Kharnator

Darkrenown, is there a confirmation on this matter? That Forceful Deflection is not affected by Diminishing Returns?

 

• Zurm

Thanks, I actually have Blood and Unholy fairly comfortably modeled, I still need frost. As a side note, you probably would have broken 2200 dps if you used PS before IT in your rotation, and UB before that every full cycle (the two lines above = 1 full cycle) (you'd obviously miss it in the first cycle because you probably wouldn't have 60 RP going into a boss fight.

Some things I could use some help on with the model, however:

1) How to model Empowered Rune Weapon... I haven't found much use for it, but I'm sure you guys have good ideas
2) The coefficients on our spells, and how exactly Impurity works (an example of how to calculate effective spell damage and the coefficients abilities like DC, IT, and diseases use).
3) A frost DPS rotation (and any info on disease uptime %)
4) I need some numbers on ghouls... specifically what is the base % of str/agi/stam/etc they get from their masters. I can figure out the core stats and stats via talents easily on my own.

I've made a lot of progress on the model so far, should be interesting to compare talents and stats when its finished. I'm also trying to formulate an interface to allow custom rotations, but that's still a little ways off.

 

Ginn

Any of the beta players got some sort of disease watcher?
DoTimer and Natur aren't working.

Working boss mod would be appreciated as well.

 

Deathwing

Wait, if both my blood runes are on cooldown and I cast an ability that doesn't use blood runes, BB is refreshed? 100% uptime should be damn easy to achieve now.

I like Xequecal's build. I believe the point of his DRM is to make Rune Tap much more accessible when you need it. Can Death Coil only heal you when you use Lichborne?

Ginn, Quartz can track your debuffs on the boss. It's working correctly on the PTR.

 

• Zurm

Technically, yes. However there is currently a bug where if you get ressurected as a ghoul, you can use any ability that wasn't on your main bar. So you *could* also use it after you die and get ressed as a ghoul on yourself, provided you had the RP.

 

tayedaen

I like your spec too.
However, I would modify it slightly to this spec
The two free points can either go to Epidemic or Ravenous Dead (for strenght), or even into improved rune tap.

Reasons:
+ Mark of blood = 4% mitigation (when up)
- Blood of the north= bad for tanking due to preventing Blade Barrier procs
- guile of gorefiend: hard to reach without blood of the north

EDIT: typos

 

jaxdahl

I just tested it a little more, it seems using just about any ability will refresh blade barrier if both your blood runes are on cooldown -- using Frost Strike and using a trinket both refreshed BB. Rune Strike also refreshed it on the next melee swing (not the act of activating Rune Strike).

 

Deathwing

If this unexpected behavior is happening, is BB removed when a blood rune(or the death rune generated from it) become active?

Tayedaen, BoTN does not interfere with BB. It will proc when those death runes are used up.

 

Xequecal

1. Blood of the North doesn't prevent Blade Barrier procs. In fact it makes them easier to get, as when the Blood runes recharge as Death runes, any ability can consume them to trigger BB, rather than just Blood abilities.

2. Mark of Blood has a 20-second duration and a 3-minute CD. It's not 4% mitigation.

 

Daedalix

This is a pretty narrow view of your role as a tank and especially as a Deathknight. If you're simply "holding aggro" then you're doing just enough to get by and not maximizing your potential nor your raid's potential. In Wrath, tanks are meant to contribute to DPS even more than in the past. DPS is also a significant chunk of our threat and a reasonable portion of RDPS. Any tank who isn't doing well enough to "do DPS" is holding the pure DPS classes back. Coddling your healers is also no way to go about tanking content on the bleeding edge, either. Fulfill your role as a member of the raid. Just holding aggro isn't really pulling your weight. Anybody should be able to do that these days. Any healer worth his salt won't need you to be healing yourself. This is like telling a warrior to sit on rage and not spam HS.

Along with that and all this business about Rune Tap... if it's on the GCD, then it's a complete waste of a GCD. You should be pushing the envelope on your threat abilities rather than worrying about a spot heal. The cooldown on it is way too short to be meant as a tank self-heal. It's actually pretty absurd if you've ever healed a tank in a tight situation. As an ex-longtime healer, that's not what I need the tank to be doing. His ability to do that is pretty weak compared to mine. Instead, do dps, maximize your threat, let the dps go all-out, and get us out of the fight longer so I don't run out of mana. 7k heal is completely unmitigated dmg that will be wiped out in the next hit or two. It only increases the spikes in your health bar and actually prevent me from doing my job. You'd do better to have another mitigation ability available and use that.

I would really enjoy hearing some more feedback on frost dps builds/rotations, on a personal note.

 

Xequecal

The priorities of a tank are:

1. Hold aggro.
2. Stay alive.

Doing DPS is a DISTANT third. You only worry about it if you can do it without sacrificing 1 or 2. If you're holding aggro, it's not worth a mitigation/avoidance loss to do extra DPS.

Seriously, why? If you're holding aggro, any additional threat in excess of that required to hold aggro is 100% worthless. It does nothing. Why risk even a slightly increased chance of death in exchange for nothing?

It's a 20% heal with the full 4 points. Last Stand heals 30%, and nobody calls that useless. Sure it heals for less, but it has a MUCH shorter cooldown.

I definitely agree about how it would be better to use a mitigation ability rather than heal yourself. The thing is, being able to heal yourself doesn't interfere with your ability to use all those mitigation abilities at all. There's no reason not to do it if necessary. The WORST thing that can happen is my self-heal makes you overheal when you ordinarily wouldn't have overhealed.

 

abyssichate

I am currently using ClassTimer and it nicely works. You can find the latest WOTLK version at svn://svn.wowace.com/wow/classtimer/woltk/trunk. I suggest you using TortoiseSVN to checkout the addon.

 

Janraea

Read the rotation I mentioned - at capped hit and expertise, you do not cap rune power at any point. The assumption that " to do max dps, we need to burn every rune ability at the precise moment the rune pops up" is correct, given that our rotation should never allow RP to be capped..

Your reference to capping rune power makes me think that you were using the wrong rotation or spec to do well in unholy presence during your test. I'll go make or adapt a spreadsheet for this spec/rotation and report back.

 

Nymph'

Actually I think it's not true. It's more like :

1) Stay Alive
2) Hold Aggro

If you lose aggro, maybe one or two people will die. If you die, everyone will. Simple. In a situation where your life is in danger and your aggro is too low, you FIRST increase your protection, and AFTER you'll think about increasing your aggro. DPS can DPS less, but healers can't heal more. DPS are responsible of their aggro equally as you are responsible of yours, but you are the only one responsible of your mitigation.

( You will worry about DPS if you are staying alive (whether you're a brother or whether youre a mother, of course) and holding aggro well. I 100% agree with the fact that worrying about DPS for a DK tank is stupid if you can improve your mitigation and significantly help your healers)

 

Flamingcloud

It is not on the GCD.

I've finished as 7th on the dps meter using a crappy blue pvp sword while tanking, I have no doubt a full naxx geared tank could go over 3000 dps without sacrificing any mitigation. Far as I am concerned the goal for every fight is to play perfect. Perfect means maximizing survival, as well as holding aggro and doing dps. It is like an affliction lock/spriest priority system for dps, with your avoidance abilities at the top of the priority system, and frost strike at the very bottom.(moving up to around the middle of the priority queue if you do not have a big lead) On a fast hitting boss your going to be using most of your runic power on rune strike anyways.

 

Daedalix

While getting slightly offtopic, this is an untrue assumption. Each healing class has the ability to "heal more" at a greater cost to our mana. I guess if that's your playstyle, then that's that. But I would submit that those 4 talent points you are spending are completely inefficiently spent for any current tanking build at a reasonable level of content.

 

Nifty01

Hi, i am sorry if this has been shown before and i didnt find the post, but i just did some testing with BCB after i read this Bluepost:

Hitting a Lvl55 dummy with a 3.43 speed weapon i didnt get any faster proccs than every 3 strikes (10.29sec between proccs). With a 1.62 speed weapon the proccs didnt happen more often than every 7 strikes (11.34sec).

However, if i stopped autoattacks after a BCB procc for 10sec the next strike would proc a BCB at exactly 30% chance regardless of weaponspeed.

 

Ginn

Have you tried it with Death Knight? Seems to work perfectly for old classes, ain't working with DK though.
Without yellow-strikes hit cap you are not using rotation actually, just a skill priority. Hard to maintain diseases 100% of the boss fight time without any sort of timer.

 

Nymph'

Actually Rune Tap (if you're speaking of it) only cost me 1 point. I don't improve it. My point are better spent on the frost tree.

But I'm not speaking of Rune Tap here ; Rune Tap is merely a little regular help in 25 boss or a way to spend a BR better than others in some situations. Rune Tap is more of a help in 5 or 10-man. Either way, it costs only 1 point (i.e. 1% crit), so who cares. Even if you use it just as a "little boost of heal in a hot spot", it's worth its price, IMO.

I was speaking about DPS versus mitigation for a DK tank. ^.^

 

• Zurm

A 10 second internal cooldown makes the talent a lot less appealing than it did before, and also means that it's not as good for DWing as previously thought (in fact, it almost seems better for 2h now).

 

Nifty01

It makes up for 1,5% of my total damage as deep unholy. This is rather bad, but since the only alternative talent to specc would be Necrosis which is an even worse DPS increase per point (not sure about that, didnt do the math) we will have to stick with it anyway

 

• Zurm

Necrosis from my tests was about 3.5% of my total dmg. It would be more at higher gear levels and DWing. The internal cooldown on BCB is simply unncessary though... it can only proc off white attacks.

 

abyssichate

I reported it to the author and he fixed it; the toc file had no reference to the deathknight.lua. At the moment it keeps track of Frost Fever, Blood Plague, Ebon Plague and Chains of Ice - is there any other debuff that DK uses and that I've forgotten?
The only thing that seems not to be working - at least for me - is the colouring filter based on debuff type.

EDIT: debuff colours are now working properly again.

 

Aeryn

There's also healing threat to be taken into account. Supposed that (Improved) Rune Tap heals for a full 7k, that's ~7k threat against single targets in Frost Presence (and still some threat for multiple mobs).

(edited after Chicken's and Deathwing's replies below)

 

Flamingcloud

That is interesting since I did this exact test last patch and it did not proc significantly more when I took a 10+ second break after a BCB proc. (It procc'd like 15% instead of 11% with breaks)