My curiosity mostly lies with interaction between Blood-Caked Blade and Scent of Blood, at the moment. I would likely push aside a couple points I have planned for Epidemic for a point or two in BCB if I could confirm having it would increase RP generation by burning off the charges faster, therefore, theoretically, more opportunities to proc, meaning more Rune Strikes, therefore more Empowerment runes for more Death Strikes. (Or it could end up being a wash.)

I admit I don't see Blizzard letting us go without diseases. Currently, I see a place for both of the ones we have - Blood Plague as our setup for converting an Unholy to a Blood rune, so to speak, and Frost Fever as our slow.

Come to think of it: Is Scarlet Fever counting as a disease right now on PTR?

The mele haste debuf is brought by other classes, although its my guess that only feral druids would be keeping it active on a regular basis.

Feral Druids (Infected Wounds)
Death Knights (Frost Fever)
Protection Paladins (Judgements of the Just)
Protection Warriors (Thunder Clap)
Shamans (Earth Shock)

I don't want to make something it isn't, but you have a 5 second window to get the apply and the tick, with a buff that lasts exactly five seconds. Most of the time it's fine, but you must have some magic latency to not miss-time that by .2-.5s ever? Given that he has to apply it and it isn't always exactly when dbm predicts it. I'm not going to argue that AMS isn't situational, but it's situational survivability, something we might actually want on fights that have large amounts of magic damage.

As for DRW being mandatory, do you want to back that up with anything? Have you actually had any threat issues since the most recent buff to frost presence on beta/ptr? A whopping average 3.25% TPS buff just doesn't seem useful at all. Just like picking up DRW on live, leading the dps by 25% or 29% really doesn't matter. Threat drops are even stronger in 4.0 than they are on live, and they're pretty pointless as it is unless you're taking chain pain sups or intervenes(both of which lose the threat drop in 4.0) for some reason.

You're basically giving up on one a death strike every 20 seconds, which is a fair amount of self-healing you're not doing. This sounds like sacrificing survivability in exchange for a more convenient and less complex rotation, which may be viable if you're raiding trivialized content, but definitely seems sub-optimal.

Sorry, I assumed this was the forum for discussion, not for posters to try to make snide comments at each other. I guess killing a boss two months after you at 25% makes me not a "progression raider". Real progression must have stopped when FL killed him. It's not like he was first killed two months before you did it, right? I'm here to make a point, not wave internet wieners. Let's be civil. You disagree with me, I get it.

This is a 4.0 thread, pain supp, vigilance, and intervene no longer reduce threat. I understand, threat is important. I also deal with players capable of pulling enormous nubmers on live, while still letting affliction locks get the opening tricks and rogues tricksing each other from there. In the case of adds, DRW does shine, and the bonus threat is great, in those fights in cata I'll be glyphing DRW and using it for burst threat when adds come rolling in (assuming something freya esque). The nice thing about the new glyph system is that all you need to switch every fight is some 20 silver fart dust, with the goal that all glyphs are situationally useful. If it's an insanely add heavy fight people could glyph DRW/BB/Pest and go nuts. With the current modifiers, I still don't see a threat glpyh tied to an avoidance cooldown as mandatory, especially for any Icecrown encounters. It's situational, just like the rest of them.

As far as Cata goes, I wouldn't be surprised if various fights had different glyphs you want to use. No one's seen the raid healing or encounters yet, but I'm sure there's fights where I might want to use the VB glyph, and others where the bonus health will probably be more valuable in the clutch. Call it armchair theory-crafting if you want, but that's all glyph selection is going to be until we see the nature of the encounters.


My point still stands, Aegis of Dalaran and ams if glyphed will take the apply(25kish after resists) entirely and still be able to take the 50k end tick in half reducing the burst on both ends when paired with auto swings. I'm aware this wasn't effective at 0-15%, but when were we talking about that? The discussion is about 4.0, I referenced live, which is 30%(and will be in 4.0 as best we can tell) . I'm willing to bet hysteriaing yourself wasn't a good idea at low buff %s either, but it's 30% it's on farm, and we can get away with different tactics. I would still recommend trying it to any DK tank who's guild may have weak healing and is still working on Arthas and is having problems with SR burst, it is effective at 30%. If you want to argue over what did or didn't work 6 months ago, this isn't the thread. 4.0 is going to be super easy icecrown and once we're all 85, it'll be a bunch of encounters none of us have any knowledge about currently.

Damage isn't the only reason to use ams either, any time you can avoid a negative effect, ams has a purpose. I recall using it on heroic rotface when the encounter was fresh and he summoned oozes faster as the fight went on, and the damage going out could actually kill people. If I could pop ams and sprint through the stacking snare on the ooze flood so that a healer or dps didn't have to move, or that the big slime didn't run people over, the two extra seconds had a use. It wasn't a hard fight at all, the glyph wasn't mandatory but it was progression, and it was convenient to have a 7 second self freedom instead of 5.

I feel patronizing talking like this, and I really don't mean to be. I just don't think blanket dismissing the glyph makes sense when it's only a major. As you said, pest/BB are pretty questionable depending on the encounter too.

I never implied glyph of AMS was mandatory, just that it was overlooked in your post, and Communism's. Hell, both of you mentioned bone shield, which is far more situational, and seems borderline worthless unless you want to use a tank timer as a 12 second 7% movement haste. I feel I'm going a bit too far to defend it, but if you're going to talk about majors, it should at least be referenced. You edited it in to your post to include it now, and are still dismissive, but at least it's there to be considered.

This has gotten pretty off the core discussion, I apologize. I'l leave it at this. I still argue that glyph of AMS deserves being mentioned when majors come up, and that with the new system and how easy it is to have all your choices on hand, it's hard to peg any Major glyph as mandatory. It's whatever fits the mechanics of the encounter best.

Snide comments, 'waving internet wieners', and assuming I think my guild is superior to all? Sounds to me like you are a bit misinformed.

I wasn't implying anything 'snide' or flexing epeen, but rather stating how annoying it is to read people constantly make statements about how unnecessary threat gain mechanics are when they actually aren't and disagreeing with your claims of how useful the AMS glyph is.

Threat will always be an issue/priority in a top end guild (either initial or sustained) and that's not going to change. So unless a glyph that actually accomplishes something better presents itself through changes to the current ones, its pretty set in stone what glyph choices should be used by a DK tank:

Any single mob tanking role should be glyphing VB / DRW / BS as their major choices. RS/HS/DS as Prime.

If you're AE tanking, pick up Pest/BB for Major and DnD for Prime.

That's the only changes I would see being somewhat feisable outside of some single 'gimmick' (ie the one fight i'll agree it benefits - rotface add kiting) encounter that would make use of the remaining choices of AMS or RT.

If you want to argue about the validity of BS, name me a single fight where movement speed doesn't increase your efficiency in some way. You'll come up with a few, but you can come up with plenty more than do make use of it (which is a ton more than you can mention for AMS).




Your point on AMS/Sind Trinket/LK Soul Reaper stands for nothing more than wasting a glyph slot (you would be much better suited by picking up RT glyph). You don't need the extra 2 seconds (at all) if you can time your AMS correctly (applies to any situation, not just LK). Its completely wasted - thats my point. If you need an extra 2 seconds of time, get better at managing your cds.

I believe the top of the page still says Elitist Jerks, not Defensive Game Design Debaters. Having said that, the title (and most likely the intention of the OP) appears to be focused on "endgame tanking". Which appears to be taking on a very new meaning. Now,

Threat is a priority for an endgame DK tank. We are certain this will not change. In fact, there is a much more interesting (and on topic)debate ongoing as to the usefulness of DW tanking without the ToT talent. The necessity of sacrificing survivability (or vice versa) for threat as it pertains to (soon to be situational) glyphing is almost entirely speculation with no real insight into what the new endgame content will be. Yes, you could make an argument for some situational glyphing on certain ICC fights, but I don't think filling this thread with posts focused on ICC content is very productive considering the limited amount of time between 4.0 and cata's release. I'm sure nobody would object to either of you starting a situational glyphing thread for tanking, where you could then choose whether or not you want to focus on it's application to ICC or not.

I agree that a true min/maxer would learn to time their AMS rather than glyph it as a crutch.

Correct.
L85 specs will not be relevant until December 7th.

L80 v4.0.1 specs could be relevant tomorrow, if the patch is released.

I will update the OP over time to reflect the community's established facts for endgame raiding. Currently, for 4.01, there's still some divergence of opinion on talents, such as blood parasites or BCB. Thus EJ can serve its purpose of elite theorycrafting.

Sconnel has produced an analysis of the spec choices so far (see the google spreadsheet linked from his post).

I'm not sure exactly what stat weight looks like in Cata, but I'd imagine for optimal survivability we gem pure Stamina in blue sockets, Stam/Parry in red sockets, and Stam/Dodge in yellow sockets. Is this correct, or should something like Expertise or Mastery take higher priority? I'd imagine Expertise would be somewhat important if landing Death Strike is so important to our "rotation". (Is parry haste still a factor?)

Parry haste has most likely been removed from the game.

I assume this is true for all entities in the game.

I think parry is quite a viable surivival stat now that it is much less spiky. And I wonder how it works if you parry 3 attacks in a row?
- Will it be multiplicative be 50% - 25% - 25% - 50%?
- Will they get chained to 50-50-50-50-50-50 (I doubt that)
- Or will they overwrite eachother to 50 - 50 -50?

If the first or even the second is the case I think parry will be a pretty decent mitigation stat.
And since it has the same item budget as dodge (at least on gems), Parry will most likely be strictly better than dodge until you reach a high level of it.

In case it will overwrite itself there looks to be a soft cap for parry where dodge will be better (as soon as the overwriting starts to happen too often).

Although it is up-in-the-air what Rune strike will look like when finalized, I find it less optimal to use GoDS over GoIT with the current system. If Rune Strike remains a 20 RP, GCD cost, we will likely be using it often as one of our bigger threat gains. This will keep the Runic Power we have relatively low and you'll likely get more out of the FF damage/threat than the extra on DS (aoe slightly better if spreading to adds). If this is the case your 3 primes will be GoHS, GoRS, GoIT.

Also, I fail to see the benefit From Crimson Scourge. BB will only be used for Scarlett Fever (assuming no one else provides) and DnD and HS should be enough for mob tanking. 2 points to get a free BB AND only if you have your timing right to use your PS before blood plague falls off. Very clunky in my opinion for 2 points - better spent in virulence IMO.

I prefer this spec ATM - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

P.S. All points provided here are assuming you will keep up your diseases on the target (I am sure that will be the case). If you are keeping up diseases you'll get slightly less DS which makes the IT glyph argument still intact.

EDIT: Hmm, in the latest post on MMO it says Rune Strike is still only usable after a dodge or parry... is that correct? I was under the impression it was usable at any time. - MMO-Champion - Patch 4.0.1 on live servers this week