Recently they announced a significant buff to the tanking weapon enchant, Mark of Blackrock. Before the nerf, if could only proc if you were hit while below 50% hp, and even then only had a 30% chance on that hit. Very bad. Now it procs if the hit takes you below 60%, so you could get a proc at any HP if it hits hard enough. It also has a 100% chance instead of a 30% chance. All this means that the uptime of this is going to be MUCH better than before, and 500 Bonus Armor is nothing to sniff at, so this has led to some blood DKs wondering how it compared to our runeforges. I decided to take some time to clarify where Mark of Blackrock stands for blood.
Spoiler alert: Keep using Fallen Crusader.
Going just off the tooltip, Mark sounds amazing, as you could have significant uptime of 500 Bonus Armor. However what’s not written is the 40 second internal cooldown. Here is a link to the blue post (with the old proc status, but the ICD is the same). So given the BEST chance of uptime, you’re still looking at only 30% (12 second duration, 40 second ICD). 30% of 500 is only 150 static bonus armor. Fallen Crusader on the other hand, has no ICD but rather goes off a rppm mechanic like a trinket. With an rppm of 3, with even 0 haste rating (fully buffed) FC is going to have an average of ~58% uptime (this isn’t accounting for the near guaranteed proc at the opening, so it’s potentially much lower than reality depending on length) of +20% increased strength, which for me is about 780 strength per proc fully raid buffed. 780 str on a 58% uptime translates to 452 strength averaged out.
This is before you even consider the fact that if you’re not taking damage enough to reliably proc Mark of Blackrock you don’t get anything. The 30% uptime from earlier was best case scenario, and if you are not tanking anything (tank swap for example) or just tanking something very light hitting, you are going to get 0% uptime until you start taking damage. Let’s say a tank swap had you taking “enough” damage and was a 50/50 split (you tank the boss equally with your co-tank). Your overall uptime of Mark would be 15%, and 15% of 500 armor is a static value of only 75 armor overall, which is not great.
Sanguine Fortitude 
Thanks for this one!
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“Spoiler alert: Keep using Fallen Crusader.” LMAO, I don’t think I have laughed that hard in a while. Thanks for the info, I had taken it into to consideration but it seemed like ti was too good to be true. Most of the time in my life when it seems to be too good to be true, it is…
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Could we have theory crafting on the usefulness of having multi-strike because whenever i see multi-strike on a piece with better item lvl I think is it really an upgrade? How useful is more runic power which could be used for more death coils for more rune taps thus more dses or does this just cause the need for spamming ds to use these extra rune taps efficiently if they do happen at all.
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Btw I took a bit of a deeper look and realize its sort of just useful to where you comfortable with your runic power generation but I’d still like to see your view on it.
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That’s a good idea for a blog post. I’ve been pretty busy the past month, so it might be time to get back at it and that’s as good a place to start as any.
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Other than dps reasons, what’s wrong with not having an armor proc up when you’re not tanking? Seems like the “effective” uptime (as in, the amount of time the armor buff is up when you actually need it–when you’re actually tanking) would be higher.
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Remember that strength isn’t JUST for damage anymore. Strength also gives DS heal size through AP. Armor also gives AP, but assuming any kind of decent gear an FC proc is considerably more AP than 500 armor. (you’d have to have only 2500 for the AP contribution per proc to be equal, which is extraordinarily low. like in questing greens low.)
Yes armor also gives raw dmg reduction, but again with the ICD you’re going to be without it the majority of the time. Even when you do have it, there’s no guarantee you will have it when you want it. FC on the other hand is pretty much going to be there consistently.
Finally, the actual dmg reduction is very small. Exactly how much per proc is dependant on your current armor due to diminishing returns, but at level 630ish levels of armor you’re looking at ~5% reduction, and it only goes down from there as your ilvl goes up.
I’m replying on my phone, so I’m sure my explanation could be a bit cleaner, so if you need any more explanation just lemme know.
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