Yourr stats look plenty good to be tanking heroics, definitely go for some more defense where you can (You've got only one gem with any defense and it's only an enduring - I was gemming all thick gems to start with because it was such a pain to hit cap in blues), that said in a heroic you're also looking at a lower cap since most of the mobs you're dealing with are like level 70. As frost I rarely found a need to DnD (IT, Pest, HB, BB and you're set, plus it dumps your blood runes reasonably fast).
You do need to be aware of larger/nastier pulls, and even *gasp* use CC as necessary on some mobs if you're genuinely taking too much damage, but honestly you shouldn't be. Also I was tending to use IBF pre-emptively early on in heroics, like right on the pull if we were just AEing the junk down - it will be up most of the time for pulls and you can kill a few of the mobs before it drops easily.

I'd personally ditch the dual wield idea, but again in heroics that's almost certainly not what's killing you. Make sure you're running with a decent healer more than anything. Being undergeared is painful. Try to do some regular halls of Lightning to get the trinket - regulars are a pain nobody wants to go through but the drop rate is high on it and it's VERY good.

Your link directs to a Frost build.

First off, the link is to a frost build.

Secondly, I like this spec if you don't want to pick up lichborne.

Lastly, Lichborne is worth picking up. It's your "oh s**t" button.

If true, that's a different internal CD than any other effect in the game that I'm aware of - nothing else has an internal CD that affects chances to proc the effect, just that it can't proc period for the duration of the internal CD after it procs - thus making a very short CD on WP just a cap on number of times it can proc, which wouldn't affect the chance of having at least one proc per set of ticks. It is possible that Blizz added a new mechanic to keep the servers from having to make too many rolls for WP on pulls with high numbers of trash mobs (like Morogrim's murloc adds for example), but a cap on how often it can actually trigger rather than a cap on proc chances would eliminate having to do multiple damage calculations per mob for WP on a pestilence disease tick, and wouldn't require new mechanics. Testing the actual proc chance via WWS and/or target dummies is probably the only way to figure out which it is. One other question I have about WP is whether UB still procs it even as a non-disease effect, as I think I've seen it proc when only UB was hitting a mob - would affect chance to proc per tick cycle if true.


On other subjects, I have to agree with those that are saying that unholy aura is a must even in an unholy tanking spec - even in a 25 man raid, you couldn't really bring a second unholy DK even if you wanted to without either gimping the DPS DK's damage (bad) or the tanking DK's damage (really bad) due to ebon plaguebringer mechanics, and the aura is a major boost. Also, as a tank, passing up your only method for getting 15% runspeed even just for personal movement would be highly questionable - avoiding AoE damage, getting to a new position, or getting to a mob before it gets to the cloth wearer that pulled aggro are all tasks that benefit from having 15% rather than 8% runspeed bonus.

One thing that would be rather counter-intuitive but may deserve testing is whether DnD is worth using in a single target aggro situation especially for unholy DKs, as like I've seen commented here I haven't really had single target dps pull off me very often in AoE situations even with just my AoE damage on the mob, but single target aggro is much closer than I'd like at times, though my single target rotation execution could still use improvement. Even if only used every 20 seconds to avoid overly disrupting your rotation, knowing whether it would be a threat increase would be very useful in situations you know the mob won't be moving outside a DnD radius for 10 seconds - I wish the target dummies showed threat, but as far as I can tell they don't, so testing this will probably require actual mobs, and will need a baseline threat per tick with just blood plague up as that and ebon plaguebringer have to be up to get accurate numbers on DnD vs BS + SS. I'll try to remember to play with that as I'm respeccing today or tomorrow before putting points into WP to avoid that complication.

I'm getting my information from actual testing in the game rather than mindlessly parroting incorrect forum information. You're correct in that there are two separate "misses" for spells, actual misses and 100% resists. However, they give different combatlog messages: one says "Miss" and one says "Resisted". All of the spells I listed can Miss, as opposed to full resist, and I have personally observed all of them doing so.

Taunts are on spell hit still. That's why every class with a taunt has a glyph to add 8% hit to that taunt (9% physical hit + 8% extra = 17% miss chance removed). Dark Command (and other taunts) cannot be Resisted because they are Physical school.

First post, so be gentle

Okay, even though the latest posts from Blizzard say they will be beefing up Blodd specs, wont the fact that a blood rotation makes more strikes (HBx4 instead of DS/OB etc) make them always more susceptable to boss parry issues

Separate question, I have been playing with a Death Strike build, does this scale in 25s?

Here's my thoughts:
Death Strike Tank

Rotation:
IT->PS->BS->BS->DS->DC
DS->DS->OB->DC

Questions I am not sure of is:
Is the 3rd Point in Vet of the 3rd better than taking Mark of Blood? (i'm thinking No)
Are the points in Necrosis better off in Blood-caked Blade or elsewhere? (really not sure, took it for high armored bosses)
Is there any tanking value to On a Pale Horse or are the points better spent elsewhere (I'm pretty sure it's not but the ride speed is nice)

Should this spec generate enough single target threat?
Is there a better Rotation?

Waddy I know this might sound odd...but have you perhaps considered that your healers in heroic runs are undergeared?

I mean, Naxx 25 is supposed to be a harder than a heroic run, and I know that people being tanking heroics with quest blues and some rep rewards (Armory down so i can't see your gear).

You definitely don't need to be uncritable to tank heroics, and I have a hard time believing that mobs in Naxx 25 hit for less than mobs in heroics.

I really think either your guild healers are far overgeared, or (more likely) your PuG Heroic healers are not very good healers.

Aquarian I would recommend you go over the tanking specs that Rejju posted on page 12 of this thread. Your spec has some fundamental problems with it that I won't rehash for the sake of space.

Also the damage + healing of your DS won't provide more threat than the extra damage from Oblit/SS. DS is good in some cases to take some pressure off your healers, but it is not advisable to use it as a central tanking ability, and structure a build around it.

After spending a few weeks tanking I figured I should should share what I've learned.

I should mention I've tanked nearly every heroic 5 man, the wintergrasp 10 and 25 boss, and all of Naxx 10 and 25. Many of the fights with different specs over the last couple weeks. I figure I should share anything I've learned.

1. Hitting defense cap pre-naxx gear isn't overly hard, but your avoidance will suck. It scales up quickly with naxx gear thankfully. We don't get the luxury of shields, 1h tanking weapons, nor ranged items with stats, so hitting the cap will make your threat suffer until you start picking up gear with a broader range of stats. It's a necessary evil. Get defense capped asap.

2. Frost and unholy both have their benefits. HC-> deathchill -> HB is absurd snap aggro, though I think I'd prefer HB on a 3s CD with half the damage :-/. Acclimation often catches some flak, but its a powerful talent in specific situations. Unfortunately, its rough to commit 3 points at that level of the tree for very specific situations. As mentioned, believe it or not, HC is crazy useful. Too bad the length of the cooldown is horrid. If the PVPers wouldn't freak out, I'd say they should drop the frozen effect to 2-3s and lower the cooldown dramatically. In pve you're really only using it to snap apply FF so you can fire off a HB. For those who scoff at lichborne because its a "long" cooldown, I think some warriors would like to shoot you in the face. It's an amazing talent.

As for Unholy, I've found it to be superior in nearly every way for AoE tanking. Increased DnD/disease damage and UB on top of that makes it nearly impossible to pull mobs off you, assuming you can get pestilence off before the AOEers unload. Yes, I'm aware UB doesn't tick for all that much. It seems most people forget it ticks every second. Oddly enough, I've found unholy to be superior in single target threat gen as well, although realistically either spec can gen enough threat. Bone shield is amazing, and in my opinion is vastly superior to UA. Unholy Aura is a must have if you're the only unholy DK in the raid. Regardless of the fact that you won't be moving much, the melee dps will be, and the raid dps gain is substantial.

Onto talent point selection:

My stadard build...
<Unholy Tanking Build>

BLOOD:

Blade Barrier- 5pts - No brainer.
Bladed Armor- 4pts - Also a no brainer. Makes me cry I can't fit 1 more point into it.

Frost:

Imp Icy Touch- 3pts - A tad more IT damage doesn't hurt, as you'll be using it to grab adds often. More importantly 6% speed reduction is a no brainer if no one else can apply it. Even if someone else can I'd pick it up for 5 mans.

Toughness- 5pts - Mandatory. With no shield we're left with armor and CD's to mitigate incoming damage.

Icy Reach- 2pts - As previously stated, there will be plenty of situations where you'll need to pull something outside of dark command range and grip will be on CD. Hence why I take icy reach. To be honest, you can put the 2 points in black ice if you want. I just prefer the extra range.

Lichborne- 1pt - Absurdly useful. Three minutes is _not_ a long time for an ability of this caliber. Does not have to be used preemptively on a fear, it will break it. (Anyone macro a castsequence with /tar self, DC -> DC /targetlasttarget?)

Unholy:

Vicious Strikes- 2pts - SS provides quite a bit of single target threat. A healthy boost for two points.

Morbidity- 3pts - DC is a large portion of single target threat. More importantly, halving the DnD cooldown is just flat out required for AoE tanking.

Anticipation- 5pts - No brainer.

Epidemic- 2pts - Regardless of the length of your rotation, if nothing else pick this up for AoE tanking. Only reasonable reason to pass this up requires a blood spec without Annihilation.

Virulence- 3pts - Ever miss a pestilence? Nuff said. Until you're hit capped of gear, take this over other filler.

Unholy Command- 2pts - Ok, most people will not agree with this. In my opinion it is two points well spent. From yanking adds on Gothik to yanking the power things on Malygos, 45s is too long to wait. Pick it up and tell me you aren't happy with it. What else are you going to put it in? Ravenous Dead? Yeah like your ghoul is going to survive more than 10 seconds and the extra 30str is going to make a difference. Corpse Explosion? /laugh. Necrosis? Yes it affects rune strikes, but your single target threat is good enough as is. BCB? Yep, causes parries. Outbreak? Ok, I wish I could pick outbreak up. Its useful for the first pest + BB on an aoe pack. That's about it.

On a Pale Horse- 2pts - 20% off stuns and fears occasional saves a wipe. Every other place you could put two points won't.

Shadow of Death- 1pt - Effectively the same as two points in Ravenous Dead, plus you get stam, plus you can run to a safe res location after a wipe. See why Ravenous Dead sucks?

Impurity- 5pts - No brainer.

Dirge- 2pts - More RP = faster initial UB on AoE pulls and more DC's on single boss encounters.

Reaping- 3pts - Blood runes suck on single target tanking.

Magic Suppression- 5pts - 5% less magic damage and improved AMS. Unfortunately, at a high point cost. Can be exchanged for Desecration. Personally, with the limited uptime of Desecration and the fact that it makes various ground effects nearly impossible to see, I'd take Magic Suppression over it any day.

Unholy Aura- 2pts- For the same reason good rogues took Cat's Swiftness over 12 agi. More time on target = more dps time for your melee.

Anti-Magic Zone- 0pts - Yes, 0 points. I don't take it. AMS is on a short enough cooldown as is. AMZ's only real use is to cut magic damage on _only_ yourself. Anyone who thinks they're going to protect the raid with it clearly hasn't used it.

Crypt Fever- 3pts - No brainer.

Bone Shield- 1pt - I can't stress enough how awesome this talent gets the higher your avoidance. Yes, the charges get eaten on AoE pulls very quickly, but it does have a minimum up time and its long enough to save your ass when you pull twice as many mobs as you should be. (Which will be quite often in Naxxizan.)

Ebon Plaguebringer- 3pts - No brainer.

Scourge Strike- 1pts - Bread and butter single target threat gen.

Rage of Rivendare- 5pts- 10% more damage is amazing alone. 5 expertise makes these some of your best spent points. Speaking of, stack expertise once you defense cap. Getting parried constantly royally screws your rotations.

Unholy Blight- 1pt- Fire and forget threat. I think mine ticks for about 100 d/s unbuffed. Coupled with DnD it makes DK's a premier AoE tank.


Other random advice:

Swordshattering > all. Throw Spellbreaking on a backup weapon and plan on never using it. Anyone have any numbers on how much STR one would have to have for Fallen Crusader to out perform 4% parry? How much up time does Fallen Crusader have on average?

If you're just getting started, start running Halls of Lightning non-heroic asap. [Seal of the Pantheon] is quite helpful for capping defense.

Remember, we're avoidance tanks. Cooldowns run out eventually and we're going to take burst damage from time to time. Make sure your healers are aware of the difference. It's the single reason why I'd still prefer a warrior MTing most encounters. At least we get to use really really big weapons :-/

Speaking of, I'm still confused by all this DW tanking talk. Your weapon is your single most important item for threat generation. Why trade that for mitigation weapons and twice as many parries?

EDIT: One last thing. WP adds a laughable amount of damage on anything less than ~10 mobs in tank gear. Wonderful dps talent. Horrible tanking talent. Hit BB once instead of BS :-/

Can anyone suggest a good setting for Loot Rank for WOLTK to develop a Tanking Set?

I was thinking:

0.5 armor
1 stamina
1.5 defense
1 parry rating
1 dodge rating
0.5 expertise
0.5 hit
0.25 strength
0.10 AP
0.25 crit rating
0.10 haste

Anyone else have any good suggestions for a setting to have the best balance of threat gain/mitigation as a Frost specced tank?

Sorry about that, link is now fixed appropriately. I had about 10 DK specs opened at the time, so I just copied the wrong one.

Secondly, I already have 2 "oh shit" buttons not even counting my trinkets. A third one on a long CD isn't going to help me much at all. I have not found myself in any situation yet where I said to myself "Man, I really wish I had 25% more chance to be missed right now". Bone Armor, IBF, trinkets, Death Strike, all of these are plenty of Oh Shit buttons for a DK. If you think a 3 min CD is going to make or break a DK tank, well... maybe you just end up in worse situations than I do. Remember, I don't MT much, so I just don't see the extra wasted points as vital.

As to the Death runes - I'm sorry if I got it wrong but I was watching my rune CDs carefully and I would swear that even with 2 *active* Death runes, my Blade Barrier refreshes when I cast something else. Like I said, I could be wrong, but it would seem silly for Death runes to count *as* Blood runes - or else a Blood tank would have to have ALL 6 runes on CD to proc BB (Because Blood runs with all U and F runes as D runes).

All good information. I have benefited a great deal from the incite.

I have gone over all those specs and I respect the thought that went into them, but I would really like to see why or why not DS tanking is viable.

With 3 diseases up (Any other Unholy DK would be assumed to have take Ebon)
It would seem that since DS does .6 WD + 2.5 Heal - threat would = .6 * (1 +2.5/2) = 1.35 weapon damage
With the Glyph of Death Strike and appoximately 80 runic power average (okay I did make this number up, but 80 is conservative)

Thats an extra 2% * 80/5 = 32% for a total threat of 1.78 * WD which I believe is on par or even better than OB/SS raw damage threat

Plus the obvious advantage of some self healing

Also having BS + Lichborn as well as +8% health as well as a 17% heal available every 40 seconds there seems to have more of a chance to keep a cooldown up. Plus the Frost skills to mitigate and extend IT seemed extremely valuable.

While spell deflection is random, it still adds more mitigation, and while AMZ is situational, it is still very nice to have during those situations

It also has very few skills that cause boss parry like BcB

(Other Glyphs would be Bone Shield/Glyph of Icy Touch/Glyph of Pestilence)

I have seen others suggest DS Tanking but no real numbers saying why it doesn't work
The spec I posted seems to have very good spell/physical mitigation/health/CDs/and threat just not as much actual damage

So I might be missing something very obvious as I'm not 80 and doing 25s yet but it seems a fairly viable way to tank
and I would be interested to know how theory deviates from reality.

I don't think detailing would be rehashing, since I have seen nothing in this thread or elsewhere to say why it won't work and limited experience having it work in 5 mans (Yes, not the same as a raid)

Looks like we've got some big changes on their way.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Thoughts on death knights

Relevant parts:
I'm glad to hear that blood will be getting some love, as it definitely feels weak as a tanking spec. Mitigation with cooldowns down has been a problem for a long time. Why did it take them so long to realize that?

Does everyone spec unholy for Bone shield? Personally, I like unholy because of the playstyle and the ease of the rotations.

nmind.

Taunts were changed to work on melee hit not spell hit. All but a few of our spells work on melee hit. I could be wrong, but I want to say that was Icy Touch, Howling Blast and Death Coil. While missing Icy Touch would definitely be a bad thing, hit capping to 9% will be more than enough to just use IT twice. The odds of you missing 2 in a row are low and we do have other things we can use. Gearing for that much hit is ludicrous unless you really want to go DW spec.

Erm, I was under the impression ALL hit ratings were combined into a single type. Ranged, melee and spell hit is just hit. If you've got enough hit to never miss with a melee attack, you've got enough hit to never miss with a taunt.

Or are the caps for each different for some reason?

Taunts WERE changed to use Melee Hit Rating, yes. They've always been on the spell hit CHART, though, and they still are - again, that's the entire reason that there are +8% hit glyphs for all the taunts. You're also completely and utterly wrong about the spell list. Seriously, try taking off all your hit gear and casting some of the spells I listed on the boss-level dummies (or, even better, get a level 58 starter DK and test them on the level 80 dummies). They will all miss - not resist, miss.

It's 9% and 17%, and there's really nothing to disagree with, those have been the same numbers for years. It's 0.5% per level, but the formula changes at +3level where it becomes 3% per level. So 5%base miss, +1% for lvl 82, and then 3% for lvl 83. Bingo, 9%.

Taunts are on melee hit now as someone said, they changed that after the original naxx fiasco where you had tanks running around with the spell hit trinket from zg for 4horsemen, and where the T3 bonus was necessary to even do the fight. Some of the DK abilities are on spell hit though, the list was given earlier, IT DC and HB. You can easily see that, on a WWS parse, if I don't have virulence, I'll miss quite a few IT or DC, and never miss a single melee ability.

Really all this info is in the DPS compendium, or on basic wow wiki stuff.


Now blizzard announcement, I'm a bit scared. Sure they're talking of BUFFS, but I'm affraid they'll just nerf bone shield. I do prefer unholy because of bone shield, but also because of the rotation and AE threat. I tried frost tanking, but didn't like it. Blood is obviously bad, and I guess it needs more than nerfs to other specs to be worth it.

Also not too sure about nerfing cooldowns and buffing general mitigation. The cooldowns is what makes DKs better than any other tanks in a lot of situations. I guess it'll depend on the extent of the change.

I realize that terminology changed. You get more misses on spells that before. Thats a change that Blizzard put in. I got the list of spells from the DPS compendium listed here. If you can give me a list from blizzard or a blue post that specifically says otherwise, I will use the information I find here.

If taunts use melee hit, but are considered spells for the % you need to not get a miss, you should specifically say what you mean. I think that is what you are trying to say. Now, would you like to be a little less belligerent to people trying to help others? I'm pretty certain they say miss specifically because it's calculated as a melee miss, not a spell resist.

Talking with warrior tanks and my own experiences, picking up extra hit rating specifically for taunt is worthless. Especially when we don't need taunt anymore except to pick up stray mobs. As a dk taunt is one of about 6 other abilities that will "taunt" at range. I use death grip, IT, death coil, howling blast, taunt and pestilence to pick up mobs off others and you can use DnD too. Are all these spells ideal? Well no, but each one can pull mobs off other people who might pull or you may not have gotten threat on them yet.

Thanks for clarifying that for me Pyros. That now makes complete sense, I was told 1% each level. Personal opinion, I think it's worthless to get hit above 9%, we just don't need it anymore than that.

@ Nanjani:

Awesome post! I really like that spec. Seems like it's full of utility, which appeals to me, as I'm part of a small guild that will mostly 5/10-man.

Question: What do you think about taking 3 points out of Magic Suppression and putting them into Outbreak? [Huge caveat here, as I haven't hit 80 yet. and even when I (finally) do, I don't anticipate doing 25 man content.]

Basically, do you think the cost of Magic Suppression (1 point per 1% reduction) is acceptable? It seems very high to me.

(Also, why no counter points/rebuttals? Doesn't anyone want to debate Nanjani's arguments??

Thanks.

Okay, so if I get gear for 9% hit and I DON'T take the Dark Command Glyph, my Dark Command will screw up 8% of the time? Is that what we're saying here?

Well, one thing Nanjani said kind of confused me

Does Blood-Caked Blade really do that?

First, 80 RP is not a conservative estimate. Unless you're consciously avoiding Rune Strike and DC, you're not typically going to be sitting around at 80% of cap, and obviously if you're consciously avoiding all RP abilities just to keep RP in store for your DS build, you're sacrificing a huge chunk of single-target dps.

Second, skipping out Unholy Blight misses a huge advantage of being an unholy tank in the first place, which is AoE tanking. You also don't have deep frost talents, so you're just going to suck all around as an AoE tank. You also don't have Unholy Aura or Ebon Plague, so you're dependent on another Unholy DK being around, even though you went so deep into Unholy yourself.

Third, a lot of the "advantages" that you list of your spec are present in the more standard builds being thrown around. Examples: You don't have BcB - neither does the deep unholy tank build. You say you have frost skills to mitigate, but you don't go deeper in frost than the deep unholy tank build.

Finally, actual numbers: In Naxx-10 last night with my mediocre gear, overall for the night, my average DS hit was 859, and my max crit was 2076. My average SS hit was 2060, and my max crit was 6351. Threat difference is pretty clear.