Death Strike Vs. Obliterate Blood Tank

[sawzz]

Speaking from the view point of a blood tank. Im having second thoughts about if using death strike and investing the 2 points in Improved Death strike is better than investing 3 points in Annihilation and using Obliterate. Follow my logic here for a sec. First Deathstrike does not heal based on the damage you do anymore. It heals base on the number of deseases on the target. So it no longer benifits you to increase the damage or critical strike of death strike from the standpoint of the healing it does. Also Improved deathstrike only benefits a single spell where as Annihilation benefits all melee spells by increasing critical stirke by 3% alone with its benefit to obliterate. So if i want to use deathstrike for the healing benifit I can with the same amount of healing and now I have a better crit chance with all my melee spells as well as a harder hitting ability in Obliterate. Just a thought.

[Krenian]

However you're not looking at it fully:

The Blood tree only increases the damage of Death Strike now and not Obliterate. Obliterate's main damage increases are only in Frost and you're not going deep enough in Frost to do anything to push it's damage up. Therefore not only will your Death Strikes hit harder for more damage then your obliterate, but the heal helps your healers maintain your health at a comfortable level. It's in no means amazing but it's still a decent heal through 20 seconds of your rotations.

No, people need to get it in their heads that Blizzard no longer wants you to use Obliterate in a blood rotation. They want you to focus with Death Strike, which gives you health, which in turn, is a key idea around the Blood tanking tree. It focuses on effective health and survival, and Death Strike belongs there better.

Obliterate belongs with Frost and Scourge Strike with Unholy.

[Charkh]

When it comes down to it, the blood rotation I use has 8 Heart Strikes, 1 Death Strike, and a PS/IT over roughly 20 seconds. Neither Death Strike nor Obliterate would be a large part of the equation, so it really comes down to talent points. I use two talent points that don't affect Heart Strike to buff Death Strike. In order to get down to Annihilation, I would need to take 8 talents out of the blood tree and put them into only marginally useful talents to get Annihilation. That's a lot of wasted talent points for only 1 attack every 20 seconds.

If I a Glyph of Disease rotation with 2 Obliterates, that would definitely make the talent choices more plausible, but in my WWS reports, my average Heart Strike in a 56/5/10 spec hit for 1800. My average Obliterate in a 10/61/10 spec hits for 2680. So even a fully buffed Obliterate, which you wouldn't have with only 13 points in frost, hits for less damage per rune than Heart Strike does, so it would be silly not to use a Heart Strike heavy rotation in blood.

[sawzz]

I should have stated that my tank build goes 10 deep in frost anyway. I like taking Icy reach and improved icy touch. So this allows me to go into Annihilation without invest any other points in the frost tree.

Krenian: The blood tree does buff obliterate and that why I bring this up in the first place. Both Subversion and Death rune Mastery apply to obliterate. If blizz wanted to make things easier they could just take these buffs out of the tree all together. Also im not sure you are correct that a talented death strike hits harder than and untalent obliterate. Also improved death strike buffs one spell and as Charkh said is only used to generate death runes. Now please bear in mind all this is therorectical as this point. I see it as a simple 2 point investment to buff one ability versus a 3 point investment that buffs all melee abilities that also take advantage of subversion ( 9% crit to obliterate) that you have already invested points in.

Charkh: You are correct that if your not going to invest any more than 5 points in frost than this is not for you. If you are going to invest at least 10 than i think it is something worth discussing. Annihilation does buff heart strike as well as your other melee specials so its not just to buff obliterate. And lets remember that the whole purpose of deathstrike and Obliterate is to generate blood runes so you can pull off your real damage dealer. Im just thinking out lound here that maybe an investment that benifits all special may be better that one that benifits only one. For one extra talent point.

This is all in responce to the deathstrike healing nerf if not for that I would never have even brought this up. But since Blizz did nerf it and at the same time remove the insentive to make deathstrike hit harder in order for it to heal you more. I question if its even worth the talent point investment.

[sawzz]

I think a build something like

Death Knight - Talents - Thottbot: World of Warcraft

maybe

[Charkh]

According to the WWS of the night I ran both specs while learning Ignis, Obliterate's average hit in full frost was 2614 and Death Strike in full blood was 2550. So when you consider that Obliterate will not be fully buffed with only 13 points in frost (specifically the increased critical strike damage), Death Strike is the better talent investment.

The 3% crit chance isn't insignificant, but skipping the Sudden Doom talent (also three points) I think would prove to be more threat. On that same WWS, my Death Coil hit on average for 1571. At a 15% chance it adds, on average 236 damage (or 572 threat) to each of our 8 Heart Strikes in the rotation.

[sawzz]

Im not sure we can compare full frost Obliterate with full blood death strike. Blood boost physical damage whcich obliterate is while the frost tree mainly boost frost spell damage.

I did a quick test on the level 80 test dummy using my current blood spec using both obliterate and death strike. I made sure both deseases were up and I continued until I had performed 30 attack each. Both average damage was around 1850, 1840 for death strike and 1870 for obliterate. This is a simple test I know, but I think it shows that we are not getting much bang for the buck from investing 2 points in improved death strike.

[Krenian]

Alright, let me amuse you all by going down the tree and analyzing if this is even possible.

Presume that you have to go at least 13 points in frost.

Let us also presume that you’re only going 44 points down in Blood. (I find Blood Gorge and Dancing Rune Weapon to be unessential to tanking whatsoever. One because you’re not going to be reliably over 75% health all the time – you’re consistently taking damage – and the other because it will cause just headaches and you use your Runic Power for Rune Strikes for more threat.)

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9806

This would be something like the spec I’d go for. Essentially, you want a smooth rotation so you do want the two points in Epidemic. Also, you want 3 points in Morbidity to allow you to do some semblance of AoE damage aka Death and Decay. Blood’s already weak in the AoE department so you may as well have your best AoE skill at your disposal much more often.

Not taking Sudden Doom is silly as it’s a free attack with free threat attached to it. Taken. I don’t have enough points so I have to only put two points in Spell Deflection. In both scenarios, I think Will should save you more often from an Oh @#^$ moment.

The one thing I’m noticing right now in the tree is that the only thing that really gets increased in damage for Obliterate is Subversion: gives it a flat 8% increase critical strike chance. Alright, yes, that’s nice considering our tanking gear probably doesn’t have that much crit strike, any time obliterate will hit will do a lot more damage.

Now, here’s what you’re losing from the Death Strike build.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9806

That’s a build I’d probably run with, quickly looking at talents and grabbing them:

Might of Morgraine only affects Death Strike. It empowers your crit damage of Blood Strike, Death Strike and Heart Strike by 45%. This talent, a lot of people look over and I’m not sure why: You’ll crit with those skills, and the more damage you do, the better it is in my opinion.

Improve Death Strike increases it’s damage by 30% and it’s crit strike by 6%. It places it I believe on par with Obliterate’s damage, and instead of relying on diseases, it mostly relies on runic power for the extra damage. This means you don’t necessarily need your diseases up to do damage with the skill, although you won’t get the healing component. The healing component is nice, but in a raid situation, you’re being healed by a couple of healers so not having it go off isn’t the biggest things.

The trade-off?

45% extra crit damage and 6% crit chance versus 8% crit chance alone. You get Imp IT’s slowing movement as well.

Not worth it imo. I thought however that there were a lot more talents that helped Death Strike so I have to thank you for making me look and analyze this a bit more than I did. Also, I’m sure Satorri’s gonna come in and bite me on the rear about the talent distribution I have made for tanking. Maybe he can shed a bit more information here.

[Satorri]

Tony does good crunching, but to be clear, Annihilation is not a 3 pt investment, it is at bare minimum a 5 pt investment for Blood into the Frost Tree. The pts aren't wasted by 4% more IT dmg and 4% more DC dmg are not the best purchases.

Blood buffs both strikes well for damage, they're both physical and OB can proc DRM and Abom's Might. OB is physical damage so it will be fully buffed by both Bloody Vengeance and Blood-gorged. In short, there is no clear cut better choice.

That said, I'll put my money on DS every time as a Blood tank. Fully talented my DS's are doing 2200-2600 now non crit, and pushing 6k+ with crits, Oblit won't improve that much. At the same time DS heals. Even if you don't pay the least bit of attention to whether or not it will heal or overheal, if you are taking damage (which you will take plenty in Ulduar) even a bit of that effective healing will buff the threat further and buff your survival. Besides that, with the heal now being based on total health it is INSANE for a Blood tank. My raid buffed DS heals me for 4.6k!!! With Vamp blood each one heals me for 7.3k!! I checked my overhealing last night after a night in Ulduar, and not surprisingly DS was the highest of my self-heals as I use it usually in rotation for glyphs and only hit it occasionally for the heal (Rune Tap beats that for half the price), but it was still only 50% overhealing. So a non-crit (27% crit rate raid buffed mind you) DS will hit for say 2400, plus 40% of a 4.6k heal (1840), is a total of 6900 threat, or a functional dmg threat value as if it hit for 3320.

I wouldn't give up the points to buy Oblit in rotation with DS working as beautifully as it is now for a Blood tank, but that's a personal call.

[sawzz]

Wow this is getting very technical. lol.

There was a point that I missed and thanks to Satorri for pointing that out and that is healing aggro. For what ever reason this totally slip my mind.

Well i guess im back to where I was before im more sold on using Death Strike but I must say after seeing its damage vs. obliterate (without the obliterate glyph) I feel we are getting a little ripped off. I would like to see it buffed either in crit chance or overall damage or better yet it healing brought back somewhere between where it is and the original version.

[Fabreze]

Having main tanked Ulduar 10 (to Mimiron) and Ulduar 25 (to Auriaya) as a Blood tank there have been a few things that I've found. Obviously my results will be very different as a Blood tank considering the talent point allocation of my specs and glyphs. For reference, I'll make it known here that I was a frost tank from the day I hit 80, all through Naxxramas, and up until 3.0. I had thrown around the idea of using Blood as a tanking spec, but it never came to fruition until the release of Ulduar.

Depending on how you choose to spend your points higher in the Blood tree (ex. Death Rune Mastery), and if you choose to put any more than 5 points in Frost. If you've elected to take Death Rune Mastery, the number of Death Strikes used in a given rotation over time is negligible compared to the number of Heart Strikes. Again, even if you choose to put 13 points into Frost and use Obliterate instead of Death Strike with Death Rune Mastery (assuming you have it) would make Obliterate low on your list of used abilities in a given rotation.

I don't have any specifically parsed TPS numbers for either Obliterate or Death Strike but from personal experience I have found that the threat contribution from either Obliterate or Death strike really isn't that significant in difference or overall effect. One thing to keep in mind, however, when considering Death Strike's threat is the healing threat generated by the self-heal is divided by the number of hostile mobs within range of your threat generating abilities. Naturally, the threat from Obliterate would be roughly equal to Death Strike in a single target situation. In an AoE threat situation, or a situation with multiple targets Obliterate would generate more threat on your main target.

With the way that I've specced, however, this point is entirely moot considering how rarely I even use Death Strike (with the exception of refreshing my Death Runes). Linked below are my talents and glyph choices for readers' reference.

53/5/13 - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

In case these questions come up, I elected not to take Improved Icy Touch due to my guild's raid composition. We more often than not have another Death Knight who is spec'd 0/10/61 for the improved Frost Fever debuff.

I chose not to take Improved Death Strike and took Epidemic instead due in part to personal preference (I like my diseases to not be my primary concern) as well as the negligible increase in Death Strike's damage. Yes, 30% damage and 6% critical strike chance sounds fine and well, but in the long run having 5 extra seconds on my diseases allowed for, at the very least, 2 more Heart Strikes. In my current spec Heart Strike, without fail hits and crits harder than my Death Strikes.

Hope this helped even in the slightest.

[Feanorr]

Ok so I was asking the same question myself, so I tested it out.

Here is my both spec, very similar for a better comparison:

DS one: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

OB one: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft


We did 2 evening on the deconstructor almost exclusively (we didnt pass it yet) so the comparison should be pretty accurate. Here are the WWS TPS calculator's reports:

With DS's spec, for all bosses (including flame leviathan but it wont affect the tps per strike):

Niniel produced 4260 tps vs All Bosses

Again with DS's spec, but for one of the try on the deconstrutor (the longest one of this evening):

Niniel produced 4547 tps vs Déconstructeur XT-002

With OB's spec, for all bosses (including a few try on razorscale):

Niniel produced 4594 tps vs All Bosses

Again with OB's spec, but for one of the try on the deconstructor (the closest one with the DS's sample in duration):

Niniel produced 4601 tps vs Déconstructeur XT-002


So what we can see is this:

1) If we count only damage, with my stuff anyway, OB does more threat, no doubt. If you take the 2 single try, OB is at 8556 Threat per strike and DS at 6604.

2) however if you add the effective heal done by DS, the resulting threat is really close. Again on the single try, DS goes up to 8507 threat per strike. I just took the total threat by heal done with DS, divided it by the number of DS done (16 for this try) and added the result to the threat per strike of DS. That's with an overheal of 63%.

3) With OB's spec, the threat done by other abilities, HS, RS and white damage at least, are a bit better (the 3% more crit ^^). 5728 vs 5560 threat per strike for HS.

So for pur single threat, the OB's spec is a bit better; not because of OB threat (the difference is marginal), but because it buff all your crit. However, for that you loose some AOE potential (I lost morbidity and Corpse explosion) and some healing (but not a lot, 30K heal on a 4min fight is marginal).
If you can manage to get less than 63% overheal, it will of course boost the threat of DS, puting it ahead of OB's threat. But I dont think you could compensate for the others strikes' threat gain (DS is only ~11% of my threat).


By the way, after seeing these reports I think that a DS glyph will be better that my DS/OB's one. RS's threat is 24-25% of my threat, 2 times more than OB/DS.

However, single target threat is not my main concern at the moment, I am ahead of our best DPS. So personnally, I will try to boost my survivability as much as I can as long as my mate dont need to slow their dps because of my threat. Tomorow I will try this spec:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I will loose some single threat no doubt, but I will gain some AOE threat (with DnD glyph) and a bit of survivability (with WOTN).

If I get some threat trouble in the futur, I will keep the OB's one in mind though (well I will probably first go back to the DS one, without WOTN, then if it's not enough take the OB one).



Niniel

PS: strike's translation since my WWS reports use my french strike names :
Frappe au coeur = heart strike
Frappe runique = Runic strike
Frappe de mort = Death strike
Fièvre de givre = Frost fever
Peste de sang = Blood plague
Frappe de peste = Plague strike
Toucher de glace = Icy touch

[Satorri]

Nice numbers, Fea, nice testing. That said, you also illustrated the reason I love DS. In your DS test (all bosses) you healed yourself for 115k with DS, and only 20k with Rune Tap, but when you switched to OB you healed 120k with Rune Tap. The clear message to me is that both have major survival value, where as OB is only threat, and the survival value has been feeling great for me in Ulduar, especially since no one tests my threat, but bosses tan my hide. =)

Keep up the good work, and good luck with XT!

[Feanorr]

I could also mean I didnt used rune tap enough the first night

But anyway, DS will do the same healing with the talent or not, so maybe we can skip it. At least I think the DS glyph could be changed for a better one: RS for single threat or DnD for AOE threat or even rune tap for even more heal (30% miam ^^ plus some group heal). I may try rune tap for tonight, the group heal could help on XT's AOE.

[Fabreze]

This might just be personal preference, but for those who looked at my spec will notice I didn't take Rune Tap/Improved Rune Tap, Hysteria, or Mark of Blood. Personally I've found Rune tap not to be significantly useful as if I need to heal myself for 10-20% of my health bar, I've got more serious problems on my hands concerning my healers.

Obviously since the difference in threat is negligible and in a deep blood tanking build Heart Strike and Rune Strike (as with any Tanking build) takes up a very large portion of threat. Being able to refresh diseases with 1 Pestilence rune and only using Death Strike to refresh Unholy/Frost runes is extremely useful in terms of threat generation. Heart Strike will hit just as hard, if not harder than your Death Strikes, and most likely just below Obliterate. Since Heart Strike only takes 1 Blood/Death rune, it will be the Threat Per Rune in your Blood tanking build.

[Satorri]

Fabreze, I don't know if you've spent much time in Ulduar but I've been averaging about 5% overheal on Rune Tap and using it frequently whenever my health dips, which is fairly common with the amount and scale of damage. It's pretty easy to fit in when you're taking 20-30k melee swings. But it is a personal choice as all survival and threat talents are.

And Fea, I'm debating the glyph value myself now that it won't affect the healing (though if they change that I'll cheer). I'm thinking I may pack a stack of RS glyphs and a stack of IBF glyphs for swapping as I need more survival or more threat. For me, in raid buffs, the glyph is worth 600 dmg per use, which averages on to 1 DS per 10 sec, so 60 dps, 124 tps. But Rune Strike, with the crit buff, and Blood-gorged, and Bloody Vengeance, ooooooowwweeeeeee. That could be hot. IBF on the other hand, being still on a 1 min CD and being a 50% dmg reduction with the glyph could be a major value, though I'll miss not having the duration increased like it is in Frost and/or with the 4 pc t7 set bonus. Still, after Vamp Blood it's my favorite survival glyph.

[Fabreze]

Fabreze, I don't know if you've spent much time in Ulduar but I've been averaging about 5% overheal on Rune Tap and using it frequently whenever my health dips, which is fairly common with the amount and scale of damage. It's pretty easy to fit in when you're taking 20-30k melee swings. But it is a personal choice as all survival and threat talents are.

And Fea, I'm debating the glyph value myself now that it won't affect the healing (though if they change that I'll cheer). I'm thinking I may pack a stack of RS glyphs and a stack of IBF glyphs for swapping as I need more survival or more threat. For me, in raid buffs, the glyph is worth 600 dmg per use, which averages on to 1 DS per 10 sec, so 60 dps, 124 tps. But Rune Strike, with the crit buff, and Blood-gorged, and Bloody Vengeance, ooooooowwweeeeeee. That could be hot. IBF on the other hand, being still on a 1 min CD and being a 50% dmg reduction with the glyph could be a major value, though I'll miss not having the duration increased like it is in Frost and/or with the 4 pc t7 set bonus. Still, after Vamp Blood it's my favorite survival glyph.

Not necessarily arguing that it doesn't have its uses, however I've found personally that when my DPS are going all out and trying as hard as they can to push my threat threshold, I'd rather not waste runes or GCDs trying to heal myself when a healer can do just the same with a 1.5 second cast. Instead, I'd rather burn a Heart Strike or two and keep my TPS running at 7K+. Like you said, personal preference.

[Feanorr]

I'd rather burn a Heart Strike or two and keep my TPS running at 7K+.

A rune tap is, for me, a heal at 9k (with raid buff). And it does a bit more than it's healing value in threat (according to the WWS's tps calculator). It's more threat than a HS; more than 3k ahead of a HS for me.

So, unless you use it at full health or near, you dont waste a rune or GCD, you bump your agro, and your health. At least for a single mob fight, in AOE it spread accross the mobs I believe.


@Sartorri: for the moment, I went for the DnD's glyph; my single threat is good enough for my guild's DPS at the moment, but in AOE it's more a problem. IBF could be a good choice too.
On a side note, those wws's report show me that I definitly need to use all my survival cd (IBF, VB and rune tap) more often



PS: I may be wrong, I am not very used to healing agro (not sure if it's correct in english )

[Satorri]

You are correct Fae.

On a single target Rune Tap is worth more threat than HS. The catch on aoe pulls is that the healing threat gets split. On two targets the HS will win for total threat, but a self-heal is not a lack of threat when you use it, especially not when the healing adds up.

[Vanthus]

This is the build I am currently using...

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft


As a few have pointed out, I don't think the issue is really OB vs DS directly, but rather what happens when you have Death Rune Mastery and only use them once every 2 rotations. I decided that I would rather have the 3% crit chance for every HS and every Rune Strike. This build has the highest DPS of any build I have tried recently (although admittedly I am not a great DPS guy).
The main thing that I am now trying to decide is if the Improved Icy Touch is more valueable than finishing blood gorged for the extra 4% Armor penetration and 3% strength out of Unholy (or possibly the shorter DnD and 15% DC).
My current rotation is IT-PS-HS-HS-OB (or DS if I want healing) then IT-PS-HS-HS-HS-HS. I also use a DC at the end of each if I have a lot of Runic power.
I may drop the OB glyph in favor of IBF now that I have read how that is working currently.