I didn't use any CDs for Inferno Blade aside from Aura Mastery and possibly AMS. The only gear changes I did was to replace Symbiotic Worm - Item - World of Warcraft with Essence of the Eternal Flame - Item - World of Warcraft and to put Swordshattering. Still had a balanced Mastery/AV build. I also used Armor+Expertise elixir for Baleroc rather than Flask because I noticed I had too much HP if I stacked stam.

I used DRW, Vial of Stolen Memories - Item - World of Warcraft, Glyphed VB and AMS if it was up for Decimation. Maybe I got lucky but I only took 10 Decimation hits over a 6 minute attempt. Having 4 piece tank helps tremendously for this fight.

About 4-5 times per fight Baleroc would hit me with both hands and then his main hand and I would drop to 10%, or I would die if I was unlucky, I don't think there's anything you can do about this because there are gaps in your CD usage where you will have no CDs up in 10 man. You can also use an armor pot when you have no CD up. The best thing you can do really is to have BS rolling as soon as the blade phase ends, or to pool 2/4 runes and DS when you get hit (if you avoid the last blade hit, your DS heal will be reduced to it's minimum due to Baleroc's swing speed).

I'm also not really sure why you would want to DW tank when a weapon like Skullstealer Greataxe - Item - World of Warcraft exists.

[Mandible of Beth'tilac] x 2

394 Strength

592 Stamina

286 Dodge

224 Mastery

[Skullstealer Greataxe]

460 Strength

689 Stamina

311 Haste -> 187 Haste, 124 Dodge

299 Mastery

We will not be dual weilding, 2 handers are better itemized than 1 handers. If you switched from the axe to the tank swords, you gain 162 dodge rating. You loose strength, stamina, mastery, and a ton of weapon damage. The huge base stat loss, and dps hit make dual weilding not viable.

Not a huge thing but I noticed that the profession portion lacks comments about alchemy. I for one don't use stam flasks outside of farm fights.

Typically I run [Elixir of the Master] and [Prismatic Elixir] or [Elixir of Deep Earth] depending on the fight.

With mixology [Elixir of the Master] gives 265 instead of 225 (40 point difference) which is on par with half of what you'd get from any other profession with plus mastery.


[Prismatic Elixir] gives additional 15mr from mixology

[Elixir of Deep Earth] gives additional 120 armor from mixology.

To me it kinda takes an already decent idea of going for more "mitigation" and makes it a bit better from a different stand point and you still retain your 80 stam when needed. As I said nothing huge but an option.

Sorry I disagree with your deathcoil solution simply because DK's heal off deathstrike and technically its not the tanks job to constantly worry bout healing himself. To spec into lichborne waste to many survivability points that could be used else where for threat and so on, more importantly deathcoil doesnt heal that much compared to the hits that the bosses do and you only are undead for 10seconds. Personally i have no problem healing myself with my deathstirkes over deathcoil and have been told by many healers i dont take much damage at all. In actuallity im healing myself so much they dont notice the damage i take. And as for mindfreeze its not a tanks job to constantly interrupt targets that should be soley on melee thats why the spec is in melee tree. Granted there are classes that can interrupt very well as tank, pallies and warriors, but if thats the case then they should just give blood DKs strangulate on a 10second cooldown. That way we dont waste points to get mindfreeze. So this is my oppinion for spec for dks endgame tanking 33 blood 3 in runic power mastery. Check it for yourself. YOU will see im right.

This. I can remember a situation while I was tanking Baleroc during Decimate blades and I had used all the self healing I could and I knew that within a GCD he was going to hit me and I was at about 87% health. I healed in just one death coil enough to bump me up to 91% health and I lived the next hit with 1% health.

Call it what you will but it can be clutch and adds more survivability than a harder hitting blood boil, extra runic power, reduced strangulate cooldown or more attack power (which is useless if you run with a good raid comp) The only thing you gain is perhaps a bit of utility and some more threat. I appreciate your desire to show how easy you are to heal for your healers but please give a constructive response that shows what we could use in exchange of this and not just ramble on about the idea of this theoretical increase in survivability.

Interrupts are good for a 10 man where you want to squeeze some more damage out and ending a cast every 10 seconds is a pretty big loss over the course of a fight where a tank can fit this in with out as much of a rDPS loss.

Lastly, your theoretical spec of 33/3 is missing 5 spent points and you have yourself listed as a paladin and no one can get to your armory of your imaginary DK. all topics here are around heroic mode progression and trying to live through situations where even in the best of conditions you are living by the skin of your teeth not just normal Shannox and Rhyolith.

Thanks for playing.

I may just be missing it, but what should we aim for as far as avoidance goes. Only suggestion I saw was 30%. I may be just too tired but if that 30% for each dodge and parry?

Also what is the best gems we should use or is that soley based on stat need?

This statement makes no sense. On the one hand you point out that DKs heal off of Death Strike, but also claim that it's not a tanks job to worry about healing himself. Self-healing is fundamental to DK tanking. We have numerous CDs related to this core feature of DKs, so claiming that we don't need to worry about self healing is ridiculous.

Furthermore, Lichborne/DC isn't about constantly worrying about healing yourself. It's another very powerful CD you can choose to have to save your ass in an oh-shit moment, or to help your healers out during a stressful aoe healing phase or movement mechanic. I use glyph of death coil and macro vampiric blood to lichborne to make these heals more powerful. It's almost as good as a lay on hands. I can spam a few DCs really quick to almost completely heal myself from nothing.

On a side note, I often have my runic power at near full too, since I like keeping it there for the extra dps I get with glyph of death strike. I switched my glyph of rune strike to glyph of death strike after the DS crit buff, and haven't looked back.

If kojack34 is "healing myself so much [healers] dont notice the damage i take" then I think we can safely assume that his definition of endgame is rather different to that generally discussed in this thread and move on.

Worst example you could possibly bring up. All healing you do while taking Decimating Strikes is reduced by 90%. Death Coil doesn't scale with the increasing health levels on this fight. So a single glyphed DC heals for less than 1 or 2% in that situation. It's still a great emergency heal, just not on baleroc.

Not really even if other heals went out I got it off and it was enough to keep me alive which was more to the point. I didn't go back and look at the parse but I remember thinking "holy shit I'm still alive." If you want a better during phase 2 rag our strat for 10 man is to stack up and AoE seeds down (this is normal of course) and for one of them our Shaman pops her spirit link totem. I always try to maximize my self healing here because I often get gouged by it with movement and have VB up at the same time. So essentially through spirit link and healing me there is a very powerful raid cooldown. Lichborne works well here.

As for the avoidance question. I don't think there is an acceptable amount of avoidance or acceptable amount of mastery for that mater but more a rule of them that says if you have more avoidance your DS and therefore your BS do not work as effectively. 30% however seems to be what people are running at because it becomes physically impossible to reforge out of anymore. This goes back to the general idea of reforge out of hit/expertise where you feel comfy, if no mastery is on the gear use mastery, if there is then wherever you have the less of Dodge/Parry. I sit at about 1% hit and 13% expertise right now. Then reforge out of dodge/parry to mastery wherever possible while trying to maintain very close numbers between the 2 to eliminate as much DR as possible. With stoneskin gargoyle I run at 15.53% parry and 14.77% dodge right now.

Askmrroboto.com does a decent job at handling these calculations for you with the default build. Some of their choices are questionable on there but overall it is close enough that anyone starting to tank would greatly benefit it even with the tiny difference between "general rule" and "Mr. Robot weights"

Honestly the healing you will get from lichborne "is" small, and makes the 6 talent points for it questionable. At the same time, lichborne is the only ability left that will increase your surviability. Wether you use it or not is up to you (I haven't spec'd lichborne for months), but know that anything else you pick up won't increase your surviability. The reamining talents are only damage and utility, aside from lichborne.

Don't understand this... How are warriors and paladins better at interrupting? You don't need to spec into endless winter to interrupt. We all have a 10 second interrupt, strangulate definitely doesn't need to be on a 10 second cd. That would cause all kinds of trouble in pvp.

Yeah you living here was not thanks to lichborne's heal, all self healing is cut by 90% when a decimation blade hits you. It prevents death knights and paladins from having a ridiculous advantage.

Daxxarri has given us a response, changes are coming in 4.3