I picked up your thoughts and specced out of virulence to spend the points elsewhere. But last night at Sapphiron I noticed misses of Unholy Blight, so I wonder if it is really not affected by virulence.

Sorry guys I am sure this is covered many times over in these forums but they have grown to a substantial size since they first sprung up which i am ecstatic to see.

My main question is what are the ideal avoidance stats to have to reliably keep bone shield up for that 20 seconds and what are the rules associated with it? are there any exceptions where the bone armor would drop due to certain pulls of smaller non elite mobs or something like that?
any other information associated with this that I could be directed to would be appreciated

thanks guys and keep all the ideas flowin

Just curious as I am running a similar spec (still leveling)... I was thinking the points in the resist aura might be better spent in Runic Power Mastery (I have no trouble maxing my runic power it seems) and Morbidity, then taking two points from Bladed armor to max Morbidity, and moving the remaining to two handed spec. This seems more beneficial to generating threat, especially helping our AE abilities. From various reports here the frost aura doesn't stack with similar buffs.

Also I'm curious about bladed armor vs two handed spec, I haven't run any numbers on it so can't say for sure but intuitively it seems like it would be better to max two handed spec first.

I wish people would stop this myth.

Virulence affects:

Icy Touch
Howling Blast
Death Coil
Death and Decay
Unholy Blight
Dark Command
Pestilence
Blood Boil
Corpse Explosion

I believe it also affects Strangulate, since that has a damage component as well and thus SHOULD miss. I've never seen it miss, but I only rarely use it so that's no surprise.

General consensus says that you'll need ~45% base avoidance to extend Boneshield's duration as far as desired.

The real advantage to this is most likely only going to be seen in single-target fights...In a multimob situation, it's entirely too likely that you'll get hit enough times to drop boneshield before it can be reapplied, no matter what your avoidance is at.

On that note, however, do encourage your healers to use shields / damage absorbing effects on you as a tank unlike the other tanking classes since it doesn't hamper your resource generation as it would with rage or the blocking and spiritual attunement mechanics of paladins. Any fully absorbed hit will not remove a charge of boneshield, thereby extending its duration even further.

Just don't demand those shields of healers...they're still as rough on mana efficiency as ever as I understand it.

Thank you for the awesome response, I currently do quite well tanking frost and I love it, but I have noticed that even when I am just OTing the trash, or single targeting a mob while trying to hold AoE aggro which already is never a problem, I can manage to hold out enough aoe aggro that i really do not need to focus too much on consuming runes to maintain a significant amount of threat on the primary mob that is receiving all of the dps output. noticing this couple with the fact that I love the way it seems unholy plays, i think that it seems like unholy might just be somewhat more superior for threat generation.

That being said I have not noticed much damage mitigation in unholy which would make me think I might not be as efficient to try and maintain aggro on AoE packs. Healers never have any problem keeping me up, but Unbreakable armor and Lichborne are amazing skills to give your healers a little bit of breathing time. I will be attempting to try my hand at Unholy but in the back of my mind it seems like I'm trying to fix somethin thats not broken by taking this spec for its increased threatgen / damage

If anyone has comments on any of these mindsets I have on the topic please debate me, i would rather be wrong and corrected than wrong and wiping naxx

Thanks again for the help this far

I was wondering if frost or unholy would be a better tank spec for tanking heroics? I have yet to attempt tanking as unholy but I heard tanking heroics is easier as unholy. I suppose that is because of all the AE. The main reason I don't like unholy is because I enjoy my UA, 18 second IBF, and Acclimation while tanking. I am also uncertain as to how I should spec as unholy.

Theres a great thread about that on this very forum. Infact its the one you're posting in. I suggest reading it.

Both specs are completely viable.

I would like to note that I have been reading this thread and I have posts back at page 13.

Would you care to elaborate more on the point distribution for unholy?

Read this post. The OP links to it.

Avoidance Diminishing Returns - Elitist Jerks ... g_returns/

does this hold true for DK's .. or is our avoidance calcs a whole different then warriors

I don't see how this affects Blood specifically, since DnD first is pretty much standard rotation for any build when tanking.

If you ignore Blood Gorged you can pretty much pick up all the talents you'll ever need Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft and still have some left over if you take points out of Sudden Doom. You'll probably want to be Death Strike spamming instead of Oblit anyways.

A class that has a ton of avoidance talents gets a spell avoidance talent that is RNG based? That's like saying "Blade Barrier/Anticipation has the potential to be amazing but it only has a x% chance of working."

I've yet to (or seen anyone) use Will of the Necropolis so I'm curious as to who long the 35% armour buff lasts. I still feel that the talent needs to be changed to something like "under 50% health, gain 25% armour for 10 seconds). The only time it's useful is when you're in an encounter that chops your health down to an arbitrary percentage (Gluth Decimate, except Gluth is trivially easy), where Will of the Necropolis will go off and then you can Vampiric Blood + Rune Tap yourself up.

As a response to the one poster on why people take wandering plague...

Its an amazing aoe tanking talent, but a bit expensive IMO.

Yes, you'll most likely be around 10% crit...but if you're in a pile of bodies, thats 10% per disease, per tick. If anything, 1 point in is just worthwhile. I spec'd out of it only cuz I couldn't afford it with the build I wanted to hit up. I did notice a decrease in my threat aoe-wise though due to it.

I tank as unholy. I've had almost zero issues with AoE tanking. I'm routinely told by healers that I put out more threat than any frost they've played with, and that I am much easier to heal. (52% avoidance with horn + blade barrier running) Having 26.5k hps helps a bunch too.

We hit up Naxx this w/e, and I was originally trying to MT Patchwerk. The OT died within seconds, I stayed up the next 2 mins 35 secs until the healers ran out of mana. When I let the OT (A paladin) go as MT, I ended up lasting longer than him still. Turning on the raid warns for the hurtfuls and seeing: dodge, parry, parry, dodge, miss was quite fun.

As for why in my spec I went with AMS and AMZ? Its actually been *really* helpful. I get requested to come tank HoL heroics since I basically make it a cake walk for healing and dpsing. (They dont even need to move the first nova, and I end up staying alive about 3-4 novas after even the healer dies if it goes bad...without ever running out. Before I went for AMS/AMZ, I did notice a distinct squishiness with magic, now its quite a bit more manageable.
AMZ can also come in handy for plenty of fights where you need to avoid a large AOE via LoS or whatever too. (Obsidian Sanctum, Occulus) Its also a nice party saver for times like when your healer gets ice blocked on the first boss in Utgarde Keep, or held down and life drained in ahn'khet.

Ok, so after tanking for the last 2 weeks in heroics, 10 man Naxx, and Sartherion (starting 25 man Naxx tonight) I think I have worked out the spec I am going to use as my main tanking spec. I haven't currently tried it, but in theory it should work just fine.

Some notes: I am an OT. the MT is a warrior. I find DKs to be amazing OTs since our AoE threat capabilties are awesome, our gimicky magic mitigation is also useful in certain situations, and the way our damage reduction works is great for short bouts of tanking (where you taunt off the MT for a while) even moreso than for full-on tanking.

Anyway, I tried Frost a while back, didn't like it much. UA is just not enough damage reduction at basically 10% parry and armor for 20 seconds. It doesn't work against magic, which is what a lot of the Frost tree is about, and must be cast in combat (good bye Frost rune).

So I have been using Unholy, since it's AoE threat generation is far superior and is great for 5 man heroics, and Bone Armor is the win.

Here's the spec I'm going to use : Unholy Build

And here's the breakdown in my reasoning:

Unholy:

First tier:
Obviously take everything. Dodge, Morbidity, and Vicious Strikes all good.

Second tier:
Epidemic: I have run with this and without... it really depends on preference. Running without isn't bad, but requires re-applying diseases every rotation near the beginning. I don't have it currently, but think I will spec back into it so I have more options of BB/DnD early in a rotation. However, these points could arguably be moved.

Ravenous Dead: 3% extra strength is nice, coupled with Shadow of Death you are running 5% extra Strength. I have somewhere around 900 strength base in my tanking gear, which means about 27 extra str from 3%, which is nice imo for 3 points. But again, these could possibly be moved into Virulence. Still debating on this one.

Virulence and Unholy Command I didn't take - Virulence as stated can be argued for, and UC I just don't find to ever be needed.

Third tier:
Necrosis: As noted before, can be great threat even on RS procs.

Corpse Explosion: Didn't take because I never find a good use for it (I hate any abilities that take a single F or U rune that aren't IT or PS).

Outbreak: Don't find to be a good investment of talents for abilities you use max once every 10 seconds. Could be argued for though.

Fourth tier:
Shadow of Death: the only thing I took here for the 2% stam.

BCB: As noted before can be parried, which is not worth the extra threat imo.
On a Pale Horse: How I love this talent for flying around in Northrend, but unfortunately doesn't help tanking. Reduction on stun and fear is negligible imo.

Fifth tier:
Gargoyle: skipped of course.

Impurity: Great for threat.

Dirge: I do love me some RP, but this could arguably be moved if preferred. I just didn't see anything else to be better than as filler. If anyone is so inclined, the points could be moved into Frost as lead to Lichborne, or into Two-handed Weapon spec for threat. I like them here though.

Sixth tier:
Master of Ghouls: I don't bother with this anymore. Ghoul pet w/o Avoidance dies way too fast, and the stun is minimally useful. As a tank, the ghoul is just more a liability than anything.

Magic Suppression: Here's the debatable part. I made room for the extra 6 points to get this and AMZ. I agree that the talents are very gimicky and limited in usefulness - however, I have tanked all in Naxx 10 man except the final 2 bosses, and I must say that having Magic reduction talents is a must have. Sure, it's not useful EVERY single time, but at least half the fights in there I am spamming my magic shield on CD. Since I am not frost and do not have Acclimation or Frost Aura, I would say that making these 6 pts available as Unholy, if you plan to do real tanking, is not a bad investment. Nice thing about this talent is at least it has the 5% reduction on magic damage all the time, which I assume stacks with Bone Armor's 40%.

Reaping: Mandatory. Death runes are great, and if you keep your Death runes, *they don't count as Blood Runes* so that Blade Barrier stays proc'd more often.

Seventh tier:
Desecration: I was tanking with this, since 5% damage seems like a good amount of threat. However, I find the slow to be more of a liability - there are many times as an OT where you want to move things fast (the fire adds on Sartherion, the blobs on Globbulus, etc) and the slow just hampers your ability to do this. Also, the animation is annoying, and tends to impair visibility of other ground effects that bosses may be casting, and causes extra lag. So in the end, I feel this is not a good or necessary tanking talent, and 5 points can be much better spent elsewhere.

AMZ: This I think, yes is gimicky, but can come in very useful, for fights like the 4H. Using it on Thane's Meteor would be nice, and on bosses like Gorthic it can be used as more mitigation against his magic spam. Overall, I think the 6 pts to get these are fully justifiable, since I have encountered a ton of magic damage inside of Naxx and many heroics. I also don't feel I need these 6 pts for anything else.

Unholy Aura: debateable, but I like to take it, since mobility is always a good thing. However it could be skipped.

Eighth tier up:
I think these are all self explanatory. Night of the Dead and Wandering Plague are useless as a tank. Everything else is golden.

As to my sub: Blade Barrier and Toughness of course. And I always like to take Bladed Armor as Unholy because so much of our threat is AP based, and from this talent I gain about 700 AP alone. If you skimp on this talent at all, you better be getting some damned good threat elsewhere.

And unlike most people, I do not waste the points to get to Lichborne. Wasting 2-5 talent points to get a 3 min minimally useful CD is not my idea of a good spec. Between Bone Armor and IBF, I have all the mitigation I really need, and 1 extra long CD will not save my ass. As for the fear immunity, a 3 min fear immune will not help you. If fear or w/e is an issue, then it will be happening more than every 3 mins, in which case On a Pale Horse will be more beneficial.

You could make arguments to get Lichborne as Unholy, but I feel that it is a waste for Unholy and is better for Blood or Frost specs, since they do not have quite the demand on talent points. I honestly feel having the "gimicky" magic reduction from MS and AMZ are way better than a 3 min CD 25% miss buff. But again, it's a lot about preference and what you are tanking.

I've seen reference to us having 3 diseases, but after re-reviewing the spell list and talents, I don't see how we can get to 3. We have Frost Fever and Plauge Strike which account for 2 obvious ones, where does the 3rd come from? I've looked at the talents that modify diseases etc and don't see where a 3rd would proc from. Is there something easy I'm missing??

Ebon Plaguebringer/Crypt Fever, unholy talents.

This isn't true. When I have both 1 and 2 runes up as Death runes, Blade Barrier does not proc. It only procs when they are both on cooldown, whether they are Blood or Death.

Also, on Wandering Plague: I have 13% crit in my tanking gear. Against 4 targets, this means there is a 67% chance of proccing Wandering Plague each tic. This is non-trivial.

Not true. WP has a very, very short (1 second or less) internal cooldown. That means that diseases spread through Pestilence only effectively count as a single disease for proccing WP. Thus, with 4 diseased targets you only have 3 chances every 3 seconds to proc WP, not 8. This pretty much inverts the proc chance you have listed; I come up with 34.2% chance per set of ticks.

Wanted to see if you could update this to your actual spec. Was just looking through it and seems that it was changed to a frost spec at some point.

Wrong link. That's a frost build.

**Too late. grrrrr

Where are you getting your information?

I was under the impression that spell hit works in the following way: Direct damage spells have a base 17% miss rate against boss mobs. Hit affects THIS miss rate. Then, if they succeed in hitting, partial resists are calculated. These partial resists can be 0, 25, 50, 75, or 100%. Finally, AoE spells always pass the first hit test, thus spell hit is worthless for them, though they still suffer from partial resists -- INCLUDING full, 100% "partial" resists.

Also I was under the impression that all taunts, including dark command, use melee hit percentage. I am very curious to see where you are getting your information.

Hey everyone, this is pretty much my first time posting.

Anyways, to the point, I just hit 80 a few days ago and my guild let me tank in naxx 25 man on Sunday night, sarth last night, and I did fine didn't die once but I have been having some real tough times main tanking in heroics. I think this is due to my gear, because I haven't quite gotten uncritable yet and my parry is arguably low.

Other than that, I've been exploring the tanking talents and I think I've finally settled on what makes me happiest:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'd just like to hear what y'all think and maybe get some advice on how to make myself a bit better of a heroic tank?

Assume that I'm using the proper skill rotation, unbreakable armor - lichborne - Icebound Fortitude - Anti-Magic Shell. Also, assume that I'm using the proper skill rotation.

I usually pull with icy touch and then plop down a dnd, followed by ps and then pest and from there I just blast and rinse and repeat.

My main issue is like I said I just get hit really hard and the healer can't keep up, although in most guild groups I tank much better.

Ok, enough rambling, thanks for your input.