nevinera

Then say 'inadvisable' instead of 'impossible'.

edit:
And the threat depends quite a lot. deep frost can make frost strike cause frost fever, and as I understand it, your ghouls are supposed to cause blood plague atm (but don't because they aren't done implementing them)
Lets go with deep frost and FRM (which won't be up at all times, sadly; we'll assume it is as worst case)
IT, Oblit, Oblit, BS, BS, IT
Then
Oblit, Oblit, Oblit, Oblit, FS, FS.
Repeat.

You really think that's bad threat?

edit2: Actually, I'm not sure if your ghouls' blood plague counts for oblit/bs, but it seems like it ought to.
If it doesn't, or isn't blood plague after all, you could use death rune mastery and epidemic, and
IT, Oblit, DS, BS, BS, IT
Then
FS, PS, Oblit, Oblit, Oblit, Oblit,
Repeat.

It might be difficult to pull off and still build threat with builds that don't have BotN, but the healing from death mastery should count for something..

 

Gort

Correct, if you start from 6 runes. However, mid-encounter there should never be a time when you're at 6 runes. The most that will pop simultaneously is 3, from a D&D use, which will be 5s before the next use of D&D, and possibly the trickiest part of the rotation. More realistic would be to have 1-2 runes popping at any given point, which would be quite simple to use before the buff expires.


My thinking below:

No URM: Assuming multiple mobs, you could rotate Icy>Scourge>Pest>D&D, at 6s of GCD usage. You now have 8s of BB. In 4s, you get a frost, which is either Icy or saved for an Obliterate. 1.5 later you get an Unholy for Scourge or Oblit, either case you're back at 0, refreshing the buff with time to spare. Blood up next for Pest, BB refreshes. 3 up next, which hold for the remaining 5s of D&D cooldown, then are used to refresh D&D, also refreshing BB. This could repeat indefinitely. Single mobs, either retain Pest or use Blood Strike, and D&D can be Oblit/Blood(Pest).


URM: Identical to above, except your quicker Unholy get used on Scourge Strike as they become available outside your normal rotation. Assuming worst case, your first Scourge Strike triggers URM, and will be back in 5. You require 3s before you can clear your runes with D&D, triggering BB for 8s. Assume that triggers URM as well, for giggles. 2s later, you get an Unholy, which you SS away(BB trigger), leaving you clear for the Frost back in another 2s(BB trigger), with your quickened Unholy 1.5 later for another SS(BB trigger).

Each case, every time you use an ability, you clear your runes and refresh BB. You should never be more than ~2s from a clear runebar once you begin tanking. Blight should be consuming your RP as fast as you can generate it, so minimal GCD usage there.


Am I missing something fundamental? It does get messy if you have to stop using runes for whatever reason, but that's just as bad as starting an encounter, and I think either IBF or Bone Shield can help out a bit in those cases. (-10% avoidance, but -40/50% damage.) Also, if no D&D use, then you have a bit more GCD usage to manage, but I don't think it's impossible.


If you're not Unholy, I would assume that Oblit/HS (For Blood) would work, with the same GCD usage as the nonD&D rotation I listed above. Frost is a bit tougher, as their off runes are B/U, which don't have a good combo ability to dump them at the same time. FRM might need a look, in that case.

 

Zurai

You're using double-rune abilities, but you won't have the alternate rune available, which forces you to use single-rune abilities and stack up GCDs. You're also forgetting things like Bone Shield and refreshing Frost Fever that have to be worked in. Here's an example with timeline, assuming a perma-URM proc (which actually isn't all that unlikely if it works like the talent reads):

0.00 - Bone Shield - BBFFU left
1.50 - Icy Touch (pull) - BBFU left
3.00 - Scourge Strike - BBF left
4.50 - Blood Strike - BF left
5.00 - U refreshes - BFU left
6.00 - Obliterate - B left
7.50 - Blood Strike - BB activates
8.00 - U refreshes - U left - BB at 7.5
9.00 - Scourge Strike - BB refreshes
10.5 - Deathcoil - BB at 6.5
11.0 - U refreshes - U left - BB at 6
11.5 - F refreshes - UF left - BB at 5.5
12.0 - Obliterate - BB refreshes
13.5 - Deathcoil - BB at 6.5
14.0 - U refreshes - U left - BB at 6
14.5 - B refreshes - BU left - BB at 5.5
15.0 - Blood Strike - U left - BB at 5
16.0 - F refreshes - FU left - BB at 4
16.5 - Scourge Strike - F left - BB at 3.5
17.0 - U refreshes - FU left - BB at 3
17.5 - B refreshes - BFU left - BB at 2.5
18.0 - Icy Touch (to refresh Frost Fever) - BU left - BB at 2
19.5 - Blood Strike - U left - BB at 0.5
20.0 - BB falls off


It's only for 1 second at that point, but from there it continues to spiral downwards.

 

nevinera

You are misunderstanding something, I'm not sure what. deathstrike and oblit are both 2-rune abilities, bs and it are both 1.
I'm assuming death rune mastery, which any spec can pick up..

edit: It looks like the deathrune mastery assumption should have been stated, my apologies. my later post did mention it I think.

 

Septus

Has anyone considered the ability to click off what I assume is a buff that procs from the rune masteries? Macro it to an easily accessed button maybe.

 

Prepared

You know, I've never tried that, but they do show up as a buff for each appropriate Death Rune, that wears off after a few seconds.

 

nevinera

A neat idea. If it works out that people need to do this however, Blizz really should make the mastery itself a self-buff..

 

Zurai

So you meant DRM but not the others? I was referring to the "decreases rune cooldown" rune masteries. Yeah, you can keep up Blade Barrier with DRM.

Also, you can't pick up DRM as an Unholy tank without passing on either A) Annihilation AND Lichborne or B) Rage of Rivendare AND Unholy Blight, which seems a poor tradeoff.

 

• Chicken

With the newest beta build Rune Masteries no longer show up as buffs so you can't click them off either.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Gort

At 16.5s, if you use UF on an Obliterate you'll get a BB refresh.


I would, as Unholy, do (Assuming perma-URM, as you did.):

Pre-pull Bone Shield, to have it off CD and to suck up the lack of BB on pull.

0.0 - Icy (Pull) - BBUUF - no BB
1.5 - Scourge - BBUF - No BB
3.0 - Pest - BUF - No BB
4.5 - D&D - clear - BB at 8
5.0 - Blight - clear - BB at 6.5 (using Blight means no GCD required for RP for duration.)
6.5 - U1 refreshes - U - BB at 5
6.5 - Scourge - clear - BB at 8
9.5 - U2 Refresh - U - BB at 5
9.5 - Scourge - clear - BB at 8
10 - F refreshes - F - BB at 6.5
11.5 - U1 refreshes - UF - BB at 4
11.5 - Oblit - clear - BB at 8
13 - B refresh - B - BB at 6.5
13 - Pest - clear - BB at 8
14.5 - U2 refresh - U - BB at 6.5
14.5 - BF refresh - BFU- BB at 6.5
14.5 - Scourge - BF - BB at 6.5
16.0 - Icy - B - BB at 5
16.5 - U1 refresh - BU - BB at 4.5
17.5 - Pest - U - BB at 3.5
19.0 - Scourge - Clear - BB at 8
19.5 - U2 refreshes - U - BB at 7.5
20 - F refreshes - UF - BB at 7
20.5 - Scourge - F - BB at 6.5
23 - B refreshes - BF - BB at 4
24 - U1 refreshes - UBF - BB at 3
24 - D&D - clear - BB at 8


Repeat. You can't get 100% D&D uptime, but you should have pretty good Frost Fever coverage.


I can't, of course, gauge the threat on this, but it would seem to be decent at first glance. Pest can be swapped for Blood Strike if the added damage from BS outweighs the innate threat on Pestilence, or if Pestilence doesn't affect already-diseased mobs.


Math failures? Missing anything obvious? It's definitely twitchy, and you definitely have to play just right to make it work, but... I kind of like that.

 

Zurai

Yes, and you'll lose Frostfever.

 

nevinera

The post you seem to be replying to is the one where i was taking issue with someone saying that you couldn't use 6 runes in less than 5 cds.

The one where I show that you can do good threat while having URM up is after it, and more clearly states its assumptions about what talents people have.

If you want to argue about the useability of rune masteries while tanking, go read that one and reply to it instead - it's more detailed, and makes all the points you're forcing me to rehash here - in general, a deep frost build is the one that can handle rune mastery best while tanking.

 

nevinera

I'd expect most tanks to get the extra 6s talent..
Two points for a lot of flexibility in rotation and much better multi-tanking is a pretty good trade.

edit: yeah, losing frostfever isn't great. his rotation won't be perfect, but it's just one such,
I showed a much simpler one a bit ago, and I think we can believe that there are more such..
Challenge that if you want, I'll come up with another, but it'd be more work :-)

 

Gort

Actually, I corrected my example to have an Icy refresh within the 18s duration. I would actually swap my 17.5 and 19s abilities, as going Pest THEN Scourge would correctly refresh Frost Fever on more mobs. This shouldn't impact the rest of the rotation, as that Unholy is slated for the next D&D, and you're well within BB uptime if you have to wait 1.5s to pop D&D.


I'll edit to do that, actually.

 

Zurai

My example is WITH 2/2 Epidemic. Frostfever and Blood Plague are both 12 second durations, base.

 

nevinera

Even simpler?

Just let the mastered runes both sit unused for 5 s each rotation if you need to.
assume URM:

Something like
BS, IT, Pest, Oblit, PS, BS, IT, Pest, Oblit, PS...
but the timing is controlled too.
If you use the two unholy abilities next to each other, every ten seconds, you have 3.5 seconds with both unholys down.
Now you just have to make sure BB refreshes at both the beginning and end of that period and you have full coverage
(incidentally, that's pretty easy with a steady rotation, but would be VERY difficult with a changing one. I'd expect master tanks to actually practice against a simulator before trying this crap)

edit: (And there's no point to having urm while tanking unless you do try for the changing rotations)

 

Zurai

The point isn't that you can't keep BB up with a Rune Mastery - but rather that it's inadvisable, because you cannot predict when you're going to get a proc and thus cannot really plan ahead for having twice as many of whatever type of rune as usual (EDIT: and for the record, "proc is always up" is actually NOT the worst case scenario, it's just the simplest to model. Worst case scenario is random procs). This forces you to modify your rotation on the fly, which isn't a gamebreaker, but drastically increases the number of things that can go wrong and increases the number of things you have to keep track of simultaneously. If there was a major benefit to doing this, it'd be one thing - but TPS is only slightly better, at best, with a Rune Mastery going, since the biggest damage dealer (Oblit) is a dual-rune ability. It works out best with a Blood spec since you can just spam Heart Strike more, as you don't need your blood runes for anything except DPS.

I wasn't saying don't do it - I was saying be sure you're actually getting your 2 talent points worth out of it. I've tried tanking with rune masteries (admittedly before this latest patch) and it was Hell. Much, much simpler to use a predictable rotation, and I wasn't losing aggro even to t6 geared mages and hunters so TPS is still fine.

 

nevinera

With the talent as it is described in the talent calculator right now, 'always up' isn't a guess, it's a certainty.
We're talking less than a 1% chance for it to go down for even a moment in a ten second period.
If dots don't count (which they might not), we're still not in a bad situation.

The last post I made applies perfectly well even if the proccing is spotty. (about just not using the extra runes)

edit: "but TPS is only slightly better, at best, with a Rune Mastery going, since the biggest damage dealer (Oblit) is a dual-rune ability"

Have you tried this as deep frost? with BotN, you get extra oblits out of it. Roughly one per rotation, and it ought to be somewhat easier to keep up with the variability of the proc because of it.

(I do expect it to be very difficult, and that's most of why I want to try it.)

 

Gort

For a 1 point investment, I think it's decent. I'd agree that 2 points was too much. 1 point for URM, though, there's not much else to spend on at that tier (in Unholy, at least), and the extra Scourge Strikes would seem to be a respectable TPS increase. It may, as you say, be unneeded, I'm just arguing that it's not a detriment, and has some benefit, especially when each one is considered as 15RP/3s of Blight uptime.


The other trees don't seem to have the same synergy between end-tier talent/RP dump and their primary RP generator, unfortunately. Frost is at least able to get 15RP off each Icy Touch, but I wouldn't think that would be as spammed as Scourge Strike, and Blood entirely lacks a RP-generation increase to its primary attack like Dirge or Chill of the Grave. They may intend Scent of Blood to act in its stead, but I don't think that will be as effective.

 

Zurai

5 seconds, not 10. It's not nearly a certainty that you can keep URM up. I assumed it because it makes the math infinitely easier, but it's not a safe assumption for real world circumstances. In 5 seconds, you'll have, on average, about 12 chances to proc URM (1.5 autoattacks with 1.5 Necrosis, 3.5 instant attacks, 4 disease ticks if you're using Unholy Blight, 1 Wandering Plague tick). That's a 71.x% chance to proc at least once in that 5 seconds, but it's not a certainty by any means.

I havn't tried it as deep frost, because quite frankly Unholy is much better at instance tanking, even with half the abilities not working*. Much better AOE threat and much better single target mitigation (through Bone Shield). Frost maaaay be better at single target tanking, but I'm not convinced.


EDIT: And Gort, I didn't use Pestilence or DnD because I was assuming a single target, for simplicity (DnD is worse single-target TPS than a blood strike + oblit with 3-4 diseases). Nice use of Pestilence to refresh Frostfever, though; I hadn't thought of that. The rotation still destabilizes, but it takes longer.

* - IMO.

 

Gort

Frost Fever also ticks for damage, so that's a proc chance as well. Not huge impact, but some. URM uptime would---assuming DoTs proc it--get massively better with Blight/Wandering Plague and multiple mobs.

--

Okay, I was assuming 2-3 mobs. If single target, then D&D may not be wise; I've been assuming a fairly large value for the added threat component as well. I'd still pop it early as hey, free damage, threat, and quicker BB proc. Using Oblit/BS is 1.5s more time than using D&D, but you can do it at any point, with no requirement to hold for the 15s cooldown. In that case, at 20s you would change from:

20 - F refreshes - UF - BB at 7
20.5 - Scourge - F - BB at 6.5
23 - B refreshes - BF - BB at 4
24 - U1 refreshes - UBF - BB at 3
24 - D&D - clear - BB at 8

to:

20 - F refreshes - UF - BB at 7
21 - Oblit - clear - BB at 8
23 - B refreshes - B - BB at 6
23 - BS - clear - BB at 8
24 - U1 refreshes - U - BB at 7

and continue. This actually looks a LOT more stable, as the only multi-rune combo you have refreshing at once is UF, which goes right into an Oblit, leaving your single F refreshes for an Icy, single B refreshes for a BS/Pest. Can refresh BShield in place of an SS if needed on CD, same rune usage.

If you DO destabilise, you've got IBF/BS to cover for you as you get it back up, as I don't see even worst case a destabilisation within a 30s-1m timeframe.

Pestilence usage would really depend on how large the added threat is. Obviously, as I assumed 2-3 mobs, you'd use it over BS, but if you're down to a single target then BS may outdo it for the rune/GCD. No effect on the rotation though.

 

nevinera

I'll assume a raid environment, since we're theorycrafting..
first of all, you'd use a fast 2h, (normalized strikes), with windfury of some kind.
so 2.5 hits, 2.5 necrosis, 3.5 instants, 1.5 bp ticks, 2 thorns ticks, I'll assume either gargoyle or swarm is up, so 5ish ticks from one or the other .3 blood caked strikes for around 17 hits /5 - 83% uptime.

Yeah, you're right, it won't be 100% ;-\
Last time I did the math I was working on a DW dps build, didn't realize how much of a difference that made here. (i was getting nearly 30 hits in the same period)


Regardless, keeping up with urm is definitely possible, and even realistic, if you always keep your unholy rune uses close together, and only take advantage of the extra runes you could be generating when d&d is up (or when you have the death runes to pull off a couple of oblits), you can hold it together. Though it's kind of seat-of the pants.

edit:
"Unholy is much better at instance tanking"
Grossly so. There's no way that they will let one tree dominate that way after the crap they've been spouting. I hope they just buff the other two trees' high-end tanking talents instead of nerfing boneshield, but i expect the latter.

 

Zurai

Gargoyle won't affect URM - its damage isn't credited to you. Same with ghouls. UB is, but it's already accounted for (so is Frost Fever - you won't get 4 disease damage ticks out of Blood Plague in 5 seconds ).

The Rune Masteries are one of the only reasons to consider dual wielding as a DK, IMO, but even Blizzard says it's not a good idea to tank while DW because of parry-gib. At least at the moment, they don't plan to remove the parry haste mechanic, so DW is a lot more dangerous in that respect.

If you want to take the most challenging way to tank possible, more power to you! I'm more conservative by nature. I'd rather stick with something I can guarantee will work 100% of the time, since the benefits of not doing so aren't all that high IMO.

They're actually talking about buffing Bone Shield by increasing the internal cooldown to match the 3.5 seconds used by shaman shields. Currently it's 2 seconds. Since removing a bone isn't tied to decreasing the damage dealt by the attack, that's a major buff.

 

incko

well good evening
this is my first post in your forums and i want to keep it short.


does anybody know if "Unholy Presence" stacks with "Icy Talons", which means 35% haste?
and would this stack with Heroism for 65% haste?^^
what about the idea of a DW DK?
well with unholy presence and icy talons he would be an extremly fast melee
and this high speed would mean that "blood rune mastery" would activate very often...

discuss?^^


sincerly yours incko

 

Spiry

1)We don't care it's your first post
2)Don't sign your posts.

3)It's most likely multiplicative as opposed to additive, thus more likely 15%*20% and for Heroism 15%*20%*30% for (insert maths here) 79.4%...though I really don't trust my maths.