Asari

In the frost tree, there's a talent that gives 3% chance for melee attacks to miss you. How viable is this and how does it play in with high defense?

Additionally, how much research has been done on main tanking as DK in raids and has anyone found truly viable builds yet? Blood seems like it might be a good tank tree, but that's only if the heals scale well at level 80.

 

Janraea

Viable? It's a good talent, and the reason frost is competitive currently in the endgame theory-wars..

Blood is the only tree that *doesn't* seem viable for raid tanking - the heals scale for solo play, they're insignificant compared to 6000 damage boss swings.

 

Enthralled

Can a DK act as MT in a 10 man raid setting? 25 man? Only on specific bosses?

How much gear support is there currently for DK tanking ( I am recalling the days when ferals could in theory MT but had a very hard time getting the gear they needed to do so)?

 

Theldon

A bit off topic for this forum but is Aldor/Scryer reputation making a return in Lich King?

 

Jasin

Blizzard has said that they intend for every tanking class to be capable of being MT in any content with much less in the way of niches than in BC (e.g. Pallys for AoE).

A pleasantly surprising amount. If you look at the consolidated loot lists (e.g. MMO Champion's Naxx25 List), you'll notice that tanking plate generally comes in "with shield stats" and "without shield stats." There is generally one non-set item of each type for each of the 8 main armor slots.

 

Asari

Another tanking question... does anyone know where I can find a good list of consolidated changes that occurred for tanking and how they effect real game play and not just theory-craft? For instance I've heard that Crushing Blows got taken out, but I can't find anything proving this. And while there's a thread on the existence of diminishing returns for dodge and parry, it doesn't say much on how this really effects gearing. (e.g. How much dodge/parry rating should you aim for at 80 and at what point should you start to look at other stats?)

 

SpaceDrake

Crushes have been taken out because... crushes have been taken out. Seriously, stand in front of a +3 level mob with maxed base defense observe what happens. It won't crush you. It doesn't need "proof", it's happened and Blizzard confirmed it.

Now for my simple tank-related question: is it absolutely confirmed what boss dodge-parry rates are, and do Wrath bosses have similar dodge/parry to other bosses? I'm trying to figure out what the expertise soft and hard caps are for tanks, and it'll go a long, long way to figuring out just how viable dual-wield tanking will be.

 

Jasin

I think the reason that you don't see any guidelines on dodge/parry (obviously, uncrittable is the first gear goal) is that the math of avoidance just got far more difficult/interesting. In the past, you could have reasonable assurance when choosing between two items by using stat weights for your general level of gear. However, the way that DR works means that deciding optimally between two items means calculating the marginal effect of DR with all of your other gear on.

Practically, this means that most of us will be using Rawr (once a DK Tank module is available) or a spreadsheet to model gear choices, because rules of thumb will be much harder to rely on going forward. It would be tough to look at the items on your character sheet and in your bag to optimize the best combination without a tool that makes accurate DR calculations based on all your available gear.

 

Cayl

Has anyone done conclusive testing on whether an Icy Touch/Plague Strike applied before the previous dot wears off refreshes (with no loss of dot ticks) or replaces (restarting the dot timer altogether). How about for the Scourge Strike glyph?

 

misada

yes, and no. it is still in the game, but i was using it as a generalized rep as i didn't know what the wotlk shoulder enchant rep is. so will you be doomed to grind aldor/scryer rep to get shoulder enchants, no. however you will be grinding rep for SOMEONE to get the wotlk ones.

also i do believe the highest dps one in woltk will be 40ap 15 crit, an only marginal upgrade from the exalted aldor ones.

links:

[Greater Inscription of Vengeance]
[Greater Inscription of the Axe]


@Asari

that talent is almost a requirement in my opinion, it's 3% less chance to be hit, so would be nearly the same to 3% more dodge OR 3% more parry.

@Cayal

from what i've noticed, it resets the timer when you apply, though hard to say for certain i'm almost positive that it's "replaces" the existing disease, not "extends" it. the scourge strike glyph is useful for solo, but as for raiding i'm not to sure of just how useful it is. it's not 100%, and even with the current "Best" rotation it's not a guaranteed proc. at best it's a nice saver for a lucky proc after boss movement, at worst it's a good way to screw up rotations if you try to use it's procs to keep uptime on the diseases.

 

dalavita

Are the death knights spells based on melee crit like they are based on attack power for scaling, or are they based on spell crit?

Melee crit benefits from agility and other talents whereas spell crit does not, 20% melee crit vs 9% spell crit. It'd be sad if it was the later.

 

Najani

Personally, I went with 4% parry until I hit 70 and got fallen crusader. For most kill quests I'd mount up, gather a bunch of mobs and AOE them down. The parry seemed to help quite a bit, as did mixing in a healthy amount of tanking gear. (Speaking of, IIRC the quest rewards from the first Nexus and AN quests have some pretty hot tanking pieces. DPS gear is a dime a dozen, I'd suggest picking up the tanking stuff.)

After tanking a bunch of the entry level instances (UK, Nexus, first two at AN, generally with a bunch of T6+ geared AOEers with an itchy trigger finger), I found that dropping a DND right before the pull and using DG to initiate the pull seemed to work the best. I'd then toss PS and IT on the mob I wanted to die first and Pestilence it to the rest when they all arrived in the DnD. After that I get up UB as soon as possible to secure AOE threat. (I highly suggest not having RS macroed into other abilities for AOE tanking. It sucks to miss a UB because you just ate 20 rage on an unexpected RS. Use it manually.) I've also found that using BB is generally not a good idea. Better to save the rune for getting another DnD up asap and using your 2nd blood rune for Pest juggling. (This being said, make sure you burn your blood runes in a timely manner or you'll get crushed without having your parry bonus up.) Also, I tend to use DS a lot over SS in AOE situations (for the boosted AE healing threat). I'd expect this may change once I'm in some better gear. All in all I've been fairly impressed with the DK's taking abilities. In a few instances I was able to hold aggro and take reasonable damage on boss mobs 4-5 levels higher than me. (Thank god for Rune Strike.)

Also, remember we don't have challenging shout to fall back on. Start your AOE threat generation quickly and make that your focus. Better to have one mob smack an aggressive rogue and taunt it back rather than all but one mob beeline for the hunters/locks/mages/etc.

Speaking of, does anyone know if CEing your ghoul gives you the threat, or the now dead ghoul? 1 pt for what could effectively be a 1.5s cast AOE ohshitIlostaggro button may not be a bad trade.

On another note, anyone else annoyed with how worthless bone shield is for AOE pulls? Don't get me wrong, its absurdly OP for single target boss encounters, but even with 5 charges its down 1 second into an AOE pull. I guess it is making the initial burst damage from an AOE pack more manageable. Maybe I'm just bitching for the sake of bitching.

 

richard

Are Death and Decay and Unholy Blight affected by haste?

 

Arakki

Has anyone else seen an anomaly in the amount of Sudden Death procs while leveling up? It is supposed to have a 20% chance on a BS or a HS but the amount of procs has gone down. According to ProcWatch 1.1 during the whole level 71 I had a total of 790 procs, 72 I had 517 procs, level 73 I had of 117 procs and during level 74 I had 11 procs total. I haven't changed my rotation since level 68 or 69 as I haven't gotten any new skills between this time.

Anyone else seeing this kind of behaviour? And no, ProcWatch was not on pause/suspend mode.

 

faight

A couple really dumb ones:

Does Icy Talons stack with Unholy Presence?

Is Howling Blast affect by Impurity?

In unholy if I DND before I put up a disease is the entire duration of DND unnaffected by Ebon Plague?

Does Bone Shield have a timer before another bone can be lost similar to Lightning Shield/etc?

Is there any way to specify your ghoul pet as a target for Corpse Explosion other than targeting them specifically? /cast [target=pet] Corpse Explosion does not work, but doing it with Death Coil does, you have to do /target pet;/cast Corpse Explosion. Is there a way around this or am I stuck? If I set pet as focus will I be able to /cast [target=focus] CE or will it return the same "Target is alive" error?

And finally:

Can I Death Grip people off of their mounts in midair while I myself am flying and then use a slowfall effect of some sort to not die myself, alternatively can I death grip people from the ground in to the air and cause them to die that way (perhaps they're standing on a cliff and I'm hovering over the gorge below).

I apologize, I am at work currently and I just though of the focus thing for CE, unfortunately I can't test it for a while, and by the time I get off work servers will be down for maintenance.

 

• frmorrison

Yes, however for dps you still want to use Blood Aura (Unholy is best for PvP).

Yes, Howling Blast is a spell (so is affected by spell miss rate) so gets the bonus.


Some of the other things you can test yourself.

 

Bonestorm

I see this macro getting tossed around a lot:

Everywhere I see this posted people are saying it will use Mind Freeze if the cooldown is up, and Strangulate if not, including the big DPS compendium thread here. I've been testing it out, and if the cooldown is up for both (and I have the resources for both obviously), this macro will always cast both at the same time. Am I doing something wrong, or does this style of macro just not really work?

 

Prinsesa

Enthralled: In terms of a DK main-tanking, what we do know for sure at this point is that they are supposed to be able to. They have all the tools to do so:

* Taunts (albeit lacking a multi-target taunt,
* Increased threat, reduced damage stance
* Several mitigation talents
* Itemization support (defense rating, parry rating, dodge rating, etc.)
* Panic buttons (Icebound Fortitude, Unbreakable Armor, etc.)

In practice, DKs have only started hitting 80 as of yesterday, so it'll be a while before we see widespread DK MTs, but DK tanking has been tested as viable during the beta test, although I'm not up to speed on how well they mathematically measure up to Warriors/Paladins/Druids.

Theldon: There are two factions in the Sholazar Basin, the Frenzyheart Tribe and the Oracles, who are opposed to each other like the Aldors and the Scryers. As in TBC, you can only choose one of them to gain rep with, but the choice is not nearly as important as Aldor vs. Scryers, because the shoulder enchants are located in a different faction.

Apart from the rep rewards, all of which are eventually replaceable, the only thing you'll miss out from either faction will be two Jewelcrafting recipes.

Asari: Significant tanking changes:

* Crushing blows will only be caused by mobs that are +4 levels or higher than you. This means that they will not realistically occur in a raid situation, since the most you'll be facing is a +3 mob.

* Blessing of Salvation has been removed, but tanks have received a 43% threat increase on top of their baseline threat increases to make up for the loss. For a Death Knight, this means that 1 point of damage is worth (1.43 * 1.45) or 2.07 points of threat, or layman's terms, that you'll always be running with Blessing of Salv on your entire group ON TOP OF Frost Presence's 45% threat increase. For the most part, Warriors/Paladins/Druids have been using this really high threat situation to gear exclusively for mitigation.

* Avoidance has been put on diminishing returns. This means that the first 100 points of dodge rating (and other avoidance stats) offers more dodge percentage than the next 100 points, and so on. In practice, you don't really have to do any number crunching for this, since this new avoidance model is similar to the armor model in that the Time-To-Live remains constant. For more details, refer to the Combat Ratings at level 80

SpaceDrake: As was noted in the DPS Compendium, Blood would need 123 expertise rating, while Frost/Unholy would need 173 rating to hit the Dodge cap, assuming you took all the relevant expertise talents in your tree.

As for parry, we won't know for sure until more people move into the raiding scene and we start getting some combat logs. Keep in mind that parry rates would sometimes vary across different bosses in TBC, though.

dalavita: All of our abilities that use spell damage use (AGI + critical strike rating) to determine crit chance, with the exception of Icy Touch, Howling Blast and Death Coil, which still uses (INT + critical strike rating). That being said, with the merging of critical strike rating to provide for both melee and spell crits, we're only missing the crit from AGI, which won't be a lot given that Death Knight DPS gear typically has no AGI.

A level 80 Death Knight has 109 base AGI for 1.74% melee crit, while also having 32 base INT for 0.19% spell crit.

Assuming you never get any additional AGI on your gear, Icy Touch, Howling Blast and Death Coil should lag behind your other abilities by 1.55% crit.

richard: Death and Decay and Unholy Blight are DOTs, whose tick timers are NOT affected by haste.

faight:

* Yes, Icy Talons will stack with Unholy Presence.

* Yes, Impurity will increase the AP coefficient of Howling Blast from 10% to 12.5%

* While I have not tested with Death and Decay specifically, my experience with Consecration is that damage is computed on a per-tick basis, such that my Consecration would experience a 13% gain from Curse of the Elements/Earth and Moon (and by extension I assume Ebon Plaguebringer) even if the effect was applied halfway through the duration.

* Bone Shield can only lose a charge once every 3.5 seconds, similar to a Shaman's elemental Shields. Assuming you're getting hit every 3.5 seconds, that means that Bone Shield will be up for 17.5 seconds with the Glyph. Since Bone Shield has a 60 second cooldown, it should theoretically have a 30% uptime in this worst-case scenario, making the 40% damage reduction equal to a 12% damage reduction on the average.

Without the Glyph, Bone Shield would have a 23% uptime for a 9.3% damage reduction.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

faight

Thank you, it was most informative.

As much as I like to I won't be able to get online again until tomorrow night as I work nights and when I get home Maintenance will be running. As this is a "Simple Questions" thread I hoped that since I hadn't seen them before maybe someone would already have the answer. Thank you for your input though, I do truly appreciate it.

I'll have to test out DG with mounted people to see if I can get some hilarious results. Unfortunately I'm only 65 and I can't use a flying mount yet, but I'd love to try it out to see.

I'd also like to point out that if you CE your Ghoul in a duel and it kills the person they actually die. Dueling another DK in Hellfire I ended the fight with that and he turned in to ghoul himself due to Shadow of Death. I was quite surprised.

 

daia

Bone shield was supposed to be changed from 2 seconds to 3.5. As far as I know this still currently not the case in live.

 

Prinsesa

faight: Regarding your Ghoul/Corpse Explosion problem, it may be related to the fact that the Ghoul is considered a 'Guardian', and only becomes a 'Pet' if you have the Master of Ghouls talent. I'll try to play around with this later.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

faight

I had Master of Ghouls, just so you're aware. Maybe this only occurs with DK's with Shadow of Death though as that's the only person I've dueled against and used CE to kill them. I haven't gotten a chance to play with it yet as I was focused on leveling, and it was kind of back-burner in my head until now for some reason.

Edit: Oh you were referring to macro targetting. [target=pet] works for Death Coil though, but always returns "Target is Alive" for CE. Obviously it's casting it on them, but I think it's a different skill all together. When you CE your ghoul he actually casts it, much like when you use Explode when you're a ghoul. Perhaps that's why you can't macro the spell, you're telling it to cast it instead of casting it on them, however I'm pretty sure it still costs you an unholy rune. Also CE doesn't show up in your pet's skills in the spellbook.

Quite odd, really.

 

Gort

As Mind Freeze doesn't trigger a GCD, the macro will happily cast it and continue on to the next ability in the list.

My suggestion would be either a castsequence macro with a 10s reset timer, or simply add a /stopcasting (or /stopmacro, etc, just something to tell the macro to quit.) after the Mind Freeze line in the macro.


Personally, this isn't something I'd do, as there are very definitely times I want direct access to Strangulate separately from Mind Freeze. (Caster at distance, etc, while maintaining ability to interrupt my melee targets.) I speak purely in terms of PVE of course, so PVPers may or may not think differently of this.

 

bologne

Hey guys,

I've been working on a DW build, similar to the tri-spec talked about at the beginning of the thread.

My current level 80 spec is as follows: World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Death Knight -> Talents

The basis of this is large howling blasts / ITs, along with BCB, and Killing machine. Slow MH fast OH of course.

I was wondering what would give more of a DPS boost, with the 5 points in tundra stalker, as I have there, or 5 points in to move those 5 points into the unholy tree, giving 4/5 Impurity (20% more bonus to spells from attack power).

Obviously I have either a 10% buff in all abilities + 5 Expertise, or the impurity. I find it hard to pick, seeing as i'll be using spells as the majority of my damage.

Thank you

Edit: for clarification, this would also be with unholy stance for +15% melee attack speed, with icy talons etc.

 

faight

Would /cast Mind Freeze; Strangulation or something similar work or does the semicolon require a conditional?

bologne:

I'd go with something like this:
World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Death Knight -> Talents

Dual wield focuses on dealing lots of white damage, if you definitely want Guile of Gorefiend that is. With Bladed Armor 10k armor = 300 or so AP, which seems like a bigger boost to DPS than 10% on abilities since that AP affects everything, and that 10% only affects your abilities. This also would seem like a bigger bonus to your spell's damage than Impurity as well.

Also I never saw the point the extra RP, and I still don't understand why dual wield builds with Killing Machine get Deathchill. 50% chance to ensure a HB crit versus using a cooldown to get it, when you'll more than likely crit multiple times before you HB anyways? Maybe I'm missing something here.

And I'd probably go with Blood Presence, because it's 15% more damage on everything. If your aim here is big HB's and IT's and having your weapons hit for as much as they can this seems like a better decision than Unholy Presence.