With this change, DKs will have a 19.25% Damage reduction vs a warrior's 15.6%, its really not even close...Also, this miss chance is nice, but obviously lower reliable damage is far superior.

Also, no raid boss in WoTLK is spell reflectable so far..In TBC 3 were, perhaps 4, if you include Muru's adds. (4 out of 30)

Spell reflect is a gimick spell for any high end content, an encounter has to be designed to make it useful, where as AMS/AMZ is always useful.

I agree a "caster tank" is a ridiculous "strong point", but as is, if they balance people for physical mitigation, which DKs will be excellent at post patch if the current theorycraft holds true, then you will have one glaringly obvious magic tank and 4 tanks that do well vs physical..I'm not going to argue if that is balanced, or not, but it is what it is.

Read my post 2 - 3 pages back and my latest one..

My understanding is as per wowwiki:

Each point of +Defense skill adds 0.04% to the chance to be Missed, to Block, to Dodge and to Parry for players. This means +25 Defense will grant you an extra 1% Miss, Parry, Dodge, and Block.

So 25 Defense is 4% combined avoidance (which I hope... and will check on PTR soon) is still 4% avoidance for DK's and not 3% because we get nothing from block.

** edit: error on my part here. 25 defense per 1% dodge, miss, parry -- 4.92 DR per Defense so 123 defense rating per 3% total avoidance or 41 defense rating per 1% total avoidance **

If you check my profile, with my trinkets, either the epic defense or epic dodge trinket, I get the same total avoidance (well, a difference of 0.05% technically).. ** so it leads me to believe that the defense formula has been adjusted for DKs. **ignore this comment please**

So as I posted prior: defense to 540 then defense = dodge > parry > str in terms of avoidance. You will need stamina but IMO you should be socketing with expertise / stamina gems to reduce being parried as a tank while using ilvl200/213 gear. Maybe that will change with T8+ gear.

No, there is no agreed spec.

However, if you search you will find several builds which are acceptable -- I fully agree with one intelligent poster Ovp, that the best spec is what you are comfortable with.

Several specs to consider include:

Ovp's spec - 23/5/43 - which I believe warrants serious consideration when entering 25 Man Naxx. (Although I believe he is too polite to say it, we have some forum chair experts who lack the experience to comment on his build, but have nay-sayed it IMO prematurely. I am looking forward to trying it now that I have the gear *almost* match). At the very least, take a look at this character. It is impressive. The World of Warcraft Armory

My Spec - 12/8/51 - I think it's a solid spec for 10s and 25s. It's geared for AOE dmg / threat, but as I go deeper into 25 Man Naxx, I will be looking for something more robust on single boss tanking, ie Ovp's spec. Note my glyphs as I use the death strike glyph to aid my self healing. I like to crit for 5k self heals. The World of Warcraft Armory

Unholy Lichborne spec - 9 / 11 / 51 - This gives you lichborne which some people swear by.

Overall: I have 2 trinkets for a last stand and dodge ability (which mimics lichborne) plus bone shield and icebound fortitude. I don't find it useful to get Lichborne. Personally, I'd rather have more dps / threat and an increased ability to self-heal myself with bigger crits. I've been so busy running heroics, I like having unholy blight.. but as Ovp mentioned, as a min / maxer, I don't feel satisfied being 80% spec'd to tank the big bosses.

I have every 10 man boss to my credit (save Malygos) and am working on the 25s now. As a prior server-first tank for half of TBC's content as a feral druid I think I have the experience to critic this new character and I like Unholy right now. None of the content is as hard as TBC was back then (pre-nerf) but DK's have everything available to be a viable MT with a smart player. I'll be trying both frost and unholy on the PTR.



I hope that after testing on the PTR that a middle ground will be found: Bone Shield 30% for example. IBF 40%. More armor, more stamina.

Overall, we were tanking well, but I think our class as a whole needed more armor and stamina to be competitive with other classes. A full 90% armor and 25% stamina would give us an equal footing with BS at 20% or 30% -- but a minimum 30% is needed to really make a significant difference during a critical moment. I also contend this is the case with IBF. A 20% reduction is helpful but not game changing as is shield wall. I think time on PTR will show this.

The same thing is true for paladins and warriors, so the defense formula hasn't necessarily been changed. The difference between avoidance given by defense and dodge rating is very small even completely disregarding the increased block and crit chance reduction. 123 defense rating will give you 3% avoidance, 1% block and 1% crit reduction as a paladin or warrior. 123 dodge rating would give you 3.12% dodge so the difference in true avoidance is very small. Somehow a myth has formed that defense is not good after you get enough to be crit immune. It's also likely you personally have larger diminishing returns on dodge than parry or miss due to your gear.

You're correct - I'm tired and am making mental mistakes. FYI, I like some of your gear selection - I may try that armor ring that's sitting in my bank.

My dodge rating is less than 400 so my diminishing returns on dodge isn't nearly as great as my parry, and as 1) my parry rating is over 400, 2) parry suffers more than dodge from diminishing returns and 3) as it takes more parry rating to get 1% parry than dodge rating for dodge or defense rating for defense, I've itemized for defense and dodge over parry. I use a script to calculate total avoidance and this helps me figure out the best items and gems.

It's ironic that it appears that DK's were designed with parry as their primary avoidance technique, but they subjected them to the old formulas of parry rating per 1% parry and diminishing returns on parry that the consequence is that DK's avoid parry and try to stack dodge and defense.

I hope this changes. I like runestrike and the idea of a parry-happy undead swordsman. (Who looks best as a night-elf.)

MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies

Quoting the General changes area:

As far as I know, this means that armor trinkets will loose top priority for us as well (as well as rings). I like this.

With the new IF change coming is defense going to be a higher priority for us now that it increases the damage mitigation for IF?

I understand we all have to hit the def cap but is going to more def after that a viable option is what I am asking.

The defense rune really opens up a lot of options. Right now, my tank set puts me to defense cap, but all from extremely high defense blues, much of which are crafted. I'm also using stupid things like Dabri's Embrace just to hit cap. As I picked up more naxx gear, they tend to have less defense on them. The rune gives us the ability to upgrade our gear logically.

This is not correct at all. 15% from frost presence, 5% from magic supression, 4% from rune of spellshattering, AND AMS/AMZ would be possible(could even go into blood for spell deflection too). Plus you would have bone armor and IBF you could use for an incoming magic attack. Acclimation if you are frost.

There is no comparison DKs are definitely the best anti-magic tanks now, in any spec.

This however is a pretty significant nerf, my armor is only going to go up around 1500 with this +80% armor modifier change. I was looking forward to the +defense glyph so I could wear both the epic armor rings. This really sucks overall because dks/warriors/paladins are all going to be competing for the same items for best in slot now as armor is now totally worthless (not even affected by the 10% talents those classes have).

Which is a niche trade-off for reliable everything else tanking.

In regards to threat...

Now that I've got a handful of DPS in near best-in-slot gear, it's getting tougher and tougher to hold threat. 25 man isn't too bad (our pally still holds the lead for threat gen and our warrior just gained a lead on me), but 5 man is hell on azeroth. Especially mages who are benefiting from EbonPB. This wasn't a problem until recently, but now I'm forced to eat my words that threat was A-OK.

From the patch:

I'm showing ~12.5% increase off the RS changes. This should help a bit, especially when coupled with the RP generation changes.

*Frost Presence _______________________ × 207.35
*Rune Strike ________________________ damage
*pulled from Tankspot DK Threat Values


As for bladed armor benefiting from the FP armor boost... (all values unbuffed)
17419 X 1.6 = 27870.4 ~250 higher than what I'm showing in FP, due to toughness I'd assume. But lets keep it simple.
17419 x 1.8 = 31354.2 approx. armor after the patch

31354.2 - 27870.4 = 3483.8 armor gain

180 / 5 = 36 armor per 1 AP from bladed armor

3483.8 / 36 = 96.7 AP

So after proper calculations that include toughness, I'll be gaining less than 96.7 AP.

Not quite what I'd hoped for from this patch. Guess it'll be AP > HP on flask selection and a threat spec over LB :-(.

If anyone has a moment please double check my napkin math.

Edit: On second thought, the armor gain will be less than listed. I'm using Defender's Code for these values. In addition I've got an armor meta in.

This is an important thing to note - less armor and less item options.

I've looked through this thread and couldn't find the answer...after defense is capped, I managed to have quite a few free gem slots open. Should I be using these for stamina? More parry/dodge? Strength? Where is the next priority after crit immune?

I actually somewhat agree with you, with the caveat of "best single target tanks". The one problem I see is that DK's are slightly below average on single-target threat, slightly above average on AoE threat, yet are the direct opposite on survivability. There is no question that a block-tank does better on damage from multiple, smaller sources, evidenced by the fact that my warrior friend can run into a pack of Sarth trash, tank them all, and block 50% of the damage, while my DK gives the healers heart attacks when they try... Conversely, healers can go to sleep when my DK tanks Sapphiron, while warriors... well... it's UBRSramas, so they can go to sleep anyway, but the sleep is neither as deep nor as restful =D

While block is good against multiple mobs, so is avoidance, having a 20% advantage(big time talent advantage and the fact that we aren't spending itemization on block items) is huge. If it was something like m'uru stage 1 with 3 medium hitting adds I think a dk would do very very well, if it was 50 mobs that hit for 1000 well paladins have the highest block % so they would do the best.

Not only warriors can run into a pack of Sarth trash and tank them all. Quite frankly (atm anyways) dks are the by far best trash tank since we can shield wall every pull basically, and have the best aoe threat on targets that all come at once(though we can have problems when mobs come staggered).

That depends on who you're playing with.

If DPS are riding your threat then you might want to gem for more threat (str, expertise, hit). If healers are finding you hard to heal, you might want to gem for more avoidance (dodge, defense, maybe parry). If you get dangerously low on health in certain situations (say patchwerk off-tanking) you might want to go for stamina.

Personally, if I have a blue socket I'll probably go for stamina at the moment, and if I have a red one I'll probably go for expertise. I think threat will be more of an issue than avoidance for me, and getting a special attack parried at the wrong time can really mess things up -- especially if I am trying to use my blood runes to keep blade barrier up. For yellow I'm still going to stack defense because being over the cap isn't so bad since you still get dodge, parry and a chance to be missed, and it gives me a bit more wiggle room when I get more gear.

i dont want to de-rail the recent topic of the changes being made, because it is important.

I just want to get some input from more experienced tanks. Im not nearly as experienced or ahead in the game as some of you, but I am tanking heroics, and I offtanked in naxx last night...

Im currently frost, my armory around 21,500 hp in frost, 542 def, approx 47% avoidance self buffed with BB up.

I have 0 problem with STT, hold aggro like a champ. If the healer is good, then everythings golden.

My big problem is AOE threat (I am aware that unholy is supposed to accomplish this better) in waves. Like I just did H HoS. and the little event with the dwarf and the waves of dwarfs beat the hell out of me. With DnD on a 30 sec. timer, and IT > Pest > BB > HB just doesnt seem to cut it all the time.

I loved frost for tanking everything up to 80, but now with heroics and off tanking in naxx. It just seems like unholy is better in almost every way. I have noticed that nearly all of you are unholy tanks, is that just eventually the route I need to go?

If there are some frost DK's out there tanking heroics/10 mans. Is there anything i need to change in my spec...I was thinking it may be smart to go with Morbidity for the 15 second DnD. but dont know if it is good for frost builds. I also realize my HP is a little low and I am working on it...but I am horribly unlucky so far with tank drops in heroics.

appreciate any help

Vampiric blood is going to be very nice now, as having a last-stand style hp buff built in gives it a decent chance of helping you survive long enough that heals can land, and even ignoring the effective % health increase when not at full health, it can be viewed as reducing the % health each attack takes away to 1/1.2 = 83.3% of normal while increasing the % health each heal gives you to 1.5/1.2 = 125% of normal. Thus in some sense it's now a 16.6% damage reduction and 25% healing bonus for the duration and an initial heal that's more powerful the less heath you had left - long story short, the 20% health bonus added will make it so it will take almost as much damage to kill you as if you had the nerfed version of bone shield up, while being easier to heal. I have to wonder if they're really going to let blood keep the ability to use vampiric blood and rune tap in rapid succession to gain 50% of their health rapidly, as that seems VERY powerful in PvP.

I agree that these changes don't really seem likely to affect how bone shield or IBF are used - and with IBF, I suspect that their intention for it to be a PvP stun immunity is at odds with it being a tanking tool now, as a higher damage reduction with a 2 minute cooldown would make it closer to an ability that would be used like they said, but would reduce how often we could make ourselves stun immune in PvP, though personally I'd rather it be a bit longer CD in PvP but break stuns reactively as well, which would leave room for better damage reduction scaling from defense to match a longer CD for tanking. *shrug*

It's worth noting that with strength giving parry rating for DKs, parry may well be our most heavily diminished avoidance stat - the fact that chance to be missed is only gained through def may make it better or at least on par with dodge rating though - it certainly isn't a stat to avoid as soon as you hit the "cap" any more than it is for a warrior or pally. My impression is that flat % boosts from skills and talents don't affect diminishing returns though, which makes the 4% parry from swordshattering not a simple 1% avoidance increase vs a 2% stam increase even ignoring the increased gearing options due to hitting uncrittable sooner - even as much as I like high avoidance tanking though, if the resulting hp % boost from a 2% stam increase is close to the % avoidance increase from swordshattering, the new rune will be a clear winner for me in a vacuum, though high damage bosses may merit a consideration of whether that extra health gets you enough closer to surviving an additional hit to be worth it for that particular fight.

The nice thing about this change to pestilence is that when your main target's diseases are about to expiry you now have the option of reapply IT, PS then Pest or selecting another target which has its diseases up and reapply pestilence. This should make other trees where you have extra death runes in addition to blood runes (>2) much more capable in aoe tanking simply by serially applying pestilence. Unholy has less benefit as our blood runes become death runes and thus we never have more than 2 bood / death runes available to apply pestilence.

This is more or less what I am doing even now as a Frost tank.
I know it may sound fool, but on AoE pulls I prioritize Pestilence over DnD, mainly for an rune-wise economy.

Standard AoE pull for me is:
IT on first mob, DnD on my position, PS on first mob, Pestilence. (At this point we have 6 seconds fight going on and all rune exhausted). Dump with Frost Strike / Rune Strike if available on first mob.
Whether the first target is dead or not, tab to another and Pestilence, then Howling Blast the most you can.
On a 5 pull mobs, they now usually die one by one at each next Frost Strike / Rune Strike / Obliteration / Howling Blast.
If you got both your blood runes converted to death runes, you can end the pull with a sequence of three Howling Blasts.
Coincidentially, Pestilence cooldown is perfectly syncrhoed with what I do.

Rotation:
IT, DnD, PS, Pest, FS/RS, FS/RS, Pest, HB, HB, HB

On particular hard pulls, Empower Rune Weapon is a saviour.

I don't use Death Grip on such pulls because you never now whether some mob resists Pestilence and run for your healer, or if one of the mobs is a caster and decides to stop out of DnD area to cast stuff to random targets.

Ok i will do some in-depth analysis here of how good defense is for DKs and also clear up some things with how diminishing returns work.

Assumptions:

• Each point of +Defense skill adds 0.04% to the chance to be Missed, to Block, to Dodge and to Parry for players. This means +25 Defense will grant you an extra 1% Miss, Parry, Dodge, and Block. (Source: WoWWiki)
• The formula for Defense is constant across all classes. (Source: WoWWiki)
• A DK gets nothing from Block.
• Obviously every Tank needs 540 Defense rating (or mixed with some resilience) to be immune to critical strikes. I will only evaluate Defense beyond this point.
• 39.35 Dodge rating = 1% Dodge
• 49.18 Parry rating = 1 % Parry
• Dodge, parry, and miss are subject to diminishing returns. When you determine how much dodge/parry/miss you gain from rating or defense, it must be converted into the diminished amount. Avoidance contributed by defense is also subject to diminishing returns.
• The diminishing returns on dodge, parry, and chance to be missed are independent of each other. Each has its own cap and formula. E.g. The amount of dodge you have does not affect the diminishing returns on your parry, and vice-versa.
• Your base (naked) avoidance and avoidance given by talents and racials is NOT subject to diminishing returns.
• A "naked" DK hast 5% Dodge, 5% Parry (+some parry rating depending on base strength; class dependant and subject to DRs) and 5% Miss. Through talents an additional 5% to Dodge and 10% to Parry can be gained (from here on i will consider Blade Barrier as a passive +10% parry since it should be up close to 100%),
• This leaves us with 10% Dodge, 15% Parry and 5% Miss as base values. Anything we add to this is subject to diminishing returns.
• Rune of Swordshattering is a flat 4% increase in parry and not subject to diminishing returns.
• Forceful Defelection is NOT a racial or talent and thus all parry rating gained through Forceful Defelection is subject to diminishing returns..
  
• For the sake of simplicity I will base following calculations around a DK with 1200 Strength and 350 Agility, which is around naxx entry gear level with some Raid Buffs. Forceful Deflection adds 1200*0.25 = 300 parry rating.

Crunching:

Ok so we have a DK with 1200 Strength, 350 Agi, 540 Defense rating and no other items which add avoidance stats.
540/4.9185 = 109.79 Defense Skill.
109.79 Def Skill * 0.04 = 4.39% Dodge, Parry, Miss (and Block).
350 Agi * 0.01360 = 4.76% Dodge
1200 Str * 0.25/49.18 = 6.1% Parry
= 9.15% Dodge, 11.49% Parry and 4.39% Miss to be diminished and added to the base values.

The formulas i use to calculate diminishing returns on avoidance can be reviewed here: WotLK Diminishing Returns - Avoidance - TankSpot. I won't do every single step of the calculations here to keep this post as short as possible.

9.15% Dodge diminished = 8.29% Dodge
10.49% Parry diminished = 8.58% Parry
4.39% Miss diminished = ~4.18% Miss
Note that the diminishing for Parry is much stronger; the cap for dodge is 88% while the Parry cap is only 47%!
Also the formula for diminishing return on miss has not yet been established. I will just use the same formula as dodge in this example (88% cap).

Diminished Values for a DK with 1200 Str, 350 Agi and 450 Defense Rating (No Rune enchanted yet):
18.29% Dodge
23.58% Parry (Blade Barrier up as always)
9.18% Miss

Let's evaluate 4% Parry (Swordshattering) versus 25 Defense Skill (Gargoyle) at this Point:
- 4% Parry is a flat increase and will thus add 4% parry
- 25 Defense Skill will add 0.811% Dodge, 0.658% Parry and 0.9% Miss. Which equals 2.37% Pure Avoidance.

Now lets try to factor in the value of Defense regarding the new IBF. Please note that is is mostly just speculation!
If the increase were constant then each point of Defense would add 0.1366% less damage taken. Of course it will not be linear, but some kind of diminishing function (similar to armor or avoidance). I guess the cap will be around 50% dmg reduction. So we can establish some very very vague values:
The first 25 Points past 450 will add 0.1% each.
The next 25 Points 0.09% each and so on.
This would mean you will reach the cap of 48.75% damage reduction with 700 Defense Skill.
It will probably scale a bit better but i guess we can run with those numbers here.

IBF has 20% uptime with an Unholy Spec and 30% with a Frost spec. I will go with 25% average.
25 * 0.1 * 0.25 = 0.625% damage reduction. Since its not passive this will reduce the value further and put it somewhere around 0.5% effective damage reduction give or take.

Rune of Swordshattering will give you:
4% Parry

Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle will give you:
2.37% Pure Avoidance, 0.5% damage reduction and 2% Stam.

So from an avoidance point of view i would prefer Rune of Swordshattering since it is giving you a good deal more of pure avoidance at the cost of 2% stamina. The 0.5% damage reduction should not be weighted too high since its pretty hard to die with IBF turned on anyways (assuming 35%+ dmg reduction).

Remember this is calculated with no avoidance stats except 540 Defense rating!
In which direction does Stoneskin Garg vs Swordshatter shift when we include avoidance stats from gear?

Short Answer: In favor of Swordshatter!

Long Answer:
The Avoidance stats of the Gargoyle Rune (Defense) will continue to diminish as your gear improves and thus the gap between the two runes will become larger the more avoidance you have. The example above with no additional avoidance stats ist the best case for Gargoyle.
The only way for Gargoyle to increase its value compared to Swordshatter is if you stack stamina while your avoidance stays the same as the rune gives a 2% stam boost.


Here an example with advanced DK tanking gear (close to endgame gear). Assuming 1.5k str, 550 agi, 400 Dodge rating, 350 Parry rating and 540 defense.
540/4.9185 = 109.79 Defense Skill.
109.79 Def Skill * 0.04 = 4.39% Dodge, Parry, Miss
550 Agi * 0.01360 = 7.48% Dodge
400 Dodge rating / 39.35 = 10.17% Dodge
1200 Str * 0.25/49.18 = 7.63% Parry
350 Parry rating / 49.18 = 7.12% Parry

total before diminishing returns is: 22.04% Dodge, 19.14% Parry and 4.39% Miss to be diminished and added to the base values.

22.04% Dodge diminished = 17.63% Dodge
19.14% Parry diminished = 13.6% Parry
4.39% Miss diminished = ~4.18% Miss

Total Values:
27.63% Dodge
28.6% Parry
9.18% Miss

Let's evaluate 4% Parry versus 25 Defense Skill at this Point:
- 4% Parry is still a flat 4% increase.
- 25 Defense Skill will add 0.634% Dodge, 0.498% Parry and 0.9% Miss. Which equals 2.03% Pure Avoidance.

Now Swordshattering is avoidance-wise nearly two times as good as a Gargoyle. No arguments to be made for Gargoyle as the 2% stam bonus is nothing compared to 2% avoidance.

Conclusion:
From an avoidance/mitigation point of view (and also from a TPS point of view) I can imagine no realistic situation where Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle is better than Rune of Swordshattering. EXCEPT if you are below 540 defense when Gargoyle becomes the obvious choice.

Additional Notes:
This was calculated with a miss cap identical to the dodge cap. The exact numbers are not available yet. However the real value will not affect the results too much. 88% is already a pretty high assumption for the cap and lowering it would only put Gargoyle further off.
Edited the post to correct Swordshattering is not affected by DR.

I'm also gonna calculate the values of dodge/parry/def gems at different gear levels later today or tomorrow in case you are interested. Let me know!

Rune of sword shattering is not subject to diminishing returns fyi. AFAIK, anything that's not a "rating" does not contribute to diminishing returns. Otherwise unbreakable armor would be quite bad . But I agree that even with high levels of dodge, rune of the gargoyle is competitive, especially due to the 2% stam.

Hm gonna check on that.. but it would make sense since its adding a flat % and not rating. (got a source maybe?)

Oh well, gonna edit the post when i find some time. But i can already say if its really a flat 4% increase then its so much better than Gargolye .