FS/DC macro: No, you'll have to manually switch buttons.

I can't think of any compelling reason to use only one disease, esp. if you're AoE tanking. You might end up using one disease for a portion of the fight (the pickup, i.e. HB -> DND -> BB) but you should probably always have two diseases rolling on all possible targets for maximum threat.

e: VVV You can write a modifier macro, (or just bind a modifier key to those attacks), but you won't be able to write a "smart" macro that auto-switches for you.

You can make such a macro. Assume FS was set to "6", you could bind "shift + 6" to death coil.

I swear i got crit by Black Knight, I remember it vividly, but wiht the 2 other mobs i noticed having crit modifiers, its starting to look like I imagined that after getting crit elsewhere. Perhaps I just became gradually more aware of what is happening at any given time...I will for sure be looking out though.

Ok i got couple of questions, so lets start

As my guild progressed and killed AB 25 hc we got our 258 tokens, now after few weeks of farming it and farming DKP i finally got enough of it to get more then one. Tho luck didnt smile to me until tonight where i got my 1st token, and hopefully soon the other, so 1st in line of questions is what part of 245 ilvl set i should replace, got frostborn chest from heroic mode so thats good start for getting bis for tier 9 loot table. Rest of them are set items. I am talking about DPS gear ofc, but i get that is self-explanatory. I already got one piece of 264 set and next week ill get another one, even tho ill need some more time to farm badges for it. My second question is kinda related to the 1st one, "which one should i replace" and is more oriented should i even replace it. I was looking at shadows edge the other day and realized that with 4 alts, and main included, it takes you a month to get all of primorial saronites, few days more less. And when i look at DPS set bonus its more worth to have 4 pieces of tier 9 258 then 2 parts of tier 10. So i am in doubt there and need some advices. My current weapon is tribute chest 10 man and its pretty good but now as ilvl of me and my fellow 2h users raise its kinda becoming outdated. So i was thinking if Shadows Edge or even Bryntroll are good choices till heroic mode of ICC is released.

Is there a spreadsheet for DKs similar to Aldriana's spreadsheets for rogues? I have tried Zerack's DK Gear Optimizer and although it's a nice tool I want something that shows the possible upgrades, enchant and gem suggestions; pretty much everything that exists in rogue spreadsheets. Please point me in the right direction, thanks.

We currently have nothing of that sort available to us. All we've got right now is rawr, Kahorie's sim, Zerack's and simcraft; links to all of them can be found in these boards.

In 5 mans and sometimes in 10 mans DW frost will mostly generate more threat (on the basis that blood generally requires both buffs and debuffs to adequately perform threat, not that it doesn't generate plenty as is, just that it's sub par in 5m and some 10m). It provides more armor (agility), and I believe more avoidance (but that was only true of the old 1.5s speed weapons, I haven't figured what the difference is now between two Hellscream Slicers and Mor'Kosh, as an example). Frost cooldowns are nicer in 5s, especially the longer duration of IBF, in comparison to bloods cooldowns which are much more targeted towards large health pools to buffer incoming heals.

It's something I'll be testing quite a bit further into the week, but for now if you have the DW weapons and not the 2h then by all means it's fine.

So i noticed that my SS hits for more than it crits throughout the entire raid today and i cant really figure out exactly why. Critrate was around 25% all night too which is way lower than it should be. All i can think of is that recount is fucked up or that it shows the melee part and shadow dmg part of SS seperately. Would explain the low crit if it counts spellcrit?

Imageshack - err2y

Anyone know exactly wtf is going on? Screen is from a try on Anub25hc

Something's wrong with recount, you probably haven't updated it in a while.

So with the changes to Scourge Strike, what specs are people preferring for ICC? I went back to Blood the other day, and honestly I'm liking it a lot more except on Saurfang. Is Blood a good 'main spec' with Unholy as the off? (with appropriate priority in gemming). Just not sure Unholy for everything is cutting it but I want to get the opinions of others before I blow a ton of cash on armor pen gems.

Will the Bone Arbiter 2h axe be superior to Shadows edge for a Blood or Unholy DK?
With information about its proc now readily available?

I've heard about the different procs for different specs phenomenon, but thought that the ArPen proc was confined to Blood. If it's at all possible, could you have him get a few screenshots/post a parse on WoL of this data with each spec being used? If it's true (I don't really doubt that it is), it might dramatically change the value of the trinket for Frost (potential for Frost to reach the ArPen softcap).

I'll ask if he'll do exactly that and either myself or Ahi will post the followup. Probably after the holiday weekend though.

Is there another DK reading this forum with one that could try this too?

Hi all!
Here goes my question: is it normal for my Blood spec to constantly outdps my Unholy spec ( we are talking 51/0/20 vs 17/0/54 single target version here) on Boss target dummy by 200-400 dps? (cant say anything for sure about real raid environment) Or maybe my parses are too short (doing mostly 4-minute tests just to include couple of gargoyle/hyst cds)? I keep reading how Unholy beats pretty much every other spec nowadays, even on ST fights. Does it mean it scales so much better with raid buffs? Or is it my gear/gemming that is more blood-centric (doubt it as Ive always been short on arp). Pretty sure I'm doing everything fine rotationwise as I'm usually topping meters no matter what spec I use.

I've been thinking of the exact same question. The talent points is really tense for a DW tanking build， and you could save up 6 points with a normal 2H Frost tanking build, which can be invested to other useful talents. DW tank do have a little bit higher avoidance as you can use 2 tanking weapons, but not too much a benefit in my PoV. I would like to hear you guys' opinions about this.

@ Heldan: Blood is the better burst spec and dummies is no decent way of testing your dps.

@ superworm/Keldin: 2h frost tanking is fine, albeit (supposedly, I haven't tried it myself) less singletarget threat than dualwielding.

So for the sake of my own guild's progression, I've been tossing around the idea, once I get my computer hardware updated(my processor is going out thus my PC at present cannot handle raiding), of attempting to main tank our icecrown runs.

Problem is I'm unsure of what numbers I should shoot for. My original aim was to hit 38k hp and 65-70% avoidance unbuffed as unholy(following which I'm still debating unholy vs blood depending on if I have difficulty with threat gen vs our dps or not, personally I prefer unholy's flexibility over Blood's pure single target threat, as our other DK tank, whom is blood, cannot seem to hold aggro on trash pulls and multiple target situations). I do not want to spec frost as I like having the availability of the superior death strike self healing that both unholy and blood have present(although unholy has to sacrifice some threat if they want the self healing).

That said, after running some numbers I'm having difficulty coming up with a suitable tanking setup without relying on raid drops. My current gear is in my armory profile, but I'm hesitant on shelling out 10-20k gold on materials and such for things like full crafted ToC25 items, the Frost Emblem tanking trinket(not shelling out gold for this obviously), and maxing both jewelcrafting and blacksmithing for the sake of hitting my projected numbers without relying on ToC drops(which are unreliable considering I'm attempting to be available for tanking sooner rather than later).

What unbuffed/buffed tanking stats are recommended? A paladin tank I know is packing 2-3k block value, 45k unbuffed hp and some 70% unbuffed avoidance(sans block), but DK tanks gear differently and he also overgears the first wing most likely.

I have been using various simulators and looking at posted results in these forums and have noticed that DW frost builds tend to sim 10-20% higher than Unholy which is 1-2% higher than Blood. I have been using the standardized builds and glyph setups and as close to the same set of gear (trying to get comparable 2h and DW weps) for each simulation. In short, I try to keep things as simple and constant as possible.

The question is: Why does DW Frost simulate so much higher than the other two trees but not actually produce those results in practice?

The only thing I can think of is that the nature of the more demanding proc based priority of Frost makes it much harder to use effectively and efficiently in a boss encounter and the simulators can simply take perfect advantage of every proc. Or, there is a bug that permeates all the simulators (I find this unlikely).

------------

In response to MikeMo, I have found that I receive the STR, HASTE and CRIT procs from DBW as Unholy but have not tried any other specs yet.

I doubt it, when comparing my crit rates on various abilities to the crit rates that the sims generate, I find that they are almost identical. I know that I miss one or two KM procs over the course of the fight, but as a general rule, my play on fights like Saurfang is nearly perfect, but I am still several hundred DPS short of the values given by many of the sims.

I'm much more willing to accept the sims having various errors in them, not a lot of time has been devoted (to the best of my knowledge) to modelling Frost, as it's much less played than Unholy.

Hello Qaenyin

Do some reading up on tanking in ICC (you did mention that was where you wanted to tank). The current end game tanking priority is EH, or effective health - not avoidance. ICC has a permanent (while you are in the instance) -20% to Dodge. This completely nerfs the stacking of avoidance in end game raiding (notice I did NOT say completely negates avoidance), which was Blizzard's intent as they gear up for Cataclysm. A quick quote from GhostCrawler:
"What I would like to see in Cataclysm is higher health pools but also lower heals (and tank avoidance) overall. "

Therefore, we would now want to stack effective health (health, armor) to maximize survivability in the Citadel. In the very first boss encounter for example, you are going to be consistently taking around 18 to 22K damage every 2 seconds (others can check my figures as I am tired ;P) and that is as off-tank . MT will also be taking melee hits. You must have over 40K on this encounter or it basically puts your healers in a no win situation. This is how it is meant to be...a gear check.

We have done this with a tank with 44K but it took multiple tries, however I am sure some guilds are able to push through. To one shot that particular encounter I usually tank with a little over 50K, and the druid tank with about 55.7K.

I don't understand the, what I consider to be a misconception, idea of "needing" Death Strike healing while in a raid. Your healers are there for a purpose, and you are there for a different purpose. Healing yourself while in a 5 man is indeed neat, but in no way needed in a raid scenario. Ask your healers if they can tell the difference between your Blood tanking (using the proper rotation/priority) and some other tank. Your survival on something like the previous fight (Marrowgar) will not be affected at all by a DS heal.

Your pally friend is mostly likely counting his block in with dodge and parry, just like most pallies do. It took 30 minutes the other day for my party to explain to our pug tank that his avoidance wasn't 75%. Shoot a armory link this way and we can tell, I guess.

Take care

Covering each point seperately.

First point, yes I realize EH is more important than avoidance, which is why I'm aiming for the pretty low level of 65-70% avoidance(considering my present avoidance is almost 60% and my equipment is 15-30 ilvs below even ToC25 gear, that puts it as pretty mediocre for unbuffed. 65% avoidance, discounting spec specific talents like FDP, would be along the lines of 12% miss, 32% dodge and 21% parry, which is only 8% higher than what I presently have. I'm not taking Chill of the Throne into account in my numbers, mind, for the sake of simplicity). If I were stacking avoidance I'd want closer to 75%+. That said, I need a certain level of avoidance to maintain rune strike uptime. The avoidance level I want has little to do with survivability.

38k hp is pretty low, yes, which is why I'm trying to get a reasonable number to aim for. I only have about 33.5k right now unbuffed, but I cannot seem to come up with a decent gearset I can obtain for ICC that will bring me up to the 40-45k unbuffed that I'd prefer to have. Even throwing in the ICC trinket and every piece of ToC25 crafted gear and every piece of badge gear sans frost badges only seems to put me at 38-39k with full +30 stamina gems.

Reason I like having death strike available is more for padding to support my healers than for the sake of a primary source of healing. Being able to grab a quick 12k heal via death strike is a pretty significant benefit if it won't noticably impact threat generation at the time, and while not something I want to rely on, is something I find frequently convenient enough to be a nice thing to have if I can work it in in a pinch during a high damage intake situation(I ended up using it a lot in uld10 back in 3.1 as blood as it made a pretty sizeable difference on hodir, giving my healers more freedom to top off dps taking incidental aoe damage, and I have on several occasions had it allow me to survive long enough to serve as a buffer between heals in certain situations).

And lastly, the paladin in question in the gearset I was describing has 44k unbuffed hp, roughly 3k block value, and 70%+ avoidance(this is his anub add tanking set and thus he makes it a point to be avoidance capped with holy shield, which would be at least 68% avoidance minimum, and he has more than that I know for sure).

That's partly why I'm still using my T8.5 chest. I'm undecided on whether it will be necessary for me to get Breastplate of the White Knight and Saronite Swordbreakers made or if my current bracers and the T9 chest will be sufficient, so I haven't spent my triumph badges yet in case I need them for the orbs.

No, you really don't. Most tanks are at a comfortable level of avoidance to maintain Runestrike, and if not, then they shouldn't be endgame. I can't think of a single ICC fight where your DPS would overtake you on threat, except on something like an aggro wipe, which they should know how to handle anyway.
Runestrike just got a buff in 3.3 to offset the -20% dodge.

The most return you will see for Runstrike uptime if you have a good level of avoidance is capping Hit. You are very near cap, which is great...I am only at 6% I believe and i have no problems at all.

Your expertise is probably the next thing to improve to minimize your other TPS abilities from getting avoided. You will see threat jump a significant amount the closer to cap you get.

There is no reason not to have an avoidance set, since there are some fights which demand it at first (until its on farm) such as Saurfang. This will NOT be the norm, bceause of Blizz's direction for tanking.
However every other fight you will need your EH set, and an EH set doesn't gem for avoidance.
If you look at my armory now, thats my avoidance set. All i did was swap out trinkets. Thats it. And it was way overboard for Saurfang. Next time i won't even switch from my EH set on that fight.

I am not trying to make you uncomfortable while playing...obviously you need to be happy with your toon. But these forums are all about maximizing, and doing things because a better option doesn't exist.