Chamenas

And the actual point, if you would read all of the posts and not respond in a conversation that you had not actually involved yourself in, is that Frost Tanking is not solely for trash mobs. It is in fact a very viable, competitive spec for Main Tanking, as it has a heavy focus on survivability. Frost does have better mitigation, if you can prove otherwise, go ahead. If you'd like, I can add up the percent of inherent damage mitigation to the average frost tank spec, BEFORE cooldowns, and compare it to any other tree.

 

Consider

Vampiric Blood is not mitigation, but it is Effective Health, which, combined with the increase healing effect, makes it nearly the same as actual mitigation.

The fault of frost is not its mitigation/avoidance, obviously. Anyone can look at the tree and see it takes less overall damage than Unholy or Blood. The problem is precisely it's cooldown, and you can't ignore that fact. UA is incredibly weak and insufficient as a stand-alone cooldown, and as such Frost as a whole suffers because of it.

"Before cooldowns" only really matters if the actual cooldowns are strong enough to survive bursts like fusion punch/plasma blast/unbalancing strike/whatever. Otherwise, you are going to die then, and that's that.

 

Womba

The reason UA is so "bad" is because Blizz has a relatively high number of fights where the tank can be one-shotted without some sort of cooldown. And UA doesn't help nearly as much as the Blood or Unholy cooldowns.

 

Zurai

Actually, Vampiric Blood is a far better mitigation cooldown than Unbreakable Armor is. The only case in which VB does not effectively mitigate damage is when you are struck by an attack that kills you outright from 115% health to 0% health (in which case, Frost would be equally dead, with or without UA). In all other cases, having greater health and greater healing received yields the exact same result as having higher damage mitigation.

Frost has "the best" mitigation (by a whopping 2%), yes, but that doesn't make it desirable. Frost tanks are losing out on 6% health, which is more valuable in almost all cases than 2% mitigation. And, actually, the net gain isn't even 2% mitigation, thanks to Will of the Necropolis. Even assuming WotN only fires every 30 seconds, that's still an average of 0.5% mitigation. In practice, it usually fires more like every 20 seconds for 0.75% average mitigation. That means Frost only has a ~1.25 to ~1.5% mitigation edge.

Also, you're wrong about a tank's job. Tanks have two goals: keep aggro and stay alive. Having healing cooldowns helps with the second goal. Dismissing keeping yourself alive as someone else's job is shortsighted, at best. For one thing, if the tank can heal himself to a significant degree -- and parses clearly show that Blood tanks can do so -- then raids can plan around that, bringing fewer healers and more DPS, which will end fights faster and cause the tank to take less total damage.

Finally, you claimed that Frost has an additional mitigation cooldown compared to the other two trees. Even if you're going to be obtuse and claim that VB isn't functional mitigation, Bone Shield is, and will nearly always mitigate more damage than UA does -- and Unholy has Anti-Magic Zone in addition. Frost has fewer mitigation cooldowns than Unholy does, in short.

Not that I'm saying Unholy is the best tank spec, nor Frost the worst; I'd rate it Blood, then Frost, and Unholy a very distant third. However, you really do need to apply factually correct arguments if you want to win people over to your point of view.

 

Neb_dk

I think you would agree, that with increasing avoidance WotN looses usability.
I agree that a tank should survive as long as possible, but it should be not his goal to compensate the skills of our healers.

Vampiric Blood is indeed much more better than Unbreakable Armor, but mention please Guile of Gorefiend.

 

Timbalt

Tonight I was tanking in a pretty heavy caster 10m group, and to put it simply, my threat was TERRIBLE.

I know Blood depends on melee buffs/debuffs (namely Expose/Sunder), but it is really that big of a difference? I was using the exact same rotation I always use, but I was noticing pretty bad RNG luck with parries.

So was this just a case of terrible RNG or was it more because of missing the melee buffs?


I've read that Frost is a lot less dependent on said buffs, is it true? If so, I plan to try tanking it as Frost next week instead of Blood, if we run the same group.

 

Dash

Can't find you on armory, so there's no way of telling if your blood tankspec or gear could be improved to counter your threat issues.

 

slackhoid

I'd like to hear more about why you (or ppl in general) people rate the unholy worst? I'm simply not finding the arguments used against it true in many occasions. Our guild is at Vezax atm, but we've yet to encounter situation where my unholy spec was not more than good enough, what I'm seeing is quite the opposite and my healers are telling me they are "spoiled" by how little dmg I take
- Unholy Antimagic CDs are a huge bonus in Iron Council, Ignis Construct soloing, Hodir, Mimiron etc.
- I have AoTD as panic button once per boss fight and Death Pact 1-3 times (perma pet ==> even semi-sensible presummon quarantees the ghould is there for sacrifice) per boss fight available as extra panic buttons if needed
- no single-target TPS issues often associated to unholy specs so far. Our best kill on Hodir is 3:40; one DPS (actually our OT) was doing around 1.5k dps (without Hodir buffs) and one was dead most of the figh so our real DPS'ers were putting were putting out quite nice numbers yet I maintained nice threat lead throughout the fight
- when needed I can self-heal almost as well as Blood; 3-disease Death Strikes heal me for 6.8k per strike. I use this a lot during Mimi Plasma Blasts etc. to help healers and when combined with def CDs ==> one hella sturdy tank
- I've never encountered these snap AOE aggro issues either. Timing pest/BB (followed by Blood Tap + BB when needed) correctly is just part of the fun to me and Hodir's arena is smooth sailing even though I have no Glyphs or specific talents for AOE aggro

What I'm trying to figure out is when/where should I meet these limits/issues like single-target TPS etc. that almost everyone associates to unholy spec? That said my guild only raids 10-man. Maybe 25-man changes the picture or something?

 

Dash

Only beef I have with unholy tanking is the single target TPS. The other downsides are balanced against unholy's upside (imo). Compaired to my gear you're using sigil of awareness, a higher threat 2hander and you have more expertise. So yea, compaired to my gear you'll do more threat and I will survive easier.

Hodir threat isn't really a good measurement tool for your TPS however. Threat at hodir is subject to so many external factors. Pillars of light for haste, Storm cloud for increased crit dmg, Singed debuff. Good tests for single target TPS is vezax, IC with steelbreaker first, Mimiron P1. If your dps can go full out at those fights, then your single target TPS is good enough.

 

slackhoid

Since I'm pretty much running only 10-man, the Awareness is the only useful Sigil; Unfaltering Knight one is IMO quite useless. Awareness also helps me maintain bit better TPS during defensive play as it buffs Death Strike dmg quite nicely.

You are right about Hodir, now that I think of it. All the Hodir fight buffs and boss debuffs boost Unholy dmg considerably as Singed further boost SS, DC and UB. Never had an TPS issue in IC with Steel 1st or in Mimiron P1, even though I go both of those phases very defensively and burn def CDs + Death Strike during every Fusion Bunch and Plasma Blast.

Looking at recount my top source of DPS (and thus ofc TPS, due to modifier) often seems to be RS + Necrosis (RS macroed to pretty much every strike). Decent 2H, RS Glyph, 2-piece T8 Bonus equal quite hard hitting and crit happy Rune Strikes and 20% more dmg for extra DPS/TPS from Necrosis is quite nice icing on the cake. Since unholy single target TPS takes a sec to start rolling I often pop Blood Fury, Speed Pot, Blood Tap and sometimes even ERW (though I mostly save this for emergency Death Strikes) to get a nice head start in threat. Working perfectly so far; we're going after Vezax tonight so I'll see if threat is an issue there.

 

concept84

I run in a caster stacked 10m hard mode group (on Algalon), without Sunder or Expose Armor, as Blood. I find my threat to be the best in Blood spec even without the sunder debuff, although I am hit-capped with a good amount of Exp as well.

It could have been your rotation, or maybe am unfamiliarity to the spec, as its threat even without the sunder is very close to Frost.

 

Chamenas

I will get to comparing the mitigation from both trees later, as you haven't actually laid out your math, and assuming that you've actually done the math is just as bad as not doing it myself, which I have been doing. In the end, I'm not trying to make an argument for the "best" tanking tree, to me that's worthless considering that Blizzard seems to wish every tree that DKs have available to them to be viable tanking trees, and best would almost always be "marginal" in difference. But these forums are about min/maxing, right? So I suppose some people will look for the best, I won't, not yet anyways. The main purpose of my original post in this thread was this:

That kind of thinking is bad, and the close-mindedness of it is what infuriates many people trying to get into raids who are perfectly acceptable tanks. "Oh, you're a Frost tank? Don't need you then."

Mind you, if someone says that to me, I definitely don't want to be in their raid in the first place. But I'd rather not have such comments made uncontested on these forums where people come for advice. I'll admit I don't know everything and that I'm here for help myself, but I cannot possibly see this sort of comment as being the normal view of Frost tanking at the moment.

 

• frmorrison

Knight is still useful past 540 defense, since Def adds avoidance past the crit cap. In addition, having more defense helps IBF scaling.

I guess the best results would be to Sigil swap between Knight and Awareness (you do lose an autoattack when swapping).

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

 

Kamaa

Frost is actually my spec of choice. I enjoy it because of the snap aggro available with howling blast, but when it comes to tanking hard modes, it simply can't compete with blood. In ten man I will generally be the #1 source of healing myself through Vezax hard mode. (That's with no kiting.) Twenty five man has different results obviously, but I still heal myself for a good amount. Assuming you're doing okay on threat, you can even delay death strikes until you take a hit. Co-ordination with healers (ie. "I've got the next big heal.") makes mana issues far less of a concern.

The only fight where threat should even be an issue at all is Hodir. You're likely in partial frost resist gear so you're low on hit. Personally I use the Malygos trinket to at least be soft capped on expertise for this fight. For hard modes though, it's just about the fast reflexes. If a boss is tauntable, I tell my DPS to never slow down. When they pull aggro (as they can and will on Hodir hard mode) I'm simply ready with the taunt.

As far as AoE threat/snap aggro, it's true that blood has less snap aggro. However, do not dismiss the ability to spam blood boil 6-9 times in a row. You won't be able to do this every time, but for key moments like tanking adds when an arm dies, you can and should be prepared.

Is blood tanking the best spec? It's certainly the best spec for my guild in almost every facet. Your survivability and utility coupled with reliable TPS is just too much to let go.

Omegatron has arrived.

 

Zurai

I, personally, rate unholy the worst because it has less effective health, less single target threat, less self-healing, and arguably less non-magical mitigation than Blood spec (glyphed VB vs glyphed BS -- even with 6 charges BS frequently doesn't last anywhere near 30 seconds), but better AOE and magical mitigation. Compared to frost, it has less non-magic mitigation, less avoidance, and less single target threat, but better self-healing, magical mitigation, cooldowns, and sustained AOE threat.

However, sustained AOE threat is, frankly, not useful as a main tank in Ulduar. There are zero single-tank fights where you need sustained AOE threat (unless Algalon does -- havn't seen him), and for the other fights your offtank is going to have the job of rounding up adds anyway. similarly, the magic mitigation isn't a huge deal, either. Since the nerf to AMS, Suppression is a much weaker talent -- it's going to absorb the same amount of damage with or without 5/5 Suppression, and for the most part any attack you're going to use AMS on is going to eat your AMS in a single attack anyhow. The 5% magic damage mitigation from Suppression is nice, but it's only useful as a main tank on Mimiron, Iron Council, and Hodir. 3 fights out of all of Ulduar is not a ringing endorsement. That leaves no advantages over Blood and only better self-heals and cooldowns compared to Frost. Unlike you, I do NOT count Unholy as having "nearly as good" self-healing compared to Blood. In order to self-heal as Unholy, you sacrifice a considerable amount of threat, because your Death Strikes hit for dramatically less than your Scourge Strikes, even counting the healing threat. That means you're only going to use it in desperate situations; compare to Blood tanks who can use DS on almost every set of FU runes and still maintain their superior single-target threat. So, really, for me, it boils down to Bone Shield + AMZ vs everything Frost has, and IMO Unholy loses out in that comparison.

 

Chamenas

Well, getting off-topic from what I was discussing (since I have not been discussing the best tanking tree), the fact that there is a far and away best tanking tree for DKs speaks to potential issues that need to be resolved. Even with the slight loss of stamina in 3.2 (to the Blood talent), the nerfs to DKs in 3.2 seem to favor Blood DKs even more, don't they? Or am I missing something?

After sitting down and doing the math, the mitigation in Frost is actually a lot less than I thought it was. There is an additional 3% avoidance, but that's not mitigation. I'm also particularly troubled by the weakness of the Improved Frost Presence ability. Since it does not retain the full mitigation/threat/armor bonus that the actual presence does, Frost tanks must still be in the Frost Presence for effective tanking, meanwhile, Blood DKs will be in Frost Presence, getting a nice bonus off of their improved Blood Presence talent.

As far as progression is concerned, I'm not. I don't foresee any issues being able to tank any of the Ulduar normal-modes, pre-3.2, nor after. However, when considering hard-modes, the unknowns of the new raid (in which a tank dying and causing a wipe will be unacceptable), and simply the changes of 3.2 to DKs, I wonder how competitive Frost Tanking will be. This is when considering competitive to be on par with, and not simply "do-able".

 

Bllets

Most blood DK tanks don't take the improved blood presence.

 

Timbalt

The World of Warcraft Armory

Sorry, old account. There's me, transferred a while back and never thought to change it.

Rotation is: IT PS HS HS DS HS HS HS HS IT PS

I'll try to update the armory for this account since apparently having it wrong means infraction, but I might just have to make a completely new account.

 

Dash

Well you have me baffled Do you do 10mans with lots of destro locks perhaps?
You got great gear and threatwise I dont see your spec & rotation lacking much. I suppose if you're gonna skip Improved Icey Touch, you might as well aim for necrosis. Necrosis is a great threat talent since it buffs Runestrike as well. Also you can switch out the gargoyle enchant for the 4% parry one. I think you should stay crit immune with all that resillience u got. More parry is threat too hehe.

In my 10mans I can stay ahead of the destro locks with a survival spec, but then I do usually get the target sundered.

 

Timbalt

We had:

2x Resto Druid
1 Resto Shaman
2x Mage
1x SPriest
1x Rogue
1x DPS DK
1x Tank DK (Me)
1x Lock

It WAS General HM, which I know is really terrible for my threat and all (especially with caster heavy group), but apparently the Warrior tank they had used the week before had been fine. I even asked the Rogue to use Expose and it was still pretty close. No idea what was going wrong.

 

• frmorrison

Maybe he would be crit immune with his resilience + the parry enchant, but I wouldn't recommend that since that makes IBF weaker and losing 2% stamina, and gaining 1% avoidance and a little more threat with Rune strikes.

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

 

Taizu

I really don't see how threat can be a problem with expose armor. On Vezax, casters need to pay attention; if they go all out while in the crash, they ARE going to pull aggro. Most casters in my guild were pulling 12k+ DPS. Without active aggro reducer I'd need to pump 9k TPS to keep them below 130% of my threat. If it is 10 man, lack of raid buffs can do that also.

 

Dash

Hey Im just trying to help his threat That said, you'll gain more then just 1% avoidance. Its been ages since I compaired the two, but isn't it more like 2.5% avoidance you gain?

 

slackhoid

Thx for well-rounded answers, though I have to diagree on some points. A few comments
- Magic Suppression is 3 pointer for 6% magic dmg nowadays, so for 4 points you get both AMS and AMZ. Post-nerf AMS is not what is used to be but AMS + BS or AMS + AMZ can still absorb a huge load of magic damage and that's only for 4 points
- I look tank self-heals mostly as reactive/emergency mechanism to be used during special situations like damage spikes, healer death while waiting CR, healer out of range temporarily etc. The threat math for unholy 3-disease DS threat vs. SS threat is interesting as like said, I use it a lot in some situations (Mimiron Plasma Blast without IBF, Hodir Frozen Blows, Steelbreaker Fusion Punch) yet still somehow manage to have significant threat lead. When I use it, usualy below 50% health, very small part of it is overheal (occasionally big heals do arrive during my reaction time) so I get both dmg and heal threat. My 43k health means I get around (43000 * 0.15 /2 ) * 2.0735 = 6687 threat from heal portion only, toss in dmg portion and we're easily around 10k threat from a single DS. So I have to disagree about Death Striking always automatically being "huge" loss for unholy threat when compared to SS unless my math above is totally false
- BS uptime tends to scale with gear as avoidance grows and if you are using it wizely like using JC trinket Dodge boost to protect the charges 25-30 sec uptime is not unheard of; I've been meaning to check the uptimes from combat log. Given that tank needs to be hit in order for charges to drop the things like tank switches in Thorim and running from Mimiron novas can also increase uptime where purely timed def CDs can be sort of wasted
- the single-target TPS issues are just not materializing to me. Maybe this is different in 25-man gear and/or raid buff stacking. My gear is pretty ok for 10-man TPS wize: Awareness sigil, Stormedge 2h, 2-piece T8.5 and almost full Ulduar gear in off-set slots (about hitcapped and over expertize soft-cap) and I run talents/glyphs (RS & SS glyphs, maxed necrosis) oriented at unholy MTing and I don't see our almost 5k dps boomkin nowhere near my threat even with enviroment buffs affecting DPSers. Depending on the fight my DPS is around 2k and given how big portion of dps is RS with its huge modifier I'm calculating I should be able to hang above pretty much over any 10-man geared DPSer. Vezax with casters making perfect use of the buffs is pretty much only place I would potentially expect problems. We 8-manned Vezax yesterday to about 20% (tank, 3 healers, 4 dps with OT in retri-spec doing 1.6k dps). Our imba boomturtle was putting out up to 10k "Recount" dps (thus spiky and nowhere near 100% sustained ofc) yet I had quite nice threat lead all the time. Checking out an realististic example Vezax HM kill log Vezax HM 10-man I don't see anything I could not keep threat agaist given the few 10-man gear upgrades I'm still waiting for. Those 5-minute Vezax hard modes quite propably are done in fully decked 25-man gear.

I'm not arguing here that Unholy is better, but to me it seems like it is often maybe bashed a bit more than it should be. In 10-man the Ebon Plaguebringer is a huge buff, due to it's AOE spread capability and the fact that you cannot count on lock or boomkin to provide it (I know I cannot, just had a 3 weeks of raiding period without either). For 25-man where raid buffs are pretty much always available from multiple sources Blood looks like easily best MT choice due to significant, though soon to be partially nerfed, EH advantage.

 

Timbalt

Yeah, our casters do amazing DPS. I suppose they were just trying to lay it off on me because they didn't want to slow down their DPSing.