Blood Parasite – The Specifics
May 29, 2010 12 Comments
Since many people seem curious:
- Blood worm: Initial Health: 10187. Stacks Blood Gorged – May burst, healing neraby allies for 10% of its maximum health. Stacks 14 times.
I’m not entirely sure if it has a chance to burst each time it gains a stack, then heals for 10% of its health * the number of stacks or whether it simply heals for a flat 10% of its health. Either way, pretty potent talent, as even if you interpret that as negatively as possible, that’s still a 10k AoE heal fairly regularly.
Still, 10k health might not be all that much in Cataclysm. Stat inflation appears to be rather huge, at least relative to past expansions. Simply look at the new HoW:
- Horn of Winter now increases your total strength and agility by 419 (up from 155).
Even so, 10k is greater than the current Circle of Healing numbers and the like, so as long as healers actually have to manage their mana, it might actually be a welcome addition, even if it isn’t as crazy as it might appear were it live today.
Consider This... 
Sounds like a DK version of leader of the pack.
Even with stats increasing by the huge amounts that they are, I highly doubt you’ll see tanks with 250k health (4% of which is 10k), let alone dpsers/healers with that much. So it’s like a DK version of leader of the pack… except leaps and bounds stronger.
Not to mention the fact that LotP relies on the individual critting for them and only them to receive a heal. Tanks rarely crit, and thus rarely benefit. Blood Parasites procs off hits, and then heals all the melee (and anyone else within range). Much better.
True, but less reliable and more bursty. And ours usually wont affect ranged.
The only ranged who benefit from iLotP are Hunters, anyways. Not a huge loss, really.
Less reliable is arguable. HS, for example, will have three chances to proc it. BCB should be able to proc it. So on. You’ll get at least one every 10 seconds, and likely more. Ultimately, yes, it’s probably slightly less reliable for dps classes, but a ton more so for tanks.
Right exactly. Although, speaking of Blood talents, its interesting that they removed Anticipation…
Probably due to the inflation of Dodge and Parry well get once Defense is removed. And they said they want to keep Avoidance at around 30% in Cataclysm. I’m assuming the 5% Parry Talents will be leaving us too.
This isn’t really DK related, but I wonder if they’ll take those talents out of the other tank classes too, like Warriors?
Well why shouldn’t they?
There are several factors that I see as deciding whether this a “must have” or a “don’t bother”:
1. How susceptible are the worms to cleave and AoE damage? How does Blizzard ensure that they survive boss abilities but aren’t ridiculously overpowered in PvP?
2. How will RNG dictate the average chance to burst (and hence release the heal)? Is it fixed? Or does it start out low and then become proportionally higher as the worm gains more stacks (So we will rarely see a 1 stack or a 14 stack burst, but might see 6-8 stacks being common)?
3. Does the heal “spread out” based on the number of allies, or does it remain constant, no matter how many allies you have near you?
I don’t quit see them being used in PvP because they’re so deep in the Blood Build. Perhaps I’m wrong, if so sorry, I’m not greatly experienced with PvP.
They did make it so that Pets Ghouls Minions etc take reduced AoE damage, maybe these Bloodworms are the same even though they’re only temporary and not permanent.
Excellent post though, pity we can’t test it all out though. Well maybe if we’re lucky one of the F&F Alpha DKs reads this Blog and would test it and give Feedback to Blizz about it 😀
I was actually posting from a predetermined assumption, i.e. that Blood and Frost would become a lot more useful in PvP than they are currently. The disease protection talents being higher up in the Unholy tree makes me hopeful that you’ll only need to subspec into the tree and not invest yourself fully into it.
The problem with reduced AoE damage is that it has the potential to become too powerful in the arena. It’s one thing to have a single ghoul (which, once you destroy, will stay down for at least 30 seconds) which you burst down with single target abilities. It’s another when 3-4 worms are chowing down on you and you have to waste valuable time single targeting and killing each one before focusing on the Death Knight, and this is assuming he hasn’t already spawned more.
This brings me to yet another concern:
4. If we assume Blood Parasite is as susceptible to AoE/Cleave as Bloodworms are right now, will having them die before exploding mean absolutely no healing?
If this is the case, I see this becoming yet another “useless” ability in raids and little more than an annoyance in PvP.
Blood parasites, as minions, should have the 90% AoE avoidance which all minions (and pets) appear to have on Alpha. I can’t definitively confirm this, but I don’t see any reason why they would be an exception.