Fun little trivia fact: when Wrath of the Lich King was first announced, Blood was going to be the PvE DPS spec, while Frost would be for tanking and Unholy would be the utility/PvP spec. When Wrath went live, however, they embarked on an ambitious experiment to make all three specs tank and DPS capable. By the end of Wrath, they realized that was insane (and OP) so they chose the spec that had all the self-healing as the tank. But it is funny, because I remember having a Blood DPS spec and a Frost tank spec (which I later just changed to Blood as well, because I loved Blood during Wrath,) and at the time, Blood Presence was for DPS and Frost Presence was for tanking, so I'd always have the opposite one from my spec active. Ah, memories.
What's up with Blood?
Rune Strike - Gone!
Rune Strike was notable for bypassing all dodges and parries (and blocks, I think.) However, with the expertise hard cap built into all tank specs now, that's not nearly as impressive as it once was. So instead, Blood will now use a cheaper and higher-damage Death Coil for their RP-dumping needs, which is fine. Now you'll have a nice ranged ability that bypasses armor. Cool beans.
Heart Strike - Gone!
Whoa, whoa, back up. Heart Strike is gone? What? Yes, it turns out that good ol' Heart Strike is going away. Back in Wrath, when Blood was DPS-capable, Heart Strike was what you used all your Death and Blood runes on. In fact, the fact that Blood even generates Death Runes via Death Strike is kind of a relic of that era. These days, you'll probably just be spending those on Death Strike anyway.
Instead, we'll just be using Blood Boil for both single-target and AoE.
Pestilence - Rolled into Blood Boil!
Earlier in the Beta, they rolled Blood Boil into Pestilence, but people liked the aesthetic of Blood Boil better, so they switched it around. I'll agree that Pestilence is maybe a more specifically-Death-Knight-ish thing than Blood Boil, but I agree with the move. Also, it frees up the name Pestilence for some new ability later down the line.
What this does mean, though, is that you're going to be using Blood Boil a whole hell of a lot. You still get a free one with Crimson Scourge, and it still refreshes diseases, and of course now spreads them as well. This does mean that the new Plaguebringer talent that replaced Roiling Blood (which is of course now baseline with this change,) doesn't look all that attractive to Blood, as it will be hard to do anything without keeping those diseases refreshed anyway.
Rune Tap - More Active Mitigation Options
Rune Tap is no longer a heal, but is instead a short-duration 50% damage reduction cool down with two charges. I believe the recharge time is 30s, so you can expect to use this frequently. Will of the Necropolis will now just automatically activate it at 35% health.
Multistriking for Scent of Blood:
Last time I checked, Multistrikes will now contribute, or perhaps just be the way for you to get stacks of Scent of Blood. This buff, in case you forgot about it, will stack up to 5 and increase the healing and RP-generation of your Death Strike. Multistrike is Blood's stat-attunement, but we'll have to see how powerful it is.
EDIT: Actually I'm not sure about this one. Multistrike is definitely the stat attunement, but I could be mistaken about how it interacts with Scent of Blood. Still, all tanks are getting something that will make MS attractive, so I could have been right the first time.
Where the f- is Ghoul, String? Where the F- is ghoul?
Yes, as I covered in the Frost discussion, Raise Dead (not to be confused with Raise Ally, which is still class-wide) is now Unholy only. Admittedly, Raise Dead was mostly important for Blood as a fuel for Death Pact, which no longer requires an undead minion to work, but still, it's a little sad to see that we won't be raising the dead all that much. Again, Army of the Dead remains, but the damage has been nerfed, and it's really more of a panic button for when things get out of hand. Army of the Dead is such an awesome spell, but I sort of wish it was easier to use properly. Oh well.
RP-Spenders All Proc Rune-Regen talents:
No longer do only Death Coil, Frost Strike, and the defunct Rune Strike proc Runic Empowerment, Runic Corruption, or Blood Tap. Now, if you spend RP, you have a chance to proc them, which honestly I think frees up a lot of future ability and class design.
Talents!
DK level 100 talents are the same regardless of your spec, even between tanks and DPS.
Necrotic Plague: This is a disease that will replace both Frost Fever and Blood Plague, and will do damage greater than both combined, ultimately. It starts out doing relatively low damage, but with each tick, it gains a stack and spreads to an additional target. When a target afflicted with Necrotic Plague tries to attack you, you gain 2 RP, which should provide quite a lot with large packs. The disease cannot be refreshed though, but doing things that would refresh it instead add a stack, capping out at 15 I believe. Given Blood's very easy time refreshing diseases, this means that you'll likely be able to get it up to full stacks pretty quickly.
Defile: Replacing Death and Decay, Defile creates an AoE zone that ticks for damage for everyone standing within it. If there are enemies within it when it ticks, it grows in both size and damage by 2.5%. Enemies who are standing in Defile will do 10% less damage to you, which means that even on single-target fights, it can be a nice little damage-reduction cool down (though with Crimson Scourge, I expect most players will use it more or less on cool down if they can cast for free.)
Breath of Sindragosa: This is the only ability that doesn't replace an existing one. BoS has a 2-min CD, and costs 15 RP per second. It lasts until cancelled or if you run out of RP. BoS causes shadowfrost damage to enemies in a cone in front of you, and targets that are hit by it will heal you for 10% of the spell-damage they do.
Personally, I'm all about Defile, partially because no Lich King ability scared me as much as that one. And I'm angry at Necrotic Plague for being the one LK ability that is keeping me from getting my Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher. Breath of Sindragosa is a little fussy for my tastes, though the game of maximizing its duration could be an interesting challenge for some.
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