There Will Be Blood (Tanks) 2

It should be noted that information here was taken from this week’s press event, and is in no way “leaked” info or NDA breaking data. The original post can be found on World of Raids [here] I have however weeded out the info pertinent to DK tanks and posted it here for ease of access, along with my own comments. Enjoy…

ABILITIES
» Blood Presence – The new Tanking Presence, functions as Frost Presence does currently.
» Rune Strike – As expected RS is no longer an “on next swing” attack, but an instant. It still requires a Dodge or Parry to use.
» Death and Decay – Cost reduced to one Unholy Rune (down from 1 BR, 1 FR, 1UR). This one is huge for multi-mob tanking…

TALENTS
+ Blood
» Subversion – Removed. The crit will be missed…
» Blood-Caked Blade – Moved over from Unholy and is now a tier-3 talent. This should be a definite must for any threat spec…
» Bone Shield – Moved from Unholy to Blood, and is now a tier 3 talent. A new tool for Blood to work with, should be interesting to see how it works alongside the other tanking cooldowns…
» Toughness – Moved over from Frost and is now a tier-4 talent. A welcome change, and pretty predictable.
» (NEW) Hemorrhagic Fever – New tier-5 talent that causes Blood Boil to reduce physical damage dealt by 10%.Very interesting, we get a version of Demo Shout. I like this.
» Improved Blood Presence – Now causes you to become crit immune at 2/2. As stated previously all tanks will become crit immune through talents, so this was expected.
» Will of the Necropolis – Now also generates a Blood Rune and resets the cooldown on Rune Tap when it triggers. I think I just came, seriously…
» (NEW) Blood Parasite – Tier-8 talent, chance to spawn a Bloodworm with attacks. It will attack a target until it explodes, healing nearby allies. On the fence with this one, depends on the AI of these little bastards.
» (NEW) Sanguine Fortitude – Tier-8 talent, 3 ranks, improves Icebound Fortitude reduction by 10% per rank(?) and at max rank makes it cost no runic power(?). Kinda a big deal, I can’t tell you how pissed I was when they nerfed the IBF glyph and this brings back freebie IBF, Viva la Cataclysm!
» Heart Strike – Now hits 3 targets. Let’s just call it Heart Swipe now… Don’t misunderstand me though, I think this a positive change.

» (NEW) Blood Swarm – Tier-10 talent, when you use Plague Strike on targets with Blood Plague it has a chance to make Blood Boil not cost a rune.More AE Threat Potential, and “proc” based. Interesting…
» Dancing Rune Weapon – Now also increases parry chance by 20% while it’s active. Not gonna lie, this one caught me off guard (sorry for the parry pun) but in all seriousness I had somewhat expected this to swap with Howling Blast, then again I think that was mostly wishful thinking on my part.

+ Frost
» Unbreakable Armor – Removed. Annoyed that it didn’t make it to the new blood tree, but not overly surprised.
» (NEW) Runic Empowerment – Tier-1 talent, 5 ranks, has an 8/16/24/32/40% chance to active a random fully depleted rune whenever you use Death Coil, Frost Strike or Rune Strike. Though not a tank specific talent, it offers some utility and flexibility. And with the changes to rune mechanics this one might become a necessity for many builds.

+ Unholy
» Morbidity – Moved from tier-2 to tier-4. I’ll be honest, knee jerk reaction – this kinda pisses me off. Blood really isn’t big in the AE threat department, we don’t get an AE taunt. So BB and DND are our bread and butter (typically). Now, with some of the other changes we may not need to rely on DND as much, but for now I remain reservedly pissy till I get a chance to play around with the new talents first hand.

CURRENT THOUGHTS
I’m still not sure how this whole change to the rune and runic power mechanics is going to work, and of course we still don’t have a complete set of talent trees to look at, but overall I’m happy. The changes appear to be mostly positive and they look as though they will be enjoyable. I still have concerns of course and I definitely still don’t like the level of homogenization we’re seeing, but I can live with it (so far). Either way, I’m as excited about the expansion as ever after reading about these changes.

I’ll have more news as it develops…