So I've been debating whether or not to get 4/5 Bladed armor or take out the two points from bladed armor and put it into wandering plague.

I have about 15-20% crit 25man raid buffed.

My armor tank spec is around 26k.

4/5 = 4 AP per 180 armor, so (26000/180)*4 = +578 AP
2/5 = 2 AP per 180 armor, so (26000/180)*2 = +289 AP

With those two points I lose 289 AP.
Does the extra 66% bonus damage outweigh the 289 AP?

In regards to Killing Machine in a Frost tanking build, has using the rune strike glyph with it been seriously considered? Since rune strike has an aggro multiplier, effectively replacing frost strike damage with rune strike damage would be a better deal than it would be outside tanking, and the increased crit chance should help proc Killing Machine more often. Now, if both UA and AMS glyphs are wanted, using the rune strike glyph over an IT glyph is probably questionable in a frost build, but it would be a way to reduce the effect of lower crit chance in tanking gear on KM proc rate.

A mob or player's next autoattack comes much sooner than normal after they parry an incoming attack. While this CAN be very bad, from having tanked as a warrior in TBC, I can say that the number of times that this directly leads to you dying is pretty low, even with only enough expertise to remove mob's chance to dodge your attacks, which still leaves about a 10% chance to be parried.

It receives more attention than it really deserves in my opinion because when trying to model tanking, parry haste MASSIVELY increases the maximum amount of incoming damage that you're dealing with. However, I've always found that the chance of being parried and having an unlucky string of luck to not avoid the hasted attack or the surrounding attacks while also not having trinkets/other CDs or enough incoming healing to survive was low in practice - note that on fights that are challenging to heal at all, long enough strings of not avoiding any attacks push you over the edge from hard to heal to impossible to heal, so parry haste isn't introducing chance into something that is otherwise fully predictable.

Since 2h DK tanks have fewer auto-attacks and unlike warriors have many special abilities that can't be parried (all the spells, frost strike) and can convert auto-attacks into rune strikes which can't be parried, I personally think that the extent to which tanking DKs need to worry about their attacks being parried is pretty limited, other than it being a very good reason to not DW tank due to the lack of significant advantages to begin with, and a reason to skip BCB in a raid tanking spec - expertise is a very good TPS stat, but the mitigation gained is small in comparison to what extra avoidance would give, as the avoidance affects all incoming attacks including parry hasted ones, while parry hasting will only affect a few of those attacks. Being able to get enough expertise to completely eliminate parry does provide a very tempting option for tanks to reduce the number of ways the RNG can kill you, but you can easily get away with not worrying overly much about expertise and parry haste.


It's worth noting that the original concern about parry haste and tanking, and still by far the most important part, is that having melee dpsers in front of a boss is bad for the tank's health.

Regarding the issue of misses/parries/dodges for initial threat. I'm wondering if we aren't just better off starting with a DnD even on single pulls or boss pulls. With the bonus threat modifier you at least get something even if your Icy touch and plaguestrikes are missing. Of course a nice death coil in the face could help with initial aggro but I'm finding that with Runestrike macro'd to all my strikes and no Blessing of Sanctuary that I'm RP starved much of the time.

I don't know if this has been said, but i am wondering what stats am i looking at before i will be able to tank heroics??
Getting 545 Def before doing any 10mans/25mans isnt easy.

The question isn't, "Is WP a valuable talent?"
The question is, "Is WP worth more than what I'd have to give up to get it?"

My standard build for everyday tanking is:

Blood (9 points)

5/5 Blade Barrier
4/5 Bladed Armor

Frost (11 points)

3/3 Improved Icy Touch
5/5 Toughness
2/2 Icy Reach
1/1 Lichborne

Unholy (51 points)

2/2 Vicious Strikes
3/3 Morbidity
5/5 Anticipation
2/2 Epidemic
3/3 Virulence
2/2 Unholy Command
2/2 On a Pale Horse
1/1 Shadow of Death
5/5 Impurity
2/2 Dirge
5/5 Magic Suppression
3/3 Reaping
2/2 Unholy Aura
3/3 Crypt Fever
1/1 Bone Shield
3/3 Ebon Plaguebringer
1/1 Scourge Strike
5/5 Rage of Rivendare
1/1 Unholy Blight

So I have three options to pick up any points in WP.
A) Pull from bladed armor. No thanks.
B) Drop lichborne. No thanks
C) Pull from unholy aura/SS/Bone Shield/Ebon. No thanks.
D) Pull 1 point (all that is possible) from Magic Suppression and place that point into WP. Ok, this actually seems reasonable. While you're only getting 33% damage out of WP hits, I can see it being useful in more circumstances than having the last point in Magic Suppression. In all honesty, you've converted me.

That being said...

Overall, I'm just not that concerned with threat. I don't need a 200% lead on our highest dps classes. I just need enough to be able to relax. IMO necrosis is just 5 wasted points. I'd much rather have a shorter CD to pull sparks/mobs on Malygos/Gothik respectively. Likewise, giving up lichborne for full WP and crit seems like a horrid trade off.

If you're not concerned with threat, why the insistence on keeping Bladed Armor?

535 Defense is the cap for Heroics (mobs 2 levels higher), 540 is the cap for raids (mobs 3 levels higher). All I did was waited until I was above 520ish defense to start tanking heroics, which took nearly no effort at all, simply quest rewards got me there. Heroics are fairly simple, and only getting easier, if you simply gear towards the defense cap, the other stats will fall in line.

Because more threat is still better than less threat. Bladed armor > WP as it improves all offensive actions.
Dropping bladed armor for a defensive talent is not possible as no other defensive talents are within reach without giving up UB.

D+ for effort.

From a purely mitigation and stam perspective, could it not be better to have an 1h tanking weapon and an offhand frill if they dont make 2h tanking weapons? Even the gladiator's offhands have a lot stam and a bit of resilience. With 2h weapons you are stuck with agility (dodge) & stam only. Being able to get expertise, defense & parry would be quite helpful. It could also be nice for dks who cant reach the defense cap. This also gets rid of the problems of hit loss and parrygibs dw has.

I don't think this would actually work. I however have never really thought about using a one hander then using like some off hand (usually) caster type off hand that would buff stam at best. I'm assuming that would work around the miss chance that duel wield suffers from since you are *ahem* not duel wielding.

However I think the main benefit for a 2 handed tank weapon is twofold.

1) They are slower. This means a couple of things. Like the rogue SS before it, slow weapons are the best for many of our abilites because they do straight weapon damage that scales off the damage of the weapon. Any two weapons that do the same DPS will do a vastly different amount depending on the speed. So, simply put, slower weapons hit harder to keep up the same dps as the faster, less damaging weapons. That means your strikes like BS, HS, OB, etc etc etc all do a percentage of damage of the weapon. And they are instant like that rogue SS. So your overall DPS (and thus, TPS) will increase as a result.

2) The two handed weapon that is slower reduces the number of parry haste attacks you can take. If you have a 1.5 weapon vs a 3.0 weapon you are essentially doubling the number of attacks in the same frame of time. Again, simply put, a 12 second fight has you swinging 8 times with the 1.5 speed and only 4 with the 3.0. Thats 4 more chances for the boss to light you up with parry haste and increase the damage your taking, which is not what you want as a tank. Now thats just a simple do-the-math-in-your-head exercise (which is why I chose 12 secs). Think about how that changes when the fight is 3 to 8 minutes and your speeds could vary from 1.5 to 3.5 or so.

I agree that the stats are more attractive on the one handers, but anything that makes you take more damage and possibly pump out less TPS is bad. I think the idea of DKs equipping one handers is just for the bump two tanking one handers would give us, considering we are shieldless. Only using one would gimp us comparatively.

Honestly, I don't pull single targets with DnD opener unless it's boss. Patchwerk for example, I kept a DnD up at all times (once off of cooldown) on 10man and ended up leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else. It is a good idea, though. My spells aren't missing a whole *lot* but if I spec out of Virulence (maybe today?) DnD will be my opener.

540 for raids. It's difficult to get if you're mixing epics + blues. With Blues it's almost too easy to get (World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> DK Tank Gear Guide: Uncritable before Naxx) but, the issue is you're avoidance and stam suffer. The moment you make the upgrade to epics, you're going to be floating a little below def cap (I was, at least.)

Now, for Heriocs, I was tanking with 510 def and tanked several Naxx wings 10man style at 526. Let your healers know if it's a raid, there should be no issues in Heriocs unless RNG hates you.

Threat isn't a *huge* issue right now but it's going to start becoming one. Plus AP = DMG and there's nothing like hearing "Wtf? You were MTing and pulled 2k dps?" from all the other tanks.

I have a question that's not entirely related to dk tanking, but still quite a bit. When I'm AE tanking lots of mobs(2 spider packs in naxx for example), I start to get extreme FPS issue as soon as I cast DnD and UB. I'm fine without them, and I'm fine all the time out of that even at full graphics, but on large AE pulls, even with all graphics down, I get atrocious machine lag. I've tried removing all my combat log tabs(I have a combat log named Empty with everything turned off), but it doesn't seem to work. I've turned off Recount, and QH obviously, and it doesn't seem like there's an addon spiking on memory during AEs. I'm still pretty sure it's combat log related, but don't know how to fix it. Considering this is especially annoying when tanking, I'm asking this here because another tank might have had the same issue.

While it may be a big deal down the road (in regards to tight enrage timers) I am curious how other tanks do in DPS compared to us.

Wow Web Stats

Nearly 3k DPS as a tank seems quite high (mind you patchwerk is pretty ideal IMO) and I could've changed a few things to make my DPS higher (like having BoS). I don't know how many of you have had the luxury of having BoS on you while tanking, but it is most definitely more effective on us then any other type of tank. I am fairly certain that I could spec into Gargoyle and keep it up the entire duration on a boss like patchwerk while dumping all of my auto attacks on 25RP rune strikes.

As far as I'm aware it's an issue with Death and Decay, more information here:

World of Warcraft (en) Forums -> Death Knight preformance issue with c. spells

Issue is, I'm still getting performance hits at 0% spelleffect, so I'm not too sure it's that. Maybe I'll just delete everything and reinstall. I'll start by clearing wtf folder I guess, the problem is it's hard to reproduce out of raids, not that many places where I can gather enough mobs and not die in the process. Maybe I'll check black morass.

Tonight I got the Repelling charge trinket. This has 95 parry. I had to jiggle some armor around to stay over defense cap (hense the unsocketed / patched pants) . With the changes I end up at 544 (over the 540 cap)def 19.75 % dodge and 16.38% parry.
My original set up I was at 21.52% dodge and 15.2% parry. My question :- is the trade off of about 2% dodge worth 1% parry? Is there a mechanic I am missing or is parry badly itemised on gear?

I get the exact same thing on pulls with more than 15 mobs. It only happens after DnD -> PS -> IT -> Pest -> UB. I kind of assumed its related to the bliz scrolling combat text. I'll turn off all that stuff and see if I can recreate it.

Without BOS last week, as MT i pulled 3.4k dps. I was rp starved tho.

Got all those items now.

Repelling charge is very interesting because with it, I have the same (actually slightly better) total avoidance than with the Badge Dodge trinket -- and I like the last stand option. As with other min / maxes, I want to start gemming for the expertise / stamina gems which will allow me to better increase my threat. I'm fortunate to have nearly 8% hit, but the parry is killing me.

If you armory me when I'm in tank gear, I have a lot of hit but my expertise is low. I've had 3 or 4 parries in a row, and it's a mental thing to stay focused and get back on rotation. I'm starting to see my guild begin to pick up their threat generation as their gear and dps improves; as another post mentioned, a GM found his DK tank threat limited -- and that's a hit / expertise issue.

Well the numbers (correct me if I'm off a bit):

Parry: 49.2 PR per 1% parry
Dodge: 39.2 Dr per 1% dodge
Defense: 41 DR per combined 1% miss / dodge / parry (I assume we aren't loosing any to miss) [updated thank you]

For DK's in epics, you will have a parry rating (PR) of ~400+ with 20% parry and a dodge rating (Dr) of about 350 with 21% Dodge and a defense rating (DR) of 540+.

Now if you check the dimishing returns chart, you'll find that you will gain the most avoidance by stacking dodge until and actually after a Dr of 400 before you should start to stack parry again (last I look, about a Dr of 470+). [ edit --> ? remove Defense is quite good, although expensive % per DR, because your DR's dimishing returns chart is better. <--]

Overall, after defense of 540 go: dodge > defense > parry for max avoidance.

Furthermore, by the time you get to "obscene amounts of both", you'll be gemming for expertise as your "obscene" amount of hit will be negated by parries.

FYI: using both Seal and Repelling Charge defense trinks, I had the a slight more total avoidance that using Repelling and Valor Medal.. go figure...



UPDATE
Here's the link:

Dimishing returns
WotLK Diminishing Returns - Avoidance - TankSpot
Warrior Diminishing returns and defense vs dodge - TankSpot


Defense and Defense Rating
4.91850 defense rating = 1 defense skill
25 Defense skill will grant you an extra 1% Miss, Parry, Dodge, and Block.
I made an error in calculation (thank you) so that 41 defense rating gives 1% avoidance of combined miss, parry, dodge.

I'm going to re-think my conclusion because of two errors in premises which now stand corrected: 1. it takes 41 defense rating to get 1% combined avoidance of miss, parry, dodge and 2. defense rating is not subjected to diminishing returns as per dodge.

So: defense > dodge > parry for avoidance.

Thoughts?

It's actually around 41 defense rating for 1% dodge/miss/parry.