Janraea

Our It haste doesn't stack with jack. This doesn't have any impact on equalizing raid buffs, it just means we spend too much for ours. With white damage in the 25%-35% range, 4% haste works out to roughly 1% damage increase per talent point, just like it should. With not stacking, we just have a raid buff and 1% dps for 6 talent points, which is.. really bad.

And hungering cold is pretty decent in 5mans.. not terrible in 10 man raids either, if your dps are attacking the right target. It's still more of aoe emergency button.

 

Caggy

At the end it just sounds like a bug.

 

Neddie

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is how an 8s rune refresh time works well with having a bit of latency. If it is indeed 8s to refresh, and you have a bit of latency so you can only hit a rune in 1.6s instead of the 1.5s GCD you don't lose any DPS

Zero latency / reaction time case:
0.1s per GCD latency / reaction time:
So if you have no latency there's half a second when you're waiting for a rune to refresh. If you add a little bit of latency you won't have that 0.5s of waiting for runes to refresh, they'll basically be coming up right when you're ready to use them. If you have a lot of latency you'll start losing DPS because a rune will be sitting around waiting to be used before you have a chance to get to it.

I hope that the 8s refresh for runes in combat is indeed the case because that little bit of dead time will help.

 

Janraea

Well.. you neglected the next rotation. If you lose .1 seconds on each ability, the rune will recharge .1 seconds later the next time - The ui won't let you hit the ability until you can cast it (rune is active), and then you lose the latency time before it gets used. That dead time keeps the effect from cascading, but you do lose *some* dps (~1% for 100ms latency)

 

Daedalix

Taking a closer look at Hungering Cold, it only costs RP. Pestilence, BB, and DnD all cost Runes. So it would seemingly help in your AoE threat rotations and act as a quasi-AoE taunt with a lot of utility.

 

Caggy

The problem is HC is a tad bit too situational, and for some having no use on bosses is way too key for a 51 point talent to not have.

 

Scraps

Wow, I....... totally thought this talent worked the same way as Zurai thought it did.

 

Deathwing

Does HB require a target to cast? And what's the point of being able to cast it when your target is 30 yards away?

 

Kirion

Atleast you get something from it. Shaman's Unleashed rage is 5 point talent for 10% ap which doesn't stack with Abomination's might. For me both cases look like bad design.

42.

 

Janraea

It reads like the Aoe is centered around the target - is that the case? Cause that's way better than I thought it was.

Very much agreed. I think Unleashed rage should be built into another talent, or lowered to two points.

 

gorsameth

Yes HB will hit everything within 10 yards of your current target. The tooltip is pretty clear on that imo.

As for IIT not stacking it is indeed odd and something that has been noted several times. Especial considering that they consolidated haste into stacking with all self buffs and the highest non self. Its like flurry not stacking with wf haste

 

Lanlaorn

Question about the 5 points in Blood (after Blade Barrier) that a Frost DK tank has to move around:

I see a lot of people getting 5/5 Bladed Armor, and it certainly is a ridiculous amount of AP for a tank, but if you're using an Obliterate based TPS rotation (so, PS/IT/Ob/BS/BS, Ob/Ob/Ob) wouldn't 3/3 Subversion + 2/2 2 Hand Weapon Spec. be better? Subversion is 9% crit to almost your entire rotation and 2-Hand Spec is similarly 4% to all those strikes. Assuming a pretty good gear level, shouldn't such powerful, scaling effects to almost all of your yellow damage be worth more than a (nearly) static amount of AP?

From the bit of math I've thrown at this, Subversion + 2-Hand Spec outscale Bladed Armor very quickly unless you have both diseases up on a ridiculous amount of targets. So I don't see why a lot of epic geared, 25 man tank specs are taking Bladed Armor, am I just wrong? Anyone compared the two in practice?

 

Zurai

Yes, that's how it works. I actually never realized it was a ranged ability until Mild Confusion (sorry Deathwing!) pointed it out. There's really no PvE point to making it ranged, and in PvP you're generally not using AOEs anyway except for things like destealthing rogues - in which case an AOE that requires a hostile target is pretty worthless.

It looks like you're right; I checked the spell data and it's at 100 yards now. So, that removes that complaint. It's still not worth 6 talent points, though

 

Caggy

Abom Might and Imp IT are intended as shaman replacements on the whole redundant buff system. No one class is required in a raid anymore.

That said, the thing with Shamans is they can bring both the AP buff and melee haste while an optimally built DK is going to only bring one or the other. Its 5 points is reasonable.

For ITT, it may not be optimal for pure tanking, but its still great for DPS and an OT or at least backup role. Its still a DPS and therefor threat boost.

 

Zurai

Let's compare. We'll use the 800 AP mark I mentioned earlier for the AP contribution from 5/5 BA; let's further say that you've got a fully tricked-out Obliterate build with all the other +crit talents for it, bringing its crit up +23% without Subversion and +32% with. With the 17% crit I theorized for a tank earlier, that leaves us with an Obliterate that crits 48% of the time w/o Subversion and 57% with. Let's assume that a non-crit, base-AP Obliterate deals 2000 damage, just for sake of easy math (it's not far from the mark for my premade, anyhow). Let's also assume a 3.4 speed weapon, just to eliminate the normalization math, and zero out armor again for simplicity (since armor affects both cases equally).

The base Obliterate deals 2000 damage on a normal hit and 4900 on a crit. It crits 48% of the time, for an average damage of 3392.
The Bladed Armor Obliterate deals 2194 damage on a normal hit and 5376 on a crit. It crits 48% of the time, for an average damage of 3721.
The Subversion/2HS Obliterate deals 2080 damage on a normal hit and 5096 on a crit. It crits 57% of the time, for an average damage of 3799.

So, our Subverted Specialized Obliterate deals 78 more damage per hit, times 4 hits over 20 seconds, for a total of 15.6 DPS.
However, your diseases are going to do another 44 damage (pre-talents) per tick from that extra 800 AP. They'll tick 6 times over 18 seconds (Epidemic), for a total of +26.4 DPS. Again, that's before considering stuff like Black Ice.

Of course, 2h spec increases auto attack, Rune Strike, Frost Strike, Plague Strike, and Blood Strike damage as well (and Subversion helps Blood Strike too), but Bladed Armor affects every damaging ability you use. Don't forget that Rune Strike gets an additional AP bonus on top of the 200% weapon damage, too.

And why are you saying Bladed Armor doesn't scale? Of course it scales. The more armor you have, the more AP you gain from it. As your gear improves in iLvl, armor automatically and naturally increases - which is further helped along by Frost Presence and Toughness.

(IIT) - actually, depending on raid makeup, it might even be a threat loss by comparison, by allowing the shaman to drop Wrath of Air for a bunch of casters. 2h DKs scale very, very poorly with haste. The 5% melee haste you get from IIT is going to be much less threat on your part than the 5% spell haste provided by Wrath of Air Totem. Haste is a much better stat for nukers (as opposed to affliction locks and shadow priests) than it is for any melee except maybe rogues.

 

Caggy

Well what about 3/3 subversion (For also all your non tanking needs) and 2/5 bladed armor? That is around 300-400 AP if it was giving 800 at 5 points.

Well also remember if you're running with a Resto/Ele shaman, he's going to be dropping WoA for his healing needs over WF for your tanking needs. There isn't much loss in going down Icy Talons for tanking, you end up losing your resists (which is handy but not something every other tank has) and maybe merc combat/endless winter.

 

Tafsis

There was some talk about Blood DPS a few pages back that touched the subject of rotations that are longer than 8 seconds, and that seems quite needed of course, with all the RP you'll be stacking up. What I'm wondering is whether anyone has made any kind of priority list like the ones that have been posted for Frost recently. So far I've been adding DCs in between disease applications, with a slightly unsatisfactory result. With solely premade gear, I'm getting around 1.5k DPS, and with the amount of misses I'm getting, I'm finding it fairly hard to keep the rotation and diseases up properly while dumping all my RP.

Trying out Blood is kind of annoying too, as you suddenly see your damage going down after having popped Hysteria for the second time or so, bringing you down below 75% hp. If only Mark of Blood would be any good on dummies.

Anyway, any numbers or priority lists for this would be superb, because while I am guessing that it'll get easier as the hit and expertise ratings start adding up, knowing which of my abilities are most beneficial when is much more valuable than just spamming a rotation.

 

Zaroua

Took out the stuff I agreed with.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft this is the spec I'd use. And I'll give a brief run down of why I choose every talent - keep in mind that I've tanked Naxx10 and Naxx25 with this spec multiple times so I've had the time to refine it and choose what was more important.

First thing, my damage is usually split up like this when fighting a mob: 30-40% Rune Strike, 20-25% Obliterate, 15-25% Melee, 6-9% Blood Strike and the rest at or under 5%. The more I Rune Strike, the lower my melee damage is (or will be once the bug is fixed - haven't looked into too much at this point).

• Improved Icy Touch: No brainer here, it helps to pull mobs/adds to you and it gives you the much needed 20% speed reduction. A must have for any spec unless you want to force someone else to put it up on every single fight.
• Toughness/Blade Barrier/Anticipation: Again, pretty much required out of any tanking spec, no explanations needed.
• Icy Reach: Lets you pull mobs without having to hug them, lets you pick up stuff easily without having to move during a fight. Another talent that I feel is required as Frost Spec (Unholy may want to skip it).
• Black Ice: Amazing returns per talent point, it helps a lot more than Glacier Rot because it doesn't require a disease to be active on the target - and no matter what, sometimes you won't have a disease up for whatever reason thus making this talent a much more interesting one. It also greatly increases your AoE damage/threat potential, a lot more than Glacier Rot ever could.
• Annihilation: With a 2H Frost Spec, Annihilation is an obvious choice. It's also pretty much needed as a Blood tanking spec since Blood tanks won't have the luxury of spamming HS 4-5 times per rotation, nor will they be able to pick up DRM easily.
• Lichborne: Is an amazing talent for any tank spec. With decent gear and Blade Barrier, this will EASILY push your avoidance over 80%. With Naxx gear and raid buffs, it'll be close to 90%. If anything, it's worth it for Maexnna and any other boss that Frenzies/Enrages. It also easily lets you reach 102.4% avoidance if you pop an additional avoidance trinket or Unbreakable Armor. Wouldn't want to live without it.
• Chill of the Grave: Absolutely needed, especially without Blessing of Sanctuary. Even with Sanctuary, it still provides you with an increase in RP generation, letting you Frost Strike more often. And when you're off-tanking or DPSing, it also gives you a sizable increase in DPS.
• Frigid Dreadplate: 6% extra avoidance after something lands a hit on you. Amazing - it's being nerfed to 3% avoidance at all times, but it'll still be amazing since it's 1% avoidance per point, that's not on diminishing returns. Must have if you're Frost.
• Deathchill: Another must have as Frost tank. It lets you open up on a tightly packed trash pack with Deathchill > Howling Blast, giving you a nice threat buffer (hits for 2.3k-2.5k damage, without Frost Fever). But the best thing is for boss fights: pull with Icy Touch (30 yards with Icy Reach) and Deathchill > HB before the boss gets to you. It basically lets people go all out unless you get a resist, in which case the runes will be active after you apply a PS, letting Obliterate and carry on with your normal rotation. The third reason to pick up this little gem is for Freezing Fog procs - you usually won't have the RP to Frost Strike too much (even with Sanctuary) so this talent lets your Freezing Fog procs become crits. Since you won't use IT too much during your normal rotation, it makes the Freezing Fog procs pretty rare so a good percentage of them will be Deathchilled. Another must for tanking specs.
• Rime: Another great talent, Obliterate is a large chunk of your total DPS while tanking and a bigger chunk while DPSing, so this talent is simply great for the Obliterate crit alone. But then you add up the Icy Touch crit (more range threat with Icy Reach/Imp Icy Touch) and the chance to proc Freezing Fog and it becomes a great investment. Note that when you're forced out of range, this talent lets you generate a lot more threat than you otherwise could - doubt you could compete with a Searing Pain Warlock when it comes to range tanking, but you ranged threat would be higher than the other tank classes, which is something to consider.
• Howling Blast: Bread and butter AoE tanking tool. Can't live without it, take it and enjoy the pretty numbers. Can outshine Obliterate on raw damage without armor debuffs present, or if you have a terrible weapon. Obliterate will most likely still average ahead of Howling Blast unless you're DWing because Howling Blast is a spell and is resisted "often".
• Frost Aura: Right now it's good because it stacks with everything, even other Frost Auras. Having multiple DKs with Frost Auras means the buff and the resists stack: Sapphiron is trivial when everyone has maxed Frost Resist. If Blizzard ever nerfs it not to stack with anything, particularly resistance auras/totems or MotW, then the talent will become mostly useless, freeing up two points.
• Blood of the North: Worth it as a tank spec just because it frees up a GCD every 2 rotation. Other than that, it's a significant DPS boost not only because of the added Blood Strike damage, but also because you can turn Blood Strikes into Obliterates, Icy Touches, Howling Blasts and Unbreakable Armor. Actually I almost always use Unbreakable Armor with the BotN Death Runes, using the other Death Rune on an Icy Touch. Great talent.
• Unbreakable Armor: Without the glyph, this talent rocks for tanking. With the glyph it becomes over the top. 10% avoidance 33% of the time, or about 3% avoidance from 1 talent point. Oh ya, it also gives you extra armor which means extra AP through Bladed Armor. Must have talent. And if you're an off-tank you could potentially ignore the glyph and use this talent as a DPS cooldown, using it with your BotN Death Runes without too much loss.
• Frost Strike: Another no brainer. Completely replaces Death Coil in your normal rotation and it hits pretty hard too. You won't use it all that often without Blessing of Sanctuary, but it's still extra threat and extra DPS when off-tanking or DPSing.
• Guile of Gorefiend: Simply amazing, never skip this. No point in explaining it.
  Tundra Stalker: Another amazing talent, never skip it. It's worth 5 talent points for the expertise alone, the extra damage just makes this talent better than anything Blood or Unholy could ever offer.

You'll have noticed that I left out Killing Machine. Going down the Frost tree towards Blood of the North requires 35 talent points and if you follow what I wrote up there, you'll be 4 talent points short (6 if you skip Frost Aura). So here's where you could put your extra points:
Glacier Rot
Killing Machine
Runic Power Mastery
Merciless Combat
Icy Talons/Improved Icy Talons
Endless Winter
Nerves of Cold Steel

The "worthless" ones being Nerves of Cold Steel (don't DW as Frost with the super Obliterate and 6 second Howling Blast cooldown), Endless Winter and Runic Power Mastery (in a tank build, at least - it's quite useful in a DPS build).
Leaving us with 4 choices, between Glacier Rot, Killing Machine, Merciless Combat and Icy Talons: Icy Talons is decent if you're only running 10 mans and no one else is getting Imp Icy Talons or you don't have WF totem, Glacier Rot is small DPS increase for a small portion of your DPS (also remember that with 18 second diseases and 20seconds+ rotations, some Frost Strikes won't benefit from this talent), Merciless Combat is a small increase in DPS at the end of the fight instead of at the start when it's the most important (initial threat and being able to start faster) and Killing Machine, which is a small chance chance to proc on boss fights but somewhat better on trash and while DPSing. It all comes down to preference: I take Killing Machine because I'm always struggling on AoE threat (granted I pull 3-4 packs at once and all the AoE goes wild before stuff even gets to me).



Now for the other stuff Zurai posted:
-Last I checked, Acclimation stacked with other resists, but it directly competes with Bladed Armor/Epidemic so it gets trashed. Even then the extra resist isn't all that great anyways except on Sapphiron/Faerlina/Malygos, or if you're doing Sartherion hard mode. Depending on how it buffs Rune Strike, it may become a must-have talent however.
-Spell Deflection is terrible - most spells aren't very threatening, it's direct damage only and it's only a random chance. Oh and if you're Frost it competes with Tundra Stalker, if you're Unholy it competes with UB/Rage of Rivendare. Leaving it only really accessible to Blood tanks, who are vastly inferior to Frost and Unholy right now.
-Endless Winter is pretty terrible, and that's being nice about it. Only fight where you have to interrupt is KT and you'll have plenty of RP to play with KT doesn't attack all that often compared to other bosses, meaning a lot less RP spent on Rune Strike.


For Bladed Armor/Dark Conviction/Subversion: it mostly comes down to Subversion or Dark Conviction since Bladed Armor outshines the other two. Bladed Armor gives me a little under 1000AP fully buffed and that helps with AoE threat and single target threat. The other two don't have nearly as much of an impact - at least in my experience. Subversion has the extra utility of reducing your threat when you're DPSing, so it would end up winning out for me. And finally, you get a Sigil from Naxx25 that increases your Obliterate damage by a considerable amount: [Sigil of Awareness] - since I use that myself, Subversion wins out for me.

Edit - Sigil of Awareness: Increases your SS/Obliterate damage by 420.

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

Aedon

That is a similar rotation I use.

IT-PS-HS-HS- Oblit/Oblit - HS - HS- HS- HS-> IT-PS-HS-HS- Oblit/Oblit - HS - HS- HS- HS.

Same thing as you stated with the Blood rune CD changing a blood to a death run when you need it or Obliterate chaning a Frost or Unholy to a Death Rune with Death Run Mastery. Of course you can use death coils in there when 2 Oblits aren't optional.

I have read multiple post as well experienced myself that the cookie cutter rotation doesn't always apply every rotation. That is what I like about DeathKnights is sometimes, changing the rotation up a little bit to maximize runes/runic power and or different scenarios.

 

Tantlin

Thanks this is pretty close to what I've been looking for, for my spread sheet.

 

Mild Confusion

OK, I want to get a better grip on the unholy tree, so I figure I'd come up with a spec and go do some Wintergrasp pvp and see how unholy pvp works out.

I don't know much about unholy, so I came up with this spec. Any opinion? Improvements?

 

Leaflock

Following up on the rune cooldown discussion. Rather than block quote everyone who was adding to it, I'll just give overall responses.

I'll agree that 7.5 seconds seems closer to the actual cooldown, now that I've tested it and observed it some more. If you watch closely, it's actually observable on the default rune UI. The rune cooldown does a full circle the first time, and 3/4 of a circle every other time.

To other testers, coming up with odd results: are you looking in the right place? I'm well aware that using one ability over and over will use the next available rune. That's why you have to look at the rune cooldown, not the ability cooldown. With the plague strike example, you use an unholy rune, then look at when that unholy rune becomes available again, not when Plague Strike is available again.

The observable rule is that each individual rune, not rune type, will be 10 seconds on the first use, and 7.5 on subsequent uses. If you get 10 seconds twice in a row, it's because you're using two different runes. Using one unholy rune will not change the cooldown on the other unholy rune, for instance. Each one has to be "broken in", so to speak. Try it yourself:

1) Use Plague Strike. It uses the first Unholy rune, which comes back in 10 seconds.
2) When it's back, use it again. The first Unholy rune is used again, which comes back in 7.5 seconds.
3) Without exiting combat, Plague Strike twice in a row after the previous conditions. The first "broken-in" rune will come back in 7.5 seconds. The second, previously unused rune will come back in 10 seconds. You can observe it visually on the rune timer animations, which start the cooldown count in different spots, at 3 o'clock and 12 o'clock respectively.

A couple people said that their runes came back at different times after a SS. I can't reproduce this, outside of the rules I mentioned above. If you SS and use one broken-in rune and one that's not, they will come back 2.5 seconds apart. I just tested and verified this. Otherwise, you might be looking at the wrong runes, e.g. your PS-IT runes popping up first, separated by the GCD from when you used them. Or, if you're not using the default UI, it might not be as readily observable. I think the full rotation vs. three-quarter rotation on the rune UI is the most compelling evidence that the 7.5 second rune cooldown, after an initial 10 second one, is intended.

Any other more complicated rune explanations need to demonstrate that they're clearly and repeatedly violating the rule above. Tell us exactly what you're doing so it's repeatable and verifiable.

Also, on a side note, the suggestion/bug report button is gone on the beta, so we're pretty close to what we're gonna see in live now.

 

Kaejin

You might want to consider Unholy Aura depending on what Presence you like to PvP in and if you plan to PvP in a group with friends. I'm not sure if Blood Caked Blade would perform well in PvP either.

 

Deathwing

Zaroua,

Nice post, thanks for the insight. I was wondering if you could provide a brief comment on these three tanking builds and as to why you don't like them as much as the one you posted:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The first two are max mitigation builds, based around UA or BS. The third one is a full Unholy tanking tree. BS looks like it will be superior to UA, in single target fights, that is.

 

Aedon

Dual Specs , should make a lot of things interesting now.