Lecture on Mythic Plus Tank Changes and Effects on Blood Death Knights

Jul 20, 2024

Lecture on Mythic Plus Tank Changes and Effects on Blood Death Knights 🛡️

Overview

  • Lecture discusses recent tank changes in World of Warcraft, specifically regarding Blood Death Knight (DK) tanks.
  • The lecture includes the speaker's experiences, thoughts, and data from Mythic Plus dungeons testing.
  • Duration of the lecture was approximately four hours, highlighting the complexity and breadth of the topic.

Key Topics

  1. Contrasting Opinions on Changes

    • Community Split: Some players are highly negative, threatening to quit the game, while others find the changes negligible.
    • Expectations vs Reality: Misalignment between what players expected after reading patch notes and their experiences in-game.

  2. Evaluation of Changes

    • Blizzard's Promises Not Fulfilled: Blizzard stated aims to make tanks less squishy and not prone to one-shots but failed, per speaker's observations.
    • Example of Tests: Only a few hours spent in dungeons yet substantial issues noticed.

  3. Specific Changes and Impacts

    • Blood Shield: Heavily nerfed; previously a core mechanic providing significant mitigation for Blood DKs.
    • Healing Output Analysis: Blood DK's healing chart compared to a Shaman healer in a high-tier group.
      • Demonstrated Blood DK still outperforms in self-healing but with less overall effectiveness post-nerf.
    • Damage Reduction and Sustain: Historically strong sustain (high % healed vs damage taken) has significantly dropped.

Specific Mechanics Discussed

  • Bone Storm: Changes in how Bone Storm consumes Bone Shield.
  • Talents Adjustments: Speaker changed weapon enchant and some talents to adapt to changes.
  • Dancing Rune Weapon: Increase in uptime due to changes in Bone Storm/Tombstone usage.

Content Hardness and Affixes

  • Mythic Plus Dungeons: Noted as significantly more difficult post-changes, hard to isolate impact variables (e.g., scaling vs tank changes).
  • Affixes: New affixes considered extremely punitive and game-changing, e.g., damage buffs to mobs and crit bonuses to players.

Practical Observations

  1. Survival Difficulty

    • Noted increased difficulty in survival and more reliance on healers, contrary to Blizzard's stated goals.

  2. Class-Specific Commentary

    • Despite the nerfs, Blood DK's new mechanics can still offer bursts of strong defensive uptime.
    • Adjustments not compensating adequately for the changes, leading to frustration in high-difficulty content.

Community Reaction and Final Thoughts

  • Content Creators and Player Feedback: Urging for feedback and likely further changes based on community response.
  • Speaker's Perspective: Mixed feelings but urging not to quit the game over these changes, confidence in eventual balancing.

Future Expectations

  • Possible Adjustments: Speculative thoughts on Blizzard potentially reverting or adjusting the most impactful nerfs.
  • Overall Impact: Temporary frustration, but with adaptation strategies available and likely future tuning.

Note: The content was from a comprehensive live-streamed lecture where detailed and nuanced perspectives were shared. For a deeper understanding, viewers are advised to refer to the actual content.