My Thoughts on Huge Blood DK Talent Pathing Changes... 

A lot of the issues in the tree come from the pathing and position of rapid decomp. It would have been even better symmetry if they would change blood tab with rapid decomp, but then nobody would ever go further than bone collector on the right side. Rapid decomp is an amazing talent and most likely will always be taken, but once you consider dropping it the whole tree works so much better and opens up. The choice between Improv Vamp Blood and Imp Heart strike is interesting in case you want to get to Hemostasis. Getting rune tap to go to Coagulopathy becomes an option and you easily have the point to also take Foul Bulwark. The only easy fix on the left side that is needed is: remove the connection from Heartbreaker to impr bone shield and instead have a connection from foul bulwark to Gorefiend's Grasp - that fixes the left side completely for me (by the way doing the same thing on the right side, so connecting Hemostasis to Rapid Decomp would also be better than what we have now)

Bloodied blade requires some testing it can be a good talent if u can get the str stacks while the 10% str buff is active , dragon flight made me get used to not having mass grip so i personally am ok to sacrifice it in favor of improved heartstrike and aditional haste from boneshield ,

Bloddied Blade i could see a pretty insane synergy with the San'layn Hero Talent Tree since it's revolving alot around heart strike and it's replacement.

Also that hero talent sanlyn , vamp strike and bloodied blade could have some really good synergies assuming they code the talent right

DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a Blood DK or even a tank main, my experience in said role is extremely limited. I do wonder how gear will effect this, as the seasons (and expansion) progress and better and more effective gear becomes available I wonder if a switch in talents over to a more offensive build might not be an option. Where you can move over into taking the new talent and sacrifice foul bulwark for the talents that buff blood plague and synergize with heart strike. I mean I know it's always a balancing act with tanks in general and BDK specifically (due to the "health rollercoaster" that the spec engenders), but surely there must be a world where gear provides you with enough added defense, either through tier sets or trinkets, that it is possible to be a bit more offensive too. Again I am not a tank myself but it almost seems, from what I have seen that Blizzard is kind of leaning that way for tanks (and healers to a certain degree) where they want to be able to contribute more significantly than in the past on the DPS side of things. I don't know, Maybe I am just a crazy old man, but that's my take on the whole thing. (Also anything that increases the variety of tanks in keys is ALWAYS a good thing, so the VDH nerf is a buff to the other 5 tanks for sure.)

Bloodied blade increases Str, which means it also increases the armor we are getting from the Bone Shield. 500ms = 0.5 sec. The first buff doesn't appear again until the second one expires. Mandatory for M+? Maybe. Uptime is close to 100% in combat with multiple 5-7+ mobs; it stacks to 8 in 4-5 sec and for 6 sec after that, it gives 10% Str. (buff with stacks disappears, 6 sec buff with the same icon appears.) Heartbreaker opens GGrasp because they think both of these talents are for AoE tanking. They also want to prevent noob DKs from dying when they have no PR for DS in M+. Blood Tap + Blood Drinker will allow DK to survive big melee hits from bosses in raids every 30 sec. (At least, I guess that's the idea?) They should merge Heartrend into Improved HS for people who level up or do dailyes in blood. At least that way these talents will have a certain role. Leeching Strike is basically a weaker version of Vampiric Strike, they probably need to change it as well. As you have said, Umbilicus and Co. (all talents that buff Blood Plague) will be mandatory in M+ for both Sanlayn (bloodbeast+pact of sanlayn) and Deathbringer (wither away - that thing provides insane Blood Plague damage).

i feel like the idea here is that you take heartbreaker for aoe (m+) and you typically only will be using gorefiends during aoe where youd generally want heartbreaker. from that standpoint it makes sense. i also havent found heartbreaker mandatory tho. to me the issues are having 2 extra bone shield talents. one that gives you haste and one that lets it stack 2 more times. the armor bonus from reinforced bones is kinda useless. i feel like those 2 talents could be baked into 1. and my biggest problem with the bdk tree which is the exact same from DF, is having the choice between 2 points in improved heart strike and improved vamp blood. in every bdk build out there you HAVE to spend 9 points in the first section of the tree bc you have to dump 2 points into one of those 2 talents just to get to drw. if those talents went to 1 point each then this would solve a lot of the problems in the tree for me. i do like the choice of getting extra dmg from heart stroke or longer vamp bloods. but spending 2 points on it is not a good feeling. i also dont understand why bloodfeast and leeching strike are still in the tree, nobody has ever once taken those talents lol

I really hope they rework Heartrend, absolutely dogshit talent, and change improved vamp blood and heart strike to just 1 talent point, this would help when picking other talents in the middle of the tree

The thing i like about this new tree is that there is actually a viable choice to sacrifice damage for tankiness and reverse, where the current one is so set is stone, that the only real choice was to switch between UE/bloodshot (which is also not a real choice with s2/s4 set bonus). Also i think improved bone shield feels too good not to take and should probably be a bit higher up. Also as a vdh main, 99% happy with sigil nerfs (elysian decree should still have 2 stacks tho). It feels bad when your whole class identity becomes only about the stops you provide and nothing else.

I think just dropping Carnage. It doesn't seem to reset very often (even the tooltip says 1.1 resets per minute) and the damage and healing Consumption does is garbage, so contributing to mastery just doesn't seem worth it.

From how I read it you stay at 8 stacks until your next parry, or 9th stack, and then you consume them all. I don't like how it's essentially random, though, I don't really have a grasp on how many times your parry during an encounter

Never used Gorefiend grasp. And most likely will never use it either. I do not see a problem here :)

The whole goal was to make gfg not a pain to get. They made a lot of 2 point nodes 1 point, but they have added really decent talents or new talents that force us to certain paths on the tree that make us use up too much. I am at the point of no gfg taking those 2 extra points for bonestorm and bloodied blade, and sanguine ground and no iron heart. They just imo made the tree better but still having the problems that exist in DF tbh.

What i mostly like is that they nerfed the Sigils!

idk man heartbreaker is a pretty nice talent to take, personally speaking

will be good for raid