saiyajinmaster

Unless you're an orc from a pure mitigation point of view the Inevitable Defeat is clearly the best. Unless you're having super threat issues (I know I've had none so far, and have tanked ~half of 25 man Naxx) I think the best tanking weapon prior to hitting Naxx is the [Whale-Stick Harpoon] That being said, Unless we start having threat issues it should pretty clearly be the weapon with the most stamina, expertise, hit, AP/STR, and unlike for dps even agility is a solid enough tanking stat (Not the best but more dodge never hurts and we have a great conversion rate for it).

 

Suno

Frost is quite crit dependent, but they're not hard to come by. Most geared tanks will have about 7% melee crit chance, then obliterate gets an addition 27% crit from talents. That's ~35% crit for your biggest TPS move in addition to an unavoidable FS (assuming yellow hit capped). AE tanking has went well for me with threat, and I use your exact rotation, except I dump a HB with my returned DnD runes. DnD>IT>PS>PEST>HB. No mage will pull off that. I agree that overall unholy has better threat potential, but I'm hesitant to pick sides on mitigation yet.

 

Griefknight

How important is Acclimation when tanking? Sure it may help the healers out when tanking KT and maybe some other (if there are any) heavy magic damage fights. But is it really something worth speccing into? I have the same question about Frost Aura, are there better places to use those 5 talent points? Killing Machine maybe?

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
This would be the build I am going to use at 80 but I am uncertain if I have spent my points wisely, mainly in Acclimation and Frost Aura. I did not take DC because I see little use with it, every two minutes you have a free crit? That looks more like a PvP talent to me. If I don't take Acclimation and Frost Aura I can have Bladed Armor or KM. Bladed Armor gives ~575 AP, that is if you are at 20k-21k armor while in Frost Presence which I have noticed most Naxx DK's are. I am pretty sure it has been tested that you gain AP from Bladed Armor while in Frost Presence, if not then you would still get ~360 AP from Bladed Armor.

575 AP - 20800 armor (w/ Frost Presence)
360 AP - 13000 armor (w/o Frost Presence)

 

Rejju

Butchery is not meant to generate threat itself, but to make it so you can use extra death coils or fros strikes to generate extra threat. On AoE pulls it is also important; if you get those killing blows, it makes it that much harder to lose threat. Very worthwhile talent, but more personal preference.

 

Solithaira

Neither of your links worked for me so I'm not entirely sure on exactly what builds you are referring to...so I'm going to assume a relatively standard frost and unholy tanking spec in each.

I'm not entirely sure why you feel Frost relies on crit for tanking. Most frost specs leave out Killing Machine, although there is some debate over this choice due to rune strike counting as a white hit. I think Frost is a little less RNG dependent (at current gear levels) when it comes to mitigation. Bone shield could potentially be active for a long period of time...but the combination of IBF (talented to last longer) and UA is very appealing from a mitigation standpoint.

Overall though I agree that Unholy is a "better" AoE tanking spec, but I have not yet decided that it surpasses Frost by enough of a margin on the AoE front, to make up for the added mitigation and improved single target tanking.

 

Talbaz

[Sword of Justice]is going to be the Blue going into naxx that you want

drop a big fat Str gem or Parry gem in there and your set

 

deadnixon

Has anyone tested the relationship between Bone Shield and Power Word: Shield?

Healing an unholy death knight on my discipline priest, it seemed that bone shield stayed up longer when PW: S was up, and that PW: S lasted longer when Bone Shield was up. (This was running a non-heroic, with smaller incoming damage, making the difference noticeable.)

Is it the case that PW: S prevents charges of Bone Shield from being used, and does the 40% mitigation apply before the shield "Absorbs" the damage (increasing the 'effective' healing done)?

 

Buanna

Damage that counts against the limit of Power Word:Shield comes after all damage reduction abilities such as armor, bone shield, etc... If you don't actually get hit because Power Word:Shield fully absorbs the hit, Bone Shield doesn't lose a charge.

Boni and Bonii are not words.
Bonuses is.

 

heffroncm

That's just amazing. I love it. Now I gotta convince one of my pals to go Priest for our RL friend 10 man runs.

So, everything we can do to make Bone Shield last longer is enhanced by Power Word: Shield. I wonder how mandatory that makes a Priest for DK healing, or if that changes gear goals in any way?

 

Rijndael

What I think is the key observation about death knights trying to main tank, mostly already known here, is that
threat is not a problem, mitigation is (since death knights lack a passive damage reduction ability of the other three tanking classes).

With this in mind, I wanted to present the following talent/glyph build:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

major glyphs: bone shield, icebound fortitude, death strike
minor glyphs: pestilence, horn of winter, blood tap

(Note: since the idea here is to sit at mostly full runic power, icebound fortitude glyph can be replaced by some other main tank glyph -- for instance glyph of anti-magic shell increases its average uptime by almost 40%. Another alternative is glyph of dark command if taunts are important.)

As you can see, this build sacrifices the deep unholy talents, which are mostly threat, in exchange for frigid deathplate, which is trading quite a bit of threat for a little avoidance. However, threat is not a problem, and avoidance scales very well with bone shield. This build doesn't have scourge strike. Ordinarily a build like this would replace it with obliterate. However my idea is to use death strike instead (hence runic power mastery and death strike glyph). The idea here is to sit at (mostly) full runic power and use all the unholy/frost/death runes on death strikes. This will obviously hit much less hard than either scourge strike or obliterate -- but threat is not a problem, staying alive is the problem. In fact, given that death strike in this build will heal for nearly triple its damage, and healing threat is half of damage threat, effective death strike threat will end up being more than double its usual value, as long as it doesn't overheal. Glyphed death strike at 130 runic power will heal for enough, I hope, to function as yet another button death knights can push to help healers deal with those spiky damage streaks which are such a death knight problem.

Thoughts? (Caveat: my death knight isn't 80 yet, and there might be a better arrangement of unholy talents in the middle of the tree, though I think the frost/blood talents should be just as they are).

One way to think about this build is that you give up a bunch of threat for a little avoidance -- and the ability for the tank to hit himself with what essentially amounts to an instant max rank Flash of Light every 5 seconds (2 unholy runes, 2 frost runes every 10 seconds). Actually a little more frequently than that due to death runes, but you get the idea.

 

heffroncm

I think part of the reason threat isn't a problem is because we get such amazing threat abilities as Wandering Plague and Unholy Blight and Frost Strike. I wouldn't be quick to significantly nerf my TPS for a minor (3%) avoidance gain. Also, giving up the 5 Expertise hurts your Threat, hurts your Mitigation, and hurts your rotations. Going at least 50 points in any line is IMO mandatory for a DK tank, the 5 Expertise is just awesome.

 

Rejju

Okay. I have been out for a few days and WOW there are a lot of new posts. I have quite a few comments.

Firstly, I would like to rip apart bladed armor. I have not been a fan of this talent until I did some math today. Correct me if I'm wrong:

5 points in Bladed armor comes to 1 Attack Power per 36 armor.

Assuming you have 20k armor with frost presence, thats a gain of 555.5 attack power.

This seems like a HUGE gain to me, and if my math is correct, would be a 'default' talent for any dk.

Secondly, I'd like to list updated tanking specs:

Unholy with out AMZ

Unholy with AMZ

Frost tanking

Blood tanking

Lastly, I am a huge fan of frost tanking. It's just a lot of fun. I haven't spent a lot of time as unholy and I leveled to 70 as blood, but my tanking experience is frost mostly.

My rotation is IT -> PS -> BS -> BS -> DS/OB -> FS

That means Death Strike or Obliterate depending on health and Frost Strike until I cannot. Also, I use Runic Strike whenever it is up.

For AoE tanking I usually pull with DnD -> IT -> PS -> Pestilence -> BB -> Death Chill Howling Blast -> FS

I do not reuse DnD ever as AoE pulls will die too fast to worry. If I have to I'll continue the rotation starting with IT. Death Coil is useless for frost except as a ranged finisher really as Frost Strike is more threat for same RP cost.


Regarding possible change to the parry haste theory. If it is true, then I feel it warrants a look at DW tanking, but I don't know if it will be viable.

 

Rijndael

Wandering plague is amazing aoe threat, I don't think it's a particularly stellar single target threat talent (compared to say scourge strike which I also give up). Giving up 5 expertise (not to mention a flat damage boost) does hurt your threat -- but is it still known if parry-thrashing is present? I recall reading some claims that parry-thrashing is gone in Naxx. As far as rotations -- I envisioned a slightly different sort of play from a standard 'rotation' play. Namely you keep up diseases, use up blood runes, and the rest of the time use death strikes when you dip below maximum, e.g. use unholy/frost/death runes as mitigation tools.

 

jai151

Rejju

I've been trying to create a blood tanking build as well, and mine is very close to yours. However I took the 5 you have in blood gorged and tossed it into glacier rot and annihilation, figuring being able to use an obliterate for big damage instead of death strike without eating the diseases would provide a bigger DPS boost and more threat. Am I off base here?

Expertise, duh, no posting/building on two hours sleep, bad Jai! However, I did drop Vampiric Blood, Will of the Necropolis, and Blood Tap for GR/Annihilation. Obviously I need to get to 80 to test this, and I have the feeling it's going to wind up morphing into a primarily offtank and partial DPS build as we have another DK who beat me to 80 and will probably wind up MTing.

 

heffroncm

It isn't stellar against single targets, no, but I'm thinking more big picture than single target. UB is great in either circumstance.

I've seen conflicting reports on parry-haste in Naxx. Until someone does a more thorough study of it, I'm assuming it's still in. The bigger issue with Expertise is with messing up your rotations, which causes your TPS to drop further and makes things screwier with trying to pop Bone Shield and Lichborne Fortitude every minute.

Your build does clearly have more mitigation than the standard Unholy build. The question in my mind is just how much TPS you lose, and if it's worth the 3% extra mitigation.

 

Griefknight

I would have to agree with Heffroncm, the reason we have no threat issues is because all three of our specs are DPS and tanking specs unlike warriors, druids, and paladins.


Personally, I'm still wondering if Acclimation and Frost Aura are more important talents then Bladed Armor in a tanking situation. Perhaps speccing into Acclimation and Frost Aura for important fights like KT is worth sacrificing Bladed Armor, but then when it comes to fights like Patch Werk those 5 talent points would be much more useful in Bladed Armor.

 

Zurai

[Axe of Bloodstained Ice] wants to have a word with you.

Additionally, there is NO REASON for Blizzard not to make tanking 2-handers now that feral forms are changing to take weapon DPS into account. DKs and Druids can both use 2h maces, so both could use defense-oriented 2h maces, making such weapons not a "single-spec drop".

 

◊ Eej

Frost Aura is pointless because it's just a 5 resistance increase over (Imp) Mark of the Wild. I guess if you don't run with a Druid who spent the two points for it you could use it, but otherwise skip it.

Acclimation, on the other hand, is pretty amazing if you're being constantly hit by magic damage. It's amusing when a fight has multiple types of elemental damage and you're running 225 resist to all of them.

 

Rejju

Ideally, if you are tanking you should stay above 75% health, so thats 10% more damage and 10% more threat. Although, I do see your point, but its really a matter of preference.

 

Griefknight

I'm sorry, I meant that there are no two-handed weapons with defense, armor, parry, or dodge rating that you would actually use, but I understand what your saying and yes it would be a good idea for Blizzard to implement some two-handed maces that had tanking stats for us druids and death knights.

 

Rejju

That axe actually isn't that bad, but it has been stated before, weapons are for TPS not tanking stats. However, you would be stupid not to get one of the easy to get ones with a ton of stamina.

 

mav1234

Sorry to drag up a post from a couple pages ago, but how does a glyphed death strike out threat Obliterate or Scourge Strike even? Is it that the healing from the threat counts for that much more due to Frost Presence?

EDIT: I could see how as unholy, DS would out threat Oblit since you don't have the necessary talents, but how does it beat out Scourge Strike?

 

Griefknight

That is something to take into mind, I completely forgot about imp MotW. I would have to sacrifice some TPS talents to spec into Acclimation. Now something to boggle about, would 3/3 Morbidity or 5/5 Bladed armor be a better choice for a frost DK tank? I think the 5/5 Bladed Armor is a better choice and I think Rejju would agree.

 

Griefknight

[De-Raged Waraxe] has better stats then [Axe of Bloodstained Ice] and it is acquired from a level 75 group quest that will obviously have tons of people looking to do, Axe of Bloodstained Ice is acquired from a quest in Icecrown. You tell me which is easier to get.

 

Rejju

I think you misunderstood me, I'm agreeing with you.