Def needs to be 535 for heroics (540 for 10/25 man) - to be crit-immune.

HP, armor, and avoidance - there is no magic number for those. Don't worry yet (more is better, but if you are just starting heroics - it will get better as your gear improves).

My DK is Tbonee <takeout> I'm in DpS gear...I was just building my Def gear and wanted to know what I needed...but thanks for the input

btw...my Def is at 541 but I was getting smashed in Heroic UK (well thats what the healer was sayin) maybe cuz its a hard hitting instance or was it just the healer?

no, its not the healer. drop butchery and dark command, get toughness in frost at the least maxed. get blade barrier for parry. I am not a frost tank but you can take a look at the front of this thread or at the end gaming tanking thread for a better frost spec.

I would stay frost specked untill you get better gear since it is a better starting tank spec (my personal oppinion here).

You are pretty hard to heal with your current spec.

This isn't the right thread / forum for this kind of question. If you have specific questions - PM the more experienced around here with more usable information (link build / armory).

Good question. According to my own parses with various DW and 2H specs and setups, my threat per second from white damage plus Rune Strike is substantially higher with a slow/fast DW setup. That's before counting Necrosis and Blood-caked Blade.

The reason my answer includes both white damage and Rune Strikes is, of course, because Rune Striking replaces what would have been a white hit, adds a fixed damage bonus and multiplies by a threat modifier.

So the proper question we want to ask is, "If I'm replacing as many white hits as possible with Rune Strikes, will my threat per second due to non-instant attacks go down if I choose to dual wield?" Again, according to my own logs the answer is "no, it will go up".

The reason for this is more frequent Rune Strikes due to a faster (than a 2H) MH weapon (and hence more incursions of the static bonus damage, as well as fewer missed opportunities to use Rune Strike) as well as overall increased white damage from dual wielding.

I hope this helps.

This is probably off topic to the current discussion.

I've been reading a lot of tanking guides for Death Knights lately and every single one of them has some sort of statement that looks like "The number 1 priority for a tank is to hit the defense cap of 540".

Does anyone else think that this statement is very disputable?

Consider this scenario: A Death Knight with 515 Defense, 50% avoidance with Blade Barrier up, and 28,000 buffed HP is tanking 10 Man Naxxramas. The trash mobs in the instance range from lvl 80-81. The Death Knight is 25 Defense away from cap, which means he has a 1% chance of being critically hit by a boss, and 0.4-0.6% chance of being critically hit by trash. There is a 1 in 2 chance that a mob attack will land. This means that for every 500 attacks the Death Knight takes, a lvl 80 mob will be able to land a critical strike once, and a lvl 81 mob will be able to land a critical strike 1.5 times. (I hope I didn't screw up the simplest math ever, I was never very good at it -_-''). As for a boss (Let's assume he's MT'ing Patchwerk since everybody loves using this boss as a benchmark, and because our Death Knight is very poorly geared we will spare him the fate of Hateful Tanking), for every 200 attacks the DK takes, he will be critically hit once. Now this is a rough guesstimate, let's assume Patchwerk attacks twice in one second, and let's also assume that the raid's DPS blows and it takes a full 6 minutes to kill the boss. For every 100 seconds, Patchwerk attacks 200 times, resulting in one critical hit. Over 360 seconds, Patchwerk attacks 720 times. This means that over a course of 6 minutes, the tank will be critically hit 3-4 times. Patchwerk hits for roughly 4500 on plate, so let's assume the worst and the critical strike landed for 12,000 dmg. The Death Knight has 28,000 health.

With the way that our tanking gears are itemized, Naxx epics puts more emphasis on avoidance/stamina over defense rating, and heroic blues puts more emphasis on defense rating over avoidance (Hell, a lot of blue tanking gear has no avoidance on it, but it does have a load of defense rating). Following the rule number 1 of Tanking101, replacing blues with Naxx epics seems idiotic and foolish since it would take them well below the defense cap. But what is the real value behind reaching 540 defense in the first place? I understand the need to eliminate the element of luck from raid tanking, but in the case of death knights, doing so would mean sacrificing so much raw avoidance and stamina. I've ran into so many new DK tanks who refused to replace their current gear with what clearly is a huge upgrade in terms of stamina and avoidance because it was a huge downgrade for defense rating, all because the number 1 rule of tanking "Hit 540 defense first, then focus on other stats".

I guess with the release of Rune of Stoneskin Gargoyle, the issue is a moot point by now. Still, I was one of those naive DKs who refused to replace my blue shoulders with T7 because of the downgrade in defense. Is it really a wise idea to state that the most important thing to a tank is defense cap when clearly (at least from my point of view) is not?

I'm sorry if this was brought up before, but I really don't have time to skim through 102 pages of tanking discussion .

While your argument is well presented, I feel like you really know the answer to your own question. Sure, you may only be getting crit once in 500 hits, and most of those times you won't even notice, but if you give yourself the chance to be crit, you *will* be crit when you are a little low on health (due to aoe, your healers having to take a moment to move, whatever else) 0.1 seconds before you would have been healed to full, and the wipe will be 100% on the fact that you were crittable (if you are on 10k health and get hit for 5k 0.1 seconds before a 20k heal, your group kills the boss. if you are on 10k health and get crit for 10.5k 0.1 seconds before said heal would have landed, your group wipes).

If your healers keep you 100% topped up 100% of the time, and you never take a hit that had it crit, it would have killed you, then by all means sit below the defence cap.

That and your healers will absolutely hate you for taking random massive bursts.

Defense is important because your math is wrong. You do not reduce your chance to be crit by avoidance. Whether you're at 50% or 99% avoidance, that 1% chance to be crit is still 1%.

This won't make or break most trash pulls, but it can be critical on bosses. In your worst case scenario Patchwerk crits a tank for 12k damage. That doesn't seem like much, but it's stacked up on all the other damage you and the offtank are taking. There's always the chance you'll be crit a second time.

It may only be a 1/1000 chance for back to back crits, but you're going to be taking thousands of hits from bosses every night you tank. You don't even need two crits to kill you, take one at an inopportune time (say, right before Web Spray on Maexxna) and the show's over. Crits will happen, and the potential for them to wipe the raid is there.

At this point it isn't particularly difficult to maintain 540 defense even without gemming for it. There is no excuse for sitting below the cap.

Wondering if there is a thread I missed dealing with threat?

I want to up mine a bit. I have a few questions.

1. Single Target. how bad does frost rape unholy? on TPS. I've been unholy and I DOMINATE AE threat. Looking to up single target.

2. What trinkets are best for threat?

3. What piece of Valorous or other gear should be subbed for a dps/expertise item for threat?

4. Rune Strike: When should it be used over what abilities?

Thanks for any and all discussion.

hey

i got two questions i would like to ask.

first: does the runeblade produce (and transfer) any thread, so i could use it as additional thread support?

second: atm i wear the 4hm tanking sword in my mainhand and the heroic tanking sword in my offhand (utgarde i believe). i´m asking myself if i should need the 4hm sword once again, to maximize offhand damage, but i´m not quite sure if a faster sword is better suited for the offhand slot. what do you think?

as of now, i am bloodtank and mostly doing fine in terms of thread, but when a good titangrip warrior or mage starts to push the limits @sartharion´s drakes from the beginning, it gets kinda nasty threadwise xD

As far as i know hatefull strike can't crit!