Blood Tank Talent Mechanics

[Kanzer]

Let me say it in another way - Rune Tap is a very useful survival tool. For myself personally, outside of 2 select fights, I would rather do the small amounts of extra damage and threat with Sudden Doom and HS spam because I haven't died on them, or been close to dying, in about 3 months. I still do pick up WoTN however because it is a little easier to pick up without sacrificing any of my core talents I enjoy, it only requires 3 points, and it mindlessly activates when I am doing easier farm content and trying to maximize damage and threat (leading to constant rune blackouts).

Fair enough.

[Lockblade]

I've found that the further along my guild and I get into ICC, the more chances I've gotten to use Rune Tap. Besides, it's saved me from inattentive heals too many times to just give it up.

[Satorri]

And there is the whole of it. =)

Good tool if you use it, wasted if you don't. Each player makes their decision where they put their investments. Probably the only thing you can really do to handicap yourself is to take something and not make use of it, and for that passive talents are hard to waste.

[Nurasha]

Doing between 25% up to even 40% of healing done on myself on hardmode fights with Rune tap being my top healing done source the discussion is redundant to me. Being in a group with a rogue makes threat the least of my problems thus gives me the opportunity to aim for pure survival over TPS.
Healers that run with me regularly have come accustomed to the self healing and adapted, so RT heals don't conflict with a big heals.

Besides, I see it much like AMS: situational and very strong when used correctly. Take Sindragosa's breaths which are redictable, thus easy to RT on immediately which in turn reduces healer stress. Sure, RT isn't great for all fights but the same thing goes for Merciless Combat that all Frost DPS take now, which is a fine talent but to my knowledge only taken because of the major advantage it gives on LK - correct me if I'm wrong.

[Satorri]

Sure, RT isn't great for all fights but the same thing goes for Merciless Combat that all Frost DPS take now, which is a fine talent but to my knowledge only taken because of the major advantage it gives on LK - correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah, I was with you on the rest, but I don't know what you're talking about for Merciless Combat. It is a pretty standard DPS talent, and it is only actually limited on the LK (since you don't take him all the way to zero).

[Edgewalker]

Doing between 25% up to even 40% of healing done on myself on hardmode fights with Rune tap being my top healing done source the discussion is redundant to me. Being in a group with a rogue makes threat the least of my problems thus gives me the opportunity to aim for pure survival over TPS.
Healers that run with me regularly have come accustomed to the self healing and adapted, so RT heals don't conflict with a big heals.

Besides, I see it much like AMS: situational and very strong when used correctly. Take Sindragosa's breaths which are redictable, thus easy to RT on immediately which in turn reduces healer stress. Sure, RT isn't great for all fights but the same thing goes for Merciless Combat that all Frost DPS take now, which is a fine talent but to my knowledge only taken because of the major advantage it gives on LK - correct me if I'm wrong.

Everyone takes Merciless Combat because it's a giant DPS upgrade for the talent points for every fight that you kill bosses. It's technically better for Sindragosa, Putricide, and BQL than LK because it helps with the more difficult phases of the first 2 bosses and you are normally bitten on the third.
The hard part of LK HM is the second phase, and you get no benefit there, and the third phase only goes to 10% which reduces the overall value of the talent.
That's a very very confusing statement.

Also I'd love to see a log where 40% of the healing on you is Rune Tap for an actual Hard Mode fight.

[leethaxor]

*looks around, shrugs* Guess this is the right tread for this.

What is the actually up time on Blood Gorged?
I don't have it for my heroic build, but should I take it for tanking raids?

[Edgewalker]

*looks around, shrugs* Guess this is the right tread for this.

What is the actually up time on Blood Gorged?
I don't have it for my heroic build, but should I take it for tanking raids?

100% for the ArP and completely unanswerable for the dmg increase, as it is drastically different from fight to fight and depending on your role and healers.

[leethaxor]

So then the question becomes is 10% ArP worth 5 talent points or this is a personal decision part of the blood tree?

[Satorri]

The time averaged value will be plenty less than zero, it just won't be fixed. It also can increase in scale as your max health increases, again depending on the severity of your incoming damage and the speed of response and style of your healers.

Personally? Absolutely, it is worth taking. It is competitive with the other Blood talents for buffing your threat even with a modest estimation of the time you spend above 75% health. And, if anything, the heroic build would be the place you will see the largest uptime of it since it is so easy to out-gear heroics quite quickly.

If you have a regular raid team you can get a sense of it just by paying attention to where you hang out on health. Unless you are doing some of the nastier hard modes, or your healers are total slouches, you will probably have the health-based buff up much more often than not.

[Frenzy165]

I use http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jcEMqI...sxhxZ0g:GdpMmV as my tank spec. It contains imp rune tap and all the other talents being discussed.

I'm just curious as to what I would pick up to be able to avoid the imp rune tap line. The only thing i could see to bother with would be morbidity, which carries some merit, i suppose.. but not a whole lot.

edit: I have an enh shaman 100% of the time, so aboms might is redundant. I also always have resto druids and/or disc priests in my raids.. so Scent of blood is wasted, as i am usually drowning in RP anyway

[Satorri]

I'm not sure what you're looking for, Frenzy. Are you saying you want to take the points out of Imp Rune Tap and put them somewhere else? You have enough points to drop the 3 Imp Rune Tap points, so you would only need to put one point elsewhere to drop Rune Tap altogether.

You could drop a point in Spell Deflection if nothing else. But if you want a place to put your points elsewhere? Morbidity is a good choice, yeah. It makes for frequent DnD and harder hitting DCs for all that RP you're swimming in. Not sure what else you're looking for...

[Frenzy165]

I don't WANT to drop imp rune tap.. i was just curious as to what I was "missing" by taking it. For me, the spec works perfectly. It was more a rhetorical question.. as I have seen it said a few times that people don't take the imp rune tap line. Just trying to glean what alternatives people take. None of the ones offered seem attractive to me. In my raid setup, with the people I run with.. this spec is perfect for what it does.
Like i said.. more rhetorical than anything, but thanks for the response

[Edgewalker]

The argument is that the quality of life from morbidity or extra damage from sudden doom is a better investment than a heal you won't need for a lot of scenarios in ICC.

Disclaimer : Just repeating the argument, don't want to argue the argument.

[Vlad]

Why not have em all!
!

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jcEMqhbIsdofssxhxZ0x

Anyways it's prob moot, looks like possibly no rune cost for rune tap in cat.. thats always been the sticking point for me.

[coe]

With new WotN, RT will be more useful, cause it will be always available Anyway, as I'm doing mostly 10mans and we're doing some hard modes now, I find RT as very nice tool. It fits really nicely with priority tanking style, cause it doesn't break any rotation (although I know some DK tanks that sticks to their rotations). Especially when you can rotate it with AMS on some breath-like abilities. I use it very often on challenging content.