Is anyone else finding it difficult to stay at the defense cap when "upgrading" to new epics. I'm having to gem defense or a combination defense to drop the 65 defense trinket. I'm worried, as per a previous tank poster, that I won't have enough gem spots to push hit and expertise for when our dps gear catches up. (I'm sticking with a lot of blues to mantain defense cap.)
I noticed at first it was hard...but its not SO bad right now. I have been gemming defense where i can, and most my upgrades have a few less defense points, but alot more dodge, parry, hit, expertise on them. Stick with your defense gems, and defense enchants (chest/cloak) then when get the gear you want and your sitting at about 547-549 def you can re-gem some of your stuff. Most of the rare BS items have like 53,47,58 defense on them, so picking up items from Naxx25 will drop them slightly, but if you fall under 540 you can use a resilience flask, or even an old world stam + defense flask. Its not a ton, but it does help. I think its just one of those things that blizzard has over looked, which is why it has been said that their will be 2h weapons and sigils with +def in the future.
Basically stick it out, it starts to even out trust me. [Repelling Charge] will hold you over for a while while you make upgrades if you can get it. Only in 10man Naxx from Thaddius and Gluth
Edit** also you can pick up [Bolstered Legplates] from heroic VH, those will hold you over for quite some time as well.
You should consider, however, getting out of Improved Icy touch and into Killing machine if you'll be doing any 25-man raids (or smaller, but with an enhancement shaman present). You should also be aware that Frost Aura does not stack with Imp-MotW (Last I checked), and you may consider grabbing Merciless Combat, Icy reach, or Deathchill instead.
I'm not sure about the rest of the DK tanks out there, but in my tank gear my crit is pretty low, and so I opt to skip Killing Machine. It is certainly a good talent if you throw on dps gear and go at it from time to time, but when you are in tank mode, I just don't see it being that beneficial at our low crit rate in tank gear (yes, even knowing Runic Strikes proc it). I also skip IIT, as 25 mans will typically have a shaman available to drop WF.
Here is my other question. As far as tanking stats go what do you guys think should be the min. stats for going into 10/25 mans as OT/MT.
Personally I went dps and picked up tank items that our MT/OT didn't need since most of our tanks were full sunwell geared (my TBC main was a prot warrior and one of the MTs of the guild) so they haven't picked up alot of new shit or got several on the first few naxxs we did b/c I was still lvling on the first naxx we did the first week xpac came out.
The main reason I ask is b/c I have to come up with min. stats for going into 10 mans/25 mans and I kinda skipped that part. Beyond 540 defense at least I am doing guess work based off my gear.
I'm not sure about the rest of the DK tanks out there, but in my tank gear my crit is pretty low, and so I opt to skip Killing Machine. It is certainly a good talent if you throw on dps gear and go at it from time to time, but when you are in tank mode, I just don't see it being that beneficial at our low crit rate in tank gear (yes, even knowing Runic Strikes proc it). I also skip IIT, as 25 mans will typically have a shaman available to drop WF.
I am against killing machine in a tanking build due to the small chance it actually has to proc. You are right we all have a low chance to crit anyway and a coin flip off that small chance just isn't worth it. If all else fails test it out and see for yourself.
Here is my other question. As far as tanking stats go what do you guys think should be the min. stats for going into 10/25 mans as OT/MT.
Personally I went dps and picked up tank items that our MT/OT didn't need since most of our tanks were full sunwell geared (my TBC main was a prot warrior and one of the MTs of the guild) so they haven't picked up alot of new shit or got several on the first few naxxs we did b/c I was still lvling on the first naxx we did the first week xpac came out.
The main reason I ask is b/c I have to come up with min. stats for going into 10 mans/25 mans and I kinda skipped that part. Beyond 540 defense at least I am doing guess work based off my gear.
Don't know about minimum stats but I would expect any tank to have best in slot heroic gear or very close to it. A bit easier if you can just be dps for abit and plug some gear holes in naxx but if you have the time run 5-10 heroics a day until you are done. Really though it doesn't take very long to get fully geared up, I am already very close to best in slot in every slot, with only one major upgrade remaining. If your sunwell geared tanks are passing loot then they are dkp whoring, because sunwell gear is pretty bloodly awful compared to even heroic let alone naxx gear.
But since Frost Aura and GotW stack together why not get it?.
They DON'T stack. I posted that on the last page, and it's in several places on this thread. PLEASE stop posting confusing comments to a detail-thirsty community.
I'll save you the link: "Frost Aura does not stack with Imp-MotW"
I think you both just misunderstood what Pyros was saying. He's saying any action refreshes the BB as long as your blood runes are still on CD. So you use both, then you SS (still on CD, refresh to 10), then you DC (refresh to 10). When your blood runes are available again, you will have to use them again to keep BB up, but since all your actions have been keeping the duration at 10s, you should have enough time barring a lot of movement or really unlucky strings of misses.
Dude, I have you quoted above saying they do, so I'm not the one confusing people, you are. Anyway, we can drop this subject because we'll agree to disagree on that point. Thanks.
Dude, I have you quoted above saying they do, so I'm not the one confusing people, you are. Anyway, we can drop this subject because we'll agree to disagree on that point. Thanks.
You have me quoted above saying that Frost Aura and MotW give arcane resist. Are these forums no longer moderated?
I have a hard time believing that you need the full 9% to produce effective TPS. Of course it's helpful, but to call it required can really skew someone's perspective if they're just getting started on tanking and have other things to worry about like crit immunity, effective health, etc. None of the other classes truly need to be hit capped to allow their DPS to unload, and I don't see why death knights should be any different.
I'm more inclined to believe this specific person's problem was low weapon skill. If someone's miss rate is higher than the base amount before gear, something else is going on.
Well, considering that DKs are rotation-dependent, a bad string of miss/block/dodge/parries very well CAN completely screw your TPS. If it happens at a bad moment, like say the very beginning of a boss fight, the end result will usually be a lose boss followed quite quickly by a dead healer or two.
In 25 man content you might be able to recover from that.
In 10 man content, not so much.
So yes...for DK tanks hit rating is indeed very important. At this point I would venture to say it's more important for us than for a lot of other tanks.
Paladins start with full mana and missing doesn't cost them much except for the threat the hits would have caused.
Warriors start with little to no rage, but get most of their tanking rage from being hit. Against a big boss the initial hits the boss lands before the hypothetical healer pulls aggro will generate more than enough rage for the warrior to unload with his extremely high-threat abilities. Most likely while the boss is in-transit to the healer in question if the warrior is on his toes.
Druids...see Warriors for the most part, however they get the added advantage of being able to stack a few HoTs on themselves before they pull. At least that's how every (imo) good bear tank I've seen has done it so they're able to build at least a little threat, for free, just for breathing at the beginning of the fight.
DKs...if we miss we lose a GCD.
However, this means our rotation goes to hell in a handbasket. Runes CDs will happen out of order for the next phase in the rotation (if you use death runes this can be a problem due to normal rune priority). Additionally, for certain specs it means you won't have the RP you need to bridge certain abilities. If you've ever tanked as unholy you know what it's like to be 10RP short on that unholy blight...
But also, because we tank with 2handers, we don't have frequent whit hits to fall back on. If a DPSer lands some burst in a TPS valley (IOWs just before a white hit lands) or a healer lands a big heal they can pull aggro while we wait for the GCD and the swing timer (worst case scenario).
Unholy especially has almost no access to burst threat generation. A string of misses can starve our ability to generate the regular threat we excel at for short periods of time. If that short period is poorly timed, people will die.
If you have a shaman providing 20% windfury, then there is no point putting 6 points into imp icy talons. I would prefer killing machine in that situation. Other wise you are spending 6 talent points on 5% haste.
You're spending 5 talent points on 5% haste, plus 20% for the raid, and 5% spell haste, as your shaman will drop WoA instead of Windfury totem.
This thread is going out of hand, way to many lowlevels and people that haven't been inside a heroic, let alone tanked a actual raid instance trying to give advice on how to spec and tank in a raid. Post like "windfury is not raidwide" and "Frost aura stack with GotW" make me sad. For most of you guys I recommend to go and play the game and then come and give advise after you had some experience. We got some useful posts in here but they are far between and often looked down upon by the level 74 DKs trying to theorycraft around raidtanking.
1) Wandering Plague is bad because of low crit on tank gear! Wrong, I got 20% crit(23% with judgement or ToW) raidbuffed in tankgear, Wandering plague keeps doing 2-3% of my dmg on singletarget and 5-7% of my dmg on aoe. That's 3 Talent points well spent. WWS from night spent mostly tanking adds on Sartherion.
2) DKs take more damage because they don't have a shield! Wrong again, DKs got more armor and HP than warriors and paladins at the same gear level as well as more avoidance. Only thing Warriors and Paladins got are Block. Block shouldn't be underestimated but it's not crucial. In fact if you start looking up combatlogs you will see that DKS on average take 10-15% less damage than a equally geared warrior/paladin.
3) DKs are bad OTs on Patchwerk! You can probably see where I'm going. Unholy DKs are amazing OTs on Patchwerk due to the fact that they take way less hits than any other tank and got way more cds to use. If a hit get through it's fine because as mentioned earlier a Dk got more HP and armor than a warrior so the DK won't suffer as much from being hit. Most of you probably have problems because you got worse gear than other tanks since you haven't had time to gear up yet. Once you get equal gear DKs should be better OTs.
Regarding threat. DKs are higly dependant on having good melee buffs(windfury, 10% ap, BS etc) to perform well. Did a 10man Naxx yesterday with very few melee buffs and had to actually work to keep a 4k dps warlock from pulling aggro. On Thursday I tanked 25 man and had all melee buffs and threat wasn't even close to being a issue.
I do agree that we're getting a dreadful amount of "noise" in this thread. A lot of people posting "is this spec ok?" and such, and some basic mechanic issues that I thought we'd covered months ago. I'll recognize that this class forum is seeing 3-4 times as much traffic as the others, as well as that this is a new class, but the information is all here and I don't think we should still be at the "what talents are good/bad?" stage.
(Edit for awesome irony of the above poster's character name and mine.)
Regarding threat. DKs are higly dependant on having good melee buffs(windfury, 10% ap, BS etc) to perform well. Did a 10man Naxx yesterday with very few melee buffs and had to actually work to keep a 4k dps warlock from pulling aggro. On Thursday I tanked 25 man and had all melee buffs and threat wasn't even close to being a issue.
Haven't found it to be an issue, unless I need to UB for whatever reason. As long as I dump all(or well, most) of my RP into runestrike, I'll be fine usually. But as soon as I have to deathcoil adds to pickthem up, or UB to AE tank and stuff like that, single target threat can start to hurt. Luckily pretty much everything is tauntable, and with 2 taunts up, can usually manage fine. Also our paladins are starting to learn how to use salvation, and we usually have a prot war putting erm... that shield thingie(forgot the name, I know I had it for a while in our early raids) on the highest dps for a 10% threat transfer, and rogues are doing the tricks shenannigans, so it all works out rather fine. The only issue with threat is our fury war being #3 on patchwerk threat and getting HSed if both tanks aren't topped right after their HS because he has ~24k hp.
However I agree with all the other points. Crit isn't low on a tanking DK. Even with 0points in blood. There's SoE/Horn agi buff, kings and the 5%crit aura from ferals/fury at least, and unholy itself got 3%crit with ebon plague. You easily reach 15+%. It's not 30% from DPS gear, but it's still good especially since it's all passive and AE threat. Don't have the points to put in wandering plague on most of my builds though, sadly. As for patchwerk OTing, probably the best OT. My average HS dmg is like 20% lower than our MT prot war(who has better gear since he's MT) because most of them land into boneshield or ibf anyway.
The only gripe with DK's tanking is when everything is down, you're more prone to take a bigger spike than other tanks. But overall, you take less damage than other tanks. As long as your healers don't fall asleep after you spent 45secs on bone shield due to an insane avoidance streak, then 15secs on IBF, then 25secs on boneshield again, you're fine.
I am currently getting ready to start tanking 25 man naxx and I seem to have a spec that deviates from the norm. I generate plenty of threat for the time being and have no problem main tanking 10 man naxx.
Is my spec so different that i am going to run into problems in 25 mans? Veteran of the third war rocks but i do seem to have a lot of points in blood. However; my tanking talents are all covered. Looking forward to hear what the rest of you have to say.
I am currently getting ready to start tanking 25 man naxx and I seem to have a spec that deviates from the norm. I generate plenty of threat for the time being and have no problem main tanking 10 man naxx.
Is my spec so different that i am going to run into problems in 25 mans? Veteran of the third war rocks but i do seem to have a lot of points in blood. However; my tanking talents are all covered. Looking forward to hear what the rest of you have to say.
I tried this spec last week. 4/5 BotN combined with no epidemic was a horrible experience. Basically what happens is your blood runes have a harder time matching up to create a 2 death rune combo for HB/Obl. 64% chance for it to NOT match in fact. So your stuck with 1 death rune and 1 blood rune frequently. If you use bloodstrike on a death rune to keep blade barrier up there's a chance it comes back as a blood rune. This made me punch my keyboard.
Then you must PS/IT every single rotation so you lose there too.
Really the only "viable" tanking Veteran spec is the VotTW + 2/3 ebon/SS spec. Even that has its drawbacks. I have gone over endlessly in my mind how to get Veteran and not miss out on something critical. 2/3 Ebon just misses the mark because CoElements/Boomkin are better and in 5s/10s with no boomkin/warlock you lose 4% dmg on almost every ability. If you go 3/3 ebon you have to choose 2/3 Veteran (why you spec'd down here in the first place) or 4/5 Toughness (750ish armor).
Overall Veteran vs. RoR is a wash in dps/tps. So the choice is all about the above.
Boombada: First, please read the past few posts. Or, at least, if you're going to post your spec explain why it brings what you think it brings to the table beyond just "I like this talent."
As for your spec, I'm a little confused as to why you'd want to pick up Runic Power Mastery. Ideally your RP shouldn't be getting above 100, much less anywhere upwards of 130. There aren't many other places to put those points (killing machine or icy talons maybe), but if you're using your RP to the fullest (and you should be) there's no reason to take that talent.
Second, I can see why you specced into vet of the 3rd war, but I'm not sure if that heavy of a point investment into blood is worth it. You're going to be using your frost and unholy runes for obliterate/HB anyway, why have them converted into death runes (especially at the expense of having a 20% change that blood strike/pestilence won't convert the rune). Also, the 5% crit can be nice, but is it going to significantly affect your TPS in tanking gear, or are the points better put elsewhere? Furthermore, Guile of Gorefiend not maxed? One of the perks for Frost is that your get a longer IBF, though I understand why you have to sacrfice that (for the extra expertise/health/str). It's a trade off, but you seem to be doing fine with it in 10 man naxx.
Finally, from my point of view I don't think it's worth ignoring epidemic in the unholy tree. Having your diseases up longer gives you more flexibility to cast pestilence (not to mention not getting global cool down screwed if you catch it late and it gets resisted). Furthermore, lots of people on this thread have vouched for having 3 points in morbidity for the reduced DnD cool down time. Quick q: are you primarily MTing on the boss or are you AoE tanking (or both I guess?) Having DnD on a short cool down is a great way to catch those packs that get summoned out of nowhere during some fights and run over to the healers to give them hugs and kisses and flowers and bunnies and sunshine (presumably)
Just seems like you're giving up a lot just so you can get Vot3W, but is all of that worth not putting 5 points for 5 expertise + 10% damage to your frost skills (which are important in a frost build, obviously). You've made a lot of trade offs, I'm just not sure if the benefit you receive outweighs what you've given up.
Last edited by Coriolanus : 12/06/08 at 6:56 PM.
Reason: added in clarification to try and not make myself sound so harsh over the internetz
I actually use a spec with Veteran of the Third War in my Sarth/3drakes build, then again it's very fight specific build. Speaking of Sarth/3drakes, if you're having issues keeping your tank alive, try a DK tank. The damage reduction on the main damage he does, his fire breath, is astounding.
Like I said, a very fight specific talent build, including Magic Suppression and Anti-Magic Zone (both amazing talents to mitigate his fire breath):
That said, I really don't see any point into speccing so far into Blood besides Sarth/3drakes. It's just way too much sacrifice for 6% stamina and 6% strength.
Ok, so I really hope I'm way out in left field here but I have this seething anger building up inside...
I'm starting to notice that not only are we the worst tank because of our lack of health and avoidance like the other tanks but we are also the worst on tps?
What exactly are we good at and how does this all balance out besides just over gearing for everything?
That's ridiculous, my avoidance is way higher than our much better geared warriors and I still have more armor than them. My TPS is fine too, not much worse than warriors/druids. I'd dare to say that DK mitigation is quite a bit higher than warriors atm.
Ok, so I really hope I'm way out in left field here but I have this seething anger building up inside...
I'm starting to notice that not only are we the worst tank because of our lack of health and avoidance like the other tanks but we are also the worst on tps?
What exactly are we good at and how does this all balance out besides just over gearing for everything?
I am going to echo Illundai's comments on this one. Our health fully buffed is right around an equal geared warrior(due to us getting +10% on all the buffs and them getting only +6% stam). Our armor is way higher(I believe I have 5000 armor more than the warrior/paladin in my guild), and our avoidance is barring on absurd (I am well over 75% avoidance buffed).
I do agree we have worse tps than warriors (and much much worse than paladins) on single targets, however it is not by that much, it is just very dependent on melee buffs since our threat mostly does not come from our mitigation stats.
Aside from that, they are buffing our passive physical and magical mitigation, giving us a tanking sigil, and most likely buffing our overall threat(even if the only thing they do is bring runestrike to 150% threat/150% damage thats a decent threat buff). We should be in really good shape after that.
Another advantage is that we have by far the best damage while tanking on multiple mob fights, and very similar damage on single target fights.
I would like to steer the discussion back to wandering plague.
To Review:
Even with a 10% crit rate WP has a 19% chance to proc each cycle of ticks on a single target. This is due to 2 dots @ 10% chance each.
As we add more targets there is a larger chance for WP to go off on each cycle of ticks.
Forumla: WP Proc % = 1- ((1-Crit Chance)^Chances to proc)
Where: Chances to proc per cycle = Number of Targets X 2
Somebody had offered to test if Unholy Blight was capable of proc'ing WP. We can't be so fast to dismiss this as false because Crypt Fever effects UB (Unholy Dps Discussion) when UB is not stated as a disease. I didn't see any conclusive posts here or in the other DPS thread. As soon as I get time to test I will but I invite others to beat me to the punch. If UB can proc WP we increase our chances by 33% across the board.
One other item we need to evalute is the effect of Ebon Plagues +crit chance. I believe it is factored into the paper doll's critical strike column. We need to confirm. In light T7 gear unbuffed as 9/11/51 I am showing 8.5% chance to crit. with around 10.25% with horn of winter up.
To speculate if EP is already on the paper doll we can have at minimum 15% chance to crit w/o specifically looking for any additional crit because almost all raids will have at least 1 fury/feral. I realize if this is not the case it can devalue the talent but bear with me.
Just with a feral in the raid we are now looking at 27% chance for WP to proc per cycle on a single target. Dot ticks on average for 400 at 3500ap or rougly 133 AE DPS. Just adding a second target brings the proc rate to 47%.
Another option to improve the value would be to hit up a 13/5/53 style spec further increasing crit rate.
Amazing? My socks are firmly on but for situations where adds are spawning and I need more AE threat asap its a great passive pickup. Gothik and Sartharion come immediatly to mind on top of 3/5ths of the raid night spent AE clearing trash.
Clearing up a few of the above questions might get my socks off if they confirm to the benefit of the talent.
I would like to steer the discussion back to wandering plague.
To Review:
Even with a 10% crit rate WP has a 19% chance to proc each cycle of ticks on a single target. This is due to 2 dots @ 10% chance each.
As we add more targets there is a larger chance for WP to go off on each cycle of ticks.
Forumla: WP Proc % = 1- ((1-Crit Chance)^Chances to proc)
Where: Chances to proc per cycle = Number of Targets X 2
Somebody had offered to test if Unholy Blight was capable of proc'ing WP. We can't be so fast to dismiss this as false because Crypt Fever effects UB (Unholy Dps Discussion) when UB is not stated as a disease. I didn't see any conclusive posts here or in the other DPS thread. As soon as I get time to test I will but I invite others to beat me to the punch. If UB can proc WP we increase our chances by 33% across the board.
UB cannot proc WP this was tested many times before in beta including at the end, but it really does not matter. There is an internal cooldown(something like 1 second) on WP proccing, so in a 5+ mob situation even with a pitiful 10% crit rate unbuffed you are going to have no problem getting close to capping it out and doing considerable dps/tps with it. Really there is no reason for anyone to question the value of WP, like anything else the only thing you should do is compare it against what you will lose by getting it. In a vacuum it is quite good.
12/05/08, 6:44 PM
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