Elitist Jerks - Infraction for Veritas: 2. All opinions should be stated as succinctly as possible.

Post: DW Tanking Builds
User: Veritas
Infraction: 2. All opinions should be stated as succinctly as possible.
Points: 1

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

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Holy blog post with unnecessary backstory, Batman. Also, don't sign your posts.

Original Post:

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This is my first post, though I have been reading the forums here for as long as I can remember. This might be a long post, if so bare with me.

First off, here is a link to my character:
The World of Warcraft Armory
My spec is 12/51/8, I don't take frost strike in my build, but for other details, please check my sepc as I don't want to have to type out where each point is spent.

Now to the real post:

I have played death knights since beta, trying both Dps and Tanking. Pre 3.1, I went from tanking, to dps, to tanking, trying both 2h tanking/dps and DW tanking/dps. I found both times that I much prefered DWing. It's more fun, fits my play style, and ultimatly, is comparable to 2h tanking threat, and can pass it up in terms of avoidance. Tanking with DW did get nerfed a bit with 3.1, in fact, tanking over all got nerfed for us, we lost our ability to "cool down" tank but in no way are we under powered yet. From what I see, a huge buff to us is that we no longer rely on icy touch for everything, while yes, most of us still have the 53 def. rating sigil, and we care about imp. Icy Talons, with howling blast (henceforth "HB") applying frost fever it makes our rotations much cleaner, and (!) allows our blood boil to hit for more, thus increasing our snap aggro. Another buff is black ice. It applies to shadow damage as well now. With Death and Decay (DnD) already generating much of our early threat, having it do more damage is ideal and blood boil does even more damage which further increased AoE aggro at the beginning of a fight. In addition, with my spec, since I ignore frost strike, it makes my death coil's hit for more which is a huge bonus. So thats a bit of where we stand post 3.1.

Things to have as a Duel Wielding Tank:
All of my moves have rune strike the rune strike macro which allows for a bit of spamming, though I have another bar right above it with out the macro's to save runic power (I use bartender 4.0 I recommend you get it now). My avoidance is about 64% unbuffed against bosses (I use tanktotals to get that stat, I recommend you get it now, too).

And now to my experience with DW tanking:
I've main tanked WotLK has to throw at us so far. Heroics have always been a breeze, as was Naxx (of course). I spent most of my time in Naxx however as an off-tank, which, while it seems less glorious, and everyone here might get angry over, we are better at. Sure we can main tank. We do a darn good job, but I challenge any other class to pick up adds like we do. In Ulduar it is almost vital to have a death knight off tank for so many reasons. Two of them: Auryia: Drop a DnD on the floor as she walks over, you get aggro on the cats, MT grabs the chick and you are all set... and Iron Council. Death Grip is a god-send, even more so for hard mode. Being able to yank the little guy out of the power runes is amazing. Now thats more of a general thing, not really about DW only, but the nice thing about both those fights is that with DW you can build up huge amounts of threat while you wait for your team to start dps'ing your targets. We generate threat on a much more consistent level than 2h tanking does. I have never had a problem holding aggro (except against our resident huntard who is almost fully BiS, but thats only when he bows his CD's). I feel like the extra avoidance has saved me a few times, against Kologarn it makes his armor reduction shot hit less which is a huge advantage. While keeping def. capped with the new Ulduar items that seem to have forgotten def. is a touch harder with DW, its not bad, and it just makes us more avoidance tanks instead of meat shields.

Conclusion:
Dual Wield tanking is viable, as most people here have said. We can generate a ton of threat, we make great avoidance tanks and we look totally B.A. The nerfs hit us, but over all, surprisingly, overall, we got a nice buff. I thin I didn't use a ton of spread sheet numbers in here, but this is mostly another summary of our where we stand as DW tanks, what I see as our main moves and where we can be the most useful as death knight tanks in general. Hope this post helped you, and contrary to most people, feel free to contact me if you have questions, tips, or think I'm a complete idiot, I'd love to hear it.

PS: If frost strike is ever changed to hit both weapons I'd pick it up in a second, until then though, DC is my runic power dump of choice.

Email: lyeth.master@gmail.com
In-game-mail: Regalis, horde side on Dragonmaw (you should know that if you checked my armory)
Or send me a PM.