ShakeNbake

SandRock - You have a few points spent in areas that brings up a few ??, but with DK's the phrase "to each their own" has never rang more true.
As far as having trouble in the arena on the Thorim encounter, I tanked it for the first time (10 man) with no problems at all...just alternate your Death and Decay & Unholy Blight...be sure you have the glyph for Death & Decay. Target the warbringers & Champions (as they take longer to bring down), put diseases on them & pestilence followed by Blood Boil...you can hit your Blood Boil even with no disease on them, it'll be just enough threat to keep them on you until your Death & Decay is ready to use again.

For whatever reason, my above post is being ignored, but you might want to try that out as it's the best for mitigation, single target & aoe threat...specialy for your gear level. I'm 10 Naxx geared as well, tanking with people that are full T8.5 & Ulduar 25 geared out...and I never had any problems with threat. For kicks, I tanked Freya 25 & took next to no damage...less damage then a Ulduar/25 Naxx warrior tank.

 

Bikiniwax

I think I know why you were having trouble in the arena. Part of the mechanic for the area fight is that the person closest to Thorim gets automatic aggro of adds. I'll assume that your arena group stands in the center circle so you can try standing on the part of the circle closest to Thorim and have the healers and DPS stand on the other side of the circle, farthest from Thorim.

Should make most of your AoE threat problems disappear.

 

Reroller

The other week we did Thorim Hard Mode in our 25 man run and after a few nights of doing this, I've grown tired of the arena but I was spec'd frost at the time due to my thoughts of more mitigation and longer survivability (although I've grown to learn that blood once again dominates). . .that being said when I was frost it was a cake walk to tank arena almost solo.

What I would suggest if you're unholy though (which is great AoE) is to ensure that you are using your DnD as the big groups of mobs are coming in, this way you are getting aggro on everything. Pick one that doesn't get blown up fast and disease him x2 and pestilience and then bloodboil on all blood runes that pop.

Ensure you're targeting the champions as they come in as they need to be tanked immediately and focused down by your dps in arena if you plan to be successful. Asking for disarms from rogues is always nice too but not needed. Otherwise I would just ensure that you are keeping unholy blight up at all times, spreading your diseases and using BB on all blood runes.

I know that I'd get frustrated sometimes for runes to regen so I would use BT or ERW if I felt that I need to get aggro NOW and it would ensure I would be able to get good snap aggro on them.

Also I'm not sure how many rogues you have, maybe 1 since it's a 10 man. Ask your rogue to Tricks you on all CDs as well. With FoK from rogues + tricks up and you being unholy spec, you should be a stellar option for tanking arena.


If you're struggling and feel comfortable, try frost. I think the snap aggro on frost is far greater than unholy. The mobs die fast or at least they should be, so the quicker you can get the 'snap aggro' (or so I call it) the better. Howling blast is really stellar for the encounter, especially glyphed and using BB to gain more aggro since they all have FF on them from howling blast. That would be another option that you may wish to lean towards.

 

Daedalix

The large groups of smaller mobs aren't really worth a DnD unless they will have a "named" mob with them (Evoker, Champion, etc.). Typically, even an undiseased Blood Boil will be enough to hold aggro on them long enough for them to die. They don't do enough dmg to your dps to warrant worrying about. The biggest worry is not doing ANYTHING to them and letting them gib a healer. HB is your main threat gainer here as frost, use DnD for the later waves where named after named and then a large pack with a Champion + Evoker will come. As frost, Thorim Hard mode should be very easy in the Arena. Use DS for snap aggro and let HS shine on the duos if you are Blood. It's much more difficult as Blood. As mentioned above, snap aggro here is much more important than threat. Frost gives you 3+ options for Aoe threat. Hungering cold, Howling Blast, Blood Boil, DnD. Also, save your cooldowns till much later in the fight on Thorim when he will be doing much more damage and your healers are more likely to make a mistake. Trust your healers to get you through the first few Unbalancing switches.

Unholy doesn't really shine in any facet of Ulduar above Blood or Frost. The AoE threat is nice but the cooldowns on Mimiron and similar hard modes are inferior to Blood. Frost provides a nice middle ground. I was able to successfully tank everything in Ulduar until Mimiron hard mode as Frost. Anti-Magic Zone is embarrassingly bad in terms of actual damage reduction. It might save someone during Detonating packs on Freya if they are standing in it but it won't even take 1/2 of a tick of Plasma Blast for Mimiron.

The other interesting point about Blood spec'd tanking is that there are about 3 extra points where you can spend on whichever aspect you need most. This isn't so much the case with Frost or Unholy. If you are doing a Hardmode, you can spec for more EH, reduce your magical damage, or you can spec to increase your AoE viability via Morbity or to increase your threat via Sudden Doom, Subversion, or Necrosis.

One particular spec won't be sufficient, IMO, to get you through all of Ulduar. You need to be ready and able to switch specs based on the fights and Hardmodes you will be facing and whether or not you are the OT or MT.

For Freya (hardmode and otherwise) when I was frost, popping Hungering Cold at the start of a Detonating Lasher pack was clutch if the dps hadn't finished off the previous set of adds or you wanted to keep people from dying.

Stay thirsty my friends.

 

Tojara

I pretty much have to agree with the fact that you can't really stick with one spec for the entirety of Ulduar and expect to be optimal. I typically run with a pretty standard blood build (for most bosses) and an unholy build as my sub spec (I typically use this on all trash, Thorim, Freya, Mimiron and Yogg. Frost is excellent as well, but I normally only run it on hard mode Hodir as it's pretty difficult for any other spec to match the threat that frost provides (not to mention the IBF lasts pretty much the entire frozen blows).

I would disagree on the notion that Unholy is inferior in every facet of Ulduar. I find it pretty exceptional in a good number of places throughout the instance. The simple fact that you can get AoE spell vulnerability for your casters in the tunnel part of Thorim is excellent. I've also had zero problems on the hard mode Mimiron (10 man) as unholy either. IBF the first/third plasma blasts and then a bone shield running through the second one with WELL timed AMS/AMZ is still pretty easy to heal through. The biggest draw of unholy is during phase 3 where it is seemingly leaps and bound easier to pick up any junk bots running around with little to no effort. Unholy is again nice for AoE spell vulnerability on Freya as well, and is typically the spec I run.

Normally in 10 mans I pretty much switch between Unholy/Blood on every single encounter depending on what boss it is. Some encounters our group will have our resto druid spec balance, and on other encounters he can't, therefore Unholy is the obvious spec of choice.

 

Cythen

Thrones,

Have a look at my spec if you would like. I'm running a fairly simple blood spec. The balance of this is that you have a low cool down on Death and Decay for AOE pulls. You also have great single target threat levels. This is combined with absolutely great self healing abilities.

For single target tanking I try to follow the rotation of IT, PS, DS, (DS) BS - Repeat as diseases fall off. I do this with Runstrike macroed into my attacks so it is constantly spammed. This allows for 10% self heals every deathstrike, and your "Oh Shit" button of runetap every 30 seconds. A button that allows for a 7k self heal in a single click is amazing. Combined with Vampiric Blood that jumps to around 10k.

This works simply great for heroics. I even had pug priest ask the group "Who else is healing?" during a quick heroic run a few days ago.

For AOE pulls, drop D&D and blood boils, if you have more than 3-4 adds to tank you can disease one and pestilence prior to blood boil for additional damage and threat.

I currently MT 25 naxx and 10 Ulduar for our guild and still am using this spec.

I also played with a hybrid spec for a while where I was blood up to Heart Strike and put 21 points into unholy to get Unholy Blight. This worked very well for tanking annyong tiny trash mobs such as in AN. However, my single target threat levels suffered.

Go try a few different ones out and stick with what seems the most effective.

 

Daedalix

I've been doing Ulduar 10 with a pally MT primarily as Frost and some as Blood. To some extent, it depends on how you will be using the OT. If your mob is always the last to die for trash and you're doing all the AoE tanking of adds (typical OT duty) then I'd recommend Frost or Unholy. For a OT, threat is generally not an issue. If at all "snap aggro" can be (Arena tanking, Ferya adds etc.) important. You want high physical avoidance and may be able to sacrifice threat to get it. There's very little synergy with the pally tank but you will have a great 1-2 AoE punch for all the Normal mode encounters. You also need a DPS off-spec because some fights only require one tank (General, we 1-tank Yogg, Hodir, etc.)

Frost provides great AoE snap threat via HB and Hungering Cold and increased avoidance via Frigid Deathplate and mitigation via UA. Unholy has mitigation via Bone Armor and reduced magic damage (not a real factor unless you're tanking Steelbreaker or Mimiron). Frost served me well. I could snap aggro on aoe packs and he had the steady aoe threat with his consecrate. For me, the higher avoidance with liberal use of cooldowns allowed my healers to focus more on the raid and MT than myself.

Blood is weak at snap threat, especially in the AoE department. I have switched to it for the past couple raids and it's overkill on threat and mitigation/cooldowns but Thorim, Ignis, and trash were that much more difficult. It also may come down to what raid buff you need to provide. Whichever spec you have the most experience with I'd recommend going with.

You should be able to dig up example specs from the End-game DK tanking thread or from any profile around here.

Stay thirsty my friends.

 

Taizu

In terms of enchants. Due to the massive amount of defense SSG gives us, has anyone considered replacing +16 def on their cloak with the armor enchant for more EHP? I know armor from that doesn't get multiplied with Frost Presence, but since the FL25 ring is BIS for mitigation pre-hard mode, I would think +225 armor would be closer.

How would you take this into account?

 

Noak3

My tanking build is kind of weird; it's hybrid blood-unholy so that I can get mark and rune tap, but I'm thinking there might be room for improvement; I got hit like a truck yesterday in VoA.
Anyone have some suggestions?

 

◊ Bryne

+225 armor is the best EH enchant, yes.

 

piqme

I checked a nice hp/aoe tanking talent/glyphs. And it works verywell in naxx25/ulduar/ulduar25 atm.

Talent: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Taizu

Threat is a big thing for ulduar, I really wouldn't suggest a build like that.

 

Pennyarcane

I tried a build very similar to that (although I brought Ebon Plaguebringer to the table as well) in our guilds uldu10 run last Friday.

[Edit]
Build link: The World of Warcraft Armory
[/Edit]

My threat according to omen was around 3k TPS, as compared to the 3.5-4.5k TPS my cookie-cutter frost build usually generates. the build simply doesn't create enough aggro for mobs to stick once the DPS begin popping their cooldowns.

Also, if you intend to go deep Unholy, there's no excuse for not taking 3 ranks in Ebon Plaguebringer. It's a ridiculously good raid buff, and a solid increase to your threat generation

 

Mendeste

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...version=10026# (13/7/51)
will this be the new become the new cc spec due to the changes to Unholy Blight and Scent of Blood?

 

Apparition

I actually have been using +22 Agi on my Cloak for sometime now due to being well over the defence cap.

I find that the Avoidance this has provided me is actually been pretty handy I just wish they actually had a +22 Str enchant for cloak as this would benefit both Melee DPS (Warriors, Druids, DK's) & also Melee Tanks (DK's, Warriors) for Threat.

There isn't really any good Enchants for Tanks for Cloaks apart from 225 Armour, 16 Defence or 22 Agi depending on your gear etc.

I am curious what others are considering moving to come 3.2 as it looks like Frost is now severely hampered with cooldowns are avoidance nerf. I think many will be considering shifting to Blood for tanking and I know many have already made the switch just curious about the other frost tanks out there what they are considering.

 

Zurai

There is no change to Scent of Blood. It's just a tooltip update.

 

Timbalt

Can we see math on this? It seems to me that the dodge gained from +22 agi or the dodge/parry/miss gained from +16 defense would be more. But I'm dumb, which is why I want math!

 

Fortris

How does dodge, parry or miss boost Effective Health? EH is a factor of armor and hitpoints. You're confusing Effective Health with Avoidance.

 

Timbalt

Always thought those were included in EH. Guess I'm doing it wrong.

 

Alyse

Your Effective Health is essentially how much damage you can take before dying. From a healer's point of view, it is the amount of buffer/breathing room they will get to heal you back up to full health in the case that you get an unlucky string of hits (ie. you do not dodge/parry 5 times in a row).

In terms of calculating EH, only stamina and armour contribute to your EH. Stamina increases your total health pool, allowing you to take more damage before you die. Armour decreases the amount of damage you take per hit, thus allowing you to take more hits before you die.

In the case of the cloak enchant, the armour enchant adds the most to your EH; the defense enchant will only increase the amount of hits you can dodge/parry. The 22 agility enchant will increase your armour slightly, which does increase your EH a small amount, while also increasing your dodge and crit percentages.

 

• frmorrison

Well, the 22 agility adds 44 armor (48 with Kings!), so that should add some EH.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Bllets

And of course damage reduction talents/buffs/abilities.

 

Caggy

Just a quick question, right now I'm a frost tank, and with the changes with the diseases, is it good to move back to a two disease rotation? From what I can tell from the frost dps post, it seems to be the case. It also aims torwards the non-boring rotation idea.

 

• frmorrison

Yes, you want 2 diseases as a frost tank.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Nemantopia

You've...always...wanted two diseases as a Frost tank. Especially now that the damage is going up 15%.

As to the cloak enchant, it depends on what you're looking for. +16 defense is for when you're scrambling just to HAVE enough defense to cap, or to stay capped and use the parry runeforges. After that, it's about whether you're more concerned with upping your avoidance or your straight reduction. The agility enchant after Kings provides 48 armor and just shy of 0.33% undiminished dodge. The armor enchant is a straight 225 armor. So it's certainly min-maxing, but the question is 'is 0.33% dodge or 177 armor better for me?'

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