Fallenmartyr

Hey everyone long time reader first time poster I need some advice as to how important hit cap is for us dk tanks i have played all tank specs and here is the current gear i support The World of Warcraft Armory

I just snagged a jawbone and was wondering if it is worth giving up the hit for a little more expertise i have the dragon brood leggings also on a side note still waiting for a BoH but what can you do.

Sorry if this post is a little on the lack of information side but any advice is appericated thank you

PaulKemp

 

rutiene

HB and Obliterate both cost 1 Unholy and 1 Frost. Also, HB goes on CD when its used so you can't spam it. But generally I use HB whenever Killing Machine procs and I don't have enough runic power for Frost Strike.

 

czokalapik

I use obliterate, because it does more damage when Glyphed than HB, it scales better with better weapons, HB don't. I can spam it in my rotation (which uses about 4-6 Obliterates in 20sec period depending on Death Runes).
Oh, and i use HB in AoE tanking or when Rime procs, and only then.

 

verik

Wow don't I feel stupid...I can't believe I thought HB was only 1 Frost....


Anyway, thanks for your answers but I'm not sure I really got a definitive answer. I guess what I'm saying is that if I were tanking a boss, with no adds, (assuming I am not spec'd for Death Runes) is it better to just use Oblit? I think I already know the answer, I just want to make sure that I should be incorporating it into my main tanking rotation.

 

jimmyolsen

It depends entirely on your gearing and spec. The 23/45/3 builds tend to pick up an extra 9% crit from subversion to obliterate that helps it scale much faster. Secondly, Sigil of Awareness provides a substantial boost to Obliterate. Lastly (and probably most importantly) as your weapon upgrades, Obliterate scales; Howling blast does not

You'll also need to factor in things like Curse of Elements vs. Sunder Armor, Expertise for obliterate, Hit rating for Howling Blast, and Partial Resists.

The best way to decide if you should use Howling Blast EVERY time it's available or only for Rime procs is simply testing in raid-like environments and compare the average damage with each (factoring in Crits, misses, etc).

 

Feliska

I have a question, why exactly is Betrayer considered BiS for Dk tanks? I wasn't able to find any definitive data on it.
It looks like Inevitable Defeat would be the better weapon.
Am I missing something?
Sorry if I'm not posting this in the right forum. My guild was telling me that ID was BiS, and I have seen that Betrayer was - anyone know the math behind them?

 

Zerath

This is a fun question and, imo, it falls down to racial +exp for these three weapons.

ID/Death's Bite/Betrayer.

ID will be used by most due to the +EXP. This will increase TPS more so once you are hit/exp capped.
DB adds a substantial amount of +HIT while not having any wasted stats.
Betrayer has top DPS but lacks +EXP or +HIT, also, the lack of +STR drops our Parry slightly.

It breaks down to what you want to use and your style of tanking. If you're HIT/EXP capped, Betrayer's DPS will increase your TPS. But, if you're like a few of us and push EXP, the ID is going to benefit you more so.

(My knowledge of ID refers back to Notebook's posts as it's only dropped once for my raid and it went to a Fury Warrior.)

Personally, I use DB since that's all that has dropped and letting the Betrayer go to DPS is priority.

 

Flamingcloud

Everything you posted there boils down to TPS. ID is definitely the BiS dk weapon if what you are looking for is survivability. It is the only high stam/agility weapon.

 

teiglin

[Inevitable Defeat] has more agi and only 1 less stam than [Betrayer of Humanity], while adding strength i.e. parry, so I'd say it provides significantly more survivability than BoH, though of course the latter's higher DPS and DPS stat allocation will provide higher threat in most cases.

 

Feliska

great, thank you guys for your responses -much appreciated.

 

Waterboard

some of you are overlooking something in your discussion of best in slot 2hander.

ID has better mitigation stats, and while the TPS stats on both are comparable, the weapon dmg increase on Betrayer is a huge TPS gain for single target threat, which is key for some of us, especially using the hybrid frost tanking build or a blood tanking build.

Edit: my point being as the adds tank in a situation or a boss tank greatly effects your decision on best in slot 2hander.

Nothing is what it seems, nor is it otherwise.

 

Liar

Why not just get both weapons, ID with Gargoyle enchant for mitigation bosses (like Sarth himself) and BoH with Crusader enchant as your DPS and threat weapon?

It's not like you can't change weapons in combat either. <_<

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Griefknight

You would have to run with the 465 defense set-up for that to work.

I'd suggest going with SS on ID but I doubt anyone has threat problems with the BoH equipped and a DPS trinket.

 

Liar

Why can't you have a normal 540 defense set AND Gargoyle on top? The additional defense still adds avoidance and the 2% stamina is nice as well. It also enables you to be a bit more flexible with the gear. But sure, if you really wanted to you could enchant ID with 4% Parry instead but the idea is the same: One is a mitigation weapon, one is your threat/DPS set weapon.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Mercci

I've also wondered this, especially since SS isnt affected by DR it seems to be overall still the best enchant for DK Tank 2h'ers.

Also, when people here speak of the EXP/Hit cap are you referring to the soft or hard cap? The only reason i ask is because i think other thank 1 dps warrior in my guild the next betrayer will be going to a hunter unless of course i need for tanking. Im currently a DWing DK (/soothe i know) with 29 EXP and 217 hit (without my 2x 1handers) and would like some advice whether it is worth taking over ID.

 

Zerath

The logic behind that is you're missing out on possible TPS, Avoidance, or extra Stamina by keeping yourself at 540 def soft cap at all times. If in your normal Tanking Gear Setup you roll with 565def, yes, you're getting some additional avoidance but you're missing out on better stats for TPS.

My tank setup has me running at ~545 but I can re-enchant my chest to drop down to 540/541.

Most posters are referring to Soft Cap, very few people reference the EXP Hard Cap.

What is your current TPS on a typical boss fight with DW? That's what it'll boil down to. Can you make a more efficient 2H build than a DW build? (The answer there is yes, by the way, so you should get Betrayer if you have the chance.)

I haven't tanked a 25 man in a few weeks, so, with my Stam/Avoidance set (not TPS set) I was averaging between 8k and 9k TPS on most bosses as a Deep Frost spec. DW is hitting 5-7k (I think? The latter may be high) which is technically fine.

With the oncoming DW "nerf", I would have your 2Hander ready for 3.1.

 

sanddemon

*warning - please read it all, I'm not bashing frost/unholy specs*

One thing I can't understand from the revised beginning post of the thread is why the hate for blood tanks (or I guess lack of information). I have been MT as a blood tank in all available raiding content and cannot explain how much better it is than the other two builds. In the actual ability to take the boss' damage, any build can work but the problem comes down to threat. When you have DPS classes pushing 4k normally, 8k+ during Malygos and Thaddius, or fights where threat is harder to generate (KT versus paladins since he doesn't melee much), it's pretty much the only spec I've found that can keep up and from my research of top guilds I'm seeing this is generally the case across the board. Luckily I landed Betrayer early on, but once you have that weapon it just seems blood is the given way to go. Having 35k health with soft capped hit/exp also helps for those lazy moments so you can VB with raid buffs giving you 50k+ health

I'm not trying to say "my spec is better!" but I'd like to see the TPS generated from frost/unholy that can keep up with that kind of DPS (like double sparks on 10k dps shamans). I've always wanted to go back to Unholy but I'm not seeing how I could keep enough threat. My worry in 3.1 is that we're getting pretty beaten in avoidance. That said, they are increasing the TPS for unholy and frost, but not blood...unless I start taking Sudden Doom I guess but this does point out that those specs must be hurting for TPS.

Can any experienced 25-man MT in frost or unholy spec give some solid info on being able to reach the TPS necessary to tank the DPS I'm talking about? Experience with 2-3 drakes OS would be a good bar to show experience for the question. I'd like to give the other trees a try if so...

 

• Asphyxialol

Personally I have always tanked as deep frost. I don't like deep unholy, especially with 3.1, and blood had/has major lack of multi-target threat and I was both a trash tank and MT. While my TPS may not be 10k (not sure what it is, I never bothered to check), I haven't ever had a problem with HAT rogues pushing 10-12k dps, or DW DKs (like myself) pushing 5.5-6k dps or fury warriors who repeatedly have topped damage charts on almost every boss in Naxx on WMO. They weren't ever limited by my threat gen, but was there a major cushion? Not really, but I don't personally see a need for it.

I love the utility that frost provides overall compared to blood. Guaranteed, 23/45/3 or 23/48/0 is one of the best TPS builds, but that deep blood is very good at what it does: hard hititng boss tanking. With the introduction of 3.1 however, WotN decreases in effectiveness quite greatly. If I am not mistaken, Sarth can breathe twice in 15 seconds, the first one lacking mitigation from WotN, but I do have some pretty foggy memories from then. Given, it can be assumed/expected, that at least one of the Ulduar bosses is going to hit similar in damage to 3D sarth with more overall DPS (quicker hits), and for something like that blunt mitigation will out perform WotN. Vampiric Blood is being cut in half in terms of its effectiveness, it has to be used better and you need to make healers socially aware of its activation, it will likely become just a simple buff to health, or in worst case to give the healers a buffer to get up the raid while you continue to take hits.

I don't know, I personally foresee frost being the competitive tank for overall content, but that doesn't mean, as said above, that we can't dual spec Frost for overall effectiveness and heroics and such and then have a blood spec for bosses.

 

Zerath

Sanddemon - You'll be able to get some positive information out of a few of us, no worries. I've raided all 3 main specs and the TPS generation is ranked like this for me:

1. Deep Frost
2. Blood
3. Unholy

As Deep Frost I'm regularly hitting 8-9k TPS where as with Blood 9k was a spike and ~7k was a relative constant, where as Unholy is 5-7k depending the moon (it seemed.)

If you'd like me to link each spec, I can.

Each raid had the same setup, so, Kings, Enh Shaman, etc. etc.

Blood has a lot of positive things in it's tree and it works really well with a higher stam than any other tree which ranks rather high for content pushes. But, the TPS isn't on par to Frost for me, which, we'll see what happens with the upcoming Armor Pen increase.

 

krapniknil

DK's are going to be second rate tanks in 3.1 until blizzard realizes their mistake. I know there are people out there who like to believe they can "still do well" even in the face of adversity, but the truth is still the truth. The nerfs are here to stay. I know people say we shouldnt speculate whats in 3.1 until 3.1 comes out, but i can say with confidence that blizzard is going to go through with this.

UA is losing its 5% parry and becoming crap. Bone Shield and VB are going on 2 minute cooldowns. Every Deathknight is losing 10% parry and gaining 5% damage reduction, a horrible trade off. Next patch DK's are going to have just as much, if not less avoidance than warriors/paladins.

Compare a DK to a Warrior and this is what you see. A DK gets 12% Bonus Avoidance (Frigid Dreadplate, Anticipation, Swordshattering). Warriors get 10% Bonus Avoidance (Anticipation, Deflection). Warriors get 10% Damage Reduction and DK's get 5% Damage Reduction. DK's get +10% Health and Warriors get their +6% Stamina.

I know DK's "can" get +6% Stamina but im assuming any real DK tank is going to be frost because you need that +3% Bonus miss and 6 more seconds of IBF every 60 seconds to somewhat compete in the tanking world. If you use IBF every minute, frost gives you 6 more seconds of uptime every minute which comes out to 6/60 or 10% of a bossfight you will have your IBF up from GoG alone. It lasts 12 seconds naturally so you naturally have IBF up for 12/60 or 20% of a bossfight. With GoG you will have your IBF up for 30% of a bossfight duration, so for 30% of a bossfight you have ~38% damage reduction. If you average this out it comes to about a 11% damage reduction from IBF Alone. So a DK has 16% Damage reduction, plus UA (which is basically crap. does almost nothing), if he is frost which he should be if he wants to be a tank. All nonfrost tanks will be screwing themselves because frigid dreadplate and GoG is huge.

To make it easier to see this is warrior vs dk tanking in a nutshell

Warrior:
10% Bonus Avoidance
10% Damage Reduction
+6% Stamina
Shield Blocks
Much Higher single target threat output
Last Stand (available cooldown to use for enrage)
Shield Wall (available cooldown to use for enrage)

Deathknight:
12% Bonus Avoidance
16% Damage Reduction
+10% Health
UA instead of Shield Block. UA gives you 20/120 seconds of slightly reduced damage on incoming attacks




Other than those points, Deathknights and warriors are the same wearing basically the same items with the same armor/health/stats. A DK could get the dodge/parry trinkets for dodge/parry cooldowns, but so could a warrior, so you shouldnt look at those trinket cooldowns when comparing the classes. Because warriors have shield block they will be blowing away deathknights in tanking ability and healers will have a much easier time healing warriors over DK's. In addition to that, warriors have two cooldowns to use for a boss enrage, and DK's have none.

 

• Asphyxialol

From all the TPS stand points I have found, only *extremely* well played warriors (ie nearly 100% heroic strikes instead of melee) can remotely compete on TPS (check out like Mtlol of CUTIES ONLY or Xav from Premonition for an example). Prot paladins and frost DKs overall have the highest TPS recorded for most fights currently available to my knowledge at the present (but I will say this is largely due to how sanctuary(?) works and how basically every melee hit becomes a rune strike). This has at least proven true when I read through high end guild reports, but I am unaware of which site documents TPS correctly (I have been checking WMO).

I think warriors are the primary tanks because they have the best overall mitigation of every tanking class. Druids are great at tanking heavy hitting melee bosses, DKs are great at taking magic damage, paladins produce high amounts of threat but require mana and have lower survivability to compensate (both in health and avoidance), warriors are a good mix of survival tanks, they have lower TPS (in general, those two I mentioned earlier can push 10k on Patchwerk without an issue, but they are among some of the best warrior tanks I have ever seen/played with) to compensate for higher survivability and more versatility between brute and magic encounters.

 

Mercci

Well with my shoddy weapons im producing around 4-6k TPS on average (rerolled for the guild). Broken Promise will be mine if it drops as will Last Laugh once our pally tank has it.

However like you said with 3.1 i am looking into the best weapons for 2h specs. Thank you for clearing up the issue on the cap mentioned, ill now be informing our ret paladin he will be waiting another week for his weapon!

With regards to TPS in 3.1 although many people seem to shout deep frost im looking very much into unholy with plague/scourge strike changes as well as the deathstrike buffs in blood which i feel will win over with a 45/5/21 spec as being one of the most survivable and hard hitting specs for single target as well as producing some nice AOE tank numbers with UB

 

Lanlaorn

Blizzards stated goal is that there is no "primary" tank class. I mean, why don't we just call that the "obvious Main Tank" class? The point of nerfing Druids and Death Knights is to stop us from being the obvious choices. It's stupid to replace one obvious choice with another.

Anyway my real concern is TPS without Sanctuary. The difference with and without it is night and day and Scent of Blood is still terrible, equal to the Resto Druid Replenish talent.

 

czokalapik

I was playing with Scent of Blood + Chill of the Grave and i was playing with few glyphs sets and rotations.

Interesting is IT heavy rotation with Death Rune Mastery and with IT glyph, but it requires higher hit to pull good tps. With that one i was most of time on 50 or max RP.

And when tanking normally (Obliterates-heavy on Frost Fever only, no Awarness) RP generation was.... well, decent. Remeber changes in 3.1, you will have 10% less parry, so less Rune Strikes, and if you'll decide to keep your hp high with VotTW and go with deep frost there will be no place for Anticipation. But let's stay for now with "10% less Rune Strikes in 3.1".

Most frost tanks had same glyphs - Obli, RS and IBF, so remember that besides Scent you have also 1 glyph slot free (IBF), and you can put there something giving you that RP you need (FS/IT Glyphs) .

At the moment there is no diference in TPS between live and ptr in my case, but ofcourse i had to play a little with glyphs and talents.


edit:
About nerfs of DKs i have one thing to say: only thing you can do is whine, so don't do it, there are changes, nobody likes it, Druids are better EH tanks, Warriors and Palladins better Avoid tanks, so we are... nerfed, but honestly, what you can do?

 

Darmon

Spec dps and wear tank gear when something needs offtanked. The tank difference between dps/tank builds just become a lot smaller, and really does not encourage speccing full tank build, unless you are MT of the guild and you want to give that little 'extra' to beat an encounter.