And where do you get the 40 RP from to use HC as 2nd skill of your first rotation?

I was doing Ulduar10 yesterday with a 57/5/9 Spec. As the server allowed we did Flame Leviathan*2 and Razorscale and stopped at the bugged Ignis. I was rather surprised by really hard hitting stuff in there. So I think I could improve quite a bit on the survivability at the cost of threat. Actually I have about 21 Points in rather Threat-only Talents. These are Subversion, THWS, BA, SoB, DarkConv and Bloody Vengance. I'd like to try improved Blood Presence, Spell Deflection (don't like RNG here) and maybe improved Runetap as Runetap did prove rather good on several silenced healer/oor situations. Did anyone do the math which of these Threat-talents are the best/worst? So i could trade some threat for survivability?

HC now can cost 0 RP if the DK is glyphed with the HC glyph as it was changed from -10 RP to -40 RP.

Ever since I dinged 80 with my Dk I've been tanking as blood.
48/13/10 Blood tank

I do however have some questions/thoughts that I would like some input on.
With the changes made to Blood Gorged from expertise --> armor ignore is it worth taking anymore?
I've reduced the amount of points in it from 5 to 3 to get some free points into virulence, had some issues where I would constantly miss my IT every time I pulled Sartharion when I didnt have virulence so hoping that those 3% will improve that.

Havent got time to test things out propperly for the next couple of weeks so some input on threat changes from other blood tanks would be greatly appreciated. Got to try it out if only shortly wednesday night with the new boss in VOA and it seemed like even though I take slightly longer to gain aoe threat now its actually better than pre patch. And the singeltarget seemed about the same if not also slightly better than pre patch.

Hi all,

Here's my new build: LINK

Compare to before 3.1, I think the DK is uped. We've better mitigation, more stamina, and the same mps.

My build before 3.1 was 17 0 54 or something like this, I had Desecration Rage of Rivendare, and the Gargoyle, this was quite good for tanking.

For example: I was around 5000mps on Patchwerk.


So why this build?

The first reason was very simple, I don't like the frost game play, in my opinion Unholy tank is more efficient for AE-Tanking, and it's more funny at play.

Why 24pts in blood spec?

Dark Conviction combined with Vicious Strike are very nice, when I make some crit strikes with Rune strike or Scrouge Strike that blows up my mps at 8k.

I mean Scent of Blood is quite efficient for get the Rune power never empty, this talent let me "spam" my rune strike all the time.

Veteran of the thrid war improves stamina and force, that balances the lost of shadow of the death, and even more we gain 4%.

I mean Mark of blood is a must have, when the boss make a rush dps on the tank, it will help the healers.

4% of 33250 HP (My own HP) equals 1330 hp, so mark of blood will heal me around 26000 HP.

I've got one question about this skill, when a boss marked make an aoe, does it heal the raid?

Please do not be too hard with my English, I tried to explain my thinkings, and I did my best to write it as good as it's possible for me

I'm waiting for your replies.

While I am not personally a DK, my mate is. I'm a long time reader of the EJ boards, so I value the input here greatly. With that said, I need opinions on the build that we came up with in the PTR. He doesn't seem to have threat issues at all, and it's great for AOE tanking. His concern right now is how effective his build would be in Heroics, as his gear right now needs improvement.

This is the build we tested.

After some reading, I was flirting with this build, but since the PTR went down, we haven't had a chance to test it yet.

Which is better, the first build or the second? In the second build, would it be better to go 3/3 wandering plague and 4/5 bladed armor, or leave it as is?

Thanks for any help!

Hey guys im a level 73 unholy dk and i want to be able to eventually MT 25naxx and ulduar that kind of thing, and im wondering if ,assuming i can get my hands on good gear, this build will cut it- Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
any thoughts?

Also im wondering if frost is better than unholy because of frigid deathplate and also could someone give me an opinion on unbreakable armour vs. bone shield. Thanks

Oh and i know this is a really nooby question but could someone post priorities in gear for a tank? like after 540 def rating you stack stamina and things like that...so far i just grab every item i can that has defence rating but im only at 73

Personally I think 5/5 Desecration is just not needed. There are few fights where you are really stationary end game. I'd suggest putting those points in Rage of Rivandare instead. Gargoyle is not a good option for tanks either because all it does is drain RP. If you are going to take Magic Suppression, you should take AMS too. It is actually very useful in some Ulduar fights. Taking the Ghoul talents... personally I can see a use, but when tanking you shouldn't be worrying on your ghoul and instead worry about yourself and your aggro.

Lichborne has been nurfed quite a bit. My husband really couldn't find much use for it in a non-PvP setting. While it is true you can use death coil to heal yourself while under the effects, you shouldn't be having healing issues with a competent set of healers and the use of Death Strike.

thanks for the help so far, one other thing crossed my mind, stoneskin gargoyle vs + swordshattering...any opinions on that?

edit: i took into account what you said and i changed a few things, kept lichborne because im getting that far into frost anyways and i figure 1 point in black ice vs 1 point in lichborne...ill take the lichborne because i do pvp occasionally and there has to be atleast a couple uses for it while tanking and i also took rune tap for the same reason, im going that far into blood why not, it has to have uses...new link- Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Blood Gorged is one of the best TPS talents you have; however, if your dps don't need the threat barrier, than it's worth dropping it for more mitigation

Drop Annihilation. You'll save yourself 5 points. Improved Death Strike and Death Strike Glyph make DS as good as Obliterate (with it's glyph) in terms of damage dealt. Your new rotation is:

IT - PS - HS - HS - DS
DS - HS - HS - HS -HS

Get Scent of Blood, it's worth it as you'll never be RP starved.

AoE threat is not an issue anymore. Blood Boil + DRM is insane. You'll be popping off 6 straight 1k hits on all mobs in the area after your diseases have been spread.

I noticed that bladed armor does not give extra attack power for the armor gained via frost presence.
It used to have a 30s pulse but after several minutes there was still no attack power inscreasement.

ive been a long time reader as well as a UH AOE tank since my dk hit 80 my previous spec was


[url="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=005502000000000000000000000305000000000000000000000000023520033500010520 3000203113151&glyph=040915050401&version=9551#[/URL]


ive been trying to tune my tank for ulduar and was using something along the lines of ...

[url="http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=005532050030030000000000000000100000000000000000000000002352300301030152 33001003102100&glyph=040712030502&version=9767[/URL]


i feel this may be improved my threat gen is decent but since these mofos are tough there might be something i missed to make tanking multiple adds easier any feedback would be greatly appreciated. ty

I've been tanking as unholy since I hit 80 and never had any problems with it until 3.1

Now I've switched to blood tanking with much success.

Here's the spec I use:
51/5/15

I've maintanked everything up to Freya as this spec and I prob wont change for awhile.

Tried that, AP didnt change. Looks like Bladed Armor no longer benefits from Frost Presence.

Worked fine for me, swapped my trinkets around in their slots and got the extra 350 AP.

I scanned the last three pages of this topic, and didn't see the following mentioned, so which without further ado:

The Glyph of Icebound Fortitude will simply increase the DR from 20% to 30%, without affecting the defense scaling. An Unglyhped IBF will offer 40% damage reduction at 540 defense. A Glyphed IBF will offer 50% damage reduction at the same defense.

Link to the forum post with testing HERE.

I've gone back to Frost since 3.1, and I have to say, I'm absolutely loving it. Why? Glyph of Howling Blast. My issue with Frost was always AoE threat, and that has now been truly fixed. HB -> BB -> DnD on AoE pulls, and you never have to worry about AoE threat again as Frost. In fact I'd almost go so far as to say that Frost is now better than Unholy at AoE tanking, because Frost has immediate snap AoE aggro, whereas it takes a few seconds for Unholy to get diseases up and pestilenced to all the mobs.

I also like Frost because it's the only spec which buffs our one remaining 1 min tanking cooldown - IBF (there's AMS too for Unholy, but that's more situational). Still being in 4pc T7, having a 21 second IBF every minute is pretty awesome.

My spec is this. Pretty standard, though I took IIT because I only run 10mans and so the likelihood of no Shaman is much higher.

My question is this: I know there was some talk a while ago about using the HB glyph to completely cut out IT and PS from rotations. It would look something like this:

HB - BS - BS - OB - FS

What I'm wondering is - because I haven't seen much mentioned about this since 3.1 - is how applicable this could be to tanking? It has some pretty big benefits, which are nice. Certainly it simplifies rotations, as for single-target tanking you're only using 4 abilities. It's also nice for another reason - with the new Rime, Obliterate coupled with Epidemic means that the longer disease duration on FF results in more time for Obliterate to proc Rime. This gives a "free" disease re-application (except for the GCD, obviously) and allows you to get more Obliterates in. In effect, Rime for Frost tanks in this situation becomes exactly analogous to Unholy using the Glyph of Scourge Strike.

Obviously the downside is that the build doesn't use PS, which means you've got one less disease for OB. So what I'm wondering is, has anyone done modeling to determine if the loss of the extra disease damage on OB is made up for by the other benefits of using this build? Specifically, do the extra OBs you would possibly gain from getting free HBs to reapply FF outweigh the fact that each OB is doing less damage? I would guess there's a cross-over point somewhere to where one is better than the other and vice versa, I just don't really know how to model it.

If this has been done already let me know where I can find it - did some searching, but I haven't found anything.

I moved over to a no PS/IT rotation the other day. Gawd bless the HB glyph.

Threat seems to be rather outstanding. Casters with the buff on G Venax do crazy damage and only one of our locks is having to watch his threat. This is a big change from my previous 3.1 blood spec and I have no intention of ever going back. I took the spec out to a heroic 5m for a quick test run before raid the other day and was showing 5-6k tps with very few buffs.

However, contrary to a previous poster's views, I'm not very happy with the AOE threat. Rime procs are hit or miss, so depending on them for AOE threat is annoying. HB + BB + DnD is great initial threat, far better snap than Unholy actually, but sustained HB + BB + BB just doesn't seen to be enough to hold off previous best in slot AOEers. Pre-3.1 frost had better AOE threat IMO. Deathchill -> HB used to hit for 8-10k (on a shorter CD), now I'm seeing more like 6-7k :-/

A recent WWS on Auriaya showed 44 KM procs and 7 rime procs over 7.5min. The reduced rime procs are probably due to non-optimal rotations due to occasional rune usage for UA and BB. Crit rate on FF sat at 33% (which I'd bet is low due to excessive HB usage on Guardian Packs), and Oblit sat at 26% crit w/o 9% from Subversion. Ave DPS was just over 3k (again, inflated due to Guardian packs I'd bet). I'll try and convince my group to go drop Patchwerk quick this week so I can post a 'standardized' WWS breakdown.

My only real annoyance is glyphing. With glyph of FS + glyph of oblit + glyph of HB, there is no room for glyph of RS which would be nice with the new 2pc. Meh, single target threat is great already.

Repost from another thread, I think this is the better place for it:

I keep seeing variants of a 5/14/52 Obliterate-focused UNHOLY build popping up among some DK tanks. I've never heard of this build discussed before and to me it seems foolish to waste so many talent points picking up Obliterate when Scourge Strike is available for less (and I'm 99% sure is more powerful for an Unholy-based spec). Additionally, on a slightly unrelated note, said DK tanks have also been using Glyph of Disease. Are either of these choices viable ones, or am I correct in my understanding that such a choice of talents would certainly be the wrong one?

I'm trying to convince a couple DKs that this spec is a bad idea, but I figured I'd double check just to make sure before I made any assumptions.

56/8/7

I am not sure which of the two tanking discussion threads this belongs in, but what do you guys think about a build like that above with the changes made to death strike (5% max health heal per disease)?

Initially, I was looking at an unholy build for 15% self heal instead of 10% but as unholy death strike will do 1/3 of the damage as blood with death strike, it will not be feasible to dedicate too much of the rotation to that ability as you will be taking a huge threat hit.

In addition I was thinking about picking up glyph of disease to allow 2 death strikes every rotation.

Seems like single target hard hitting boss where threat is not the primary concern (nearly every boss in ulduar) would be:

(IT, PS, HS, HS, DS) + [ (HS, HS, DS, DS) + (Pest, HS, DS, DS) ] * X

Threat obviously wouldn't be as high as if you just used Death Strike to get death runes and then spam Heart Strike, but it would still be better than an unholy self heal rotation and likely more than sufficient for anything but extreme dps situations, in which case you would still have the default blood threat rotation available.

The problem is most likely your DPS. They should be focussing on your target (which should be the caster to start, I forget it's name for the moment) and as you say, they're not pulling threat on him. If they're AoEing they're killing sub-optimally, and if they're single-targetting a mob that you're not focussed on then they're being dumb.

On the other hand as mentioned elsewhere in the thread you'll get better AoE Snap-aggro with the HB glyph, cast HB - BB - DnD.

3.1.1 Brought this little gem:
* Death Strike will now heal the Death Knight for 5% of his or her maximum health per disease on the target, up to a maximum of 15%.

Sure sounds like it's counting all diseases on the target, not just yours. Very nice