DK Tanking Discussion - Page 205

gorsameth · 07/24/09, 5:19 AM

@Tay

Like you I tank warbringers during thorim so maybe i can give you some advise.
Zoom your camera pretty far out and turn it up. you should be able to get almost the entire arena in your view by watching from above thorim's head. This lets you select and taunt every single warbringer that comes before they reach the center.
Dark command when they land, and hit em a few times should give plenty of aggro to make sure they die before you lose them.

Also dont care to much about a loss small dwarf now and then. there non elite and even cloth should not have issues surviving them.

Howwow · 07/24/09, 6:40 AM

@Tay
If you want fast aggro then it's a good idea to start with HB like Afabar said. I'm not a fan of OB but it's one way to
go. If you're tanking non-elites then skip Pestilence altogether. For elites it may be a good idea, depending on
how long the fight is going to be. BB is good and with Blood Tap you can do it even three times in a row if need be.
When you've used your boils then it's not long till your HB is ready again. After that not long till DnD.

About your talents: Icy Talons and also the improved version is usually not needed when raiding because there
probably is a shaman around with Windfury Totem (or some such) that overrides Talons making it useless.
I'd put them in Virulence and Bladed Armor, or just the latter. Two handed weapon specialization doesn't help aoe either.
It's not bad but for (at least the pre-patch) frost build Dark Conviction (+crit for all dmg) is better than 2h spec.

Glyphs: Icebound Fortitude is a PVP glyph (semi-good at that) when you want to have some defense regardless
of having a high dps build. Obliterate is ok but that's for single target encounters. As a tank you just want
to keep aggro first and dealing damage is fine but secondary. You have FS and RS for that too.
DnD and HB for major glyphs and Blood Tap for minor (instead of either Raise Dead or Horn of Winter).

Once you have your flock around you and you start aoeing it will be very hard to pull them off you.
Things may get hard if you have trigger happy dps behind you but it's ok to tell them to wait till you've collected
all the dwarves together. If one manages to escape your aoe then use Dark Command or better yet Death Grip.
Just don't spend too much doing that or otherwise you'll lose the whole group because of interruption in aoe
damage. Grouping with random people for heroics it's often hard for when someone uses
Army of the Dead suddenly or starts pulling before tank. In guild raids those things shouldn't be a problem though.
Also your gauntlets could use that +2% threat +some parry enchant, can't remember the name

Your gear is quite good otherwise, there's plenty of avoidance and stamina.

dravok · 07/30/09, 9:09 AM

I just started tanking, completely new to the whole style, and I have some questions for veteran tanking DKs. I am using Frost for tanking heroics at this moment. I know many have said that it is better suited for those instances but the rotation doesn't feel right for some reason.

I have been considering switching over to blood but I have some doubts. I am concern about whether my gear is capable of using it and worry about AoE situations. I would just like honest opinions on these questions and what you might do in my position.

rh8452 · 07/30/09, 2:50 PM

Your gear and spec are fine for heroics (I'd take hungering cold for emergency CC but that's me)

There's not all that much of a rotation as frost for tanking trash. DnD -> glyphed HB, blood boil.. should give you all the threat you'd ever want, save a KM proc from the previous pull for HB on the next pull. The endgame tanking thread contains a pretty solid rotation. Frost strike spam on bosses, pull 2.5k dps as the tank in heroics.

Blood's AOE tanking is pretty meh. Tanking ulduar trash for me is relatively easy with DnD -> IT/PS/pest then DS/HS spam with a pest tossed in here and there to keep diseases up, but it does require pretty good gear to succeed and you're more or less constrained to using DnD on every single trash/AOE pull.

Ebonplague · 08/01/09, 9:24 AM

Originally Posted by Howwow

About your talents: Icy Talons and also the improved version is usually not needed when raiding because there
probably is a shaman around with Windfury Totem (or some such) that overrides Talons making it useless.
I'd put them in Virulence and Bladed Armor, or just the latter. Two handed weapon specialization doesn't help aoe either.
It's not bad but for (at least the pre-patch) frost build Dark Conviction (+crit for all dmg) is better than 2h spec.

Glyphs: Icebound Fortitude is a PVP glyph (semi-good at that) when you want to have some defense regardless
of having a high dps build. Obliterate is ok but that's for single target encounters. As a tank you just want
to keep aggro first and dealing damage is fine but secondary. You have FS and RS for that too.
DnD and HB for major glyphs and Blood Tap for minor (instead of either Raise Dead or Horn of Winter).

I don't see, why should waste a MJ Glyph on a spell you can only use every 30 seconds while playing as Frost DK. Glyph of DnD only enhances its Damage by 20%, maybe that's nice as Unholy tank, but seriously even then I prefer Glyph of UB over that one, because it's still useful in Single Target encounters whereas DnD is not. It's still very debatable if you should Glyph or even spec for only a single encounter. In my opinion that's not necessary, at least when it comes to Thorim. You can drop your DnD when it's ready, so it will aggro the little dwarves on every second wave. Granted that they don't have that much hit points, they'll usually die within a matter of seconds anyway and don't pose that much of a threat even to clothies. And apart from that there isn't really anything for what you need AoE-Threat. The Champions are being picked up by another tank and the Evokers are usually focused by melee and their damage is neglegible. So the only ones you really want to keep sticking to you are the Warbringers. You taunt them, you put your diseases up, Pest them, OB them and RS/FS them. You keep this rotation up until the next one arrives, so Glyph of OB is still very useful and a good one to keep.

rh8452 · 08/01/09, 1:48 PM

If you are frost tanking Thorim arena it should be a joke. KM -> glyphed HB -> focus warbringers/evokers/champions/however your raid divides tanking them with ST attacks to keep them on you, use DnD when up.

Every single wave should have a KM and/or rime proc with glyphed HB waiting for you to press a button and gain an instant 8k threat on every mob.

If doing hard mode you may actually have to specifically target and taunt warbringers when MC ends so your priests don't get gibbed by them, but otherwise frost should almost be /afk for arena it's so easy.

Howwow · 08/02/09, 4:26 PM

My earlier post was more generally about aoe aggro. I don't know about Thorim because I haven't joined raids much and never as a tank.
I understand blood is generally considered to be better for a MT. DnD is good if you need plenty of aoe aggro.
Agreed that it's not often when the dps in your group will cause more threat but it just makes things easier for me.
For damage purposes and boss tanking OB glyph is better. After patch maybe even more so with changes to FS.
Anyway, currently both are good depending on the situation. A few days I grouped with an Ulduar geared dps person
(moonkin I think) who did 50% of all the damage in that heroic instance, my share was 20% and 15% each for the other
two dps. Still threat wasn't a problem there.

If I had my way even raids would have more use for HC and other situational tactics, even randomness (instead
of fixed mob locations and more or less fixed spawns). I figure a frost tank would do well in such situations.
Smaller raid groups, faster group gathering, more casual. Call them super heroics maybe

But that's a subject for another discussion.

djashen · 08/03/09, 10:13 AM

Quick question: As a tank how concerned should I be with reaching my HIT cap? I recently replaced a number of gems to ensure I was at HIT cap. My concern was to ensure I always had the highest threat possible. Would I be better replacing them with stam or mitigation gems or perhaps expertise? And if so what is the expertise cap?

What is the ideal gem stacking order for a frost DK tank?

Thank you in advance

Veets · 08/03/09, 7:44 PM

Originally Posted by djashen

Quick question: As a tank how concerned should I be with reaching my HIT cap? I recently replaced a number of gems to ensure I was at HIT cap. My concern was to ensure I always had the highest threat possible. Would I be better replacing them with stam or mitigation gems or perhaps expertise? And if so what is the expertise cap?

What is the ideal gem stacking order for a frost DK tank?

Thank you in advance

Sadly this has always been entirely up to the individual and their guild's need. If your threat is too low, gem/food to ensure you're hitting the 8% hit cap and if it's still not enough, gear/gem/food for expertise (~8% was considered the soft cap for exp unless I'm mistaken).

Lorenzop16 · 08/03/09, 8:44 PM

I must have searched through 30-40 pages before i gave up. I am curious as to properly enchanting gloves.

The available enchants are:

18 = 180HP
2% Threat/10Parry = ?? / 0.11%Parry

How can i rationalize the 2% threat off of Armsmen compared to 180hp?

EDITED: Due to bad spelling on my part

.

• frmorrison · 08/03/09, 8:52 PM

Originally Posted by Veets

Sadly this has always been entirely up to the individual and their guild's need. If your threat is too low, gem/food to ensure you're hitting the 8% hit cap and if it's still not enough, gear/gem/food for expertise (~8% was considered the soft cap for exp unless I'm mistaken).

Right, it matters how much you value threat (which depend's on guild's dps skill).

6.5% is the soft cap for Expertise (26), after that you only remove parry from the swing table.

Boreal · 08/04/09, 2:22 PM

Originally Posted by Tay

Example: Thorim

I was assigned War Bringers, and I had a VERY tough time. Granted, it was my first time ever tanking a 25 Thorim (I am trialing in a guild) but I felt like I was just doing terrible. I was having a lot of trouble grabbing initial aggro on the WBs. Unless I had a DnD down, it seemed like my initial aggro was more or less, useless. Do you guys have tips for picking up initial aggro when my DnD is on CD? I also had problems FINDING my targets, as well as maintaining them. I think I was going overkill on threat before I dropped one WB to find another.

I have a lot of trouble with adds, whereas I tank bosses a lot better. Is there a macro for finding the different WBs (ones I am not already targeting)? Is there a way to practice holding adds? I do fine when I have DnD down, but IT>>PS>>pest>>BB OB and RS with HB doesnt seem to work for me very well.

Thanks,

Tay

Hey, assign a hotkey to a targeting macro. I use a single macro for all of my targeting needs in Ulduar. I do the gauntlet, but have done the arena on Thorim before, so I'll add the mob you want to it. Basically, just spam the macro and it'll target the Warbringer as soon as it jumps down.

Can change the other names for your specific assignments -- Snaplasher to Storm Lasher, etc. None of these targets conflict with eachother, so this macro will work for just about everything you'll need to target quickly in Ulduar.

Snaplasher = Freya, Storm Lasher and Ancient Water Spirit are the others.
Strengthened Iron Roots = Freya + Tree
Bomb Bot = Mimiron
Void = Vezax Trash (The things that spawn at 50%)
Life Spark = XT Hard
Clockwork Mechanic = Mimiron Trash, Frost Turret guys that spawn out of the robots.
Dark Rune Warbringer = Thorim Arena. Dark Rune Champion is the other.

Just put this into a macro and assign it to a hotkey:

/tar Snaplasher
/tar Bomb Bot
/tar Void
/tar Life Spark
/tar Clockwork Mechanic
/tar Strengthened Iron Roots
/tar Dark Rune Warbringer