艾欧娜尔的回响
, changed in purpose completely. Most of the blood death knight-specific legendaries were weak to start with, and largely untouched, as is the trend for our borrowed power, at least judging by the past two expansions.
We are left with two mainline choices, and a third, highly situational choice:
Since the last article, the additional
冰霜疫病
and
恶性瘟疫
applied by
超级菌株
have been nerfed in damage by 75%, then to 62.5% to account for their presence on the spec aura and its subsequent zeroing. Even with this, it is still
very
competitive on damage, even single-target, while providing a decent amount of extra Runic Power, making it a very appealing general-purpose legendary.
布伦达尔之力
is still unchanged, providing RP refund when your
灵界打击
heals you for a minimum of 10% of your maximum health. This will largely be a defensive-purpose legendary, used when the value of a
灵界打击
is high enough to care about the frequency of them.
灵界打击
is still our highest damage ability outside of covenants, and as such, it'll also provide a small amount of offensive throughput as well, assuming you can get the refund. Speaking of,
饮血
, due to an effect not mentioned in the tooltip, guarantees this refund.
As a surprise third entry,
死亡终途
was buffed to increase
灵界打击
damage by 35%, making it a fun little legendary to use in tandem with
鲜红符文
for big,
big
death strikes. If only Mueh'zala wasn't part of
a dungeon
...
Most of the other legendary effects are either extremely underpowered (
赤红符文武器
,
血魔统御
), extremely niche (
吸血光环
- just for reminders, this legendary power is a copy of the Dragon Soul set bonus, for which encounters were designed around), or flat-out useless in a PvE context (
塞弗斯的宣言
).
It is a real shame and a missed opportunity that all the legendaries with a real interaction that forces you to
change
your playstyle were, once again, neutered into irrelevance, but I guess that has been a trend with borrowed power for our spec for quite a while now.
Conclusion
Overall, I am a bit saddened and disappointed that a large subset of the flagship features of Shadowlands have left Blood Death Knights hanging. We have had very few impactful class changes, and we still have a bunch of talents we will, reliably, never pick. Our legendaries are underwhelming, our soulbinds are weak and unimpactful, and our covenants largely reduce to "You have a button that does damage" with very little interaction aside from
消亡之债
, which has been turned into a maintenance buff. Suggestions to improve these were provided and, largely, ignored, so I guess we're stuck for another expansion of cookie cutter builds.
We happen to have a volatile mix of extremely low armor, low damage, low, time-dependent AoE burst damage (
血液沸腾
), and while we have a plethora of tools at our disposal to deal with most situations, they are shadows of their former, pre-Battle for Azeroth glory. Some elements of borrowed power helped a bit on that front (particularly the
insane
AP multipliers on certain covenant abilities, the most noticeable being
云集之雾
for AoE burst, particularly since it is not target-capped), but that is largely band-aids over a core issue.
We still bring something unique to the table in the form of
反魔法领域
for raids, which will inevitably see play on at least a couple of fights, and we are still
somewhat
independent in terms of self-sustain. Just as we doubled down on the weaknesses, we also doubled down on the strengths.
In the future, I really hope we get some two-way communication going in order to nip these problems in the bud, before it is too late to change, re-tune or revert anything. If borrowed power is a central theme to the expansion, at least making it appealing would go a long way towards fighting the "We've been the same for two expansions except we've lost all the fun tools from Legion (
地狱之口
,
永恒脐带
,
白骨破碎
)" blues. Don't get me wrong, we're still competitive and we'll still be up there, but it just feels like the same sandwich for the third time in a row.
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