The other reason is that Morbidity is bugged on live (and on the PTR?) for some people, and causes huge framerate drops or disconnects when using D&D with anything other than 0/3. I would love to spec 3/3 since I run OT as often as MT, but I simply can't.

That's what they said yeah, but I don't see how having 0/3 morbidity means no FPS issues, and putting points into morbidity suddenly makes you lag like hell when you DnD too many mobs, with the exact same config. That's the issue really, people having issues with morbidity only have issues when they take the talent, it seems weird talent specs would be affected by drivers, unless obviously the 1/3 to 3/3 DnD uses a different spell id, which bugs with various gfx drivers. And then, it'd be interesting to know why they need a different spell id for the same spell.

Mmm, while I haven't tested myself many people here have claimed the ultra slowdown (from 60+ fps to single digit) only happens with morbidity.

False, unless, for some reason my graphics cards can't accept a 1/3, 2/3, or 3/3 Morbidity yet can accept a 0/3 Morbidity while pulling 20+ mobs without lagging. If that some how gets pinned on video card drivers, I would love to know how and why.

Death and Decay:

This isn't a "I think" statement - I have used a rotation weaving in DnD on SINGLE TARGET encounters for several weeks now and have posted numbers. DnD adds roughly 500-1k TPS to my rotation, I have yet to tank anything of value with Death's Bite (outside of 10man's and 25man 3dSarth), but, that weapon alone increased my TPS by ~300, also.

Normal rotation TPS runs borderline 3.5k-4k. While DnD Woven Rotation nets me 4.5k-5k frequently. I have spiked above 5k quite a few times but that was a lucky crit streak.

There is no frame drop with 1 target if you take Morbidity.

How is DnD being nerfed aside from the glyph change? The glyph was simply overpowered, especially if one had multiple DKs dropping glyphed DnDs in PvE or PvP. I don't really see the changes to HB & Pestilence changing how I would use DnD, unless DnD has had it's damage/threat reduced (the new glyph actually makes it more threatening).

The Unholy AoE tank in our guild ran a Heroic Magister's for giggles. Pulled the whole room of mana wyrms before the second boss at once and dropped DND. Result: his *entire* 5 man group DC'd.

There is definitely something whacked with DND, possibly in general, but definitely with Morbidity. This is one of the significant reasons I switched to Frost a few weeks ago.

Are these "Morbidity" problems demonstrable on a completely clean UI?

I ask this because when I am tanking in the spider wing in Naxx, or the Sartharion's adds, my entire computer grinds to a halt and sometimes I am disconnected. So I disable Omen and CowTip and everything is flawlessly smooth. Even though the latest Omen is more optimized than before, it's still doing a tonne of work for each mob in a pull.

I find there's a memory leak or something, and I think it's coming from CowTip. So I turn that off too to prevent my whole UI from dying mid-encounter.

Can someone please confirm that they are getting slowdowns WITHOUT addons?

Yep that's what I meant, even if you're frost, chances are you have a DW DK or an unholy spreading ebon/crypt, effectively increasing DnD threat/dmg A LOT. With it not being affected anymore, even if you glyph it, you'll still be looking at a DnD nerf. Now if you don't have any crypt fever currently, with the glyph, it will be a buff. But for most people, it's a nerf, and it's a nerf for unholy AE threat in general(not like it will matter much considering how much AE threat unholy output anyway).



As for the morbidity, yes it can be reproduced at will. When I was looking at why it was happening, I ran some tests. You can probably find it somewhere in the thread, like 40pages back. I went to onyxia's lair and tested on whelps(easy to pull 20-25mobs at once, without dieing everytime, and without any fancy graphics around). I ran the tests on an entirely clean client(no UI, not even blizzard stuff, all graphic options turned off, combat log set to display nothing at all, still had sound on though, and cleared WTF/cache in case of too) with 0 talent points spent. With 0 it was working fine, I put 1point in morbidity(still the only talent learned), my FPS drops to 0 on next DnD(did it on different pulls, but also on the exact same pull since one DnD doesn't kill whelps without unholy talents).

If it's not linked to morbidity, I find the coincidence a bit weird, especially since I tested it twice(once on live to find the reason, then later on the PTR to see if it was fixed) and both in "perfect" testing conditions. If I was lagging all the time with DnD, it'd be an issue on my side. When I freeze only when I use DnD with morbidity trained on big AE packs, while I can run the game with full graphics, fraps and AEing(without it) in 25man raids with 25-35FPS, I have a hard time believing it's driver related. Unless again, morbidity uses another DnD graphic that's not optimized, but then it's blizzard's responsability to fix it to use the same one on both, not me to find how to fix my drivers.

I'm sorry if this is a noob question but I'm relatively new to tanking and I may be underestimating some talents and abilities.

I'm levelling a DK and planning to turn him into a Unholy tank (not as a main which means I will mostly be doing heroics and 10-man raids, it will be a while before I start MTing in 25 man runs).

After reading this whole thread there seems to be many different opinions about the relative value of some talents. Anyway, picking up what I could I came up with this build:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000

The focus is aoe tanking since most heroics are done through aoe pulls but I didn't want to nerf my single target generation. I believe I have all the core talents (yes I know I'm missing Lichborne) but I don't think that is a "requirement").

As for glyphs I'm aiming for SS, BS and DnD one. In my view, the SS glyph makes Desecration fairly useless.

I chose not to include Outbreak because many people here seem to find it lackluster (even more now that it doesn't include pestilence). I believe that using the SS glyph will result in not that many plague strikes being made in a tanking rotation, since SS will have a chance to refreh diseases. I may be completely wrong in this assumption though and I would like to hear from more experienced DKs regarding this matter. The damage boost of Obliterate was also buffed and maybe that increase in PS dot damage is worth it?

I also didn't include BCB simply due to the extra chance for parries and I don't know if any change was made recently to the parry mechanics (I seem to remember there caused the boss to perform an extra attack or something similar).

As for the rest, I know many people here don't agree with the whole ghoul talents in a tanking build. I can understand that but my decision was between the anti-magic talents or the ghoul ones. I don't mind micro-managing the ghoul and the extra taunt and chance of having it explode to build aggro on a bad pull seems appealing to me, especially now that they gave us avoidance skills through Night of the Dead). On the other hand, the anti-magic talents seem nice although AMZ seems a bit lackluster due to it's low damage absortion.

Necrosis and Two-Hand specialization are mostly there to increase single target threat generation (seems that it has been proven that Runestrikes proc Necrosis aswell so, in my view, it's a no-brainer especially if it is affected by Ebon Plague).

The problem is that I'm judging talents without much experience in tanking overall so I would like to get some feedback from more experienced players.

About threat problems i (and some others) have:
i specced into 27/44/0 (from unholy).
Yes, i lost 5% dodge, but gained about 1,5% parry, 3% lower chance to hit me and some stamina, and atm i don;t have any threat problems, i had spikes of threat, from 3k to 4k, now i can sustain 4,5k tps and up (on 10ppl patchwerk yesterday i got ~5,5k tps almost whole fight).

Also i did some changes in my gear: gemmed for str/exp/stam/hit, raid buffed i got about 4,7k ap and 15% crit, 28 expertise, 178 hit, my def stats havent changed much. Amount of Obli, IT and RS crits were insane, and tps was more static (and higher ofc).
I had to nerf some def, and about 1k hp to be exp capped and put some str gems, but what elixir of mighty defense is for? ;]

About Abnomination's might: this talent (along with butchery) i took for my group, i believe that tundra stalker would be better, but since we don't have enh shaman in our group i took this path.

Im a frost tank by trade but I do see something you are missing that you can pick up by Losing your "Ghoul Talents" or Morbidity.
You have 3/3 Morbidity and it's still broken so you can use those points to put 1 point in wandering plague and Unholy Aura

Wandering Plague - You want to focus on AOE tanking this is an amazing talent even 1 single point as it's still damage done to all around you.

Unholy Aura - even in 5 mans this has a great benefit - one of the best utility talents in that tree