syrneth

Does it worth using a major glyph for trash clearing? Isn't it better something like Glyph of UA, Glyph of RS and maybe Glyph of OB (I really love this glyph for single target threat)?

 

Vicerious

im leveling a frost tank atm and progressing towards this build Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

as would be good practice to get in some rotations while leveling as per wowwiki:

This build focuses on a new Death Knight that wants to Tank in the future, but also realizes that Lv. 80 is a long way. It will allow you to practice with two rotations designed for single targets/bosses or multiple mob AOE encounters. The build also focuses on big two-hander weapons. Leveling is extremely quick due to the crit heavy nature of this build. Even at starting levels, expect 1.2k to 2k crits. Most mobs will fall in seconds. It also gives you the most important frost survival tools (Lichborn, Deathchill, and Unbreakable Armor). Having tested this build from 58 - 80, I'm please to say that death was extremely rare. The build is designed to get you started from day one (Lv. 58). Completely fill out the frost tree first, then make your way to the Blood and Unholy trees. As far as the rotations go at Lv. 58:

Single target/boss DPS/Tanking : Icy Touch ->> Plague Strike ->> Blood Strike ->> Blood Strike ->> Howling Blast ->> Frost Strike

Multiple target AOE DPS/Tanking: (Death&Decay once acquired) Icy Touch ->> Plague Strike ->> Pestilence ->> Howling Blast ->> Blood Boil ->> Frost Strike (Switch enemies as current target's health depletes below 30%)

Problem I now have is that with 3.1 coming out this tree is all shuffled and howling blast now a 51 point talent...any suggestions around this as where i should drop my other 2 points from?

Thanks.

 

EdjUh

I don't think it is worth using a major glyph for aoe trash tanking. Most of the time now the mobs are death within 10 secs and you don't need it on bosses. And in Ulduar most trash needs CC (thank god since aoe tanking gets boring!). I am only concentrating on my single target threat atm since i can gain more in that. Aoe threat will be fine in 3.1 with DnD, BB and HB if deep frost specced. So i still think for a frost tank glyph of RS, OB and FS are really good ones. I know i like them.

Also my fellow tanks in my guild fee the same way as me on over-aggro on aoe trash mobs. If the dps starts 0,00000000001 sec after my DnD then they surely will over-aggro. In that case they tank the mob

 

Shadowalker

While it may not be worth using a major glyph for trash right now, dual spec will make it a perfectly viable choice in 3.1. Many Death Knight tanks are using dual tanking specs rather than Tank/DPS specs so that we may use one build for tanking bosses and another for tanking trash.

I plan to use a blood build for tanking bosses and a frost build for tanking trash. Because this frost build is only situated for tanking trash, the Howling Blast Glyph is one of the most potent available, combined with Death and Decay Glyph we will have higher AoE threat than any other class/spec could dream of. Opening with Howling Blast (applying frost fever) then Blood boil puts you 7-10k threat on the get-go, followed by a glyphed Death and Decay as they arrive. In only 3 GCDs you are already 15-20k+ threat ahead of the DPS.

 

urotas

Frost aoe threat will be great for sure, but I'm not convinced it will still be able rival that of Unholy's. You're effectively trading:

Frost:
-Howling Blast
-20% more effective frost fever

Unholy:
- Far more effective DnD (Impurity adds 20% damage at 6k ap, Ebon plague 13%)
- Unholy Blight (constantly on, and you can cast it before pulling)
- More powerful Blood Boil (Impurity, Ebon Plague)
- Much more powerful disease ticks (Impurity, Ebon Plague, Corpse Fever, Wandering Plague. Unholy's diseases actually do quite a bit of damage unlike frost's and blood's)
- Corpse Explosion (Mostly situational)
- Desecration adds another 5% to all abilities in addition to a snare, and is actually reliable now.

The increased DnD damage as Unholy in particular is extremely powerful for aoe threat. The 10 second cooldown on Howling Blast also limits you in situations with a constant stream of spawning adds since you can't reliably hit more than a few targets with it, while you can position your Unholy aoe so every mob needs to go through it.

Where Unholy fails miserably compared to Frost is mitigation while aoe tanking. Unbreakable Armor works very well against taking a large number of small hits. Frost also gets several other very powerful mitigation effects from talents such as +6 seconds on IBF, 2% reduced damage and 3% miss. Unholy's Bone Shield cannot begin to compare to those when UA alone is better than it already for aoe tanking.

 

Shadowalker

I agree with you and I probably shouldn't have been so quick to state that Frost is better than any other build. Unholy is certainly better for holding an AoE group for long periods of time, but Frost shines when groups are dying in the first 10 seconds.

I've been unable to test any Ulduar content, so I can base my opinion/decision only on what content we have seen already. All trash in Naxxramas is quickly AoE'd down in 10 seconds every time, and quick snap threat is much more important than Unholy's sustained AoE threat. On Sartharion, the blaze/whelp tank needs only to hold aggro over the healers until it comes AoE time, and by then Unholy Blight alone has established enough threat to last the 5 seconds adds survive in the AoE.

Obviously this may and likely will change for Ulduar, but is yet to be seen. While I agree that Unholy shines in the AoE threat department, it is only moderately stronger than Frost. Frost's sustained AoE threat is more than enough to hold mobs, but Frost's superior mitigation particularly during AoE packs is what makes it superior for trash and AoE tanking. Until AoE threat becomes a problem, which is unlikely, Frost will win out over Unholy in 90% of situations. The only situation I see Unholy winning is a sustained mob spawn encounter where mobs are spawning every 5 seconds(or faster) and need a high amount of threat, more than Frost's glyphed Death and Decay alone can handle.

 

Xrkar

Another thing to keep in mind about frost AOE tanking is that with the most recent patch update, (and the changes to Black Ice), DnD just got stronger for Frost DK's.

From my personal experiance as frost, on standard 4 mob trash pack, i rarley have issues with agro... (even if they dont die in 10s). Typically, DND-IT-Pest-(Deathchill if up) -HB then just tab Frost strikes / pest & hit HB when its up is more than enough to hold agro...

The only issues i have is with some people who do not AoE.. and if i happen to miss tab targeting the mob they are focusing on. Generally i can catch it before it happens though, and if your other tanks are actually doding something its not a problem.


TBH i am a die hard frost tank, but for some reason i keep wanting to go to blood for the raid buffs and extra HP )

 

Shadowalker

EDIT: This post is no longer correct, I will leave the information in-tact as a calculation template, though.

I've been looking at the most recent Blood changes and while most talents seem obvious, I'm still unsure about a couple points.

The current skeleton build I've come up with is 47/8/10

This build leaves 6 points to spend. Potential options are Scent of Blood, DRM, Sudden Doom, Virulence, Necrosis, and Ravenous Dead.

Death Rune Mastery

It was previously determined in this thread that the gain from 6x HS over 2x DS, 2x HS is minimal at best, if there is any gain at all, removing DRM from our list of options. This assumes that you time your Death Strikes to avoid over-healing. If you don't time your Death Strikes, Heart Strike will cause much more threat than Death Strike.

If you can time your Death Strikes to avoid over-healing, don't get DRM. If you don't want to time them and prefer to spam Heart Strike, DRM will be your highest threat gain for 3 points.

Sudden Doom

The rotation used would be
IT - PS - DS - HS - HS - Rune Dump
DS - DS - HS - HS - Rune Dump

With an AP Coefficient of 0.15 on Death Coil, an average Death Coil at 3500 Raid buffed attack power will hit for 968, with +15% damage from Morbidity, and 16% from raid buffs/debuffs, Death Coil will hit for 1291 and crit for 2584. With 25% crit after raid buffs, Death Coil will hit for an average of (1291 * (1 + 0.25)) = 1613.

At a proc rate of 15%, we will get an average of (1613 * 0.15) = 241.95 damage per Heart Strike, with 4 Heart Strikes in 20 seconds, Sudden Doom will add (241.95 * (4/20)) * 1.45 = 70.2 TPS.

Scent of Blood

In the 3.1 changes thread it was assumed that Scent of Blood still has a 15% proc rate, which is unclear in the patch notes. If we assume a 15% proc rate, a boss with a 2.0 swing timer (unreduced by thunderclap/etc), and a 3.4 speed weapon, we can determine the chance it will not refresh it's duration.

First if our only haste buff is from windfury, we put our weapon at 3.4 * (1-0.2) = 2.72 swing speed. This gives us a maximum buff duration of 8.16 seconds. If we have a 10% chance to be missed without Frigid Deathplate, there is a 13.5% chance to proc on each attack. With 4 boss attacks in our 8.16 second window and a (100 - 13.5) = 86.5% chance not to proc Scent of Blood, there is a 0.865 ^ 4 = 0.5598 or approx. 56% chance that Scent of Blood will not refresh before the buff expires.

At a boss swing timer of 2.0 seconds and 13.5 chance to proc per attack, we get a proc rate of approx. 4 per minute. This gives us an uptime of 32 seconds per minute before calculating overlaps.

The chances to overlap at x seconds after proc are:
13.5% at x = 2 for a loss of 6 seconds
11.7% at x = 4 for a loss of 4 seconds
10.1% at x = 6 for a loss of 2 seconds
No overlap occurs at x = 8

Now we determine the average uptime lost per minute:
(0.135 * 6) + (0.117 * 4) + (0.101 * 2) + (0.647 * 0) = 1.48 * 4 = 5.92

So we lose approx. 5.92 seconds per minute giving us an average uptime of (32 - 5.92) = 26.08 seconds per minute. If we have a swing time of 2.72 seconds, we will gain an average of (26.08/2.72) * 10 = 95.88 RP per minute. Compared to Butchery's 12 RP per minute, this is a fairly strong talent. However, it pales in comparison to the old BoSanc.

Using the average Death Coil of 1613 found above in Sudden Doom;

(((95.88/40) * 1613) / 60) * 1.45 = 93.4 TPS

Scent of Blood will average out to a 93.4 TPS gain in this case.

Necrosis

This one is easy. The TPS gained over 6 minutes is:
R = Rune Strike DPS over 6 minutes
A = Auto Attack DPS over 6 minutes
T = TPS gain from Necrosis

((R + A) * 0.2) * 1.45 = T

So if my Rune Strike does 700 DPS over 6 minutes and my Auto Attack does 300 DPS (note: hypothetical numbers), my TPS gain from Necrosis is:

((700 + 300) * 0.2) * 1.45 = 290 TPS gained

I would need real values to which I do not currently have access to determine the actual gain.

Ravenous Dead

Using my own strength value of 1046 unbuffed without +strength talents, Ravenous Dead will give us an extra
1046 * 1.1 * 1.06 * 0.03 = 36.589 strength raid buffed.

This gives us an extra 73 AP unbuffed or 80.4 AP buffed.

The TPS gained from Ravenous Dead with any one skill can be calculated using the following formula:

N = Number of times used per rotation
Ag = AP gained from Ravenous Dead
C = AP coefficient of the skill

((N * Ag * C) / 20) * 1.45

So for Death Coil and 105 RP or 2.625 Death Coils per rotation (excluding Sudden Death or Scent of Blood) we have:
((2.625 * 80.4 * 0.15) / 20) * 1.45 = 2.295 TPS

The total gain can be determined by calculating the TPS gained for each skill, white damage and Rune Strike damage and adding them together.

This post has become long, and if anybody has any corrections to make on my math, feel free. It felt like I might be missing something major in my calculation.

I'll add to the other options when I can, but I must leave it for now. (Edit) The post seemed a little bit confusing, so I added a bold subtitle so that you could see which talent was being discussed.

TO DO:
Virulence
Necrosis (real values)

Updated 03/20/09: Subversion switched to 2h + Mark of Blood

 

jimmyolsen

Since you're working with a Death Strike rotation rather than an Obliterate one, Subversion is only giving you crit to Heart Strike. The 9% crit on Heart Strike likely will be outdone by 4% damage from 2h Spec.

 

Noorm

I agree, there is not much point to Subversion if you're not taking DRM.

As for Sudden Doom, for me DC does around 1200 on the PTR. Thus Sudden Doom will add an average of 180 damage to heart strike. This is a tiny increase compared to what is competing with it. (For example, Blood Gorged which adds strictly more damage to HS per point, and also adds to all of your DPS.

I think that Necrosis is worse than Blood Gorged. They would only be comparable if melee + rune strike contributed close to 50% or your overall DPS (not TPS, as the boost from Necrosis does not work with the added 150% threat from rune strike.) It's true that it only works if you are above 75% health, but at least for me this is the majority of the time. Also, Necrosis is considerably worse than 2 Handed Specialization, as that talent does work with the increased threat from rune strike.

 

Shadowalker

Updated with 2h + Mark of Blood instead of Subversion. It would help if somebody could provide a WWS of them main tanking, preferably for a boss like Patchwerk without much variation. I won't have access to WoW or any of my logs for another week or so.

 

Xequecal

I personally plan to use dual-speccing to min/max my DK for main tanking and AoE tanking. Main tanking will be 43/23/5 spec to max out avoidance and HP, you don't lose much threat by downgrading from Heart Strike to Blood Strike on 1 target as it only does 5% less damage. My AoE tanking spec will be 36/14/21, using dual-wielding for maximum RP generation from scent of blood and DRM so I can cast Pestilence and Blood Boil more. Will of the Necropolis gets skipped as it'll do basically nothing when AoE tanking.

I honestly don't see the allure of going Frost for AoE tanking, or hell, any kind of tanking. While the total threat output might be higher, you can't get both Unholy Blight and Howling Blast, and the 10-sec cooldown on Howling Blast is really nasty. When you're AoE tanking boss adds the adds don't generally come in large packs at discrete intervals, they swarm in constantly. With a 10-sec cooldown on your main AE attack some are simply going to slip past you. I would much rather have UB which is always on and sucks things in towards you by mere proximity. Vampiric Blood is also still the best cooldown for AoE tanking because if you're AoE tanking you generally don't die to burst damage, making the healing increase almost equal to straight0up 26% less damage taken.

What do you guys think about dual-wielding while AoE tanking? It would give you a substantial avoidance boost by using two tanking weapons, and it's a situation where your strike damage isn't really relevant as you'll mostly be using blood boil, D&D, and UB for threat.

 

Zurai

Unholy Blight is useless for picking up randomly spawning adds unless they all spawn from the exact same location. It's great for maintaining aggro once you've snagged all the adds, but it's really not very hot for picking them up in the first place. It certainly doesn't "suck them in".

You also appear to be forgetting that Frost still has access to Blood Boil for snagging aggro on randomly spawning packs and Icy Touch, Death Grip, and Taunt for getting aggro on randomly spawning singles. I have no problem as a Frost tank with grabbing a whole alcove of Aboms on Kel then getting aggro on another one that randomly charges the raid - and that's on live, without even using Howling Blast.

 

Xequecal

Uh, with Unholy Blight up you can simply run over to the adds and pick them up by being near them. Or, failing that, stand in between their spawn point and the healers so they have to run through the Blight first and aggro onto you. Have you ever tanked Sarth3d adds? I can tell you it's invaluable there, as with the mass amount of stuff going on it's very difficult to actually click the newly-spawning adds to target them, and when you already have 15 on you tab targeting through all of them to hit the new ones doesn't work too well.

 

Warstehgnome

I don't think you should chalk up unholy to having good aoe threat just because you can do it lazily.

Blood is perfectly viable as long as you can target the enemies, and havea blood rune to pop blood boil.

Blood has been buffed to a point where it has almost no deficiencies, good aoe threat, great tps, synergy within the tree(death strike viability), and a spot on the awareness sigil.

That said, as I showed earlier in this thread, with about 5500AP(raid buffed), Heart Strike was hitting for around 3500 non-crit, and DS was hitting for about 3400 non-crit.

What you have here is a choice, death rune mastery, subversion and getting more TPS(even w/the sigil). Or more utility, a little less tps, more self-healing, and less rune problems if you miss/get parried/dodged.

I for one do love DRM and spamming HS for huge #s, though I also hate the rune problems when you eventually do miss one of your HS's and you have to reprioritize everything instantly and inevitably lose some tps.

If you're going to take the HSx4 route, you also are making subversion and morbidity more worthwhile. How worthwhile though? Probably not enough to lose blood gorged.

EDIT: Also with morbidity, and sudden doom, along with 5500AP, death coil will be hitting for around 1700 non-crit. So, w/SD, 15% of all HS's become worth 3.4k+ instantaneous TPS. Doesn't seem terribly unworthwhile, though I doubt I'd rather have it than SoB.

Tsarurukai, Tank of <OP> Blackrock
www.op-guild.net
Tankspot Member Wars.

 

Shadowalker

Don't forget that Death Strike also heals for about twice the damage it deals. This means that with half-threat from heals, the healing will cause exactly the same threat as the damage, provided you don't overheal. If you can time it properly for when you take a hit, not getting DRM and spending those points on other threat talents will net you more threat than if you go the DRM route with more Heart Strikes. It will also net you more GCDs for cooldowns, Death Coils, and anything else you might be doing in the fight.

So if you prefer to spam and pay attention to other things, go with DRM and more Heart Strikes. If you don't mind timing your Death Strikes with the boss' swing timer, drop DRM and get other threat talents.

EDIT: Where do you get 5500 AP? The highest AP I get in a raid is around 3500-4000, the higher end requiring an AP flask.

 

urotas

We will still have very high avoidance even with the blade barrier nerf, so timing Death Strikes to boss damage would require wasting a lot of rune time. A boss hitting you every 2.5 seconds with 65% avoidance will only hit you on average every 7.1 seconds or so. Were you planning on waiting that long with your FU-rune pairs? The healing threat is also wasted if you are brought to full health through other means before your death strike connects.

You have to remember that the heal threat is divided over all mobs you are in combat with. Death strike is used mainly for single target threat. If you are tanking the boss, any threat going to the adds tanked by other tanks is meaningless. If you are tanking one of the adds in the Iron Council for example, you only get 1/3 of the healing threat to your intended target. A lot of the Ulduar encounters involve adds in one way or another, and Death Strike's effective healing threat will be heavily reduced in all of them.

 

Shadowalker

You're right, I hadn't considered that healing threat is divided among all the mobs. I'll probably reconsider DRM as I hadn't thought much about it previously.

However, I am still hesitant to go the route of spamming Heart Strikes because I value the extra GCD in my rotation when most bosses are movement oriented now. Usually when a boss is being moved it will shift in and out of range, so being able to unload all of your runes quickly before it moves out of range the spamming Death Coil can be valuable. It will probably take real experience with the Ulduar encounters, which I don't currently have, to decide between the two. I'll leave it to personal choice for now.

 

Warstehgnome

5500AP was an arbitrary number to show scaling in the prevoius tests. There was a theory that compared to my unbuffed AP of 3182, a higher buffed AP would yield results that would point further toward using DSx2>HSx2. This was not the case, with 5500AP, quite the buffed #, HSx4>DSx2 still beats out the other cycle by a good 7,000 Threat before rune dumps and not involving crits.

Realistically, the #s I put up there are under a best case scenario for DS, having the glyph at max effect, and all possible damage increases for it. HS doesn't even involve the HS glyph because I didn't think it would be standard for most tanks to be using.

You can't count on DS doing the healing for threat, thus we didn't include it.

Tsarurukai, Tank of <OP> Blackrock
www.op-guild.net
Tankspot Member Wars.

 

Shadowalker

Thats new to me, but knowing that, I'll change my calculations to use a HS rotation instead of DS. Thank you.

May I ask what rotation you were using? I'd think the following would be best, but I'm not sure.

IT - PS - DS - HS - HS - Rune Dump
DS - HS - HS - HS - HS - Rune Dump

At that point you encounter a problem with the next IT - PS using your Death Runes which should be the first to recover making that rotation less than ideal.

 

Noorm

Glyph of Disease should take care of that. I haven't had a chance to test it on the PTR, but the next fight I get in I will use a similar rotation, using a single blood rune to refresh the diseases. On paper the glyph should add considerably to the TPS of a DRM rotation, as you gain a HS and an extra GCD, in exchange for whatever damage IT and PS do.

 

Shadowalker

With Glyph of Disease the rotation would end up being

IT - PS - DS - HS - HS - Rune Dump to set diseases

DS - HS - HS - HS - HS - Rune Dump
Pest - HS - DS - HS - HS - Rune Dump
Repeat until end of fight. If diseases fall off, reset them and continue repeating

While it seems simpler, would it really be higher TPS? Pest deals 0 damage and I don't know if a single HS is more damage than IT - PS. On the other hand, the extra GCD not only gives more flexibility for Death Coils, but it also makes movement oriented fights more manageable.

This seems like something we can't determine on paper and will only be able to decide through experience.

 

urotas

It doesn't give an extra GCD in a HS rotation though. You are effectively switching a IT+PS for a HS+PT. Both take the same amount of Global Cooldowns, and generate the same amount of runic power, so it comes down to the damage of Icy Touch and Plague Strike combined against a Heart Strike. Heart Strike probably does come out ahead, but is it worth a major glyph slot?

You'd only gain a GCD if you switch a IT+PS+HS for DS+PT using a Death Strike heavy rotation, but that's arguably not a good idea either. Blood has some extremely good tanking glyphs to choose from in Vampiric Blood, Blood Strike, Rune Strike and Death Strike, so I can't see taking the Disease glyph to be a good idea.

 

Shadowalker

That depends on what you were planning to put in the slot. I personally was planning to use Vamp Blood, Blood Strike and either Disease or Rune Strike. Depending on how large a gain it turns out to be, it may be worth using over Rune Strike. It would probably have to be pretty significant though, because while Rune Strike glyph may not be as effective in the long run, it ends up being a fair chunk of burst threat, and still remains decent over a fight.

EDIT: I just realized that (e: I'm an idiot)

 

Ickis

I've not had any threat problems with my current spec in EoE,23/45/3 but I do always have a pally with bosanc with me which helps quite abit...

http://sigs.guildlaunch.net/wsig.php/8774676aUhvK.png

Waiting for tanking stats to update