Bloodscape

Ok I'm liking 23/45/3 quite a bit.

I'm curious though do any of you use a macro to benefit from the rime procs?

Through some play testing i found that IT/BS/OB/OB works great.

I'm wondering if a macro like this

/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE")
/castsequence reset=4.5 Obliterate, Obliterate, Howling Blast
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE")

I'm thinking that would use Howling blast when rime is procced and avoid the not enough runes when its not.

Anyways thought i might share this idea in hopes of upping our tps a wee bit.

 

Cryingwolf

Ok, haven't been able to read through all the posts, and this might have been asked already.
If you DW tank, and you spam runestrike every time it's up, would you lose much threat compared to a 2hander? (since that obviously has more weapon damage...)

 

Lipsion

I want to improve my TPS but i dont want to get to low hp, i have only made stam gems atm because i dont know how much hp that is good enough to raid with.
Would like to get some help with my geming so i can hold best TPS with the gear i have and what stats that is mininum to raid with so i dont have to much of one thing and to little of one. 32.6k hp in frost pressence
Sorry for my bad grammar :P

The World of Warcraft Armory

 

Funky

I just wanted to post up this build;

23/5/43

It's the spec our DK MT has been using for 25m Sarth 3d.

It maximizes HP and magic mitigation, and is highly specialized for heavy magic based fights. He has also used it on Malygos 25 man to great success.

Here's a link to his armory: Tsz

I highly respect him as a tank, and that's why I'm posting this here.

 

ssoykesha

The build looks interesting, but why the 2 points in Unholy Presence? If you're looking to maximize TPS or survivability, why not put them into +STR (2/3 Ravenous Dead), or 2/5 desecration, or even the ghoul? The movement increase just doesn't seem that useful, particularly in a raid where any movement will have a paladin using crusader aura....

 

salviastria

Ssoykesha...worst response to a DK thread I've seen in quite some time.

1) Crusader Aura does not affect anything except MOUNTED run speed. As such, if you see Crusader up in a fight, that Paladin is a moron.

2) Unholy Presence is something *EVERY* DK tank should have (obviously only if they are that deep into Unholy). Reasons?

A) You can enchant your boots with +22 Stamina instead of Tuskar's Vitality

B) Running out of the fire faster is good. Running into position as a tank is good. MUCH better than anything you suggested.

B) Frees up other DKs in the raid from the responsibility, so thats a DPS increase in some scenarios. This is why in the build I post below I do not get either CF or EP, so that if there are other Unholy DKs in the raid their disease bonuses don't get screwed with. This also allows me to put more points elsewhere for max survivability.

That being said, I use a slightly different tanking spec while tanking Sarth+3, but that one is pretty decent too, though I for the life of me don't understand why more tank DKs don't go 11 deep into Frost for Lichborne. Hell, during our first kill on Sarth +3 I got through all the super hardcore breaths, but he destroyed me at ~15% of his HP by landing 3 melee hits in a row. Additionally, with Death's Embrace minor glyph the self-healing from spamming DCs on yourself is useful at times in a pinch.

My Sarth +3 Spec

It's worth nothing that this is *NOT* designed for good TPS, instead maximizing survivability, self healing through all means available, etc.

 

Zasz

Is spell deflection still overriding anti magic zone if it comes up?

I say destroy the cosmos and ask questions later!

 

Talibb

No, spell deflection doesn't seem to have any negative interactions with any other mitigation abilities anymore.

 

Zerath

It hasn't done this in quite awhile. You may spec in to Spell Deflection at your hearts content now.

 

Elogios

Whats the HP, Armor, Def, and avoidance numbers required for Heroics?
Sorry if someone already answered that..I looked all day and couldn't see it.

 

DWeidman

Def needs to be 535 for heroics (540 for 10/25 man) - to be crit-immune.

HP, armor, and avoidance - there is no magic number for those. Don't worry yet (more is better, but if you are just starting heroics - it will get better as your gear improves).

 

Griefknight

You generally just need to be at 535 defense for heroics. I would like to see an armory of your character to get more insight as to what you need but I did take the privilege of checking your guild armory. All of your death knights who are currently tank spec are heroic ready. If your death knight is Demonshmoke then I'd just say regem out of avoidance and into stamina or threat/stamina gems.

 

Elogios

My DK is Tbonee <takeout> I'm in DpS gear...I was just building my Def gear and wanted to know what I needed...but thanks for the input

btw...my Def is at 541 but I was getting smashed in Heroic UK (well thats what the healer was sayin) maybe cuz its a hard hitting instance or was it just the healer?

 

Carnerro

no, its not the healer. drop butchery and dark command, get toughness in frost at the least maxed. get blade barrier for parry. I am not a frost tank but you can take a look at the front of this thread or at the end gaming tanking thread for a better frost spec.

I would stay frost specked untill you get better gear since it is a better starting tank spec (my personal oppinion here).

You are pretty hard to heal with your current spec.

 

DWeidman

This isn't the right thread / forum for this kind of question. If you have specific questions - PM the more experienced around here with more usable information (link build / armory).

 

Griefknight

This is probably the best advice to anyone who is viewing these threads and for some reason don't want to ask questions in these types of threads (which you shouldn't), there is also the FAQ that someone may view for most of the... frequently asked questions.

 

Ramalama

Good question. According to my own parses with various DW and 2H specs and setups, my threat per second from white damage plus Rune Strike is substantially higher with a slow/fast DW setup. That's before counting Necrosis and Blood-caked Blade.

The reason my answer includes both white damage and Rune Strikes is, of course, because Rune Striking replaces what would have been a white hit, adds a fixed damage bonus and multiplies by a threat modifier.

So the proper question we want to ask is, "If I'm replacing as many white hits as possible with Rune Strikes, will my threat per second due to non-instant attacks go down if I choose to dual wield?" Again, according to my own logs the answer is "no, it will go up".

The reason for this is more frequent Rune Strikes due to a faster (than a 2H) MH weapon (and hence more incursions of the static bonus damage, as well as fewer missed opportunities to use Rune Strike) as well as overall increased white damage from dual wielding.

I hope this helps.

 

Nightseye

This is probably off topic to the current discussion.

I've been reading a lot of tanking guides for Death Knights lately and every single one of them has some sort of statement that looks like "The number 1 priority for a tank is to hit the defense cap of 540".

Does anyone else think that this statement is very disputable?

Consider this scenario: A Death Knight with 515 Defense, 50% avoidance with Blade Barrier up, and 28,000 buffed HP is tanking 10 Man Naxxramas. The trash mobs in the instance range from lvl 80-81. The Death Knight is 25 Defense away from cap, which means he has a 1% chance of being critically hit by a boss, and 0.4-0.6% chance of being critically hit by trash. There is a 1 in 2 chance that a mob attack will land. This means that for every 500 attacks the Death Knight takes, a lvl 80 mob will be able to land a critical strike once, and a lvl 81 mob will be able to land a critical strike 1.5 times. (I hope I didn't screw up the simplest math ever, I was never very good at it -_-''). As for a boss (Let's assume he's MT'ing Patchwerk since everybody loves using this boss as a benchmark, and because our Death Knight is very poorly geared we will spare him the fate of Hateful Tanking), for every 200 attacks the DK takes, he will be critically hit once. Now this is a rough guesstimate, let's assume Patchwerk attacks twice in one second, and let's also assume that the raid's DPS blows and it takes a full 6 minutes to kill the boss. For every 100 seconds, Patchwerk attacks 200 times, resulting in one critical hit. Over 360 seconds, Patchwerk attacks 720 times. This means that over a course of 6 minutes, the tank will be critically hit 3-4 times. Patchwerk hits for roughly 4500 on plate, so let's assume the worst and the critical strike landed for 12,000 dmg. The Death Knight has 28,000 health.

With the way that our tanking gears are itemized, Naxx epics puts more emphasis on avoidance/stamina over defense rating, and heroic blues puts more emphasis on defense rating over avoidance (Hell, a lot of blue tanking gear has no avoidance on it, but it does have a load of defense rating). Following the rule number 1 of Tanking101, replacing blues with Naxx epics seems idiotic and foolish since it would take them well below the defense cap. But what is the real value behind reaching 540 defense in the first place? I understand the need to eliminate the element of luck from raid tanking, but in the case of death knights, doing so would mean sacrificing so much raw avoidance and stamina. I've ran into so many new DK tanks who refused to replace their current gear with what clearly is a huge upgrade in terms of stamina and avoidance because it was a huge downgrade for defense rating, all because the number 1 rule of tanking "Hit 540 defense first, then focus on other stats".

I guess with the release of Rune of Stoneskin Gargoyle, the issue is a moot point by now. Still, I was one of those naive DKs who refused to replace my blue shoulders with T7 because of the downgrade in defense. Is it really a wise idea to state that the most important thing to a tank is defense cap when clearly (at least from my point of view) is not?

I'm sorry if this was brought up before, but I really don't have time to skim through 102 pages of tanking discussion .

 

◊ foolish_fool

While your argument is well presented, I feel like you really know the answer to your own question. Sure, you may only be getting crit once in 500 hits, and most of those times you won't even notice, but if you give yourself the chance to be crit, you *will* be crit when you are a little low on health (due to aoe, your healers having to take a moment to move, whatever else) 0.1 seconds before you would have been healed to full, and the wipe will be 100% on the fact that you were crittable (if you are on 10k health and get hit for 5k 0.1 seconds before a 20k heal, your group kills the boss. if you are on 10k health and get crit for 10.5k 0.1 seconds before said heal would have landed, your group wipes).

If your healers keep you 100% topped up 100% of the time, and you never take a hit that had it crit, it would have killed you, then by all means sit below the defence cap.

That and your healers will absolutely hate you for taking random massive bursts.

Shaman | Priest | Warrior

 

Ramalama

In response to Nightseye:

You have a valid point that reaching 540 defense "at all costs" isn't an automatic decision. Whenever we're concerned with making gear choices, we have to consider not only what we're getting but also what we're giving up. I don't think anyone can correctly recommend, for example, giving up 90 stamina for 14 defense rating.

Edit: You also made the point that a newer or less-informed player might be misled by taking the statement "your first goal is to reach 540 defense" out of context. Of course you still need to make reasonable gear choices on the way to doing so. But these forums are not intended to be "a newbie's guide to tanking". There are plenty of FAQ's and such for learning the basics.

Most of the information on these boards is geared toward players who wish to be the best at whatever aspect of the game they are focusing on. I don't think that anyone can dispute that a minimum of 540 defense skill will be part of an eventual "perfect" or even "good" suit of tanking gear, even for a player who only wants to run 5-man non-heroic instances with friends.

It also happens that defense rating is quite a good stat at any gear level, even ignoring the reduction in chance to be crit. Point for point, defense rating is nearly equal to dodge rating for pure avoidance. Edit: After rereading your post, it seems that this was the main thing you were missing. My gear, which I consider to be "perfect", brings me to ~580 defense skill.

The recommendation to reach 540 defense skill is based on all of this thought, not simply the idea that "it's impossible to tank effectively unless you're uncrittable". You have a good point, but there's a lot more to the consider.

 

Darian_TruBlade

Defense is important because your math is wrong. You do not reduce your chance to be crit by avoidance. Whether you're at 50% or 99% avoidance, that 1% chance to be crit is still 1%.

This won't make or break most trash pulls, but it can be critical on bosses. In your worst case scenario Patchwerk crits a tank for 12k damage. That doesn't seem like much, but it's stacked up on all the other damage you and the offtank are taking. There's always the chance you'll be crit a second time.

It may only be a 1/1000 chance for back to back crits, but you're going to be taking thousands of hits from bosses every night you tank. You don't even need two crits to kill you, take one at an inopportune time (say, right before Web Spray on Maexxna) and the show's over. Crits will happen, and the potential for them to wipe the raid is there.

At this point it isn't particularly difficult to maintain 540 defense even without gemming for it. There is no excuse for sitting below the cap.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Static-KT

Wondering if there is a thread I missed dealing with threat?

I want to up mine a bit. I have a few questions.

1. Single Target. how bad does frost rape unholy? on TPS. I've been unholy and I DOMINATE AE threat. Looking to up single target.

2. What trinkets are best for threat?

3. What piece of Valorous or other gear should be subbed for a dps/expertise item for threat?

4. Rune Strike: When should it be used over what abilities?

Thanks for any and all discussion.

 

Jaycroft

hey

i got two questions i would like to ask.

first: does the runeblade produce (and transfer) any thread, so i could use it as additional thread support?

second: atm i wear the 4hm tanking sword in my mainhand and the heroic tanking sword in my offhand (utgarde i believe). i´m asking myself if i should need the 4hm sword once again, to maximize offhand damage, but i´m not quite sure if a faster sword is better suited for the offhand slot. what do you think?

as of now, i am bloodtank and mostly doing fine in terms of thread, but when a good titangrip warrior or mage starts to push the limits @sartharion´s drakes from the beginning, it gets kinda nasty threadwise xD

 

Afabar

You are talking about 10 person raid or 25 ?
When I look at my WWS I'm taking on average 10k hit as main tank, and our Hatefull strike soaker its more 18k-20k hit on average.
That means that if an hatefull strike critical will kill the off tank.

 

raiod

As far as i know hatefull strike can't crit!