Apaine

They have said something about using reagents when corpse is not of a proper type (non-humanoid corpses). It is a small stretch to just have DK use reagents for their CE and ghouls when no corpses are present.

Blizzard said DK's would be best for magic melee bosses. By that we should not think "kael"... we should think "hydross" - bosses whose attack by default cannot be blocked, and who do elemental damage though their swings.

How will DK be able to tank them? Who knows, but 30% parry helps... the 80% magic damage reduction helps more too. I wouldn't be surprised if a DK tank in a raid environment has a damage mitigation and armor similar to a fury/arms warrior, and is one shotted by the likes of archimonde.


Imagine a fight like Bloodboil, where 3 tanks need to be on the threat list, with small little detail that boss would randomly "enchant his weapons" to do different damage type. And he would rotate physical, and magical damage respectively. Make the magical damage type holy or chaos for shitz and gigglez, or just differnt from time to time and you got a boss that currently is impossible to beat. But that type of boss would require DK to be one of the tanks and taunt the boss off the MT when his damage changes to magical.

Notice how none of DK's resource system depends on him getting hit? It is quite a departure from the current 3 tank classes we got. Warriors need to be hit for rage, Palladins use mana, but go OOM fast unless they get heals, and druids use rage just like warriors. Currently druids are best offtanks, since they have most AP in their tanking gear - so can generate rage relatively easily while not getting hit. DK use energy like system for some of the spells, and even runic power doesn't go up when getting hit - it goes up as you use your abilities.

 

Lamaros

Conjecture on party formation is up in the air stuff at the moment given the changes we know and don't know to be taking place with WotLK. But, given what we know:

An Unholy DK will likely not need much of a party to be effective. They will give raid-wide buffs to others and will also have a a reasonable portion of their damage from their shadow damage through DoTs and other spells. They will probably not do an amazing amount of damage themselves, but will earn a spot based on the buffs/debuffs they bring.

A Frost DK will not necessarily be a tank and will likely do a lot more direct damage than Unholy, but a greater portion of it may come from spells (Icy Touch, Howling Blast, DC, Frost Strike) and will get boosts from Warlocks/Mages/Etc. They will probably not need to be as stacked in a party as others.

A Blood DK will probably get the most out of party stacking from all the specs, but how much this is so depends on what happens with the significant party buffs. They will have other things than just Imp. Blood Aura (Hysteria, Mark of Blood) but those other things might not be important, we'll have to see.

However one thing I think we have to keep in mind it that DKs may very likely fill the raid OT positions and will not be competing with Rogues (eg) for positions. Given they are not dependant on being hit to do damage or generate threat they will be able to put out decent DPS while maintaining aggro. They will also probably tank a number of fights if what we are led to believe actually happens.

Hmm, as I write this I just notice that Apaine has said it just below (above) me.

Anyway, I am not too worried about DKs getting a raid spot. They look to have good tanking/OT abilities, good DPS and a lot of possible builds that would be useful. Even if the melee DPS build isn't the greatest it might just be that it's a good OT build, or that the other builds are also good. We shouldn't expect, nor want even, the DK to fill a role that already exists in the game and do it the same way.

On another topic: X Rune Mastery.

What is with these talents? What good is a very small random chance to cut timers for ONE type of rune in half? I've dome some basic math in my head on the topic and I just can't see the usefulness of any of these at this point.

At most you will have 4 of one rune type on your blade. At least you will use 3 abilities in the 10sec cooldown period. It is more likely you will use 4 or 5.

With the GCD that is 6seconds or 7.5 seconds. Include in a runic power ability. That's 7.5 or 9seconds. At the very least it's 6seconds. So you have between 1 and 4 seconds to fit in other abilities. Even if you had endless runes of all types you can still only get in another TWO abilities at best.

This isn't considering the fact that many abilites simply are not spammable. Many are situational, many have CDs, some are "on next hit", et cetera.

If these Talents were changed to "you never run out of this rune type" it still wouldn't be a huge deal:

Endless frost runes? Well Icy Touch has a CD, Frost Strike is next hit, Howling Blast only goes once a min, Chains of Ice and Mind Freeze are situational. What's the point?

If these talents are questionable (apart from, perhaps, Obliterate spam) at that level then how useless do you think they will be at the level they are now. Frost Rune Mastery is 25% when freezing a target. You have three ways to do this. Frost Strike, which is 30% chance, Icy Touch, which is 15% chance talented, and hungering cold, which is a 100% chance.

Ignoring hungering cold because it's got a long CD and uses runic power lets imagine you could hit two icy touches, two frost strikes a rotation. You have a 7.5% chance each Frost Strike hit. And 3.75% with Icy Touch. So:

Chance of Mastery not procing: 80%.

Imagine if it did proc though.

0.0 Icy Touch. Proc. 3F, 1F on 5sec CD.
1.5 Frost Strike. 2F, 1F on 3.5sec CD, 1F on 5sec CD.
3.0 Frost Strike. 1F. 1F on 2sec CD, 1F on 3.5sec CD, 1F on 5sec CD.
4.5 Icy Touch. 0F. 1F on 0.5sec CD, 1F on 2sec CD, 1F on 3.5sec CD 1F on 5sec CD.
5.0 1F. 1F on 3sec CD, 1F on 6sec CD, 1F on 9sec CD.
6.0 Frost Strike. 0F. 1F on 2sec CD, 1F on 5sec CD, 1F on 8sec CD, 1F on 10sec CD.
8.0 Frost Strike. 0F. 1F on 3sec, 1F on 6sec, 1F on 8sec.

So you get 2 more strikes. Of course if you had other abilities in there, say Plague Strike, then this is a best case scenario. And you cannot use any Runic Power abilities.

Anyway my math is a shambles, so no point going on with it. But the problem is simple:

10 seconds. 1.5sec GCD. That means 6 abilities will fit into the time period. So unless you are spamming abilities that use 2 of one Rune type you will fit at best 2 more hits into your rotation, likely less, likely much less when you consider cooldowns, the need to have different rune type on your blade, and other such stuff. And given the low chance of procing the mastery, even given ideal circumstances, why the heck would anyone plan around it?

 

Apaine

A fair bit of the abilities DK has require 2 runes... one of different type.

X mastery might be usefull in conjunction with the idea of the death rune. DK do get skill to convert a blood rune to a death rune on demand - so a blood specced DK possibily would not need any other runes in his blade, but 5 blood runes and 1 unholy. If he needed to use any frost abilities, blood tap is all he needs.

Of course right now it's just a conjecture... if blood tap requires GCD, has Cooldown, or any other issues with it, it's not worth it then. Besides - we probably now only know a small subset of DK's abilities, since given a typical class at lvl 70 has about 30-40 abilities, we only know now about ~20 death knight abilities in alpha.

 

hannigaholic

I think you underestimate the spammability of Frost Strike. You're likely to be using fast weapons, since, unlike Blood, Frost seems to have no 'Weapon damage + X' instant strikes. Because of this you'll easily be able to burn through those Frost Runes as soon as they pop back up.

 

Tulavan

Take any Raid-tank warrior's plate armor. substract shield (biggest shield I've seen on WoWhead is Brutal Gladiator's... 6.6k armor.

Now the remainder multiply by 45% more from frost presence, and 30% more from Unbreakable armor. 1.45*1.3 is 1.885

If that tanking plate gear had at least 10k armor on it to start with, DK would score more armor then a warrior with THAT shield.

(the 25% chance to activate per frost rune used almost guarantees a stable usage if you have 4 frost runes or more on a 10s CD)
8-piece Onslaught set has 10669 AC on it. Remove Block rating/value, and replace it with stats usable for DK, and you got yourself a DK tanking set with more AC than a prot warrior has. With the best shield in game.

for lower Tiers of armor and shield this still holds true.

DK will have mitigation on par with Prot War, and higher avoidance too.


Edited for additional theorycrafting:

We can theoritize from this that there will be two tanking rotations for DK.


One is to maximize the use of Unbreakable armor - i.e. you spam your frost abilities until it activates, then wait for it to end (10sec) to start spamming again. This is avoidance/mitigation rotation

The other one is to spam your frost abilities the moment the runes activate. This time you have a descent chance of wasting the proc of Unbreakable armor, or have it refresh and lose some of the buff's duration (depending on if this talent will have CD qual to its duration or not). This is threat-optimized rotation.

Also, slower weapons will be able to deal more damage if you spam Frost Strike, simply because it converts all of the damage into Frost, thus bypassing the mob's armor. And the higher percentage of hits converted into frost meaning more of your DPS gets through. Frankly speaking with 4 frost runes and 2.5sec weapon, hasted (icy talons), the only damage DK will deal will be frost. 4 strikes every 10 seconds, no GCD. Any lower weapon will have to rely on DK's high parry chance to reset the swing, in order to use all runes properly.

This will also mean that all of the Tanking DK damage will be yellow, and WF totem will be useless. Grace of Air all the way, baby.

 

Tulavan

Frost Strike does not trigger GCD. Depending on youк normal weapon speed and parry chance, resetting the swing timer, you'll most likely have to spam it.

 

Lamaros

Yeah. But that's harder to do a simple little rotation for given the variables. All I was really aiming to illustrate was that the Mastrey talents seems pretty useless given the low chance and the basic nature of the DKs rune system. Few spammable abilities, a ten sec window, and the requirements of using other abilities as well, et cetrea.

@Tulavan:

You wouldn't likely use a slow weapon with Frost, it all points to dual wielding at the moment. A slow weapon will do more damage from Frost Strike but will be too slow. As you have said much damage will probably come from yellow damage, at least compared to other DK specs, and fast weapons will (likely) gain more benifit from other Frost talents (Killing Machine, Frozen Rune Weapon).

Unbreakable Armor is nice, and with 4 frost runes will be ~70% chance to be up, but that still leaves 30% downtime. I wonder how likely you will be to tank with 4 frost runes. I expect you will need to have 1B and 1U at the very least (to taunt, anti-magic shield) and possibly more. If Rune Mastrey became useful then you might be able to get away with only 3 runes on your blade and still proc Unbreakable Will often. However I'm still not sold on a tanking ability that has a chance to proc. It is not reliable and you cannot sensibly plan based on luck (Acclimation is also worrysome; you have to be getting hit with a lot of spells in 15 seconds for that to stack three times with regularity). Perhaps if it was reworked so as to give a 25% chance and increase the chance by a further 25% every time you used a frost rune (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%). Something to make it reliable if still variable. Unless you are spamming frost runes you won't necessarily have it up, but if you are then you will.

You might have to take away the option of having both Unbreakable Armor and Blade Barrier, though.

 

PSGarak

I think people are giving a bad rap to proc-based avoidance. And I think this comes from the old mentality of becoming crushing-immune, where a 1-second 1% gap was a nontrivial chance of tank death. With crushing mechanics giving every indication of being re-written, I think it's time to start looking at proc-based avoidance just like we look at proc-based DPS, net good = uptime% * good-while-up. So long as a DK has some oh-shit buttons for their higher-variance unlucky strings (which they do, possibly not enough), I'd actually prefer streakier avoidance because it plays better to the 5-second regen rule on your healers.

And yeah, on-next-strike attacks will give plenty of breathing room for spaming runes. Expect to be tanking dual-wielding warrior tank weapons, which are usually 1.8.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Lamaros

I would agree when it comes to mitigation that the variables can be ok. They won't make or break something and will even out for the most part, and if mitigation is key at any point the DK does have Icebound Fort. However on the aviodance side it's not as great because it's much more spikey and there is no equivalent "oh shit" button (at the moment). If a fight is survivable if you get hit 30% less then getting unlucky with that 30% aviodance will mean you might die. Or it will mean the fight is going to be doable w/o that avoidance and will be easy with it (or the aviodance will be irrelevant). Maybe they will give DKs an aviodance-like ability later but at the moment I'm going to stick with the uncontrolable variable aviodance is meh thing.

 

Alvira

Are all stirke damage yellow damage? Cos even for other death knight specs, it looks like the majority of the damage will come from strikes rather than normal swing white damage. And because the typical strikes will do weapon damage plus X as their formula, they will stand to benefit from a two hander weapon with a high damage range. A lot of the strikes are similar to an arms warrior's mortal strike, with varying damage and effects.

So, its like the deathknight will have several mortal strikes to use, some lower in damage, others higher in damage. That would seem to favor a two handed weapon, at least for DPS.

Only frost, which will make much more use of ice touch and death coil, and whose frost stirke is on next swing and adds a fixed damage, will gain more from dual wield.

 

Tulavan

I disagree in terms of weapons - The only thing now that points to DW is the +5% hit chance for 1h weapons. And even at that, theres still 20% more to miss the mob you are tanking. Which is huge. Also, keep in mind two points - I will explain why in the later discussion. (1) that for now Frost Strike has no specified flat bonus threat attached to it, that we know. And (2) that not having any specific MH/OH/2H abilities, DW and 2H paperdoll white damage are almost equal, considering all the armor, hit chance, off-hand penalty, etc. after all, it has been balanced that way long ago.
From (1) and (2) we can conclude that higher DPS and threat will come from converting bigger chunk of your damage into Frost, thus bypassing armor. with 4(5?) Frost runes, and a 10sec CD - 2H weapon can convert almost 100% of its damage into Frost, while DW fast weapons - merely half, if even that (all of off-hand damage and a chunk of MH damage, due to fast speed, remain white and armor-affected).

Also, keep in mind that Frozen Rune Weapon depends on weapon speed, so not really favoring anything (1.8/1.8 DW will do the same as 3.6 2H)

Now that I looked at Killing Machine talent I think I see something here. It looks like Blizz is giving people an option into Tanking DW, but with a price that DW rotation will be alot different from 2H rotation. 2H will favor Frost Strike spam, while DW will be much like Enh shammy - Shock (Icy Touch) spam every CD. Every Icy Touch being a crit might offset DPS difference Frost Strike is giving to 2H. How do you like this idea?

 

PSGarak

Two-handers were balanced to do 20% more damage than a one-hander with a shield, to make up for the mitigation, considering only autoattack. Dual-Wielding was balanced to do the same damage as a two-hander. Unfortunately, the scaling wasn't quite done right so while DW and 2H both have 20% higher base damage, DW also scales 20% with attack power. Run the numbers--with a 5% base miss rate, 14AP gives a 2H weapon .95 DPS and a DW setup 1.15 DPS. There's also hit scaling, magnified because on-next-attack abilities effecively give the autoattack swing an extra 19% hit chance, making them scale oddly on one-handed weapons. The extra hit makes it a larger DPS increase for DW before other effects, the frost damage conversion may or may not overcome that. There's also the consideration that there are currently tanking one-handers, and there is much work towards gear homogeneity, so you're unlikely to see tanking two-handers (aside from PvP rewards possibly).

That said, I expect to see more DW-friendly talents in the tree as it develops. If done well, I suspect that shallow frost investments will still make good use of a 2Her for primarily blood/unholy builds with some tanking talents, and the DW stuff will come later.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Lamaros

Frost gains from DW based on some assumptions. DW will hit more often and proc the Frozen Rune Blade debuff more often, and Frost Strike will be more spammable with faster weapons while still allowing you to use your other abilities inside the 10 cooldown period. More frost strikes also means more frozen debuffs, more hits means more crits means more icy touch crits means more frozen debuffs, more frozen debufs means more frost runes means more spammable frost strikes, more Unbreakable Armor procs .. etc.

Or so seems to be the intention. It's not all there at this point in time, but it seems to be the point they're aiming at in Frost, at least for tanking.

For DPS it might be that you will go with a 2H and work it with Blood or Unholy and use instant attacks, increased shadow and frost damage with bigger spells hits, etc. But for Frost tanking it seems dual wielding is the go.

 

Alvira

You have to also factor in that DK only have 6 runes right now on their runblade. Most people will have at least one of each rune minimum or risk losing the ability to activate most of the abilities that use that rune type. So, most builds will have at least 1 frost, 1 blood and 1 unholy rune. This leaves just 3 runes to go what ever type you wish to emphasie on. Assuming you want to go deep frost knight, so you take all frost runes for the remainder. That will give you one unholy rune, one blood rune and 4 frost runes.

Runes also take 10 seconds before they will reactivate and be available for use. This makes most deathknight routines based on a 10 second cycle.

A deep frost tree will have a high powered icy touch, But Icy Touch has a 4 second cooldown. So, at max, within a 10 second cycle, you can only icy touch twice. Frost strike has zero cooldown. But, based on the rune layout, you will only have two frost runes left within a 10 second cycle to use frost strike on.

Given such constraints, even if you are dual wielding, you aren't going to get to use more frost strikes. The runes and their cooldown time prevent you from doing so. So, why not go dual wield and spam 4 frost strikes and use zero icy touch? Because there are talents in the frost tree that gives you more rune power per icy touch cast which means you can charge up your rune power to acst death coil that much faster. And there are so many nice talents in the frost tree that increases the power of icy touchalready. You would be silly to go deep frost and not utilise icy touch.

And with that one remaining blood rune, there's a good chance you will just end up using it on blood stirke (the only strike that costs 1 blood rune). And that again is based on melee damage, so a two hander benefits more here.

We don't know how long frost vulnerability lasts at this point. But if a two hander can keep it up just fine, then going dual wield will have no noticable benefit where this is concerned.

At this point Blizzard just hasn't given much thought into a deathknight specialised around dual wield. Their concept of a DK is one that wields a big fearsome two handed weapon. Their entire concept of strikes is based on making the best use out of it. This is not like the fury warrior tree where a lot of thought has been put into making dual wield good for that tree.

I must stress again, white damage from weapon swings alone is only a relatively small part of a deathknight's damage. Consider the typical 10 second cycle of a two hander blood DK.

He swings his two hander 3 times.
He uses degeneration (which is a strike).
He uses Plague strike
He uses blood strike twice.
He casts icy touch once.
At the end of all that, he casts a deathcoil with whatever runic power he has.

So, consider the damage from his 3 white attack swings compared to the damage he is doing from 5 strikes and one deathcoil? White damage just isn't everything to a deathknight.

 

Lamaros

I sometimes wonder if people read every post in this thread, given how much people repeat stuff or post conjecture as if half the other participants in this thread havn't also been discussing such things.

In the post directly above yours I have indicated the reasons Frost Tanking is likely to use Dual Wielding.

What a tank uses their blood/unholy runes on will depend a lot on the situation, but there is no reason to expect they will use it on blood strike if they are dual wielding. Lets look at some of these abilities we're talking about as they currently stand:

Death Strike: 60% weapon damage, 1U. Instant. Highly situational, very unlikely anyone will be using them for anything but grind healing. Gets more DPS from a 2H, but isn't a DPS ability exactly.
Blood Strike: 60% weapon damage +damage per disease. 1B. Instant. Better with a 2H, though not overly.
Hysteria: 20% up to 3k. Lasts 30 sec. 1B. 2H makes no difference.
Plague Strike: 100% weapon damage +dot. 1U 1B. Instant. Better with a 2H.
Degeneration: 60% weapon damage +stackable dot. 1U. Instant. Better with a 2H.
Frost Strike: 100% weapon damage +200. 1F. On next hit. Better with a 2H, but not as spammable.

Of the hits you do most direct damage from, Blood Strike and Frost Strike, both have advantages to being 2H. Frost has disadvantages to being slow however, and both have elements of +damage that bears no relation to the weapon damage, making it not a major concern. The talentable Blood Strike may swing it in the 2H favour, depending how the talent works. Plague Strike and Degeneration both do more damage with a 2H but also get a bit from their DoTs.

If you are Blood/Unholy then you will likely want a big 2H weapon with heavy damage for the Plague/Degen/Blood/Degen/Blood combos because all three gain from a 2H and all are instant.
If you are heavy Blood then you may want to DW because you will get more damage from white damage (Bloody Vengenace, Blood Gorged), especially if taking Icy Touch haste.
Heavy Frost looks to be DW for the reasons mentioned already.
If you are Unholy/Frost it looks more borderline with advantages for both.
Heavy Unholy looks more likely to go with a 2H.

 

Alvira

I wasn't talking specifically about a tanking Deathknight. I was talking about deathknights in general. Even what you listed shows that a fair number of builds are likely to use two hander. And those that may use dual wield are iffy:

You said if you are heavy blood you will use DW. I disagree. Heavy blood will use obliterates, or blood stirkes in their routine. You would be silly not to. What other blood rune based damage abilities are you going to use if you don't use blood strike or obliterate? Plus other unholy rune based stirkes to get some diseases in. All these strikes are based on weapon melee damage. So, the bigger the weapon, the better. Even for a deep blood knight, strikes will be a major part of his damage, not white damage.

There is no big difference between heavy blood and blood/unholy. Heavy blood will still also use at least one or two unholy rune based stirkes to get some diseaeses in. Because of stirke cooldowns and practicality. You simply won't see a blood knight with 6 blood runes.

That only leaves frost and unholy frost for consideration of possible dual wield.

I already mentioned why even deep frost knights might not necessarily benefit that much from using dual wield.

It depends on whether frost vulnerability can be kept up even with a two hander and its duration. If it can, there is no difference in that respect between two hander vs dual wield. About all those fancy frozen effects and such. That is definitley conjuncture at this point. But speaking as a mage that has been raiding for a long time. Raid bosses don't get frozen, period. So, all the fancy combos or damage increases that you are thinking about with frost are not going to work unless they make the radical change of allowing raid bosses to be frozen.

I also specifically mentioned why the rune layout precludes frost strike spam. A deathknight just doesn't have that many runes to spam. So, even if you are hitting 6 or 7 times within 10 seonds, it doesn't matter because you won't get to do frost strike more than 2 or 3 times within a 10 second cycle. I even showed a deep frost knight with 4 frost runes. 2 will be on icy touch, 2 will be on frost strike in a 10 second cycle. This can be achieved whether you are two hander or whether you are dual wield.

So, the benefits of dual wielding right now are very iffy.

One other important thing to consider.

If boss parry mechanisms are still in place come WOTLK. You don't want to hit the boss that often if you are the one tanking. Because a boss parry will lead to a swifter next strike. And your healers might not be able to handle that kind of damage spike.

 

gorsameth

The biggest benifit to a dw tanking deathknight is killing machine. With the low crit chance of a typical tank and the slow speed of a 2h your hardly going to crit.
Yet by duelwielding you increase your number of attacks and thus the number of melee crits in a given timeframe and causes you to have a fair amount of crit icy touches.

But indeed as Alvira said. The biggest downside to dw tanking i can see atm is the load of parry's you'll be getting hit back pretty hard.

 

Rhaegal

That's only true if you assume infinite healer mana. Just because you have to go through periods of spikier damage does not mean that either (a) you can heal through it for 100% of the fight, or (b) you can't heal through it at all. From a healer standpoint, healing different flavors of tanks is very different as it is (ex: knowing that a paladin below 30% health isn't in quite as much danger as a warrior below 30% health, and adjusting your "oh shit heals" accordingly), and learning to heal DKs will just be an added extension to that. If you know to watch for a specific buff on your tank falling off (in this case, Unbreakable Armor), then you can adjust heals as necessary, and take breaks during the downtime when it's up.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

sören

People that keep stating facts regarding deathknight that are, most of the time untrue, just because they want to tank as two hand wielders need to step up. Read facts regarding deathknights and think before posting. The only real downside to duel wield tanking is the increase in parry-haste mechanic procs in bosses, something that, by the way, blizz has realised to be an issue in certain cases (brutallus) and therefor does not always apply.

Duel wielding has many benefits that exceed those of two hand wielding, in my opinion. Those include;

More specific stat allocation, and most likely value, due to being able to chose two different stat slots, with enchants.

Better attack power scaling, which is especially nice, considering how much attack power a massively armor packing deathknight will be given through bladed armor.

Faster usage of renewed frost runes, especially irregular ones, gained through frost rune mastery. Also faster burst threat since frost strikes can be used faster initially.

Steadier threat generation through duelwielding, which sure is debatable considering you will be hitting more often with the two hander, however, I still stand by this.

The duelwield specific talent, early in the tree, granting 3% hit - only to duel wielders.

What you must consider, always, is that you cannot wield a two hander with greater speed than that of 2.00, which is very rare as it is, and no matter what way you look at it, an attack which is on your next swing timer will greatly benefit from having a faster weapon, making it easier to use, when you need it, and so choose to. The only real downside is you will get somewhat less damage due to boss armor, which, by the way, is rather low as it is, when debuffed. Also, there's the fact about glacier rot and having your entire arsenal at the lower hit cap, and applied to be frost damage.
It's certainly up for debate, especially if blizz decides to make decent two hand tanking weapons available to deathknights, just don't declare duel wielders obselete or lesser in any way, especially through your petty arguments. Hey, I wouldn't even dream of tanking with anything slower than 1.7, just because it wouldn't be so much under your control, but I could atleast think of valid arguments for two hand wielding rather than just: "its what they were designed to do, and it looks badass!" and I made them up in a matter of minutes.

Don't drag this forum under, people!

EDIT: By the way, you DON'T need one of each rune type, by the looks of the description; bloodboil is of the mocking blow mechanic, making it rather useless, most of the time, or atleast when it matters.

Empowered rune weapon; a ~16.7% increase in the generation of that, by the way, rather useless runetype for tanking, blood rune, does not make it right. Especially, not something you would assume to take, which seems to be the general idea.

EDIT2: I should mention, that my theory at the moment is that the use of 5 frost runes and one unholy rune (for the usage of both upkeeping the disease, degeneration, for glacier rot, and using anti magic shield when not on cooldown) would be optimal.

 

Azurai

The problem with DW DK tanking is that you run into the same itemization issues that Blizzard is trying to get away from. If DKs are sharing warrior gear as planned, one can imagine not having an abundance of hit. In addition the DK has no increased OH damage. Frankly the best OH benefit will be as a stat stick, since no abilities strike with two weapons as of now.

You also have to consider the effect of parry thrash on threat generation and ability usage. A DK in full tank gear can be expected to have anywhere from 40-60% parry depending on procs, possibly even higher. A normal 1.4-1.6 tanking weapon will see very little benefit from this since it's already way past the minimum to spam 6 frost strikes.

A 2her will almost always have hasted attacks in this situation - with a fast hitting boss almost assuredly. If you want to take full advantage of this mechanic with a 1her, you'll need to be running a dps 1her anyway, losing your increased mitigation stats available on tanking weapons and basically negating the entire reasoning behind going DW for frost strike spam anyway. But regardless, looking at the weapons you would use at level 70 for the average early SWP guild (ie right now): [Dragonscale-Encrusted Longblade] vs [Cataclysm's Edge]

Ignoring stats and just comparing avg damage, you get 162 vs 483. Assuming 800 ap with a naked group (warriors have ~500 and lets assume DK gear, dropping block related itemization and that its a bit more aggressive) you see a 57.14 dps increase. Because FS is NOT normalized because it is ONH we get a raw hit average of 248 damage vs 683. Add 200 flat from FS bonus and you get 448 vs 883. Since it converts the strike to frost damage, you're getting no armor reduction so that will be the raw output (not counting debuffs/buffs on the boss). So quite literally you'd have to get off TWICE as many frost strikes with the 1her to consider it superior purely from this perspective. With Icy Talons being a passive 15% haste, CE would be down to 3.04 sec base and with one parry down to 1.82 sec swing timer. So in no situation would a tanking MH actually generate more threat, because there is 0 chance of you using 6 frost runes for JUST frost strikes.

So no, frost strike really isn't indicative of a DW ability, especially since they made it ONH so it isn't normalized at all, not that it would help the case for DW much since AP is probably going to be fairly tame in full tank gear. Even with frost rune mastery, the difference is going to be having to use an extra icy touch or two, and since its already about the 1h frost strike damage range before scaling for AP, I don't see that as being a net loss in threat for the 2hers...

Am I missing something?

EDIT: I'm assuming bosses will be freezable in wotlk to allow all the new freezing synergies to work, like dazing works now. Otherwise frost rune mastery is a moot point...

 

Tulavan

I myself am a pro-2H tanking, but you indeed are missing something.

Killing machine will proc about 4 times more for DWing 1.8/1.8 lets say, as compared to 2H 3.6
That means that the preferred threat generation mechanic for DW will be ever-critting Icy Touch every 4 seconds, with the rest of frost runes being dumped into FS, as they become available.

While 2H will be spamming FS on every hit, with Icy Touch every 15-20 seconds to renew haste/slow, or when Killing Machine procs (which is rarely)

EDITED: Theres also the fact that talented Icy Touch spam (DW) will return alot more Runic Power, than Frost Strike spam (2H) thus enabling DW tanks to use spells like Death Coil more often to boost their threat and DPS.

 

Tulavan

Soren, I do believe you are misunderstanding the concept.

I see how you look at DW tanking, and having things under control is almost a given, but see, with 2H tanking there is no such thing. 2H is purely spamming steady Frost Strikes as many times per 10 seconds as fits there. Concept of having control is irrelevant when every hit of yours is equally able to be Frost. Its steady, dependable, and any attempt to control it will result in decrease of threat and DPS.

 

PSGarak

Regarding Rune Set-Up: It won't be strictly necessary to have one of every rune type, all the time. If you don't know what type of pull you're facing it's the safe bet, if you're more experienced at these things you can know what sorts of abilities you won't be using and not Rune up for them in favor of more frost strikes. Additionally, there are non-talent high-cooldown abilities to convert normal runes to Death (formerly Chromatic) Runes on demand, giving you some room for improvisation. One of each is certainly the safe way to play it, but not necessarily the best, and I expect min-maxing your Rune setup will be one of the more subtle aspects of playing a DK.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Azurai

4x as much is not entirely true, you're forgetting the 19% extra miss for white attacks, in addition to the bigger impact of parry thrashing on the 2her. Overall I don't think its nearly as big a difference as you suggest, since 2h tank will go for Chill to the Grave and possibly bypass Killing Machine altogether, putting points elsewhere for +threat. Auto crit on IT is only 50% more damage to begin with, though I think FS is getting spell crit 50% instead of a melee 100% right now too? Regardless, while there isn't enough information to actually run numbers, I don't think DW has nearly the dominance that has been suggested. Perhaps if DK tank talents were consolidated instead of forcing wasted points in the blood tree then DW would be able to take enough threat talents to make it plainly superior. Right now the trees are set up haphazzardly enough that you just stack the points into the abilities that synergize most with 2h or dw.

 

PSGarak

With the melee one-roll system, the 19% miss penalty won't affect the crit chance. It actually will be four times the number of crits, sans parry-haste. You're right that the tree needs to be consolidated to really favor it, I do think that's very likely to happen.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png