hey guy im a frost tank and have been using [Inevitable Defeat] for about 4 weeks now, and was in ulduar tonight, we done flame leviathan and he dropped [Ironsoul] i rolled for offspec and won it, and wa wondering which one of the 2 was actually better for tanking?
hey guy im a frost tank and have been using [Inevitable Defeat] for about 4 weeks now, and was in ulduar tonight, we done flame leviathan and he dropped [Ironsoul] i rolled for offspec and won it, and wa wondering which one of the 2 was actually better for tanking?
ID is going to be better for tanking due to the increase of Expertise. Next upgrade is Worldcarver Vs. Rune Edge for tanking.
cheers mate, i thought that to be honest as the expertise i better for tanking than armor pen is i guess
Eh. It is unless you're rocking a Blood build, then, ArP is worth a little more as a tank but still isn't better than Expertise, imo. But - you need to realize, my goal is to break through the Parry hard-cap to see what that does to our threat.
i was tanking Mimiron in 10 man today and i would pop AMS on his plasma shot and it would only absorb the first and second tick totaling 50% of my health. I was under the impression from reading the tool tip that it would absorb up to a maximum of 50% of your health per magical absorption, but it seems to be over the full duration. Can this be a bug on bliz's part or just me misunderstanding the recent change to it. I have not had the chance to test this elsewhere to see if it just the encounter but i want to ask anyways to maybe clear up my confusion.
i was tanking Mimiron in 10 man today and i would pop AMS on his plasma shot and it would only absorb the first and second tick totaling 50% of my health. I was under the impression from reading the tool tip that it would absorb up to a maximum of 50% of your health per magical absorption, but it seems to be over the full duration. Can this be a bug on bliz's part or just me misunderstanding the recent change to it. I have not had the chance to test this elsewhere to see if it just the encounter but i want to ask anyways to maybe clear up my confusion.
I noticed this issue the other night on Mimiron 10-man, also. When Blizz nerfed it is, indeed, the moment it tickets worth of 50% of your life - it stops but the spell visual persists (it seems). It lasts 1 tick on average on hard mode 10man which is aggravating to say the least.
I am currently leveling a frost tank and am close to hitting 80. I have a question about using [Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight]. Is it worth getting this Sigil when i will not be using Icy Touch in my rotation that much because of the new Howling Blast glyph? Or should i spend my Emblems on something else?
Also i am wondering if i should use Icy touch on a Boss fight instead of Howling Blast? I know Howling Blast takes the extra rune but would using Icy Touch be a loss in TPS?
I was thinking of going with this 37/27/7 spec for tanking.
I currently have this 43/23/5 build that was worked on by a guildie for top mitigation. Now, my main spec is dps so the tanking build only gets used when we are short on tanks or they need that extra ot for some reason.
I've used the 43/23/5 build recently in 25-man Ulduar and I really didn't like it personally. When we were on Razorscale, all I needed to handle was the adds that drill up. Now, I've tanked and ot'd 10-man runs plenty to help non-raiding guildies get gear and stuff, as well as OT/MT'd stuff in 25-man naxx when needed (though with my dps build) so tanking isn't new, but I seriously felt like I could not keep the adds on me at all with this build. I also MT'd Ignis and had to work my tail off to keep threat above the dps'rs. I kept having to use reach whenever it was off CD and Dark Command when I fell below. I'm wondering if the points in subversion was the reason?
I've read that WotN is an awesome talent to have and am having issues working it into my 37/27/7 build. We generally have a shaman with windfury down, which from what I've also read, means that I shouldn't have imp icy touch.
I noticed this issue the other night on Mimiron 10-man, also. When Blizz nerfed it is, indeed, the moment it tickets worth of 50% of your life - it stops but the spell visual persists (it seems). It lasts 1 tick on average on hard mode 10man which is aggravating to say the least.
I think the whole point of the nerf was specifically so you couldn't soak up stuff like Plasma with it, on a 45s cooldown and giving you full RP at the same time. It's good enough really, it's just not a "I'm immune to magic dmg for 5secs" cooldown anymore. I use it with VB on 2nd beam(usually take 2 ticks, then use it so it lets my healers top me off while it absorbs 3rd tick), and use IBF for first and 3rd beam. If you get a 4th one well external cooldowns I guess, didn't do hardmode though but works fine for 25man like this.
Originally Posted by Amaurea
I was thinking of going with this 37/27/7 spec for tanking.
I currently have this 43/23/5 build that was worked on by a guildie for top mitigation. Now, my main spec is dps so the tanking build only gets used when we are short on tanks or they need that extra ot for some reason.
I've used the 43/23/5 build recently in 25-man Ulduar and I really didn't like it personally. When we were on Razorscale, all I needed to handle was the adds that drill up. Now, I've tanked and ot'd 10-man runs plenty to help non-raiding guildies get gear and stuff, as well as OT/MT'd stuff in 25-man naxx when needed (though with my dps build) so tanking isn't new, but I seriously felt like I could not keep the adds on me at all with this build. I also MT'd Ignis and had to work my tail off to keep threat above the dps'rs. I kept having to use reach whenever it was off CD and Dark Command when I fell below. I'm wondering if the points in subversion was the reason?
I've read that WotN is an awesome talent to have and am having issues working it into my 37/27/7 build. We generally have a shaman with windfury down, which from what I've also read, means that I shouldn't have imp icy touch.
Just use a full blood build, or a full frost build, hybrids are nice for very specific fights but generally I find them weaker for your everyday tanking, and especially for adds phases tanking(like razorscale). Just go with a deep blood build with all the blood stuff for boss tanking, you shouldn't have threat issues then and you don't need imp talons or frigid dreadplate to tank just fine. Subversion has nothing to do with threat though, unless you tank in blood presence but I somehow doubt that's the case ^^.
Unless I'm doing it very wrong, testing on the PTR seems to indicate that not only is Glyph of Disease not a significant threat/damage boost over refreshing diseases in a normal rotation, it's also less threat/damage than the HB rotation which only uses one disease.
Using Pestilence to refresh your diseases means that you can only do so when you have blood runes available - which, if you're actually using your death runes to Obliterate, is only once every two cycles or ~20 seconds. You only have a 21 second disease length with 2/2 Epidemic, which means you'd have an extremely tiny window to refresh with Pestilence. Obviously, missing that window makes the glyph useless on single targets. The fact that the guy who posted this only has 1/2 means that he's just sitting on unused blood runes to refresh diseases with, which, while it does mean you get to use every F and U on an Obliterate, you're still totally wasting at least one, maybe two runes per cycle. You will get a couple more Rime procs during the course of a fight, but the buff to PS damage means that it's not as large a gain.
The rotation that really abuses Rime is the HB glyph - every free HB refreshes your FF debuff, which means that every proc is a free Obliterate, which can proc another Rime. The big advantage here is that the rotation is massively less complicated to maintain and is much less GCD-locked, which gives you more time to Frost Strike and isn't in danger of making you start from scratch if you have to move at all or do anything else while tanking.
Originally Posted by Apate
Yeah, I'm barely OK with myself being in the room while I have sex
I've been reading over the past few pages looking about and I'm thinking about a blood spec. Blood because I don't tank a great deal, only the odd pug here and there, and I mostly like to go back and do old world content (ZG) so if I can make that a little easier it's nice.
I've come up with 53/7/11, but I am unsure of what to do with the two points I have sitting in RP Mastery and with my glyphs. I'm not really well geared so I was thinking if it was worth it to take Dark Command out or to keep it. (Armory) My current spec was made for ZG and random soloing stuff, my second blood spec I have ever tried.
From what I gather Epidemic isn't really worth it with the increase in disease duration.
If anyone can clear anything up I would really appreciate it. Thanks.
Looks like you put a bit more emphasis on buffing your DC's with virulence and sudden doom. I noticed my DC's hit for crap and it was better to keep the RP above 50 to buff my Death Strike rather than waste it on a weak DC.
I'd go with 53/8/10 and put the 3 points in subversion to buff Heart Strikes - Imp Icy Touch (unless you can rely on an OT to debuff for you). I go with Epidemic because it gives me another death strike before needing to throw up diseases again.
I glyph for IBF, DS and either vamp blood or rune strike.
I've been reading over the past few pages looking about and I'm thinking about a blood spec. Blood because I don't tank a great deal, only the odd pug here and there, and I mostly like to go back and do old world content (ZG) so if I can make that a little easier it's nice.
I've come up with 53/7/11, but I am unsure of what to do with the two points I have sitting in RP Mastery and with my glyphs. I'm not really well geared so I was thinking if it was worth it to take Dark Command out or to keep it. (Armory) My current spec was made for ZG and random soloing stuff, my second blood spec I have ever tried.
From what I gather Epidemic isn't really worth it with the increase in disease duration.
If anyone can clear anything up I would really appreciate it. Thanks.
Your build is very similar to what I use for raid tanking. It is a great build and I am having trouble finding ways to improve upon it, at least for our current progression raids. You definitely do not need Virulence with a blood build I would drop those 3 and put at least 1 in epidemic (I prefer 2 because it seems to smooth out my rotation a bit more and i get occasional lag spikes). Another thing to take into consideration is that a typical Blood Rotation has more global cooldowns than the other trees, which makes epidemic more attractive. The only other thing I would change is dropping Runic power mastery. I put those points in Improved Icy Touch for the further reduction in enemy attack speed, but you could just as easily put them in the blood tree if you trust another DK to keep improved icy touch up or a warrior to keep Thunder clap up on the mobs. If you did decide to put those points into blood the obvious places would be either subversion or rune tap...depending on if you need more threat or more survivability.
Some people I have talked to prefer to take Rune tap over WotN. I prefer WotN simply because its a passive "smart" ability. It knows when you are in trouble and activates itself. Not to say Rune Tap isn't a viable talent, I would love to find a way to fit it into my build, I just am not really sure what i would give up for it.
Now as far as glyphs go I do not believe you need Dark Command. I would switch it out for Rune strike as I believe it to be very close to a required tanking glyph, you will gain a lot of threat with this glyph. Glyph of IBF was nice before the patch but the change makes it almost useless for a tank who is already at the defense cap. Right now I am using Rune strike, Death Strike, and Vampiric Blood. As the content moves more toward farm status for us I will probably drop Vampiric Blood for Dark Death so that I can focus more on higher threat and dps while tanking.
I dont know what you use for a rotation but typically with this build i use:
IT>PS>HS>HS>DS
DS>HS>HS>HS>HS
Hope all that helps so far I have had no problems with either threat or survivability.
Your build is very similar to what I use for raid tanking. It is a great build...
...I dont know what you use for a rotation but typically with this build i use:
IT>PS>HS>HS>DS
DS>HS>HS>HS>HS
Hope all that helps so far I have had no problems with either threat or survivability.
Ah, shows what I knew about blood tanking, I was under the impression that DS would be used, not HS. I see why you put points into Subversion. I'll definately be doing that.
I was taking Virulence because I'm not hit capped, I miss stuff all the time in ZG (How the numbers work against a boss like that I don't know) so I was scared of if I miss something when grouping with others.
I was also taking Sudden Doom cause I figured it would help for some threat.
Also, by having the extra 30 RP, does that increase the damage (and healing?) of DS with the glyph? I'm assuming it does, but I also assume that it's not that much of an increase.
So it looks like I'll be going with 53/8/10, thanks for all the help.
Ah, shows what I knew about blood tanking, I was under the impression that DS would be used, not HS. I see why you put points into Subversion. I'll definately be doing that.
I was taking Virulence because I'm not hit capped, I miss stuff all the time in ZG (How the numbers work against a boss like that I don't know) so I was scared of if I miss something when grouping with others.
I was also taking Sudden Doom cause I figured it would help for some threat.
Also, by having the extra 30 RP, does that increase the damage (and healing?) of DS with the glyph? I'm assuming it does, but I also assume that it's not that much of an increase.
So it looks like I'll be going with 53/8/10, thanks for all the help.
Subversion I consider optional...I didnt fit it into my build because I would rather have Imp. Icy Touch, at least for now. Sudden Doom I definitely have...actually your points spent in the blood tree look exactly like mine. The only differences are in the frost and unholy trees. In frost you wont need Runic Power Mastery because you will be burning your runic power down to about 25 after you use your runes (twice per cycle). The extra runic power wont help you out with the glyph of death strike because they put a cap on it...after 25 runic power you dont gain any extra damage on your DS's. DS healing got changed all around, its now 5% of your total health per disease on the target and that gets modified by 25/50% with improved death strike. That only leaves the unholy tree, you really don't need Virulence because virulence only affects spell hit, and with a blood build most of your attacks are considered physical damage. I believe only Icy Touch and Death coil are modified by Virulence in a typical blood rotation. You can fix your hit issue by prioritizing your stats as you gear up. You will want to get to 26 expertise first, after that hit becomes a more valuable stat until you reach 8% hit. Once your hit is where it should be you can continue to grab expertise or work on more stamina/avoidance depending on where your weak spots lie and the content you are working on. Also remember you can use hit food to keep yourself at 8% if you switch out some gear.
Overall I would say that new build looks really solid. Out of curiosity has anyone looked into which would provide a greater increase in threat, Sudden Doom or subversion? (assuming you take only 1)
I would recommend trying out Hysteria for any blood tanks who are currently tanking without it. As a threat tool it's amazing when you need it on fights such as Hodir and Vezax, and it's handy for raid utility other times.
As blood usually up to 90% of my threat is coming from physical damage. That means hysteria is a 18% threat boost for 30 seconds every 3 minutes. If you feel uncomfortable with the health loss, you can combine it with vampiric blood right as you pull. Vampiric Blood will help you while the boss is undebuffed and healers are moving into position, and the health loss from Hysteria is manageable. The threat boost however is enormous. My second hysteria for those fights often goes to a melee unless I need the threat desperately.
When I don't need Hysteria myself, I'm happy to give it to our melee for extra raid damage. It's particularly effective on burst damage phases like XT-002's heart phase. A feral druid doing 12000 dps on the heart will effectively get an extra 2400dps for 30 seconds or an extra 72k damage on the heart. XT-002 is probably the best case scenario for Hysteria use, but it is very impressive in other fights too.
Best targets are usually:
Feral druid dps - Affects 100% of damage, great cooldown to combine with.
Combat rogues - Affects 80-85%ish of damage (not poison damage), great cooldowns to combine with
Fury warriors - Affects 100% of damage, must be coordinated not to be used simultaneously with Death Wish. Few other cooldowns to combine with, and those would probably be used with Death Wish anyway.
Arms Warriors are no longer good targets for Hysteria, because it doesn't stack with Wrecking Crew. An Arms warrior thus only gets an effective 10% damage boost from it.
Just use a full blood build, or a full frost build, hybrids are nice for very specific fights but generally I find them weaker for your everyday tanking, and especially for adds phases tanking(like razorscale). Just go with a deep blood build with all the blood stuff for boss tanking, you shouldn't have threat issues then and you don't need imp talons or frigid dreadplate to tank just fine. Subversion has nothing to do with threat though, unless you tank in blood presence but I somehow doubt that's the case ^^.
Thank you for the suggestion Pyros. Here is what I came up with for my tank spec I didn't take Rune Tap based on the fact that I really can not forsee myself using it a lot so I moved the points over to cover both Spell Deflection and Death Rune Mastery. All said and done, I ended up with 1 point left over that I wasn't sure what to do with so I stuck it in Morbidity to have a semi-shortened time on DnD. Hopefully this will end up being a good tanking spec for myself
Thank you for the suggestion Pyros. Here is what I came up with for my tank spec I didn't take Rune Tap based on the fact that I really can not forsee myself using it a lot so I moved the points over to cover both Spell Deflection and Death Rune Mastery. All said and done, I ended up with 1 point left over that I wasn't sure what to do with so I stuck it in Morbidity to have a semi-shortened time on DnD. Hopefully this will end up being a good tanking spec for myself
Few things, first you should take 3 of the points in frost and put them in imp IT. There's really no reason to get RPM or Icy Reach over 6%less autoattack damage on stuff hitting you, even if you have a prot warrior pet TCing stuff for you. Well if you really have one, guess it's fine but quite often I'm tanking mobs separately from our prot warriors so it'd be a net loss.
As for Rune Tap, it's extremely useful in my opinion, much more than Death Rune Master which I'd never used since Death Strikes are more useful than Heart Strikes for MTing, since they give back health. I also dropped Mark of Blood because I never used it, and when I did it seemed totally useless anyway. Those are mostly a matter of taste though, we're blessed with Blood being a very rich tree where you can actually make choices based on your tastes/raid composition without really having one best build.
So I have a conundrum. I've been running with my current spec since 3.1, Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft, and while I haven't had any issues with it, I know I had a few wasted points (bloodworms, for instance, was testing to see if they'd increased the heal to be worth it. Answer, not so much) and since I'm now main tanking Ulduar, I wanted to clean it up a bit.
However, most of the opinions here seem to really be at odds with my personal experiences. Rune tap, for example, I'd never be caught without yet most seem to view it as expendable.
So I don't know, I guess I'm just looking for some advice.
Rune Tap is great and gets better the more health you have. I know a lot of people use the rationalization that if you need to use it then your healers are failing somewhere, but then the same could be said about using potions or health stones. You shouldn't have to, but RNG often has something else to say about that.
Ulduar has a lot of fights that are hard on healers for various reasons. Mimiron has a lot of raid damage going around, for example. Also, anything you can do during plasma blast to take the edge off is valuable. Vezax presents a lot of mana limitations and any extra healing you could do for yourself is mana saved for healers. Things like these make it a good talent so far as I'm concerned. It's a cooldown you can use every 30 seconds that's more effective than a health pot
Also needing some help with my spec..
I just picked up DK tanking about a week ago, I swapped from a warrior since DK's are better at everything >.>.....
I've been playing around and I enjoy frost the most, and this is the spec that I'm currently using.. but I left out the 5 points I was unsure about. Spec
Basically I've been trying to weight the differences between Bladed Armor, 2h Spec, and Morbidity. Being new to DK I'm not really sure of which would be more vital to tanking between Bladed Armor and 2H Spec, but as for Morbidity, I rarely find myself using DnD except on initial pulls (am I tanking poorly? We have no prior DK tanks to which I can compare myself to in my guild), so I don't see the point in tanking 3/3 in that. So should I be speccing 3/5 BA and 2/2 2H Spec? Or should I be relooking my tanking style and take 3/3 Morbidity and use DnD more?
Edit: Just wanted to add that I'm only really tanking Uld 10/25.
Basically I've been trying to weight the differences between Bladed Armor, 2h Spec, and Morbidity. Being new to DK I'm not really sure of which would be more vital to tanking between Bladed Armor and 2H Spec, but as for Morbidity, I rarely find myself using DnD except on initial pulls (am I tanking poorly? We have no prior DK tanks to which I can compare myself to in my guild), so I don't see the point in tanking 3/3 in that. So should I be speccing 3/5 BA and 2/2 2H Spec? Or should I be relooking my tanking style and take 3/3 Morbidity and use DnD more?
Edit: Just wanted to add that I'm only really tanking Uld 10/25.
There's really no need for Endless Winter or the increase in range. I would drop all of the points out of those. Put 3 into BA, 2 into 2h spec, and 3 in morbidity if you want. I found morbidity to be great for fights like Thorim P1 and it's fairly useful on Freya. It's also nice for Mimiron P3 depending on your strategy.
You're going to need to put one point into one of the one point talents (Lichborne or HC). It's a toss up in my opinion. I never find myself using HC and Lichborne is nice if I am tanking Auriaya.
Personally, I don't use DnD unless there are adds to be picked up and never on single target tanking.
Hey guys i am wondering where to put 2 talent points and i hope you could help My build is (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) and i am wondering should i put the 2 talents into Two-Handed weapon or Epidemic. Any suggestions? Cheers
So I have a conundrum. I've been running with my current spec since 3.1, Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft, and while I haven't had any issues with it, I know I had a few wasted points (bloodworms, for instance, was testing to see if they'd increased the heal to be worth it. Answer, not so much) and since I'm now main tanking Ulduar, I wanted to clean it up a bit.
However, most of the opinions here seem to really be at odds with my personal experiences. Rune tap, for example, I'd never be caught without yet most seem to view it as expendable.
So I don't know, I guess I'm just looking for some advice.
Specs are fairly subjective, but I'll give you my opinion on yours.
Trying to pick up UB in Unholy makes you sacrifice too many useful points in Blood for it to be worth it. You're giving up a lot of crit (Subversion, Dark Conviction), a lot of damage on those crits (Might of Mograine), and several talents to significantly increase your damage/threat (Bloody Vengeance, Blood-Gorged), not to mention a large source of RP generation (Scent of Blood) to make sure you are missing as few opportunities for RS's as possible.
Necrosis is nice, BCB isn't bad, UB is good for gathering adds, but if you want to MT, leave the add-tanking to the OT's and focus on talents that boost your single-target tps. Morbidity gives DC's a nice boost, and should be more than sufficient to hold threat on any fight where even as the MT you find yourself needing to pick up a few adds.
Things I would drop altogether are Bloodworms, which you already mentioned, Sudden Doom, which provides too little extra tps for it to be worth the three points, Improved Blood Presence, which provides far too little healing to be worth a two-point investment, and Unholy Command, which you shouldn't really need. Death Rune Mastery is not a bad talent, but as a tank you should be using DS instead of HS, as the healing is now fairly significant, and scales with gear.
Here is a spec I'll be testing to see if I like Rune Tap in Ulduar or not. I skipped it in Naxx/Maly/Sarth because I never felt like it was necessary, but with the more strenuous healing in Ulduar, it might be useful in certain fights.
Glyph of IBF was nice before the patch but the change makes it almost useless for a tank who is already at the defense cap.
It was posted sometime back in this thread, but just for clarification, Glyph of IBF still provides a 10% benefit to those at def cap despite how the text reads. I'm able to take my reduction from 44% to 54%. Given the 2 min cooldowns of the three main tree talents, I like it better than Glyph of Unbreakable Armor (though I still use both).
05/02/09, 9:36 PM
My build is (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) and i am wondering should i put the 2 talents into Two-Handed weapon or Epidemic. Any suggestions? Cheers
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