kurokaze

The difference isn't "how much DPS you do" but playstyle. As far as I've been able to tell, the two trees are balanced very closely to one another and the decision for me really came down to the fact that I hate managing the ghoul. And this is how it should be.


I realize said a few things to Rosenrott without particularly backing them up, and I apologize for not being detailed enough. But the fact is that I have no idea what you're going for with your spec, and many of your choices (that I pointed out) are contrary to popular wisdom and need some explanation. But I'll try to run down the major points:

- Speccing for Veteran alone is probably not a good idea; it's an excellent talent itself, but the talents you have to take to get there aren't really.

- 2/3 Scent of Blood is pretty much strictly inferior to Butchery. With optimal proccing you will get 2.5 RP per 5 secs, vs 2 for Butchery, and Butchery requires no hoop jumping or procs or melee swings connecting or anything.

- Again, Death Rune Mastery's purpose is to allow a second rotation to use Blood Rune abilities instead of FU abilities. This is essentially only useful to a deep blood spec, as far as I know. Could you explain your intent here?

- In my testing, un-Improved Rune Tap is extremely small and not really worth bothering with, particularly at the cost of a blood rune.

- Killing Machine is essentially a talent for either dual-wielding or filler in a DPS build. It's not reliable and provides relatively low DPS/TPS gain for two-handed builds, particularly when Rune Striking (assuming Rune Strike doesn't proc KM).

- What benefit do you see getting out of Runic Power Mastery? I essentially see it as almost a benefitless talent, with its sole purpose being to buff a glyphed Death Strike. And that's hardly worth three talent points.

- A very large portion of Frost's single target threat comes from large crit Obliterates, which are relatively reliable due to the massive amount of +crit that can be added to the skill. Rime is crucial for this. Rime also produces a very healthy DPS/TPS increase per point.

For a Veteran Frost build I would suggest Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Replace Killing Machine and one other point with Icy Talons as desired. Still, it's pretty clear to me that Guile of Gorefiend compares with Veteran, and if you get Guile you're free to get Tundra Stalker, which clearly beats out Dark Conviction, and Acclimation if you like those random maybe mitigation talents.


Groggan:

That's certainly -a- frost tank build, without making any 'wrong' choices, but there's plenty of talents there that aren't going to be in every build dependent on raid and playstyle. Butchery seems inferior to Subversion to me, for example. The verdict is still out whether Acclimation is worth bothering with, since it provides little in most fights and does not substitute for resist gear in resist fights. And most notably, many Frost DKs are skipping the Icy Talons line due to lack of stacking with shaman buffs.

 

Groggan

Hmm...so I completely mis-read/skimmed the Subversion talent, didn't notice that the threat reduction was only in blood/unholy presence. The extra crit on OB is really good and I probably would want that over Butchery.

As for the Talons line, if you pull out of that where would you put points to get further down the tree? I guess you could dump into Killing Machine, Icy Reach, or Runic Power Mastery.

 

hvidgaard

Frankly playstyle does not have anything to say in a debate of which is better, only if one is considerable more difficult than the other - which I personally don't find at my current level but that said I've not really managed my ghoul - more let it live its own life. The current standpoint is that Unholy does more AoE damage. If both specs allow you dps to go all out and the incoming damage is equal'ish in both specs but one does 5% more overall dps, then the dps does matter.

But I wholeheartly agree that they both should be equal and your choise ought to be a matter of playstyle.

 

AlexanderYoshi

Does anyone have the tenacity to start compiling a list of great starter tanking gear for Death Knights?

Obviously Strength, Stamina and Dodge are superior items, but it would be nice to know which factions to hit up first.

 

Resiana

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
So, I have been tanking a bit around with my DK in heroics and a little naxx today. And I must say that frost feels a bit lackluster when it comes to building fast aoe threat. I tried starting with DnD, IT, PS, Pest and wait for runes to refresh, HB. But before my runes could refresh I would off lost aggro already. (AOE'ers that dosen't really like to wait). I also tried IT, PS, Pest, HB and Boil wait for runes then DnD, but still the same problem, not building aggro fast enough.
So I went back to my old build which I had been using for grinding in instances as tank and modified it a bit to get more utility and avoidance. And I must say, it sure paid off a lot better on the aoe pulls and the survivability difference on unholy and frost was not even noticeable. But I noticed when single target tanking that very good dps'ers had to hold a little back.
(this is most likely due to my gearing compared to them ofc)
So, I played a bit around with the talent calculators again and came up with, what if I drop Ebon Plaguebringer and Dirge and either get Desecration, Blood-Caked Blade or Necrosis , since in a raid environement Ebon debuff might be provided by others. (druid/lock). And also, can drop AMZ and free up 6points. But I really find it a nice "oh shit" button.
Any thoughts and ideas?

 

SpaceDrake

Wyrmrest and Argent Crusade to Revered, to start you off. That'll provide you with some excellent pants, chest, boots, cloak and the tanking head enchant.. Kirin Tor exalted gives you some nice gloves but obviously that's a bit of a grind. Wyrmrest and Argent Crusade are a "no duh" thing to do though, especially since it isn't very hard to get rep with either and both Zul'drak and Icecrown practically piss AC rep.

 

Louky

It might be a good idea for 1 Mob encounters, however you'd lose the ability to instantly put a 13% Magic Dmg Debuff on every target in a AoE pack. Actually the only time i lose aggro is while aoe'ing and it seems impossible on a single boss. The thread you put out is insane anyway, I wouldn't bother with neither BCB nor Necrosis. "Very good DPSers" should only do around 3000 TPS, most of those even have so form of a threat wipe.

Oh, and AMZ ... isn't worth it at all. 15k Dmg absorb is completely worthless anytime, it even requires runes - meaning you cannot use it as "oh shit"-button simply because your runes will be on CD. The only reason to spec it would be Improved AMS (5% less magic dmg, 100% absorb while in AMS). Other than that I would get butchery, it's cheap to get and a slower RP decay between pulls is simply priceless, especially in 5mans.

 

Rezoh

After some playing with my DK Iv've come to this build -> 17/54/0

Im trying to boost Obliterate as much as I can and use it as my main attack for tanking. The rotation (needs more work) is something like this: IT -> PS -> BS -> BS -> OB -> OB -> OB -> FS (to dump runic power).

For groups I'm trying this: IT -> PS -> Pestilence -> HB. After this I usually use the single target rotation changing HB for OB as needed. For now it's working but I'm pretty sure I ll have to change this for high end raiding.

I like the build right now, but I ve still many doubts. Is Acclimation useful for high end raiding? Is Deatchill worth it? Is unholy a better tanking spec? Pehaps too soon to say

 

lavandyke

is there any discussion, theorycrafting or talentbuild for spelltanks?
i have not made detailed considerations but maybe something like this:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000
or this:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000

 

A Man In Black

I've noticed that most specs, even when they go down Blood far enough to get Vot3W, they skip Spell Deflection. In my experience, it just doesn't mitigate enough to justify three points. 30% damage off of a rare sort of attack, 25-35% of the time at best? Meh.

As for those specs, they aren't tanking specs so much as DPS specs with Spell Deflection tacked on. Targeted spells just aren't common enough to justify a spec that can tank nothing but targeted spells, and both of those specs are riddled with problems (no Anticipation, no Toughness, lots of DPS talents taken in lieu of core tanking talents, etc.).

 

Durza

Scent of Blood isn't great. I'd personally put the points into Bladed Armor. Bladed Armor is an astoundingly good talent; In actual tank gear and +armor trinkets (which are good for us), you could easily push it to 750-800 AP with 5/5 Bladed Armor. That's a huge amount of passive threat increase for 5 talent points.

 

Crax

Actually, you are much more likely to replace white hits with a Two-Hander than when Dual Wielding. All the Two-Handers from Naxx are 3.4-3.6 speed. The two "tanking" one handers in Naxx are 2.5 and 1.6 speed.

So, to replace all white hits with Rune Strike, I'd need to generate 20 Runic Power in the time between swings *and* Dodge or Parry at least one attack in that time. This is *much* easier in 3.5 seconds than it is in 1.6-2.5 seconds. In fact, if you take into account boss attack speed, I'd argue that the only time it's *possible* to replace every swing while dual wielding is in an AoE tanking situation with Blessing of Sanctuary. Given that all the threat talents we've been talking about here are "single-target", with the single exception of Killing Machine's effect on Howling Blast, I don't think that scenario is relevant to the evaluation.

Now, taking a deeper look at what it takes to get to various levels of "white-replacement" with Rune Strike while using a Two-Hander.

1. 100% - 1 Dodge/Parry every 3.5 seconds
2. 75% - 1 Dodge/Parry every 4.67 seconds
3. 50% - 1 Dodge/Parry every 7 seconds
4. 25% - 1 Dodge/Parry every 14 seconds

For all scenarios, you will also need to generate 20 Runic Power in that time period. Now, with Blessing of Sanctuary, that part of the equation is guaranteed (20 Runic Power generated per Dodge/Parry). Without Blessing of Sanctuary, for 100% (the only scenario where it might be challenging to generate), you still have two GCDs two work with.

Based on all that, I'd say the odds of us approaching 100% white hit replacement are actually fairly high in a high end raiding environment, at least as an MT. As on OT, where you aren't always the focus of attacks, it's *far* less likely. So, I guess that's the answer to my original question: the "auto-attack" talents (BCB, Necrosis, KM) are *far* less useful to an MT, but still could be valuable threat generators for an OT.

So, I guess if you are going to be your MT on most fights, I wouldn't expend much effort on getting any of those three talents.

 

Crax

(Emphasis mine)

Actually, you are *more* than doubling the parry rate from white hits. With a typical Two-Hander you'll have one swing every 3.5 seconds. In a typical dual-wield situation, with the 2.5 and 1.6 speed "tank" weapons from Naxx, you'll have 1.4 MH swings and 2.2 OH swings. That's 3.6 swings in the same time - far more than double the opportunity for a boss to parry due to white attacks. Now if, for some reason, you took BCB, you'd generate even more parry opportunities. The parry opportunity from Strikes will stay the same.

I think that clearly demonstrates that while tanking, or at a minimum tanking bosses, it is an extremely bad idea to dual wield unless you are at the expertise cap.

 

lavandyke

That's right. It shouldn't be a main-spec, only for some bosses or theory.

 

Zarqon

I have noticed that many take Frost Aura in their frost tanking specs. It gives +80 to all resistances, which sounds good, but when remembering that imp motw, which will in almost all raiding cases be up, offers +72 to all resists it becomes very lackluster. +8 resistance is not worth the 2 talent points IMO, especially since the frost tree is quite bloated if you're trying to fit blood of the north in.

 

norg

WotLK Polar's Easy Pre-Naxx Tank Gear List - TankSpot

Not specifically DK-only, but there's only 1 or 2 items on that list that are warrior-centric (ie. have Block on them).

 

Okhlopkov

There is a list over at tankspot.
Easy Pre-naxx list: WotLK Polar's Easy Pre-Naxx Tank Gear List - TankSpot
Ultimate list: WOTLK Tanking Gear List - TankSpot

EDIT: Guess I should have refreshed before posting. Norg beat me to it.

 

Miracleknight

You see a lot of posts about Parry Gibbing, but with the amount of Expertise they've thrown onto gear is that really an issue? As far as I know there is a point with expertise in which you cannot be parried or dodged anymore correct? So once you hit that cap which I honestly don't think will be too hard to do; dual wielding is suddenly a much more acceptable option.

 

Solithaira

I was wondering what the best combination of professions would be, to a tanking Death Knight. I think for DPS purposes we have pretty much settled on BS/JC. Would a tank replace JC with LW? or is there a better combination out there?

 

Crax

I think BS/JC is still going to be your best option, largely for the flexibility. Being able to socket in Jeweler's Gems for Stam, Dodge, Defense or some threat stat, depending on your current gear needs, seems to outweigh the slightly higher Stam benefit from LW.

 

Miracleknight

I would think Jewelcrafting would still be quite favorable as the tank trinkets provided by it are generally very useful.

 

Darian_TruBlade

You could certainly DW tank without fear of parrygibs if you have enough expertise to remove parries. The problem is that this isn't something that's likely to happen.

At the T7 level you won't be able to both have 12-16% parry reduction and competitive tanking stats, if you can reach that level of expertise at all. Additionally expertise caps dodge rate long before 12-16%, meaning the effectiveness of the stat for a tank is reduced by one third after that point. While it's not bad for a tank to have more expertise, it ceases to be as big a priority thereafter.

If eventually all DK tanks can be expected to naturally hit the expertise cap (or at least within 1% of it) then DW tanking may become a viable option. However, we won't be seeing that in T7.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Illundai

I've been offtanking Patchwerk two times now (out of necessity and my own suggestion) and I can definitely recommend it to people who are struggling with tanks dying. If you're specced Unholy for Bone Shield you will take extremely little damage. I was specced like this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

So, like I was saying, I took so little damage that it was ludicrous... I was 1st offtank and well, just see for yourself (check damage inc):

Wow Web Stats

 

Solithaira

I was wondering if the following spec might be worthwhile looking into.

13/53/5 Spec

After reading some of the problems that DK's were having as a result of waiting for specific runes to refresh, I thought this build might make life a bit easier. I basically picked up both Blood of the North and Death Rune Mastery, with the intent of ensuring that Death Runes were being created on a very consistent basis, and thus providing more flexibility.

You could also pull the points out of Merciless Combat and Chill of the Grave for 3/3 Acclimation and 1/2 Frost Aura for certain fights.

Thoughts?

 

Khana

I think that this "unless" part is giving people the idea the can find a work around and go tank DW...
Still thinking about the numbers, how much Stamina/Parry/Dodge are you giving away to cap Expertise?

But on the other point of view (for the sake of experimentation), is it possible to think of a set that stacks Resiliance (PvP) and Expertise? PvP items usually have tons of Stamina compared to PvE, is it possible to find a list of such items and compare them to a "state-of-the-art" 2h based tank set?
Once we get the real numbers out we can see what we are really talking about...