I thought I would add some anecdotal insight on the Veteran of the Third War/Unholy spec. I OT'd naxx spider and Abom wings with it last night (we had an unholy dps that didn't want to respec, and I wasn't comfortable tanking in frost with no prior experience). Mitigation did seem better (as borne out by the increased parry), and I didn't miss Lichborne much at all. The extra health was also nice.

However, threat on trash was pretty terrible, I think due to the fact that Death Strike is almost never going to do any healing on trash. DD->PS->IT->Pest->blood-tap->bloodboil would grab everything, but without Unholy Blight, I had a pretty rough time keeping everything on me after that with high dps.

But, then again, threat on bosses was pretty good. I sustained 3500-3600 for patchwerk (taking hatefuls), and had no issues with Gluth either. (my only non-rep/dungeon gear are the T7-10 legs)

I've been stacking defense to 540, which meant a lot of yellow gems up until about last night (Picked up badge ring and a couple more pieces out of naxx25). I'm now going full on for Sta, Dodge, Str in that order. I think stamina is the way to go for us because of the talents we have to increase our Sta:HP conversion and frost presence.

Reading over the post, I do not see a statement that says anything to that effect regarding DKs not being avoidance tanks. I'd actually be concerned with a buff to frost presence though, as if our armor values start to match up with the other tanks, and our avoidance/cooldowns are higher/better, then that is just asking for a nerf. I'm pretty ok with the trade off of higher avoidance for being hit a bit harder when an attack does land.

Some of his other remarks are pretty much old news though. The weakness of the blood tree was widely reported in beta, no one would tank as blood for the most part, and in general, the things he's saying have been true since about 2 months before beta ended IIRC. I don't particularly understand why runic strike needs to be changed. After a rogue loses his surprise advantage, he attacks from behind on gouges/stuns. Once the battle goes toe to toe, he should be at that disadvantage, much like against warriors using overpower.

We have to get runic power to use it and, lets face it, one or two rune strikes against a rogue if we are lucky. Tell them to get more resilience.

Gemming for expertise (at least to 6%) should be heavily considered. I just reached 24 expertise last night (before 540 defense, I hate gemming max defense then regemming later once cap is comfortably exceeded to spread it out. I'd rather chug a near-free resilience flask for a week while a grab the final +def pieces).

With all the avoidance on DK most tanking gear I'm very comfortable with my survivability. Cleared all of N-25 last night with no wipes, including tanking GWF without frenzy dispelling. There is certainly value in gemming for avoidance but that will do less for us as our gear improves. Hit, str and exp. will be very valuable as more content is released, and even as we max out currently available items. While unholy aoe tanking is incredible, I hate seeing prot warriors and pallies up there on single-target threat without getting beat on ><.

Regarding the upcoming changes, I'm all for them. I hope that they don't decrease the effectiveness of our CD abilities for increased frost presence mitigation. I would prefer instead to increase the CD on them. Having Lichborne, IBF and BS as an unholy tank in addition to increased standard survivability will be quite nice. I actually have avoided stringing together these abilities in an effort to "train" my healers to keep me up with no CD's popped, then just make things easier when they're up. Of course with fights like Patch they must be up aoap.

I'll be interested to see what happens in the blood tree, though I strongly prefer to AOE tank most dungeons for simplicity and speed, so even if mitigation in blood was brought up to par, I'd be surprised to see the AOE threat rival unholy's.

I'm really not a huge fan of Lichborne and do not wish to go the frost route, but i have been considering freeing up points in Reaping, and possibly throwing them into Wandering Plague maybe or even Necrosis.

For the time being i have also left out point in On Pale Horse, just because I've noticed with tremor totem, and maybe a couple stuns on Patchwerk trash, there really hasn't been much need for it.

My roll right now is OT/AOE/Magic tank in our 25mans. So switching to and from blood presence for fights when i am not needed is something i take into consideration, but i like *most* all of my points to act as if i am MT for when those times come.

Right now, i admit my build is somewhat not ideal....but my threat and tanking abilities are still 100% there. I will be dropping points from Butchery, and Desecration, as i find myself NEVER RP starved or making much use of Desecration since most fights i am moving around.

Any thoughts on Reaping being needed for the death runes? Will my cycle while tanking change, or is there anything else i may be over looking at this point in time. Here is a link to my build, but like i said, its not pretty but gets the job done, and will be changing some talents around when i get home today.

I'm considering a build along the lines of this.

Even putting the two points from Reaping into Necrosis, or Ghoul/Corps Explosion. Could even put them into On Pale Horse, drop Necrosis\Reaping all together, and grab a Ghoul\Corpse Explosion that way.

What do you guys think? Main concern is i do not want TPS to go down when tanking.

One more question, after DEF cap, gem Parry, Dodge or just straight Stamina? Mitigation isn't so bad for me, so i have been going with Stamina for now.

Has anyone really found AMZ to be THAT useful? I have yet to actually spec into it, i have thought about it, but cant think of a ton of situations where it would make or break a raid wipe. Only a handful of situations would it be useful in Naxx-25 and pretty much only takes some pressure of healer or allow that shitty healer you have to shine.

Hi guys, first time poster, long time reader. Thanks for having me.

Anyways, I wouldn't really say that Reaping is a must have. I haven't been tanking long, only a couple days, but I really am getting the feeling that my Death Runes are worthless. Even when they are up, I am using them for B abilities only, mainly BB. It seems to make the rotation easier when using them for single B abilities along with the fact that Blood Barrier stays up a little bit longer.

I actually found AMZ quite useful on the 10man Naxx I ran last night. It might not have made or broken the raid, but it definitely gave some of our crap healers some leeway on some of the more healing intensive and hard healing bosses. Bosses like Loatheb were my thought for this.

I'll probably stay specced for AMZ till our healers get some gear and experience just for safety's sake.

Just curious -
I see alot of Unholy Tanks taking Ravenous Dead
(its spec'd in both of Rejju's Unholy specs from p12)
I can't figure out why

AMZ is mostly a preference thing. The general consensus is that it isn't worth it, but play what you are comfortable playing.

Death runes make rotations more stable and are important to keeping blade barrier up and making sure you have frost runes and unholy runes available when needed.

Ravenous Dead is a decent filler talent. It also helps to scale tps well.

If you compare the damage per point for it from the DPS Compendium vs Necrosis/Virulence it is (top chart - 3pts - no ghoul) 0.16% vs 1.23%/0.38% or (bottom chart - per point) 0.37% vs 0.63%/0.38%

Just seems those points could be better spent elsewhere for tanking

I could be wrong, but I believe taking the numbers from the DPS compendium for tanking purposes might be misleading. Those numbers were derived for the purpose of maximizing DPS, which is not quite the same as scaling TPS.

In addition, considering that most Unholy DK tanks will make some use of the Ghoul, I feel the talent points are reasonably well spent. From what I can tell the primary other options would be virulence or outbreak, and while both have their tanking merits, I like Ravenous Dead for what it is.

I would only take it if i had perma-ghoul otherwise, i tend to skip it. IMO Necrosis is a better filler. Or put one point there and two in Two-Handed weapons. Thats what i prefer...since i do dps on the occasional boss fights, and in heroics i hit pretty heard being MT, threat has never once been an issue.


Also Nacht, i would have to agree with you. That is pretty much what i was thinking since i am over def cap as it is, and saving up my JC tokens to get the dodge+stam gem cut. But couldn't decide since i know the whole "parry-haste" deal exists and wouldn't be bad following a parry, but was unsure if DR played a factor.

There isn't a whole lot more to get to be honest and 3% strength is more TPS and a small amount of parry. To be honest with you all, I have updating to those specs I need to do. From feedback desecration isn't worth the 5 point investment.

I'm working on a tanking compendium, but need more testing. Here are new preliminary specs:

unholy with AMZ

unholy with out AMZ

frost This is the spec I am currently using for tanking. I'm testing 2h weapon spec vs butchery, too. If i have issues with RP generation, I may trade those points around.

alt frost w/out IIT

blood

edit- Updated specs and added alt frost spec.

Last night my guild did our first naxx-25 run. On an earlier run with a frost spec (and iffy gear) I successfully tanked Kel'Thuzad in the 10-man version, and I've been doing a lot of heroics as frost. Last night they decided to go with two warrior tanks and said I should respec for DPS. I chose a pretty standard blood spec. I did terribad DPS, partially because my gear was awful, partially because I've never really spent much time as blood (I leveled almost entirely unholy and then went frost).

Anyhow, we got to the a-bomb wing and cleared to Patchwerk. (Perhaps you can see where this story is going).

They said ok, Tank #1 is the main tank, Tank #2 and our DK are off-tanks. I put on tank gear, flasked, got well-fed, and got up to about 28k health. We pulled Patch, he melee'd the main tank, he turned to me, and one-shot hateful-striked me. (It wasn't even close)

So... not really any real in-depth knowledge to be gained here, other than "avoidance tanks aren't good with immense damage", and "non-tank-specced DKs don't off-tank patch well". Oh and "damn, I need more tank gear".

You need to make use of your cool downs here, and keep Bone shield up, put it up about a minute or so before the fight so that you are able to use it again. Your other two tanks should be higher than you on Omen, but you need to make sure you are doing enough hate to stay third. If you don't already you should pick up one of the dodge trinkets, and use that when IBF is down, DS to help out your healers as well, because when your cool downs aren't up and with out pretty decent tank gear you will be taking pretty big spikes.

I was OT#2 (2nd hateful eater) on last week's N-25 clear, and patchwerk did drop me quickly, but not in 1 hit. I think I managed to get ahead of OT1 in threat, which caused me to eat 2 hatefuls in 1 second apart from each other. When I backed off on threat, I think the max I was hit for was 27K, most being around 21-22K on hatefuls. Unfortunately, avoidance, while useful, is not the deciding factor on patchwerk, go for Stam/Armor so you can take that hateful and leave your healers as much buffer as possible. I was pushing 31-32K HP on that fight, and I'm a bit higher now raid buffed after some tanking upgrades from N-25 last week. For reference though, I ended up taking about half the damage as OT1 (a warrior) overall, but his damage per hateful was 18-19K per hateful.

I've considered this myself since it has the built in multiplier. Honestly, even if it was a threat boost, I suspect any gains would be offset by the total hell it would rain down on your SS/Oblit rune rotations. Probably best to leave it for multi mob situations. Regardless, I'd suggest picking up Morbidity. Solid AoE threat can be tough without it. Squeeze it in if you can.

This is pretty spot on. I got creamed my first week on patch25. Thankfully last week went rather smooth. Get BS up and on CD before you pull. Pop lichborne on the pull and be sure to let your healers know when it drops. Drop avoidance trinkets and another bone shield after LB and all shield charges are down. Leave a 5-10s window and drop IBF. From then on continue to drop CDs as they come up, deathstrike your ass off and pray. Make sure you've got a priest or shammy spamming on you for the 25% armor bonus on crit.

WTB Shield. Will trade soul.

Its very dependent on gear. If you get the base talents, going deep into one tree over another doesnt change the weights too much.

Using Rawrs mitigation and survival points, while uncrittable and in Naxx 25/10 gear as Unholy I get pretty good numbers.

Mitigation:
10 dodge 571.24
10 defense 545.22
100 armor 376.16
10 parry 339.36
10 agility 304.69
10 strength 113.18

Survival:
15 stamina: 574.22
100 armor 410.88

When you're crittable, defense is obviously better than dodge.

For talents, blade barrier > toughness > anticipation

I'd give some numbers on frost vs unholy but its too dependent on tanking situation

if bone shield always lasts a very low time, unholy is worse

you'd have to do it on a case by case basis

frost is better aoe mitigation, unholy is better at something like patchwerk hateful strikes