I was testing some stuff out on a target dummy (i know these things suck) but on average 1 DnD did 4749dmg, 1hs + 1ds did 5198dmg, and hs+hs+hs did 6723dmg(using death runes). Now even though the DnD deals slightly less dmg than hs+ds and doesnt produce death runes last I heard DnD had a threat multiplier of dmg x 1.5 giving it 7123.5total threat. Is my math messed up or would it seem like dropping DnD on just 1 target is still better for threat

I used GoDD and 3/3 Morbidity for the test

Blood tank is very sensitive to armor reduction on target. DnD ignores armor, DS and HS don't. Ask a rogue friend to expose armor on dummy and you will see difference.

Thanks for help you guys...so delete please

Samehada

I managed to acquire a second piece of tier 10 yesterday. It was a no brainer for me to replace 2 pieces of tier 9, as they were only i232. I have been reading some arguments on here saying that simply having the 2 piece set bonus and using the reaping build will net a higher dps, where others say you need several pieces of ICC gear as well and possibly an ICC25 or equivalent weapon. I cannot seem to find a definitive answer.

Just wondering if anyone could shed a bit more light on this? I have a few ICC 10 man pieces but don't know if it's enough to warrant changing and sticking to a reaping build yet. Should I wait for more ICC gear?

while i understand blood tanking, and HS/DS, is sensitive to ArP, DnD gets significant boost from raid buffs as well. And seeing how according to my impromptu (not necessarily accurate) math DnD gets significantly better aggro it just seems that DnD still nets more aggro than HS/DS.

On a similar note does anyone know an accurate aggro per ability list?

All your skills get boosted from raid buffs. The easiest way to check how much is to choose some steady fight in 25 raid, drop DnD few times during the encounter and look at combat logs how hard it hits compared to HS and DS.

When is the optimal time to use Empowered Rune Weapon?

As a DPS, you won't find it very useful at all. The only times I'll use it during a fight is if I mess up my rotation and go way off, or if I, for some reason, pop AotD in combat instead of before the fight start. Using AotD messes up all your runes and wastes a lot of them. Using ERW right after the channeling time is over, you'll not miss out on too much (4 seconds of DPSing), and most likely benefit a lot more from it than if you didn't.

If you're a tank, you'll probably find it useful in situations where you NEED runes but don't have any.

For Unholy DPS it's usually best to use it right after the first cycle and Summon Gargoyle, your first rotation becomes IT-PS-BS-BT/SS-SS-Gargoyle-ERW-SS-SS-BS-BS. The reason to use it as DPS at all is that for Unholy your damage per Global CD is higher for rune abilities than for runic power abilities (with the exception of Summon Gargoyle), so if you use ERW right at the start you'll be able to use it again at the 5:15 minute mark (assuming the fight lasts that long). That way you shift your damage composition a bit from runic power abilities to higher-dps rune abilities.

As a tank, I find it most useful when you're low on threat, mostly at a pull. It's also fairly useful if you're coming up to a phase where you'll be needing RP and know you won't have enough (perhaps you need enough to make sure you can both AMS and counter, like tanking Lady). Though it's more useful as Frost tank, as you use up runes two-by-two.

As a Blood tank it's only use so far that I've seen is if you're low on health and you could use two Death Strikes within the next 3sec. That, or if you pull with DnD-IT-PS-HS and want to frontload a lot of threat.

Hi there. So I was fooling around with my meta gems on Rawr (I'm blood dps), and I noticed rawr suggested using different meta gems than the BiS thread/blood simple on here...

Rawr seemed to think Thundering Skyflare Diamond was 13 dps more than Relentless Earthsiege Diamond, and that. Chaotic Skyflare Diamond was 4 dps more than Relentless Earthsiege Diamond... I see Chaotic Skyflare Diamond requires 2 blue gems, and that except for just a couple pieces of gear, using a 10 str /15 stam purple gem (as well as a +10 stats) to fulfill reqs usually lowers your dps by about as much as the chaotic boosts it, due to the loss of 10 str. However, Thundering Skyflare Diamond has the same reqs as Relentless Earthsiege Diamond (1 red 1 yellow 1 blue), so it would be easily met (like relentless) with a +10 stats nightmare's tear...

For those unfamiliar with Thundering Skyflare Diamond, the gem says it has a chance to increase melee/ranged haste rating. Looking a little deeper on wowhead, it appears to increase melee/ranged haste rating by 480 for 6 seconds, has a 100% proc (couldn't quite figure out if this is 100% on white melee, or if heart strike etc. will proc, spells apparently do not.) with either a 45 or 60 second ICD.

I realize it's only 13 dps, but there doesn't seem to be any major reason not to use it (I realize haste isn't a great stat, and that the +3% crit damage is nice, but rawr usually seems to be correct), and in fact it is actually a little cheaper than Relentless Earthsiege Diamond on my server.

Opinions? Is Thundering Skyflare Diamond better or worse than Relentless Earthsiege Diamond? Lots of haste vs. a small amount of crit and a nice 3% crit damage boost?

Does Desolation affect gargoyle?

Hi All,

Long time reader, first time poster.
I have a tanking question, I've been DW frost tanking and I'm really enjoying it.
I was using [Black Icicle] MH and [Rimefang's Claw] for OH, that was fine.
I also had a blood tanking spec with [Tyrannical Beheader] which I didn't really used.
Lately i got [Ramaladni's Blade of Culling] which makes my blood gear far superior to my frost gear (not the HC version don't know why it linked that one ).
I've tried tanking as blood and didn't like it at all, but i'd hate to go back to lower tier weapons just for frost spec since i know the effect of the weapon DPS on my threat generation.

My question is:
Is 2H frost tanking still valid? if so can you please recommend specs and glyphs? I know blizz declared the frost tree as the DW tree but I still hope I won't have to tank as blood.

Thanks in advance.
Falafelos,
Aerie Peak, EU

Saying that Frost is 'The DW Tree' is true, but doesn't make it NOT viable for 2H. Both are viable. I tank 2H, and IMO I don't get the points that I want for tanking if I spend them on the DWing talents.
Nobody seems to be having troubles DWing and in fact are coming up with quite creative ways of doing it well, if you read the threads.

I am a little perplexed as to why you would post asking for spec and glyph ideas when the first post of the tanking thread in these forums describes everything quite clearly. These folks work very hard on these posts and they deserve to have them read rather than skipped over.

So here is my question, if the answer is here already, sorry I must have missed it...

At the moment I use an almost hybrid style spec and it works very well( not 80 tested), and I'm very curious to know, is a non-deep spec even a viable option for 80 content... there is always debate between frost/blood (almost never unholy) tanking, but I can't seem to find anyone who seems to know about hybrid tanking. Is this because it doesn't work for 80 content, or that people haven't tried it

As far as WOTLK raid content , a Hybrid tank build will def be sub-par compared to full tree and 15-20 points into another tree...

Your arguing for a spec you enjoy is not changing the fact that it's not currently feasible to tank anything of any worth with non-conventional specs. If you're arguing because you think you're fabulous in pre-80 content, here's some news: With DPS gear, DPS spec and Frost presence, you could still tank it.

For anything up to and including heroics you can pretty much glyph DnD, spec into morbidity, DnD and AFK. If you're feeling really keen, you could even IT/PS/Pest and then just wait for everything to die.

Determining factors for tanking are not, as you put it, "digging deep". There is no currently viable combination of talents that does not include 50 points in one tree simply because nothing you can gain by losing those last 5 points in the tree is superior to them. Period. And if you want more detail about a spec, please indulge us with it.

A Blood-Unholy hybrid spec was viable when Sarth 3D was still difficult and Will of the Necropolis worked differently and only for this one encounter. Once WotN was buffed (and subsequently nerfed again) and Bone Shield was changed, the spec was outdated. It also only worked at Sarth because threat was a non-issue.
The penultimate tier talents in every tree are a significant threat boost that cannot be simply discarded. Also, there are pretty much no benefits to hybrid speccing on current cotent. On Sarth you took the hybrid spec, because of (at that time) 6% stamina from Veteran, spell deflection, 6% magic reduction in the Unholy tree, AMZ and an overpowered Bone Shield. Bone Shield isn't as strong as then, Veteran only yields 3% stamina, 6% magic reduction helps you nothing on current content and deep Blood talents are by comparison ridiculously good.

I want an addon that i can configure to show me when UA is available. Almost all addons will track it in the same way the game does: It'll show it as available if there is a rune to cast it and unavailable if there isn't. This is highly useless as a tank, as not having the runes to cast it doesn't mean you can't BT to cast it. I've tried TellMeWhen, It can't do it. I tried Power Auras Classic, it has the option to "only display CD" or something (tooltip says "wont check if other conditions are satisfied", which sounds exactly like what it should) only it doesn't.

To elaborate: I want an addon that'll show me some visual cue if UA is available, but that cue will NOT go away if I spend all my F/D runes, it'll go away ONLY if the ability is on CD. Sexycooldown does a good job of showing it, however I find the addon terribly ugly and not very informative. I want a static display, preferably with a numerical indication not a fancy icon moving along a bar.

TellMeWhen should be able to do that.

Set UA as the ability name,
Enable Icon,
"Icon type" set to Cooldown,
"Cooldown type" set to Spell or ability,
"Show icon when" set to Usable.

I have all my cooldowns set up like that and it works as you described for me.

I have the latest version of TMW, and I did exactly that. I then cast 2xIT so I have no runes able to trigger UA, and it's invisible. Obviously, it works fine if it's on CD anyway, but not having runes up overrides this.

Most addons register it as CDing, when it's clearly not, it just doesn't have the resources to cast it.

I made a hasty assumption anyway and based what I said off cooldowns that require RP rather than runes. Apologies.

I suppose maybe it has to do with how addons or the UI might view runes as cooldowns themselves rather than traditional resources like energy, rage, RP, and mana. If there's an addon that lets you set up specific conditions (like ignoring runes), maybe that would be able to do it.

Maybe go a round-about way and find an addon that would let you set an icon to light up 60 seconds after the last time you used UA rather than trying to time it like a cooldown. I'm not sure if something like that is out there, but when traditional methods don't work you either have to be creative with what you can find or write something yourself. =\