Here is my spec : Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
And you can see my armory profile here : The World of Warcraft Armory
(There are some arguable talents like "On a Pale Horse" or "Master of Ghouls" but I just can't do solo content without it now that I used it for 25 levels.)

I have been 80 for a week now and I have that used this spec since then. The very first instance I did that evening was Utgarde Pinnacle in heroic mode, I had around 22k health and 22k armor, ~500 def, the healer (a really good paladin) had a hard time to keep me alive but we managed it without wiping too much. The trick in tanking is to alternate and use Icebound Fortitude, Bone Armor and Anti-magic Shell at the right time.

A few days later I managed to reach 540 def, raid buffed I had 31k health and ~24k armor and I could easily main tank the Spider and Plague wings in Naxx10, plus Sartharion and Archavon. We didn't kill Loatheb that night because our raid dps was too low.

Concerning threat, I never had any problem when people let me 2 or 3 seconds to build some agro. Yesterday I looked (I rarely do) to Omen and I was sustaining 4500+ TPS on the mobs before Archavon, with peaks up to 6000 TPS when I had a few crits in a row.

The other tanks in my guild don't generate that much threat (especially AE threat) and according to the healers they are taking more damage. I can't really compare myself to other people so I'm wondering :

- Are you generating more threat than other tanks?
- Are you in the top of the damage meters in heroic (1500+ dps average) ? (We are doing every pack with AE, most common group comp is destro lock, retpal, elem shaman and resto shaman)
- Do the other tanks with equivalent gear level take more damage in the same situation?

For the Unholy OT/DPS counterparts we undoubtedly have here - due to Virulence only effecting (iirc) Icy Touch, would the 3 points be better spent on Ravenous Deeds? +3% STR but an increase of dps from your ghoul on boss fights in which we would not be MT'ing.

The +parry from the STR is negligible, correct?

Can a few more people confirm this - Bladed Armor is not proc'ing when switching presences or even gear.
(I switched between tank gear/dps gear while in Unholy and Frost Presence last night and my AP did not change.)

I'd drop Desecration and Master of Ghouls and cap out Outbreak, Morbidity, and probably Toughness. You might want to consider Dirge as well, RP gained from dirge gives you 500 threat/RP (so with it capped every DS/SS/PS will give you an extra 2500 threat).

As for UB being useless with one mob left, I find popping it right before a mob dies so it's up and running when the next pull starts (20 sec timer, should be more than enough time for the healers to drink and still have it chuggin away) is a great way to get some extra threat early on. If you're chainpulling having it up the whole time is pretty awesome, since it's basically doing DPS to each target that the tick is doing since it ticks every second (so 100 damage ticks is an extra 100 DPS, how often do you see DPSers scrambling to add an extra 50~ DPS to themselves?).

But yeah, for soloing, 5mans, and probably most heroics (once you get geared) pretty much any spec is viable. I'll be honest; I tank with a straight unholy DPS build right now, and I love my pet for the sheer fact that with one point in NotD I can Death Pact every time it's up if I wanted and I'll always have a pet. It's a great way to relieve some stress from the healer, as if Bone Shield/IBF/AMS/DS wasn't enough already.

As for your rotation:

D&D>IT>PS>Pestilence>DC
SS>BS>SS>BB>UB

Wouldn't it be better to go:

D&D>IT>PS>Pestilence>UB
SS>BB>SS>BB>DC

If you don't have the RP to UB, you could do this after Pertilence: Blood Tap > BB > UB I guess. I'm not sure why you have BS in the second part of yours unless it was a type though, since both BB and BS turn Blood to Death.

Just my 2 cents.

I've been running as unholy now since beta...didn't really get to tank there, but am in live.

You should be able to see my current spec on the side. Been messing with a few ideas lately, and seeing some of the specs here I had one big question:

Why do a lot of unholy DK tanks seem to be taking Virulence? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I thought this was agreed before that this is really only a pvp talent? I have tanked all but 3 heroics now, and don't see an issue, ever, with my spells hitting or being dispelled. (The exception being Stratholme with the infinite dragonflight...they seem to reverse time or something and wipe any debuffs on them occasionally)

Current Spec.

Future Spec.

Basically, I've found the *only* issue I seem to have atm, with almost 40% avoidance, 60+% physical mitigation and like 30k hps buffed, is that spell damage can shred us. (But, I found that with other tanks too though) Cooldowns help, and AMZ itself is arguable on how helpful it can be. I see it as more an "oh crap" power to help out the healers atm.

Oh and why do I have perma ghoul? I can drop it if I'd like...but I enjoy the freedom of a quick 20% heal with my pet atm. I've run into a *lot* of bad healing for heroics.

One thing I'm tempted to actually spec atm is Night of the Dead. Sounds stupid...but I've found it to be another "oh crap" power I can use on some fights for healers. The damage decrease means that the healers get a bit more time to get a heal off, and/or the ghouls themselves taunting the boss while I continue to fight it (and maintain tps) means that there's even more lee-way for the healer. Also, you can use death pact on the army ghouls.

I may mess with wandering plague a bit more too as I get the chance/gear. I know its supposed to be a terrible tanking talent, though I could see potential in it for tanking depending on future stuff goes. For AOE tanking, even with low critical chance, spreading all of your disease amongst the mass, that greatly increases its output in damage potential (and therefore threat potential) It doesn't require *you* to critical hit like some seem to think, it just checks your critical every time a disease ticks damage on anything diseased. So, if you have 10 dudes diseased, all with a 5-10% chance to proc that damage in an aoe around them, thats not too bad for threat potential. (even if you do just 1 point in it)

At what point would it be beneficial to drop lichborne? As it is, I seem to be using it *much* less now that I'm getting some of the gear I need. I think the only reason I used it all day yesterday through heroics was simply to break fear.

Also...I find unholy blight to be a godsend for unpredictable adds and not having any way to fire off a new D&D atm. See: Heroic Halls of Stone

The problem with Perma-Ghoul is he dies way too easily to AoE damage. Unless you can park him somewhere and still be able to use Dark Pact that way.

I'm trying out a build with non-perma Ghoul and the minor glyph that gives 20 Runic Power on Ghoul summoning, if used in a timely manner could take the edge off of Dark Pact's 40 Runic Power cost. Of course you have the global cooldown to contend with, so you have to be anticipating healer failure well in advance.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

..liking this.

I've had good luck with this build:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft


Going to give it a go in Naxx tonight and see how it works out.

I'm debating how much toughness is really worth it... how exactly does it play with the 60% from frost presence? And exactly how much extra mitigation is it giving people that are taking it and in at least level 80 dungeon blues.

Being able to use those 5 points elsewhere really gives some flexibility. Wandering plague plays real nice with the 5% crit from blood that you'd be otherwise unable to get.

And some of us aren't in your guild, so its a viable option to discuss. Just because your guild had perfect raid balance doesn't mean all of them do. My old guild had nights where all of our rogues were out and we were forced to use warriors to interrupt Reliquary of Souls and Lady Malande. And with the arrival of 10 person raid content, you can't assume that every guild is going to have a rogue in every raid. Please don't discount this talent just because you're used to doing things a certain way.

And as someone else pointed out, Mind Freeze is off the GCD. If AMS is on cooldown, why wouldn't you take the opportunity to use a free interrupt?

It's a multiplier. With Toughness 5/5, your armor from items is value*1.6*1.15.

As a tank, you take survivability talents. Your threat, while meaningful, is more for your DPS to worry about.

Assuming that parry-hasting has been removed, and DW tanking might actually be viable, how much threat loss will DKs that are not doing 25 man raids suffer due to itemization? [Slayer of the Lifeless] and [Red Sword of Courage] are the only epic tanking weapons outside of 25 man raids. Both of these weapons are fast enough that any DK using them would see a significant drop in strike damage due to the weapon's speed. The top ends on these two sit at 288 and 290, while the top end on [Broken Promise] sits at 509.

Admittedly, DK strikes are not solely based on weapon damage alone, but it is still a significant gap in damage. Rune Strikes will be especially problematic, because they will be hitting faster, which means more runic power usage, but each individual strike will hit for less than a slower weapon, making it rather less efficient than with a slower weapon.

If it does turn out to have a significant impact on TPS, then the question becomes, would it be more beneficial to use use a slow blue weapon such as [Infantry Assault Blade], a dps 1h such as [Torment of the Banished], or simply avoid DW tanking altogether until a weapon of suitable speed can be located?

You're build is designed for tanking GWF's adds, not an enraged Faerlina. Toughness is very worth it in an MT role. If you need Dark Conviction and wandering plague to maintain aggro as an unholy tank, you're doing something wrong, and you're making the jobs of your healers unnecessarily difficult. You're justifying having less armor because it CAN be healed through, which is shortsighted and wrong. Any main tank should start with 5/5/5.

One thing I've also been wondering and not seen discussed too much.

Seen a ton of discussion on DW tanking and weapons for it....not so much on tanking weapons for 2hers.

I know personally, I'm a bit disappointed in the lack of viable 2h swords. (Top tanking 2h, seems to me to be from Naxx [Inevitable Defeat] (heroic trash naxx drop)

There are 3 others almost as good that are all maces. 1 crafted, the rest all from Naxx

Meanwhile, you have 2 swords that would actually be worthwhile...

[Dreadlord's Blade] (normal Culling)

[Armageddon] (4 horsemen, heroic, naxx)

Armageddon is even moreso a DPS weapon than an actual tanking IMO. Feels sort of weird that the DK, who's generally been known for his large swords now bludgeon you to death.

Deftly avoiding nokomisa's post since AE tanking is a joke anyway.

Shilarva, Blizzard has said quite a few times on the beta forums that there won't be "2H tanking weapons". DKs are designed to tank with 2H dps waepons.

To give more on what Eej said, death knights tank like a paladin tanks. There armor gives them the mitigation/avoidance and there weapon provides the TPS. There is no two-handed weapon with defense, armor, parry, or dodge rating because there is no need for defense gems or enchants and because a DPS weapon provides more TPS then a two-handed tanking weapon that isn't even needed.

Actually, after a little bit of thinking,Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft would actually be the best DW tank spec i can see. Earlier, i said Impurity was a great talent, but missing out on bladed armor means you lose about 500 ATP, so i changed it around a little bit. With this spec, the best rotation would be

IT>PS>Pestilence>HB>BS>FS
HB>HB>HB>FS

Again, it should be easy to cap hit rating, the haste would make killing machine viable, for the HB/FS crits. As you can see, the majority of the damage being done in this spec is not based on weapon damage, and FS should still do great damage. If you have 2.6 speed weapons, the weapon damage should be around 450-500. that at 60% is 270-300. Add 150 and you have 420-450. Add the 30% frost dmg increase and you have 546-585. Add another 10% from glacier Rot and your FS hit for 600.6-643.5 damage, and crits for 1471.47-1576.58, which is still good damage.

I know this, but most DKs are not going to go out and grab weapons with haste, crit, not that much stam, etc if they are tanking. [Runeblade of Demonstrable Power] for example would be horrible to tank with. (And yet, I've seen people try...cuz its blue.)

Your point about all the spell hit we'd gain and therefore our increased interest in DW is moot, and your builds are thoughtless toward mitigation, and do not belong in this thread. Despite Blizz's best efforts, min/maxing isn't going anywhere and maxing your tanking potential is the point here. Take your homemade, illogical builds and speculation elsewhere please.

Back to parry-hasting, I'm not seeing much discussion anywhere about it. I would anticipate big announcements from reputable raiders all over the place about this, but I find very little more than what's already in this thread and some random unverified claims from other locations. I'd love to see DW take a step forward with the elimination of this mechanic. Are there any public indicators we've seen that can help answer this issue for sure?

Now lets throw another topic besides DW out here. Would [Betrayer of Humanity] be the best tanking weapon for a DK or would something with more strength, like the [Death's Bite] or the [Inevitable Defeat] be better? The Death's Bite has 62 hit and the Inevitable Defeat has 78 expertise, Betrayer of Humanity has neither. Now if someone took Inevitable Defeat over Betrayer of Humanity then yes they would lose crit, haste, and overall TPS. Yet at the same time you would gain .5% parry and the expertise would benefit a tank more then crit or haste would.

I am still unsure of which weapon would be best, some input on this matter would be rather helpful.

ok, so i guess acting like child is allowed on this forum. I, however won't stoop to that, and simply remind you that mitigation will come from gear/gems/enchants. Most lvl 80 epic tanking gear will have lots of strength, which increases our parry chance, not to mention dodge/defense/parry rating on the gear, along with hit rating and expertise. By following that spec, it makes it easier to gear, not to mention i hit most of the talent-granted mitigation in the spec. I dont really see your point about leaving out mitigation. And besides, i was posting it as an idea, not something i swear by and believe is better than tanking with 2H weapons, the point is to get all the theories out there so we can figure out exactly what is best, keep that in mind next time you feel it's necessary to act immature on this thread.

Think about the % of weapon damage attacks we use, sure parryhaste was the biggest reason why DW was a straight no when it came to tanking but then we would have to theorycraft if the TPS lose is worth using tanking weapons. I think it would just end up to where you could either stack avoidance/mitigation and have inefficient TPS compared to a two-hand tanking DK or socket your gear with strength and get back that TPS but be at about the same avoidance/mitigation as a two-hand tanking DK. Then again, at this point we aren't sure if Blizzard will be introducing as many items that can be socket as there was in BC.

In the future I think I could safely say (without parryhaste) DW and two-hand tanking is on par with each other, you would basically choose which you prefer. I for one would not pick up DW tanking even if they were on par with each other due to most attacks being based on weapon damage and personal preference.

[Inevitable Defeat], I think is going to be the tanking weapon of choice among DKs. Some pretty decent alternatives out of heroics though are the [Mojo Masked Crusher] and the [Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver]. I'm using the Cleaver till I happen across an Inevitable Defeat.

I haven't finished reading the whole thread, but I thought I'd stop here to add some of my own observations. I have tanked almost all heroics as Unholy, as well as most of Naxx as an OT, and I have also tried many Frost specs for tanking.

Firstly, to respond to the above, yes, Howling Blast can be good AoE snap aggro. However, I find some things much more trying about it:

Mainly, to do this right, it's IT (from range) -> PS (assuming you want the 2nd disease) -> Pestilence -> Howling Blast.

That's 4 GCDs. 6 seconds to get AoE aggro that you could have easily done by just casting DnD. And if you do the HB rotation, you don't have runes left for DnD, so you better hope that aggro was enough to outlast any AoE your fellow nukers might be doing.

Basically in my experience the best AoE aggro, no matter the spec, is to simply DnD on the pull, then IT/PS/Pestilence.

Of course, it would be nice as Frost spec if your HB get a "free" proc from Rime, but it's not reliable.


Some more observations about tanking:

Morbidity is a MUST. I can't stress enough what a great tool DnD is for AoE tanking, and DnD baseline 30s CD is just way too long. 15 seconds is perfect - you can DnD, IT/PS/Pest, use UF move of choice, and then BB or B-rune, then DnD should be ready again (assuming anything is still alive).

Also, having DnD ready for EVERY pull is absolutely crucial. When I was Frost spec and did not have Morbidity, healers and DPSers alike would pull aggro and die anytime it was on CD, because they would assume that my AoE threat was established, when it really wasn't. The whole setup for Howling Blast simply takes way too long, and the mentality nowadays is to have established AoE aggro AS SOON AS everything gets to you.

You could try explaining to your group why you need 6 seconds to get aggro, but I generally find this to be a futile attempt.

So, if I were to do a Frost build, it would most likely be something like:

Frost

However, the funny thing about Frost spec is it's crit reliance - which you barely have any crit at all in Tank mode, especially without Dark Conviction. This is one of the reasons I do not like Tanking as Frost, because it feels that I am just not generating the right amounts of threat because of my lack of crit. Not to mention, I tend to prefer tank specs that can also perform moderately well in a DPS role because I am an OT, not MT.

Now, the benefits of Frost spec though are imo, better magic mitigation with Frost Presence + Acclimation. But that's really the only good thing there.

Now, this is the spec I tank with mainly, which has served me well in Naxx:

Unholy

With this build, I never have problems on AoE pulls - I simply DnD, IT PS Pest, throw up IBF to mitigate most of the damage, UB as icing on the cake, and everything is usually dead by the time IBF falls off.

Bone Shield imo is the best tanking talent there is for DKs. Simply put, the mitigation gained from it is far superior to UA, and can last just as long with the proper gear, if not longer. Also, BS can be applied preemptively, which means it can be reapplied sooner in combat at least once. It also scales great with Dodge trinkets, etc.

Also, we must remember that we are a different tank in that we have several small CD abilities that reduce our damage - but when all these are on CD, we can take a LOT of damage. Healers generally do not like spike tanks, which is what we are. When you take no damage for 15 seconds then get a 15k hit, healers may not be ready for it and it can lead to a messy death.

So that's one reason I like Bone Shield - it highly helps to mitigate large portions of damage so that the healers are more prepared. UA's armor buff isn't much at all (maybe 5-10% extra physical mitigation), doesn't apply to magic damage, and if you Glyph for 10% parry, that's just means more spike damage incoming that 1 time out of 5 that you do get hit and the healer is starting to space out.

In the end, I find Unholy to be a much better tanking spec in terms of pure mitigation and threat. I realize I don't have any numbers, but just my experience with it. I think Frost can be just as capable, but I find it a lot harder to manage, and I constantly feel as if I am taking way more damage than I should be.