Perhaps if nothing else to get away from a lichborne discussion that seems to be proven already.
I had a quick question about Professions in the future. I am currently JC/Eng and was considering switching one of them to LW. The one concern I have with this is that right now LW is a huge huge stam gain over any other profession, what concerns me is that epic gems aren't out yet but when they do come out BS (in particular) is going to gain a lot of ground against other professions. Having never really been a LW on any character I've never paid close attention, does blizzard tend to increase the bracer enchant values when epic gems are released or would I be better off maybe going BS instead of LW since currently I can gain 80 mastery (or 120 stam) and once the epic gems are released even more than that.
Thanks for your time all
A bit late to this discussion: We have absolutely no indication we will ever see any other gems, aside from the ones we already have. Items in the game are budgeted for their gem slots and have their (theoretically best) base stats reduced accordingly. Agility items have -agi budget for their gem slots, etc. We happen to be in the lucky position, that some times tanking items will consider Str to be our "prime" stat, meaning tanks technically gain more from gem slots by virtue of losing less. But either way, make no mistake: The game item-budget is ballanced around not being able to super-inflate stats by gem spam nearly as well as we used to.
I'm a firm believer that there will be no epic gem, not least because it'll mean that suddenly any item with a slot will gain value inordinately, as you pointed out BS will gain value higher than other profs, alchemy will gain value because it's trinkets have one extra gem slot, and any other unballancing reasons you may think of.
The fact is there is absolutely no good reason to implement bigger gems, and several important reasons not to.
I agree and disagree with you on this Pintofbrew. While I agree that there is no reason really to introduce epic gems and therefore alter the relative value of items with gems slots. However, they have done it for the past 2 expansions, why would they now break from this tradition? It’s for this fact alone that they seem to stick to tradition that I think at some point in the current expansion epic gems will be introduced into the mix. Possibly, (and just wild speculation now) were they to amend the tier loot so that the previous tier with extra gem slots would not be as powerful, keeping the item progression curve so that higher tier no gem slot items can not be overtaken by lower tier multiple gem slot items by pimping them with epic gems.
I'm a firm believer that there will be no epic gem, not least because it'll mean that suddenly any item with a slot will gain value inordinately, as you pointed out BS will gain value higher than other profs, alchemy will gain value because it's trinkets have one extra gem slot, and any other unballancing reasons you may think of.
And then they'll just increase the value of the other Professions' bonuses to match, exactly like they did the last time Epic gems were released. None of what you said was a problem in Wrath, and it will not be a problem in Cata either. There's really no logical reason to think that Epic gems aren't going to happen.
Yes it does seem so. I guess we'll just see other prof bonuses raised to compensate for the BS discrepancy. However on a slightly pedantic point, even if we didn't see a difference, +10x2 stats is hardly worth giving a damn.
Epic gems coming into the mix won't drastically change anything. The profession bonuses will gain 20 stat points, and each socket will gain 10 stat points. Compare to WotLK epics which granted a whopping 8 stat points to most professions and 4 per socket. Yes it's of course a gain to use them but we'll only see a gain of, at absolute most, 200 stat points.
Thank you all for the responses. I went BS because I like having the flexibility to go between stam/avoidance/mastery gems if any of the three ever became significantly better than the other again.
Next question is for anyone currently testing things out on the PTR. I was just wondering how big of an impact the threat removal from DS is going to be. Currently doing heroic chimaeron I tend to jump about 60k tps when i double DS after a massacre or double strike. I'm unsure how much of my current threat is based on the heal portion in a normal fight but I'd be willing to bet it's significant. Is anyone actually testing this? I am currently at about 1% hit and 15 expertise because threat is absolutely no problem and that's just what I happened to have with my current gear, does anyone see a need to up hit/expertise values with the new patch?
There shouldn't really be much of a threat drop from the loss of healing aggro on DS. If I recall, the threat from 1 point of damage is the same as that from 2 healing, and that healing aggro is split evenly amongst all targets. So effectively you have, at best, another 23k damage worth of threat, I say 23k only because the max heal I've seen is around 45k. However if you get deathstrike that high you aren't concerned about threat anyway so it shouldn't matter, and if you are using it for threat it is likely going to be the min heal of 7%, or about 14k (7k damage equiv) in my case.
Regardless, if you don't have any threat issues now, you won't have threat issues later considering how quickly we can generate threat even without much hit/exp. If you do start having issues, that's what the DRW glyph is for.
Thank you all for the responses. I went BS because I like having the flexibility to go between stam/avoidance/mastery gems if any of the three ever became significantly better than the other again.
Next question is for anyone currently testing things out on the PTR. I was just wondering how big of an impact the threat removal from DS is going to be. Currently doing heroic chimaeron I tend to jump about 60k tps when i double DS after a massacre or double strike. I'm unsure how much of my current threat is based on the heal portion in a normal fight but I'd be willing to bet it's significant. Is anyone actually testing this? I am currently at about 1% hit and 15 expertise because threat is absolutely no problem and that's just what I happened to have with my current gear, does anyone see a need to up hit/expertise values with the new patch?
It really depends on the number of targets and if you do heroics or not, healing threat is as said split and overhealing cause no threat at all. Generally if I look at myself or other DKs doing heroic mode healing threat ends up being around 10% of the threat caused. So for heroic mode raiding you should expect a 10% threat loss on bosses like Nefarian, Atramedes and slightly less on bosses with lots of adds. On Chimareon you might expect as much as a 20% threat loss, although once you get 4 stacks that number should be less.
OK I found out what the Blade Barrier mechanic: Whenever you use an ability that takes RP or any rune, BBar will check to see if both your B are on CD. If they are, it refreshes to 9sec. Not really important if you're maximizing your RE procs by almost never having both B runes on CD, but good to know.
This is weird, because for me, Blade Barrier sometimes has that behaviour, sometimes it doesn't. Both situations happen in groups and on training dummies.
Ok, now am confused. They spend all this time trying to balence deathstrike and mastery, then out of the blue increase it to 20% healing from 15%. I just dont get it, did we needd this buff really?
I'm fairly certain its a buff. It's currently at 15% afaik.
And yes, we need the buff. They are going to have to re-balance quite a bit come next tier anyways. Seeing as how avoidance will be about the same across the board - Protadins are going to be reaching the cap where every hit they take will either be dodge/parried/blocked and a Warriors' mastery are going to scale insanely well also.
With their avoidance and block scaling so well, it leaves DK's in the same state they are in now (as far as mitigation frequency); just making our DS absorb more, but not any more often (unless it gets to a point of us stacking haste). While that will have it's own set of pro/cons, it will be changing the 'food chain' of tanking classes from its current state. How it will end up? We'll just have to see.
I would expect quite a lot of changes coming down across the board on all tanking classes in Blizz's efforts to keep things on somewhat of an even playing field.
As ZaoZao said it's just a tooltip fix. Talented Death Strike is 29% of the damage taken in the last 5 seconds which is 1.45 (Improved Death Strike) x 0.2 = 29%.
That said, I agree that we will most likely see a buff to Death Strike in 4.2. The mastery diminishes itself right now and doesn't work all that well with avoidance. Both points are not a big deal right now, but it will became worse when bosses are going to be tuned around block capped Paladins and close to capped Warriors.
Don't see any buff incoming for 4.1 though (and it's not really needed for this tier either just yet). But yeah, expect lots of changes for 4.2. The min DS heal is cascading quite a few problems as it is and I doubt it will remain that way with much harder hitting bosses.
I must have missed something, but how is it that our mastery diminishes itself? I am assuming that you are referring to how any damage we absorb through the shield isnt going towards making a new shield.
I must have missed something, but how is it that our mastery diminishes itself? I am assuming that you are referring to how any damage we absorb through the shield isnt going towards making a new shield.
Yes, that is pretty much it. There is a lot of talk about gaming Runic Empowerment to increase the DS/min ratio but it just doesn't work like this in practice unfortunately and self-diminishing mastery plus avoidance is the reason why:
For example, let's look at Maloriak who hits for around 30-40k on 10 man heroic with a 1.8 sec swing timer (with Frost Fever up). Ideally you want to Death Strike after taking 3 swings in a row which is not too hard because you have 1.4 secs leeway even due to the faster attack speed (and you have to make sure that these 3 hits hit AFTER your previous Blood Shield is consumed or you hit the diminishing returns of mastery mentioned above).
Now the problem with this method of Blood Shield optimizing is that avoidance actually makes it harder to pull it off (or boss casts; many bosses this tier stop swinging at you completely to cast something which is effectively the same as avoiding swings). If you avoid 2 of the 3 swings, you will hit your min heal treshhold because a 40k hit on a 180k health DK is not enough to put you above the min heal. Now do you Death Strike and waste a bigger shield or not? What if you only avoid only 1 hit out of 3, do you Death Strike at 66% efficiency? If you wait too long you waste mitigation because the previous hits will drop out of your 5 second Death Strike window and your DS runes are refreshing.
But what if we avoid after getting up a big Blood Shield and not in the heal window - I mean, that's good right? Unfortunately, no. If you do not take (enough) damage before your DS runes recharge again you will have to choose between sitting on them or using them for the min heal. Neither option is optimal. This is also where you can see the cascading effect of the minimum Death Strike heal. Imagine if we didn't have it; avoidance or more DSes through RE would effectively be nearly worthless in the grand scheme of things. Now you atleast get your 20k or whatever shield from the min stacked up on your current shield even if you did not take enough damage to lose that shield.
Personally, I answered these questions by still gaming RE but not necessarily Death Striking as fast as I can even if it means I have to sit on runes. RE procs enable me to DS twice in a row after taking those 3 hits (or sometimes just 2, depending on my health). That way I can keep on trying to proc RE and use a CD like Bone Shield and Dancing Rune Weapon with a bigger Blood Shield and retain the Blood Shield by keeping it stacked with min heal DSes if necessary.
Does this method take more damage than DSing without sitting on runes? Yes, it probably does. But in my experience this method is also much better at surviving burst damage because you DS when you need it and not just to mitigate 20k damage here and there just because you don't want to sit on your runes. So far the only times I have died, I have died from burst damage and not due to healers being OOM (or if they are unable to heal you due to encounter mechanics and/or "SORRY MY MOM JUST WALKED IN XD" moments <_<). Maybe that changes for the upcoming hardmodes I have not done yet, but so far burst damage has been the biggest problem.
I use Death Strike as sort of mini cool down so to speak because I like the stabilizing effect it has if done well. Which also harks back to my previous post where I argue the benefits of not ignoring the expertise soft cap/hit cap because hitting that DS when you want it adds more reliability and makes getting 3 swings in your heal window that much easier to boot. The fact that it also stabilizes threat on the pull and that I am spell hit capped for interrupts and Outbreaks never missing is just the icing on the cake.
I honestly don't know how they can fix the current mastery problem either without making avoided or absorbed hits count for your shield which just adds a slew of new problems (RE gaming becomes that much more important; much easier time to cheese up a huge Blood Shield during avoidance streaks etc) but I do hope they find a way to fix this situation.*
Now with all this said, it's not all doom and gloom for our mastery. There are obvious advantages to our active mitigation model and I hope that when 4.2 hits Blizz won't just give us more bonus armor to compensate while nerfing the Death Strike aspect. Paladins may have the advantage of blocking every hit but we have the advantages of "blocking" when it matters the most (i.e. Maloriak's green phase, Anshal's ultimate etc) and our "block" generally mitigates more damage when used properly since we trade "block chance" with "block value" so to speak.
*My guess? Death Strike min heal is going to go up in 4.2 (either through increasing the min % or increasing stamina modifiers for DKs; possibly even both). Rune of Sword Shattering is going to be replaced by an enchant that favors mastery (there was some talk about adding new tank Runeforge enchants for DKs here so chances are they will use that opportunity to get DKs away from stacking avoidance since dropping avoidance in favor of other things helps mitigate/band aid the current problem).
EDIT: Another guess: DK health modifiers might go up a bit, too.
Last edited by Tyvi : 04/25/11 at 8:20 AM.
Reason: I spell gud
I found the priority section in the OP a bit lacking. While it correctly points out that Blood DKs have a priority list and mentions most of the important skills that are on this priority list it seems to mostly name the things on said list indiscriminately without externalizing the relative priority of each skill at a given time which is crucial to fully understand the priority list and to apply it correctly ingame.
I'm aware that tanks arent as simple in that regard as DPS especially since they need to balance TPS and survival (while typically favouring the latter) to a degree and Blood needs to consider damage taken within the last 5 secs, which is different on every encounter, but I'd still love to have a complete priority list for an average progression encounter (as far as its possible), comparable to the BIS simcraft profiles for DPS, that can be worked on in a transparent way instead of being hidden behind unclear words but I havent been successful in finding a serious one.
Thus, I tried to translate what I understood from the OP in an attempt to somewhat formalize the optimal priority list, however I don't have much actual experience with blood tanking at 85 so it may have a lot of errors. I'd be happy if anyone could correct me or direct me to a better priority list. I obviously left out the longer DK survival cooldowns for a basic priority list.
1) Deathstrike if damage taken within last 5 secs > A and Health < B %
2) Apply/refresh Outbreak/Plagustrike/Icy touch as debuffs are "needed"
3) Deathstrike if all frost and unholy runes or all death runes are full and you are below C% health or you need to refresh a shield with more than D% health or you have taken E% damage within the last 5 seconds
4) Heartstrike/Blood Boil if blood Runes are full or bladebarrier is down or bladebarrier expires in 3 seconds or the 2nd blood rune is about to refresh.
5) Bloodtap unless it has to be saved for a later Boneshield, Rune Tap, DnD
6) Runestrike
7) DRW
8) Horn of Winter
9) Deathcoil
ToDo:
- I cant estimate reasonable values for the variables but the values for A and B to DS in 1) are mostly for emergencies while the values C-E for DS in 3) are quite a bit more lenient for "opportune" times to use DS so you dont sit on full runes to DS for an unreasonably long time. Also as long as there is no way to reliably measure the damage taken within the last 5 seconds Liar correctly points out that after a streak of 2-3 unavoided, unshielded bosswings it will typically be a good time to DS.
- I left the times when debuffs are "needed" open for interpretation on purpose for now but generally I assume you will want to put the debuffs up yourself and refresh them generously during "save times" before they are about to run out so you have the runes available for DS and the diseases running during more "dangerous periods" and you may want to save up Outbreak for the more "dangerous periods" when you are low on GCDs and Runes to spend. Also depending on the main damagetype of the encounter the diseases may have different priorities. Ultimately it might even be best to have other reliable (!) players (an arms warrior could bring both without too much effort) apply the debuffs for you during some cases of serious highlevel progression as this may allow you to DS more and worry less about debuffs.
-if the encounter has expected "dangerous periods" you may also want to save up runes for more than 1 DS specifically for these situations and you may want to keep your GCD free to use the DS you have saved up without being delayed by the GCD
-Bloodboil can sometimes be a better choice over HS on single targets when threat/DPS is not an issue as it cant be dodged or parried.
Last edited by Furion : 05/01/11 at 1:37 AM.
Reason: updated due to feedback
I am doubtful that a priority list as you put up above works, but maybe I can help out by stating how I do things:
1) Pull with either Outbreak or a IT/PS combo (even if Outbreak is available). Which way I do it depends on the boss: i.e. would I rather have Outbreak available 30 seconds later in the fight so I don't have to spend runes on reapplying the debuffs when I might need that DS? Or will there be an opportune time to manually refresh diseases later anyway?
We start with 2 sets of runes after all so "sacrificing" one early DS (which will most likely be a min heal anyway - you can't afford to hold runes this early in the fight or you'll most likely lose aggro) so this tends to work out better in the long term for most bosses with a backloaded damage curve (like say Cho'gall or Onyxia if you tank her plus adds which we do to speed up P1 etc).
2) Death Strike twice in a row if I pulled with Outbreak (if you use IT/PS you can only DS once obviously), Heart Strike then Blood Tap, Death Strike again and then HoW. That puts up Blade Barrier, debuffs and should give you a minimum of 70 RP, more if you had Scent of Blood procs. Dump your RP with Rune Strike here if you have less than 90 RP. Otherwise you can consider using glyphed Dancing Rune Weapon for an additional threat boost.
3) Starting here you should have enough Vengeance to enable you to try to game RE and start timing DS based on your health and incoming damage without risking to lose aggro. Doing these things is really not needed before this point so this is pretty much where the set rotation stops and the priority system kicks in.
Here are the things you want to keep an eye out for:
When to Death Strike? Note that this is my opinion, see my previous post about why I do it this way:
Count the number of swings within the last 5 seconds (while you can also monitor the incoming damage, it's generally not required).
Ideally you want to Death Strike after taking 3 swings* in a row without avoiding or absorbing anything inbetween. 2 swings within the last 5 seconds are also acceptable if you are in need of healing/Blood Shield right now but try to aim for 3 swings whenever you can. That also includes keeping your GCD free. (Again, be reasonable here. 3 swings is the ideal but sometimes you just have to do it after 2, use your own judgement here.)
Death Striking to refresh a big Blood Shield is also a good idea even though this Death Strike would be a minimum heal. And yes, this actually happens more often than not on bosses that tend to interrupt their melee swings to cast something, i.e. Atramedes who likes you to hit you hard 2-3 times in a row which is when you Death Strike (potentially even twice in a row if you have the runes) for a big Blood Shield and then does his 2+6 seconds Sonic Breath cast. You obviously don't want to let that Blood Shield go to waste so keep it up by Death Striking even with a min DS.
*Why this particular number? Judging by a couple of logs, it seems bosses now hit every 1.8 seconds this tier instead of the old 2.4 (all values with attack speed debuff up). This means that the maximum amount of swings you can cover per Death Strike is 3 and this is the number you should aim for unless the bosses have other predictable burst damage phases (i.e. saving a Death Strike after Maloriak's breath in the Red phase is generally a good idea) or if you risk dying if you don't Death Strike earlier.
That said, even at a 2.4 sec swing speed you can still DS after every 3 strikes that land successfully on you but your window of error is much, much smaller (0.2 secs vs 1.4 secs).
Death Strike or refreshing diseases with Icy Touch and Plague Strike?
Depends entirely on your health.
If you just took 3 swings in a row, then you will definitely want to DS if you can because that is where your DS is most efficient and helps stabilize your health the most.
You may also want to hold off reapplying diseases when you are at critical health levels (the exact % once again depends on the boss in question) so you can Death Strike to get you out of that, preferably with a cool down such as Vampiric Blood up and running.
If you also risk losing a big Blood Shield by not Death Striking, don't reapply diseases either.
If you get an avoidance streak or the boss starts casting a spell that is not targeted at you, you can safely reapply diseases (Valiona's Devouring Flames and Atramedes Sonic Breath are good examples of this).
And yes, that means that sometimes it's better not to apply diseases outside of Outbreak at all. This is really one of the biggest Death Knight issues I can think of right now and it's one that really annoys me because it's just a stupid "choice" (it really isn't even a choice).
I want to game Runic Empowerment: Do I always need to make sure only 1 Blood Rune is on CD while maintaining Blood Barrier? Do I Heart Strike or Blood Boil?
No, you do not always need to Blood Boil to ensure Blade Barrier stays up. If you do not risk capping on RP and not all your Death Runes are on CD (so they are not eligible for RE procs) then it's perfectly fine to Heart Strike twice in a row even or use Heart Strike to keep your Blade Barrier rolling because you won't risk Blade Barrier falling off even if your HS doesn't land on the first attempt. And if it does? Doesn't matter because there are no Death Runes to proc with RE so even if you have to put both Blood Runes on CD at the same time, it's not a big deal. There is no way to keep Blade Barrier up 100% anyway if you want to game RE (a good number to aim for is around 90% up time, obviously the more the better as long as you don't risk proccing a Blood Rune through RE. But let's be realistic here, we aren't machines; Blade Barrier is going to fall off at times and we have to accept that).
Once you reach the RP cap however, you should make sure you only have 1 Blood Rune cooling down while keeping up Blade Barrier. If in addition your Blood Rune only has 2-3 secs left before it is refreshed, you should use Blood Boil just to make sure Blade Barrier actually stays up.
When to Blood Tap?
That really depends on what you want to do. Need another Death Rune for the lone Death Rune you got from a RE proc so you can Death Strike again? Couple it with Bone Shield? Most of the time, there is not much you can do wrong by Blood Tapping on CD as long as you ensure that it a) does not mess up your Blade Barrier up time and b) you can actually use the 5th Death Rune for something. Unfortunately the game does not prioritize the BT'd Death Rune so you have to create scenarios where the game will use it for you (by unsyncing a Death Rune through RE for example, or just by having all normal 4 Death Runes on CD then using the 5th one to refresh diseases etc).
When to Horn of Winter?
Do it on CD unless you need the GCD to refresh Blade Barrier or are anticipating having to Death Strike. Blood is obviously different from DPS specs in this regard; we can afford to sit on our runes more than the DPS can.
While your post is helpful for the most part I doubt anyone can skim through such a long text within the timeframe of a GCD to decide on his next move. So while you may think that "this is how I do it" I actually doubt that you make it work that way I actually expect your brain to use a simpler priority system which could be expressed in a lot less words.
Also you seemed to somewhat ignore my suggested priority list and just tried to describe what you do which mostly corresponds to my suggested list (which is to be expected as I tried to translate the OP) as far as I can tell the only huge differences seems to be that you suggest that there are circumstances where blood boil helps BB uptime more under certain circumstances (which I didnt bother to include), that you want to sometimes save outbreak and runetap for certain events and to sometimes not use deathstrike even with full runes but as you point out the latter isn't the current consensus on blood tanking. While I have read your previous post on not using Deathstrike even with full runes it didnt convince me to the extend that it actually seems to be worth the trouble without seeing much of a proof wether sitting on those runes actually improves survival ingame significantly or if its just a fancy distraction that wastes threat generation.
As long as I havent seen simulator results on this issue I lean more towards the priorities expressed in the OP but in the end obviously both theories could be expressed in a priority list one would just have to decide which theory is more convincing. And while I mentioned that I'd like simulator results a simulator can only work if you give it a priority list so if DK rotation cant be expressed through a priority list it cant be simulated correctly but I still dont see any rational reason why this cant work. Rawr obviously makes it work (I assume suboptimally) but there are unfortunately no rotation options to tinker with for TankDK.
I also think its not necessary to change the priorities on the pull at all the only reason you may want to do anything else on the pull is because of repeatable circumstances for example you are at range or you may need "snap aggro" but both can be expressed in a simple priority list without problems. Also I'm a bit confused on why you dont HoW right before pulling.
Going to number parts of your post for easier discussion:
Originally Posted by Furion
1) While your post is helpful for the most part I doubt anyone can skim through such a long text within the timeframe of a GCD to decide on his next move. So while you may think that "this is how I do it" I actually doubt that you make it work that way I actually expect your brain to use a simpler priority system which could be expressed in a lot less words.
2) Also you seemed to somewhat ignore my suggested priority list and just tried to describe what you do which mostly corresponds to my suggested list (which is to be expected as I tried to translate the OP) as far as I can tell the only huge differences seems to be that you suggest that there are circumstances where blood boil helps BB uptime more under certain circumstances (which I didnt bother to include), that you want to sometimes save outbreak and runetap for certain events and to sometimes not use deathstrike even with full runes but as you point out the latter isn't the current consensus on blood tanking. While I have read your previous post on not using Deathstrike even with full runes it didnt convince me to the extend that it actually seems to be worth the trouble without seeing much of a proof wether sitting on those runes actually improves survival ingame significantly or if its just a fancy distraction that wastes threat generation.
3) As long as I havent seen simulator results on this issue I lean more towards the priorities expressed in the OP but in the end obviously both theories could be expressed in a priority list one would just have to decide which theory is more convincing. And while I mentioned that I'd like simulator results a simulator can only work if you give it a priority list so if DK rotation cant be expressed through a priority list it cant be simulated correctly but I still dont see any rational reason why this cant work. Rawr obviously makes it work (I assume suboptimally) but there are unfortunately no rotation options to tinker with for TankDK.
4) I also think its not necessary to change the priorities on the pull at all the only reason you may want to do anything else on the pull is because of repeatable circumstances for example you are at range or you may need "snap aggro" but both can be expressed in a simple priority list without problems. Also I'm a bit confused on why you dont HoW right before pulling.
1) Yes, I am aware it's too long to be included in the OP as something people can skim through quick enough to get the gist of it. But it never was intended to be used in that way to begin with. Your post mentioned that you were new to Blood tanking at level 85 so I was trying to give you (and other people in the same situation) as many details into how and why I do things. Again, not saying my way is the best or anything but considering that this thread has had quite low activity, I'd actually welcome some discussion if people do agree/disagree on my priority/rotation and why.
2) You forgot the disease vs Death Strike issue. That's another big one to consider.
3) Why are you so fixated on a priority list or trying to make a simulator work? As you acknowledged yourself, us tanks are different in this regard from DPS. We do not care as much about sustained incoming DPS as they care about their sustained outgoing DPS. We care about surviving, doing enough threat to never cap a DPS and about not OOMing our healers. You can argue that if the latter point was important enough we would actually care about our total damage taken - but it isn't. Burst damage kills tanks and healers have enough mana regeneration right now to not run OOM unless something else is going horribly wrong already so I think it is in our best interest to minimize the effect of burst damage, through our multiple CDs and/or Death Strike timing. What do I care if a nearly block capped Paladin takes less damage than me if he is going to die a string of unblocked hits? I know anecdotal evidence doesn't account for much, but my healers seem to think I am just as easy or even easier to keep up than our slightly better geared Paladin tank. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that my method is the right one or the only one that works. But considering my previous post has been up for more than a week without a reply people either a) don't care, b) don't have an opion either way or c) are convinced my theory is so stupid that it goes without saying that it's dumb and doesn't even required a response to point that out.
Your guess is as good as mine. <_<
4) I do that, but only to make sure the HoW buff is up. RP decays so fast out of combat that it will be down to ~8 RP before you get to pull and every DK RP costs a multiple of 10 RP to cast so those 8 RP don't actually do much for you at all. If you wanted to keep the full 10 RP you'd have to pull with a taunt, then HoW immediately afterwards which makes you lose a GCD for Icy Touch/Outbreak and the boss will already have closed on you so I don't see much point in doing it that way.
1) I was trying to give you (and other people in the same situation) as many details into how and why I do things.
2) You forgot the disease vs Death Strike issue.
3) Why are you so fixated on a priority list or trying to make a simulator work?
1) While I appreciate that effort there is plenty of helpful discussions on these matters but my clear intention was a priority list as it expresses how you actually tank much more clearer to me than a long explanation. The explanation is only (!) for theorycrafting while a priority list is the result of said theorycrafting which you can directly apply ingame and in a sim. I'd even go as far as saying its counterproductive to worry about explanations while actually tanking progression content. To me this is clearly something you want to do before going into an encounter instead of making random or biased choices on the fly.
2) Actually I didnt forget that and thus Deathstrike is right on top of my priority list under certain circumstances because of this problem.
3) I am "fixated" on a priority list because while playing the game I cant make the right decision at a given time if I dont even know the correct theoretical priorities as I'd have to arbitrarily choose one important move over the other instead of making a rational choice when more than one high priority move is possible at a given time. I'm interested in simulating DK tanking because in a sim you dont just measure sustained DPS or damage taken it actually simulates a whole encounter which would include surviving burst damage as a tank so I think you miss the potential of a sim which would still give the most reliable answer to questions like "should I typically deathstrike with full runes or wait for other circumstances".
You're asking too much of a simulation, you can't easily sim when your healer gets Mind Controlled or when he needs to move because of a bad position in the first place, or the GCD the healer lost picking a dps up that stand in fire.
You want a priority, the best one anyone here will be able to give you is:
1- Stay alive
2- Minimize spike damage
3- Minimize sustained damage
4- Don't cap dps only if this doesn't collide with the above 3
What buttons you press to achieve this aren't as much important as actually achieving it.
The only tank sim I known off only tries to predict how gearing a certain way will affect your survivability, as far as I known that sim pretty much pushes skills on CD but Lichloathe can correct me on that.
I'm aware of the limitations of a sim as a sim is not the same as playing an actual encounter but as I mentioned before it can still give the best answer to a lot of questions. Almost by the same argument you make I could claim that sims and priority lists are useless for DPS because you have to move differently on every encounter or even use a bandage but sims and priority lists are still very useful. I know the limitations of both sims and priority lists and I really dont want to turn this into an ideological discussion but basically saying both would be useless for a DK tank while being somewhat useful for all other roles need a lot better arguments and I really dont think such arguments exist.
I'm aware of the limitations of a sim as a sim is not the same as playing an actual encounter but as I mentioned before it can still give the best answer to a lot of questions. Almost by the same argument you make I could claim that sims and priority lists are useless for DPS because you have to move differently on every encounter or even use a bandage but sims and priority lists are still very useful. I know the limitations of both sims and priority lists and I really dont want to turn this into an ideological discussion but basically saying both would be useless for a DK tank while being somewhat useful for all other roles need a lot better arguments and I really dont think such arguments exist.
A dps sim assumes you've the boss with his back to you 100% of the time, it also assumes you'll be playing perfectly as such you remove a fair number of variables from the simulation, it tries to give you the best possible dps you can achieve under those conditions, if during a real fight you need to move, too bad but you'll never going to get that number the sim gave you.
If you use the same assumptions for a tank, meaning you'll be playing perfectly, the only way it would make sense is if you can some how also assume your healers will be playing perfectly, tanks don't gear or make use of a priority under that assumption, because that will wipe raids.
04/07/11, 5:17 PM
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