Chivaz

what is the best rotation for this talent? (single and aoe)

 

Pyros

It heals for 10% even with another DK in the raid with my blood spec, so no, it still works like before, the wording is probably meant to indicate that contrary to last version of DS, it does work with the 3 Unholy diseases. It's probably getting nerfed back down to two because unholy is still getting pretty huge heals, but who knows, might be to compensate unholy being the worst of the three trees for mitigation.

 

Stein

Have you considered trading some single target threat for aoe? moving just 3 points from blood to morbidity would help a lot, right?

 

Najani

Yeah, I could pull from SoB or Bladed Armor and toss a few in Morbidity for some better sustained AOE, but the real focus of the spec for me is high threat, high mitigation/avoidance. I'd rather not compromise its specialization at all. It's designed more towards General Vezax (holding threat off uber-buffed casters) than holding huge trash packs for AOE.

Currently, we have four tanks, one of each type. I'm rarely doing anything but boss tanking / single target tanking, so for now I'm keeping spec #2 as dps. If I start finding myself facing more add-centric tanking I'll probably make spec #2 Unholy for faceroll AOE threat.

 

Stein

if you don't mind my asking, why 3/5+2/3 instead of 2/5+3/3 or 5/5+0/3?

 

Zurai

2/3 Scent of Blood is plenty in my experience, especially since it stacks past 2 if you get a re-proc before you manage to use both charges. I havn't had any RP issues tanking with 2/3 SoB.

 

◊ Bryne

I'm finding the spec to have pretty similar strengths/weaknesses as you're describing - single-target threat is quite good even without the RS glyph with a PS-less rotation. Frost just has too many good glyph choices.

In a similar talent setup I'm debating dropping Virulence for Morbidity to augment the AoE threat, which may or may not be a good choice depending on the +hit you're getting out of your raid group. It would probably put you in close competition with Unholy for AoE tanking while maintaining some really decent ST threat.

 

salviastria

I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned this yet, but howling blast glyph + chillblains makes for RIDICULOUS control of adds. I was able to make mimiron trash so much easier by kiting the 'trash' and boomer mobs away from the raid just spamming HB and they couldn't catch me. very awesome.

 

Najani

As the poster after you said, 2/3 seemed to be the best bang for my buck with ID being a 3.4 speed. 0/3 SoB just flat out isn't enough RP. As is (with 2/3)
I'm burning so much RP on RSs I'm having trouble catching interrupts or popping IBF. I think I'm going to try 3/3 SoB 2/5 Bladed next time around and see if there is a noticeable difference. I wish the 4pc t7 tank set had the same bonus as the dps set :-/

 

Najani

Yeah, relying on crits for AOE threat isnt fun. Switching to Morbidity is probably a good idea when you can afford to pull from Virulence. I swear, for every upgrade I get with +hit, I get two that replace my old +hit pieces :-/ I'm right around 3.5% from cap right now and nothing is more annoying that missing a HB now. Once the misses go away I'll join you in DnD AOE goodness.

 

Egocide

I can't see not having Bladed Armor in pretty much any build, I'd definitely find points somewhere else. BA is just such a huge talent point for point.

 

verik

Okay so I have been testing deep frost for a little while now. At first I was trying DW, but found that my TPS was terrible, so I switched some points around and tried 2H. Here is my current spec : 10/51/10

My TPS has been very good, on par with a prot pally in my guild with BiS pre 3.1. In 10/25 Naxx, 25OS, 10EoE, and 10 Ulduar, I have not had any problems with threat gen/TPS or mitigation. (Ulduar an exception because they were pugs and had some bad healers). HOWEVER, my RP generation is sub-par. Granted I have macros made for all my abilities with RS in it, so that I will never miss one. Obviously I don't have SoB, so, without sacrificing any points in unholy, is it worth it to move 3 points from BA to SoB? Or, is there no other option but to sacrifice a point from Epidemic? I don't have any TPS reports but Omen was showing around 5kTPS on most fights, around 6kTPS on Patchwerk 25 MT.

 

czokalapik

I was tanking recently in 2 builds:
53/5/13: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
14/51/6: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Both are "custom", so 1 or 2 points here or there that you'd never put are those "custom fixes" made for better tainking for my 10ppl group.
Both builds are really great. In both i'm pulling 5-6k tps in 10ppl (mostly only with enh shaman buffs and BoK).

Frost is better for aoe tanking for me, i'm still learning how to effectively tank few targets in blood without recasting DnD every cooldown. In blood on the other hand i'm more combfortable with single target, tps is the same, but it's just... "better" for me somehow.

I was testing almost every possible build since 3.1 launch, in unholy i just can't pull enought tps, in both frost and blood it's extremaly easy, and in both builds i have enough "osh shit buttons" and defensive talents to let healers easily heal me.

I'm have ~210 hit in tank gear, my expertise is pretty low, about 19 (with expertise food), and my AP (buffed) oscillate between 4k and 4,5k, and my crit... i can't rememver, i think 11-12% (only with HoW). I'm tanking in Black Ice.
So as you can see with pretty crappy tps stats i'm able to pull really high tps (5-6k in 10ppl) easily. I see only one problem in blood: pull aggro is really low, IT has low crit and low damage, comparing to frost it's really low initial (pull) tps.
I was arguing with friend lately, he said Blood can't be compared with Frost, because frost gives 3% passive avoidance and 2% passive dmg reduction, BUT in blood there's some parry from additional str (i know, not much), and stamina (in my case its ~1,7k hp from VotTW unbuffed), so i think both builds can be compared and can be at "same level".

 

Kashir

Not to mention that WotN is still an amazing talent, and VB is a far superior cooldown to 3.1 UA for boss tanking (and the reverse for add tanking).

Blood is still a more than viable tanking tree.

 

czokalapik

I'm not using WotN, i'm pretty much all the time topped. As i said those are builds made for tanking in my group, and i have really good healers, that's why i didn't put any points in WotN.

But i will disagree with you, if you have good healers, then any tanking cooldown is good, and you don't have to worry about defensive talents, just pick up basics, add something that one of 3 trees offer, and rest comes down to tps and maybe raid boosts (like hysteria). In my opinion both frost and blood are great build, and they are pretty much equal, but also it depends on strengths of your group.

I believe that Unholy also can offer great tanking potential, but it requires from me some more testing to learn this tree, now i can't pull enough tps in Unholy.

 

Tima

As has been previously stated, WotN is rediculously good. Consider that if you have 40k health fully raid buffed, and you take what *would* have been a 40k hit, you only take a hit for 34,000 - allowing your awesome healers to get you to full again, allowing your to maybe get your first boss kill. WotN is potentially a raid-saving ability, good healers or not. It's nearly as good as a bone shield for flat mitigation, and only pops when you really need it, which in some ways is *better* than bone shield. For content pushing especially, there's no reason to go that deep into the blood tree as a tank and not pick it up, IMHO.

 

czokalapik

I'm not saying that this talent is bad, i'm just saying i don't need it, haven't need it eariler.
Besides, i want to rely on people, not talents, if there's spike of 2-3 large hits in a row only first will be reduced by WotN, such hits happen from my mistake or because of encounter mechanics, so i can't make any mistakes, and healers have to know the encounter to prevent such hits.
I know, for some this is strange, some say i don't know how to play, but as i said - i trust my healers, and that's why i build my talents based on my group strengths.

For now WotN will be only "hard modes talent" for me, and you don't have to agree with me, just don't tell me that WotN is "must have".

Besides - in 3.1 there is no perfect tanking or dps build, before patch dry blood and IT spammer owned in dps, now any build made with thought can be on top of damage meters. Same goes for tanks.

 

Durzil

The 25 str and buff to a pet that you don't have out 95% of the time while tanking is not worth the trade off of loosing out on WotN, you can rely on people all you want but your hurting your raid by not taking WotN in this situation.

If you don't want to rely on talents then you should spec 0/0/0 doesn't make a lot of sense huh, either did your post.

 

Tel

Ask your healers if they'd like you to have WotN. I guarentee that all of them will say yes. You're making it tougher on them for no real appreciable gain. Why?

Edit: In addition, if you're coming in here and asking people if blood vs frost is better, they're going to answer based on the strengths of each spec. If you're deliberately avoiding the strengths of the spec, you're going to go away with incorrect info.

 

Tszyu

Totally agree on this point.

However I do have a question on glyphs. Currently I use FS, OB, and IT for threat generation. They're nice and give off some pretty sweet numbers, but I'm curious as to whether or not I should be using mitigation glyphs instead. With bosses hitting for upwards for 25-30k, it almost makes sense to do so.

I do not particularly care for the fact that they are all based around cooldowns, but having some sort of extra mitigation does not seem like a bad thing for bosses that hit for high numbers. IBF and UA seem like obvious choices for a frost build.

 

spiritryu

I was browsing through my guild's DKs and I came across our MT's spec and wondered why he chose what he did. I don't really know much about DKs but it didn't seem all that good to me. Maybe he sees something I don't.
Here's his armory:
The World of Warcraft Armory
Or a direct link to his spec and glyphs:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Just would like to know if it's anywhere near viable to MT as.

 

Pyros

The UA glyph without UA is pretty golden. Your MT is an idiot. He does take some interesting talents, but he pretty much totally gimps himself for anything but trash tanking by going unholy for blight and glyphing DnD, yet he also takes veteran of war(usually a boss tanking talent). The spec is a mess, but I guess it could perform ok for heroic tanking and/or AE tanking.

 

arnham

That spec is....horrifically bad. Generally a DK, tank or DPS, would want 1 primary tree and dipping into other trees as wanted, just like most other classes. He does have all the necessary low tier tank talents, but he should really focus on one tree. Tank wise they all have their ups and downs, but I use blood and frost (both my specs are tanky). The 41 point tank cooldown talents are all useful and he has none of them. There's absolutely no reason to tank without one of those 41 point talents. Also blood caked blade in the unholy tree can cause parry hasting, and as unholy (the only spec that would even consider getting that normally), I think there's better options.

 

DWeidman

Why are you on this board then? We don't run with "your healers" - so your posts are pretty meaningless to us.

It is right next to the terrible build that comes with the "but I have tanked in Naxx" disclaimer.

 

bruceleroy99

So, I started 3.1 with two specs that I've been tanking Ulduar with (both 10 and 25), but I'm looking to optimize them as best I can. Here are the specs I'm using now:
Primary - 25/5/41
Secondary - 11/55/5

First, I love imp + glyphed rune tap. It has saved my ass on many occasions thus far, and I hate giving up imp rune tap for my secondary spec (which I actually probably use more than my primary). I haven't seen anyone else really using RT in a frost build, and I'm considering dumping it since it's not as useful as I'd like and I'd end up dropping acclimation, a point in KM, and go to 2/5 anticipation to get fully imp. RT. Also, unless I'm going for a strong single target build I don't feel like a frost VotTW build [such as 25/42/4] would be as viable as an UH + VotTW build.

Second, I'm looking to pick up morbidity for my frost spec, and potentially the HB glyph as well. If it procs imp. IT (as I've seen mentioned) and applies FF before doing damage (thus utilizing TS and GR), that's win, but I haven't been able to get the glyph yet so I haven't been able to check for myself.

I'm looking to swap to these specs:
25/5/41
10/53/8
Edit: Without CotG, it's a 10/51/8 +2 spec, which could actually be put in a lot of places [ie SoB] instead of CotG.

Questions:
@ SoB:
- Is 2/5 Dark Conviction better than 2/3 SoB? I haven't seen any #s anywhere on their TPS values point-for-point, but I feel like DC would be better for lesser geared tanks since they wouldn't be getting as many Rune Strikes to use up all the extra RP, but I could be wrong... If anyone does actually have the TPS ratings for each, I'd be interested to see them.
- Is a point in SoB over a point in BA, 2H spec, or SD worth it now with the changes from 3.1? Alternatively, which is the LEAST valuable point out of {SoB, BA, 2H spec, SD}?

@ RT / VotTW:
- Has anyone tried a frost spec with RT or a frost + VotTW build as of 3.1 and found it extremely useful? I'm definitely a huge fan of the 30s CD on imp RT and would love to pick it up, but I can't find anything I want to drop for imp RT (except acclimation due to the fact that it's unreliable). I also like HB, but would be willing to give it up due to the 8s CD, although HB + morbidity would be amazing for fights like Thorim...

@ original Frost spec (11/55/5):
- Are acclimation and KM actually worthwhile talents as a frost tanking spec? Acclimation seems to be useful for Hodir, and not much more than that in Ulduar (yes, it can proc from a lot of things, but none of them are extremely high on the list of things that would kill a tank unless people fuck up) and I'd rather have the 15s off of DnD's CD than the spotty +50-150 res to various resistances.
- Is 2/5 KM better than 2/2 CotG (either with or without SoB)?

@ Glyphs
- Is the IBF glyph worth using to replace the glyph of disease (assuming it does increase the overall DR by 10%, giving 540 def 50% DR instead of 40%)? I do like glyph of disease, but haven't seen much discussion on it's worthiness in a tanking build (granted its usefulness diminishes when considering only single target fights unless you're doing rotations that spam oblit and cycle a pestilence every 5s to keep up blade barrier).
- Is the HB glyph worth replacing imp. RT / disease with? If it procs IT, it makes it a lot more useful, imo, and if it utilizes TS / GR on an un-diseased target then I'd say definitely (although I'm pretty sure it doesn't). Alternatively, I could grab the HC glyph to do HC->HB, introducing a GCD before HB but guaranteeing utilization of TS and GR unless the HB'd mobs are out of the HC range (which most of the time isn't an issue).

Any other questions / comments about the specs are welcome as well, but these were my biggest uncertainties.

-Mjollner