Zurai

Dodge gained from agility is diminished.

 

Qaenyin

Considering testing with Threat of Thassarian seems to show Strike damage being superior to 2h, and that dual wield autoattack damage historically tends to scale better than 2h, plus the fact that you can get tank weapons as 1h while still getting DR-free avoidance from swordbreaking runeforges, I'm rather curious if there will be any reason not to dual wield tank next patch. Especially with scent of blood losing it's ICD.

The only thing that jumps out at me is Runestrike being less TPS and costing more RPPS. However with Slow mainhands(Say, Broken Promise from naxx), I'm not sure how big a difference that'll make.

Might prove useful in offsetting the incoming tanking nerfs as well, though unfortunately not having the significant self-healing boost that Blood spec offers would be a big loss since neither of the primary Death Strike amping talents(Improved Death Strike and Crypt Fever/Ebon Plague) is available if you spec into Threat of Thassarian, and speccing into Improved Rune Tap would be kind of impractical and not of nearly as much benefit.

 

Saving-Grace

"Yes, you want 2 diseases as a frost tank"

Are you sure about this? Just curious because Suno's Fireside Chat - DK Endgame Tanking (Updated) says otherwise.

EDIT: To be more clear I'm talking single target(boss)

 

Ravhinn

It doesn't have an internal cooldown now. They're just changing/updating the tooltip to reflect how the ability already works.

 

donkeyruler

Hey.

My main is a DK. Her name is Donkeerula.
I;m botha Geared at DPS and Tanking, although lately i'm considered dropping tanking and jsut focus on DPS.
Lately I've just been unsure as how DK's can compare to Warrior or Paladin Tanks in Boos Fights like XT in 25 Ulduar ect.
Deathknights just seem to take alot more damage.

At first ther huge amount of armor was what I thought would compensate for the lack of a shield. though seeing as that has been nerfed i'm unsure what else is there? I mean please correct me if im wrong (im not the smartest apple) But I know DK's dont have to worry if they stack defense rating and dodge and parry, but does it compare to that of a warrior? or paladin?

My character at first had 25% dodge and 17% parry. Back then i stacked stam just like all the other DK tanks, and got up to 36k unbuffed, but i felt that I was getting hit too hard.
I then changed some gear, different enchants, different gems, and kept my health at a decent 30k unbuffed and my dodge to 30% and parry to 20% unbuffed.

Increasing my avoidance helped wonders, and I saw that I took alot less damage. Yet in comparison to a Pally or something, It didnt compare, do warriors and pallys have more mitigation due to having block? If so what is their left for me to do?

I'm considering changing to dual wield. and putting my parry up to 25% unbuffed. that will give me 55% avoidance in total with the 2 which may help. I would barely change my spec at all, and im sure i wouldnt have any problems with threat.

I dont know, long post I Know, but with the amount of nerfs dk's are getting lately i'm kinda not too thrilled about the whole tanking thing, epsecially when bosses like XT in 25 man are giving me hassles.

Let me know if they have any guesses, as to whats wrong? or what i could do?
Cheers.

P.S I am frost tank spec, if you want to look me up on armory.

 

Taizu

FWIW I have also been doing more TPS using a single disease rotation as opposed to double disease. The extra damage from PS and BP can't compare to an additional Oblit per 2 rotations. Plus it frees up a lot of GCD that can be used for more FS spams since I have SoB.


@Poster above me, my eyes hurt trying to read your post...
My guild prefers having me tank hard mode XT (honestly normal mode XT doesn't hit that hard).
Time your CDs properly; Tantrum is on the same CD with IBF; so using IBF at every tantrum can also tell your healers of an incoming tantrum so they can prehot the raid. AMS the static charges for free RS/FS, Unbreakable Armor + Blood Presence for heart mode, etc etc.

I don't know how you get the idea that pally/warriors mitigate more; sure they take less damage on trash, but on the harder hitting bosses, druids and DKs take the cake.

 

Womba

Of course you took less damage. Stamina doesn't affect your incoming damage at all. So it shouldn't be any surprise that by increasing your avoidance by 8% resulted in you taking less damage.

 

Griefknight

However, the more avoidance you have the less HP you have and thus the more likely you will die from a streak of no misses, dodges, or parries. The reason stamina is better is because if you get a streak of no misses, dodges, or parries you have a higher chance of survival. AMS will also scale based on HP and avoidance does nothing for magic damage, unlike HP.

 

Womba

The other thing about avoidance tanks is that your healers may not actually save any mana, since they are likely chain casting anyway. Unless of course you are tanking something where there are several seconds between you taking damage and you dying (which would allow healers to heal you *after* you took damage, and so could choose to save a heal if you avoided many attacks in a row). But those situations are pretty infrequent.

 

Mithoron

Agree here...since switching to a single-disease rotation my TPS has increased noticeable. At first I was a doubter and always had my finger over my PS button, hehehe...but once I started with the single disease it was clearly better on single-target threat.

Not sure how the upcoming changes are going to affect this if at all though...

 

Lanlaorn

The single disease rotation was created for Frost DPS builds that had no points in Unholy and so only had 12 second diseases, it was a way to get 4 Oblits in while keeping Frost Fever up the entire time. For a tank, assuming 1 point in Epidemic for 18 second diseases I can't fathom how the single disease rotation:

IT/BS/OB/OB // IT/BS/OB/OB

is superior TPS to the standard:

PS/IT/BS/BS/OB // OB/OB/OB

In both rotations you have the same number of GCDs used (8), the same number of Oblits (4), the only difference is 2x IT + 5 RP gain versus 1x IT 1x PS + 6 Blood Plague ticks + an extra disease scaling each OB and BS. That comparison seems fairly one-sided to me given that IT and PS damage are much more in line now and the percent rather than flat scaling of OB and BS.

So, testimonials to the contrary aside, there is no extra Oblit, there is no extra free GCDs. That rotation was created in a previous patch and was really more meant for DPS anyway (its benefit for tanking was freeing up 2 points in Epidemic, which is now only 1 point and with 15s base diseases maybe moot entirely). If anyone can point out where I'm wrong I'll be glad to hear it, but IMO the first post of the Endgame Tank thread needs to be updated and any gains in single target DPS as a result of adopting the single disease rotation are placebo effect.

 

TiaMaster

Suno's Fireside Chat - DK Endgame Tanking (Updated)
refers to 15/51/5
which utulizes Blade barrier and Scent of Blood for tanking.

 

Lanlaorn

I'm well aware of that. Diseases are now 15 seconds base rather than 12 seconds and anyway 2/3 SoB is sufficient RP for Rune Strikes and Frost Strikes at will so there's no harm in one point in Epidemic for 18 second diseases.

I still don't see the gain in a one disease rotation in the current version of the game and your post doesn't disprove the fact that this was a rotation developed for a DPS build that didn't want to spend 7 points in Unholy and adopted for tanking to avoid spending 2 points in Unholy and is now saves you only one point in Unholy and is, IMO, less effective than the 2 disease rotation anyway.

 

shadowslyr

So, i have been tanking as a frost DK for a while now, however i am hearing from more and more people that blood tanking is significantly better, i am having a hard time understanding why exactly. I know that most people (myself included) tend to stick with the spec they have been playing and are most comfortable with, however, i dont want to be using a perticular spec if there is a better one out there. I am mostly ulduar geared and looking for ideas for that content, naxx was a joke (not a very funny one at that) so i am not interested in anything kind of help from someone who is just now venturing into heroics or 10/25 naxx (no offense) i am looking for a very well experienced DK tank to please take a moment of your time and address my question. what is the best single target spec (assuming MT position) and also what would be the best AoE spec (for a fight such as thorim in the arena) thanks in advance for your help.

 

Fyrestryke

I've tanked pretty much everything up to General in 25 man Ulduar, Sarth 3D, etc.
From my personal experience I have found that all 3 trees of tanking have a niche that they are particularly good at.
Blood = superior single target threat
Frost = superior SNAP AOE threat
Unholy = superior sustained AOE threat
For myself if I was going to be an MT I would have a Blood spec for single target boss fights and an Unholy spec for AOE situation like Thorim. As far as I'm concerned the only thing I would want a frost spec for is trash, and it's not neccesary, if you've got smart DPS, to have that instant snap agro control.
Having said all that we haven't done any hard mode 25 man stuff yet, so somebody who has done so would likely be better suited to answer for those encounters. We're learning all the content on our own with no help from guides or strats from other guilds, so I have no idea what the differnces may be from the normal versions to the hard ones.

 

Zurai

I'm actually specced tank with both my dual specs. Blood is my primary spec which I use for most of Ulduar; it has higher effective health, self-healing which is useful since we 2-heal 90% of the 10 man, and provides useful raid buffs that we wouldn't always have otherwise. Frost is my secondary spec; I use Frost for Hodir hard mode (frost strike crits with storm power let me keep aggro no matter what the DPS does), Thorim (AOE threat and extra mitigation/avoidance), and Auriaya-25 (I can only tank all 4 adds as Frost).

 

Xequecal

The biggest problem with DW tanking is there aren't any slow tanking weapons. Broken Promise is the only one. Every Ulduar tanking weapon is fast. The new raid itemization is probably going to make or break it. I would also be interested to know how the tanking enchants work when you're dual-wielding them. If you DW Blood Draining weapons, do you get two seperate Blood Reserves or just one? Do they share the same ICD or do they have seperate ones? The same questions apply for Blade Ward and Mongoose. Blood Draining might be worth losing Swordshattering if you store two seperate reserves of 2500 HP and they both proc as soon as you drop below 35% for an extra 5k HP.

 

• frmorrison

Since Paladins and especially Warriors prefer fast tanking weapons in 3.2, Blizzard will most likely itemize fast weapons. Pre-3.2 Paladins didn't care about the speed of their weapon.

I think the 4% parry is better than blood draining, even if it stacked.

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

 

pindle

I would guess the gain would be faster snap aggro, so your raid can start nuking right away. I tend to use HB for that and stick to one disease, i.e. initially pull groups with HB so the melees can nuke away on the pull. This would apply to thrash only I guess since this should not be an issue on bosses.

But let's turn your statement around? Why is it less effective? I found from my own testing that 1 or 2 disease rotations were virtually identical in terms of threat, but YMMV. The only reason I use 2 diseases right now would be a hard hitting mob where I'm planning to DS to help out the healers (i.e. Vezax), but I'd love to hear why you find it superior?

 

Chamenas

Allow me to correct you here, because clearly it's needed. Anyone that thinks that all Frost Tanking is good for is trash is severely mistaken. No other DK tree has as much damage mitigation talents as Frost does. Frost gives you an additional cooldown to use as well, in order to mitigate damage. Any good Frost Tank will have superior threat to most other tanks with the exception of Blood Tanks on single target and some Paladin tanks. In addition, Frost Tanking is usually a high dps tanking build (not sure where it compares to Blood, but since Blood often dishes out superior threat I'm going to assume it is slightly worse) with a heavy focus on instant crits and a steady rotation that relies on a lot of weaving, but isn't terribly difficult to manage.

Frost Tanks are a good, well-rounded tank. I also don't have much experience with Ulduar hard modes, but am quite willing to bet that any sufficiently geared Frost Tank would be a good MT, OT or just about anything needed of them as far as tanking is concerned in the game. Blood Tanking is nice because of its threat and self-healing capabilities, but Blood Tanks will take far more damage than Frost Tanks and are not necessarily ideal to Frost Tanks in every, or even most MT situations.

 

Zurai

It does? Pray tell, what is this mysterious bonus cooldown? Frost actually has fewer worthwhile tanking cooldowns than either of the other trees; Frost only has Unbreakable Armor (which is the worst of the top-tier tanking talents), while Blood has Vampiric Blood + Rune Tap and Unholy has Bone Shield + Anti-Magic Zone.

 

Chamenas

So how is it mysterious if you mention it? Bone Shield is a crappy mitigation cooldown, imo, since it often disappears rapidly in fights. And neither Vampiric Blood nor Rune Tap are damage mitigation, and thus would not fit under the definition of an additional damage mitigation cooldown, such as what Frost has... Unbreakable armor. The main damage mitigation cooldown is obviously Icebound Fortitude, which is available to all DKs, regardless of spec. Thus Frost has two damage mitigation cooldowns, Icebound Fortitude and Unbreakable Armor. Unbreakable Armor is by far not a superior cooldown by any means, but its effect is not negligible and it still adds to my point, that, out of any tree, Frost has THE best mitigation, which some might consider far more important for surviving in fights than being able to heal yourself. That's not your job as a tank, and it only has situational benefits.

Edit: Ultimately, the point being made is to dissuade anyone from actually believing that Frost Tanking is only good for trash, which is what the quoted poster tried to imply. Erroneously so.

 

Xequecal

One can pretty much count Vampiric Blood as damage mitigation. In the absolute worst case the effect is identical to a 13% mitigation cooldown.

 

Chamenas

Except that it is not mitigation. If it were, then I would count it as such.

 

Womba

The point, Cham, is that you can jump up and down about how Frost has better mitigation, while everyone /facepalms because something like Vamp Blood is very much like mitigation and in the vast majority of cases, far better than Unbreakable Armor.