I've done 4H several times and never had a resist. I usually just DG as he's coming over to get attention on me and then I DC. Understandable that you don't want to risk a resist, but it seems like the chances of that are so small that the threat generation from something like SS glyph (single target), Pest glyph (AE) or the added mitigation in Bone Shield/Unbreakable Armor seems to be a better use of that glyph slot.
Pestilence glyph is a Minor, not taking the same glyph slot. That said, I don't care for the Command glyph either, I prefer to run with the always-useful IT glyph in that slot.
I actually came up with a theoretical gearset that brings you to the armor cap with a Glyphed Unbreakable Armor + Inspiration, but it was something ridiculous like ilevel 213 epics in all slots, the 2% armor meta, armored necks, rings, cloaks, both trinkets, and of course UA and Inspiration, which won't always be on.
It MIGHT be possible to reach the armor cap with currently available gear and both those buffs going, but it's simply not something that's going to happen very often until the next tier or so.
Your math is wrong then, because with that gearset you should be very close to the armor cap with non-glyphed ua. I will be well over 30000 armor after the patch if I wear double armor ring. Regardless there is 0 fights in the entire game at the moment where the danger comes from physical damage so why bother. If you don't think you will have inspiration very much then maybe you could get the glyph, but I still think it is pointless.
Maybe I just have some preconceived notions that need to be drilled out of my head... but I don't see any reason a Frost tank would take Blood of the North. It's 5 valuable talent points, it buffs Blood Strike damage, but then provides a means to not use it! Even without that buffed damage, my Blood Strikes hit, on average, for about 50 damage less than half an Obliterate, and that's only due to Obliterate's higher crit rating... if I had to give up Rime to grab Blood of the North, two Blood Strikes would do more damage than an Obliterate.
I see why a DPS DK wants Death Runes... Death Runes = more FU abilities = more GCD freedom = more RP abilities. I see why a PvP DK wants Death Runes... flexibility, burst damage. I can see why a Blood tank might want Death Runes. I just don't see why a Frost tank would take that talent.
Unless you have BoSanc, you're dumping nearly all your RP into Rune Strike, and the rest is relatively easily dumped with a Frost Strike during your one free GCD (in a IT->PS->HS->HS->OB rotation). If Rime procs, then the RP can be dumped the next set of runes, since you'll be double-FU'ing (or DnDing) anyway.
It's quite possible I'm the one under the wrong assumption since I've been assuming OB>DnD for single target until I read that people were using it every time it was up on single bosses. The point I see in BotN is that you want to burn your Blood runes asap anyway, on single targets you do this with BS, so the buff to that isn't wasted, and you get more OBs from the death runes it provides. I don't think I've given up anything too important to get BotN, but feel free to take a look... The World of Warcraft Armory
This gives my OB an additional 18% chance to crit for 245% damage.
On the separate though somewhat related topic of morbidity, I noticed something interesting the other day while critiquing another DKs build in my brothers guild. It certainly wasn't an optimal build, but I noticed that he only put 2 points in morbidity, making it a 20 sec CD. If you plan on dropping it whenever it's up, then this is probably not the best idea, but if you just want to make it available for use on every rotation, the 20 secs fits better and frees up a point to go somewhere else.
Am I completely off base here, should I be dropping DnD every time I possibly can, even on single targets, even at the expense of OB?
Maybe I just have some preconceived notions that need to be drilled out of my head... but I don't see any reason a Frost tank would take Blood of the North. It's 5 valuable talent points, it buffs Blood Strike damage, but then provides a means to not use it! Even without that buffed damage, my Blood Strikes hit, on average, for about 50 damage less than half an Obliterate, and that's only due to Obliterate's higher crit rating... if I had to give up Rime to grab Blood of the North, two Blood Strikes would do more damage than an Obliterate.
I see why a DPS DK wants Death Runes... Death Runes = more FU abilities = more GCD freedom = more RP abilities. I see why a PvP DK wants Death Runes... flexibility, burst damage. I can see why a Blood tank might want Death Runes. I just don't see why a Frost tank would take that talent.
Unless you have BoSanc, you're dumping nearly all your RP into Rune Strike, and the rest is relatively easily dumped with a Frost Strike during your one free GCD (in a IT->PS->HS->HS->OB rotation). If Rime procs, then the RP can be dumped the next set of runes, since you'll be double-FU'ing (or DnDing) anyway.
If you understand why it works for dps and pvp, then you essentially understand why it would be good for a tank, unless BS/Pestilence/BB is somehow creating more threat than HB/OB. Not to mention obviously we need to get rid of blood runes for Blade Barrier, being able to use HB/OB to do so for one round is nice. Not to mention the added flexibility which is more of an issue in a tanking situation, as we aren't able to rattle off the same rotation without thought to our surroundings.
If you understand why it works for dps and pvp, then you essentially understand why it would be good for a tank, unless BS/Pestilence/BB is somehow creating more threat than HB/OB. Not to mention obviously we need to get rid of blood runes for Blade Barrier, being able to use HB/OB to do so for one round is nice. Not to mention the added flexibility which is more of an issue in a tanking situation, as we aren't able to rattle off the same rotation without thought to our surroundings.
That was my point. Two Blood Strikes do create the same amount of threat as an Obliterate (or very, very close)... and HB can only be used once every 10sec, so that isn't affected by Death Runes at all. You didn't pay attention to what I said. A DPSer can only dump Runic Power through the use of a GCD, therefore, GCDs are at a premium, and being able to do similar damage in half the number of GCDs is advantageous. That just isn't a major concern for a tank, who is dumping most of his RP on Rune Strikes, and thus only needs a single Frost Strike every rotation or two to dump it all.
Now, flexibility might be a reason to take it... except the only real situation when it would help is when you want to put up Unbreakable Armor without burning a Frost rune. Most "reactionary" abilities are either resource-less (Grip, Taunt, Lichborne), or on Runic Power (IBF), or require blood runes (Pestilence, DnD). And I could not possibly justify spending five talent points (that would be much better spent filling out Bladed Armor and grabbing Morbidity) in order to be able to sometimes use a Blood rune to pop UA.
Sure, if Blood of the North was free, I "wouldn't kick her out of bed", in a manner of speaking... but it isn't, and it just isn't worth what you need to give up to get it.
That was my point. Two Blood Strikes do create the same amount of threat as an Obliterate (or very, very close)... and HB can only be used once every 10sec, so that isn't affected by Death Runes at all. You didn't pay attention to what I said. A DPSer can only dump Runic Power through the use of a GCD, therefore, GCDs are at a premium, and being able to do similar damage in half the number of GCDs is advantageous. That just isn't a major concern for a tank, who is dumping most of his RP on Rune Strikes, and thus only needs a single Frost Strike every rotation or two to dump it all.
Now, flexibility might be a reason to take it... except the only real situation when it would help is when you want to put up Unbreakable Armor without burning a Frost rune. Most "reactionary" abilities are either resource-less (Grip, Taunt, Lichborne), or on Runic Power (IBF), or require blood runes (Pestilence, DnD). And I could not possibly justify spending five talent points (that would be much better spent filling out Bladed Armor and grabbing Morbidity) in order to be able to sometimes use a Blood rune to pop UA.
Sure, if Blood of the North was free, I "wouldn't kick her out of bed", in a manner of speaking... but it isn't, and it just isn't worth what you need to give up to get it.
I was paying attention to what you said. I am not convinced blood strike will create the same amount of threat, especially as frost tanks are generally going to have obliterate glyphed and it should be doing more damage in a single attack leaving time to burn more runic power which is never in short supply for me as a frost tank. I am partial to numbers though, so you could convince me if you cited the stats. As for flexibility, imagine you're single tanking, you've just converted your blood runes to death runes, your frost and unholy runes are on cooldown, you've been using obliterate for threat, you get an add. A howling blast or Deathchilled howling blast are useful in that situation. How about DnD using two blood runes instead of one, etc. Death runes are very useful in a situation where you aren't going to always be able to follow a set rotation.
That was my point. Two Blood Strikes do create the same amount of threat as an Obliterate (or very, very close)... and HB can only be used once every 10sec, so that isn't affected by Death Runes at all. You didn't pay attention to what I said. A DPSer can only dump Runic Power through the use of a GCD, therefore, GCDs are at a premium, and being able to do similar damage in half the number of GCDs is advantageous. That just isn't a major concern for a tank, who is dumping most of his RP on Rune Strikes, and thus only needs a single Frost Strike every rotation or two to dump it all.
Now, flexibility might be a reason to take it... except the only real situation when it would help is when you want to put up Unbreakable Armor without burning a Frost rune. Most "reactionary" abilities are either resource-less (Grip, Taunt, Lichborne), or on Runic Power (IBF), or require blood runes (Pestilence, DnD). And I could not possibly justify spending five talent points (that would be much better spent filling out Bladed Armor and grabbing Morbidity) in order to be able to sometimes use a Blood rune to pop UA.
Sure, if Blood of the North was free, I "wouldn't kick her out of bed", in a manner of speaking... but it isn't, and it just isn't worth what you need to give up to get it.
Are you taking into consideration that Blood of the North bumps up your BS damage by 15%?
I'm interested in your arguement but I think the flexibility far outweighs the 5 points. I would need numbers to fully convince me.
Would two BS minus the 15% damage increase from BotN equal one OB?
I'm thinking not, but I don't have numbers. As one of the previous posters said, the ability to pop those deathrunes for useful things when you really need them is worth the 5 points.
I was paying attention to what you said. I am not convinced blood strike will create the same amount of threat, especially as frost tanks are generally going to have obliterate glyphed and it should be doing more damage in a single attack leaving time to burn more runic power which is never in short supply for me as a frost tank. I am partial to numbers though, so you could convince me if you cited the stats. As for flexibility, imagine you're single tanking, you've just converted your blood runes to death runes, your frost and unholy runes are on cooldown, you've been using obliterate for threat, you get an add. A howling blast or Deathchilled howling blast are useful in that situation. How about DnD using two blood runes instead of one, etc. Death runes are very useful in a situation where you aren't going to always be able to follow a set rotation.
My current top-end weapon damage in tank gear is 1500, let's use that to keep things simple.
Obviously, without talents, and ignoring the packed GCD, 2xBS is more damage than 1xOB. Now, what talents do we have... GoG, which gives 45% crit damage bonus to both; Rime, which adds 15% crit percentage to Obliterate; and BotN, which adds 15% damage bonus to Blood Strike. Adding them up, if you did get all three talents, and you did get two Death Runes up (and you had enough GCDs)... the best thing to do with them... would be two Blood Strikes. Yes, if you glyphed Obliterate, the Obliterate would be worth it. Slightly. It would scale faster, as well. But is it worth 5 talent points and a Major Glyph slot? I guess that's up to you. My answer is still no. Death Runes are for decreasing the number of GCDs needed, if you don't need fewer GCDs, you don't need Death Runes.
If you need flexibility, we have Empower Rune Weapon and Blood Tap. I just can't see needing more than those, and grip, and taunt...
I disagree that BotN is needed for frost tanking, the threat gain is not better than most of the alternatives and quite frankly makes you have to look at your runes more, I don't even see the death rune part as an advantage, if HB lost its cooldown maybe. But this is a pointless argument, this has been debated for over 6 months and everyone will never agree. The differences are too few, and it is mostly a personal preference thing.
I don't really see why a frost tank would glyph oblit, HB is better damage without OB glyph, and the frost strike/it/rune strike glyphs I believe are all better for threat.
Unfaltering Knight might as well say "equip: +53 defense rating". It's a 100% proc chance for a 30 second buff with no internal cooldown.
Except in those boss fights where the raid is stunned / incapacitated / unable to attack while a cutscene plays out (I'm thinking Illidan right before the last phase, etc).
Because it isn't truly 100% uptime it might be dangerous to be below the crit-immune cap without this sigil. On the other hand, if you have a less-than-1% chance to be crit before the sigil, and the sigil gives you a 99% uptime, the odds of the boss bugging out in some way are probably higher than you getting killed by a crit as a tank.
(Yesterday Malygos decided to melee the raid in phase 2 instead of just flying around and doing deep breaths).
It also lasts for 30secs and can be applied at range, so the situations where you'd get beaten with it not up are really not that plentiful, so yeah, in my opinion, a pretty good sigil. Sure beats my +90dmg to blood strikes glyph anyway ^^. It's also more free gems, 54def rating is like 4def gems, so 96stamina, or a variable amount of expertise dodge and stamina depending on how you want to gem.
Hey guys, been reading elitist jerk forums for a while not but hadn't felt the need to post until I started tanking as a DK for a while. I am basically tanking on my DK with a 9/11/51 spec. I love it and I have tanked almost all the way through naxx 10.
My question is is Bladed Armor really all that good? I see a lot of people trying to put it in their tank specs. I understand the whole AP adds to threat and all that but a lot of the posts I have seem are doing calculations based off of what there armor is at when they are in Frost presence. As far as I can tell Bladed Armor doesn't account for the added armor when switching to Frost presence. So that 24k armor you are doing your math with is probably more like 14k armor.
Maybe this has been mentioned some where else in this thread, I have been trying to keep up but there are quite a lot of posts .
Hello, my first post here in elitist jerks, so I hope I will give some help in the discussion here.
I'm using a frost speccd DK, and maximing my TPS/Equipment is my aim. So I started reading this thread.
I'v got caught by your last discussion and tried out in-game if using 2 BS is better than using 1 OB.
Here are my Recount Charts in a 6 min. fight against a Dummy (obviously this chart is faked in the melee/frost strike)
Where in the left corner of the image, is me using OBLI when the 2 B runes become D runes and in the right corner is me using BS even when the 2 B runes are D runes.
The test went a little bad, because in the second 6 minutes (the right chart) I had an high amount of parry/dodge.
I think using OB with the 2 D runes is the solution because of:
1) The high risk of f****g up your cycle (i.e. parry, dodge, miss)
2) The high risk of not refreshing blade barrier in time (when i was hitting the dummie, i managed to see the BR buff down a couple of time... too much, I think)
3) The low dps cycle... yeah, teorically 2 BS makes more DMG than 1 OB, but you are not counting parry/dodge/miss that are moltiplied by 2 when you do the second cycle (that is, IMO, a little bit forced and "harder" to do)
I have to appoint a thing, that the second cycle is more "free", you can change your cycle in any way, like hitting with 1 BS, Blood Tapping and be able to OB again or making HB).
Sorry for my rust english
See you
Originally Posted by Tesal22
Hey guys, been reading elitist jerk forums for a while not but hadn't felt the need to post until I started tanking as a DK for a while. I am basically tanking on my DK with a 9/11/51 spec. I love it and I have tanked almost all the way through naxx 10.
My question is is Bladed Armor really all that good? I see a lot of people trying to put it in their tank specs. I understand the whole AP adds to threat and all that but a lot of the posts I have seem are doing calculations based off of what there armor is at when they are in Frost presence. As far as I can tell Bladed Armor doesn't account for the added armor when switching to Frost presence. So that 24k armor you are doing your math with is probably more like 14k armor.
Maybe this has been mentioned some where else in this thread, I have been trying to keep up but there are quite a lot of posts .
nope, I can assure you can translate blader armor (when tanking) in a: "Increase your atk power by 800, roughly".
Maybe you switched to frost presence and didn't wait the game refresh time, in fact the game doesn't refresh istantly the bladed armor buff (except when you pop up UA).
Leaving aside for the moment whether or not it is actually worth it, where would you put the points from BotN? You still need to get further down the tree for Guile of Gorefiend and Frost Strike.
Back to Death runes. Assuming we decide that DnD should be dropped whenever it's off CD, Death runes could also be spent on it. I've been in situations before having spent both my frost runes (say, refreshing IT and popping UA) and Death runes allowed me to continue uninterrupted.
As far as I can tell Bladed Armor doesn't account for the added armor when switching to Frost presence. So that 24k armor you are doing your math with is probably more like 14k armor.
Maybe this has been mentioned some where else in this thread, I have been trying to keep up but there are quite a lot of posts .
Bladed armor checks and updates about every 30 secs. Switch to Frost Pres and give it a few to update
I want to ask you a thing.
How much TPS do you do? In a normal fight?
With and Without DND, obviously.
Because i watched the cycle for DnD Spam: DnD - PS - IT - BS - OBLI (SS) - BS - DnD
and calculating the number of spells: (6) multiplied by GCD (1.5) = 9 secs
DnD takes 15 seconds to refresh, so what are you doing in the remaining 4 spell slot?
Spamming DC?
In 9 seconds, if you have windfury or icy talons in raid, you swinged like 4 time (more or less) and rune strike proccd 2-3 times if you have a good avoidance, so you don't have so much RP.
Whare are you doing in that void time?
Obviously, without talents, and ignoring the packed GCD, 2xBS is more damage than 1xOB. Now, what talents do we have... GoG, which gives 45% crit damage bonus to both; Rime, which adds 15% crit percentage to Obliterate; and BotN, which adds 15% damage bonus to Blood Strike. Adding them up, if you did get all three talents, and you did get two Death Runes up (and you had enough GCDs)... the best thing to do with them... would be two Blood Strikes. Yes, if you glyphed Obliterate, the Obliterate would be worth it. Slightly. It would scale faster, as well. But is it worth 5 talent points and a Major Glyph slot? I guess that's up to you. My answer is still no. Death Runes are for decreasing the number of GCDs needed, if you don't need fewer GCDs, you don't need Death Runes.
If you need flexibility, we have Empower Rune Weapon and Blood Tap. I just can't see needing more than those, and grip, and taunt...
Your theory is close, but not correct; one Oblit is better than two Blood Strikes. Let us stick with your numbers to continue to keep life simple, so...
Since we're pitting these abilities against eachother, and talking about deep frost talents, I'm going to continue to keep things simple and assume a deep frost spec; maybe something similar to mine! (see profile--I'd link but my only 'net access until Thursday is my iPhone) You would do well to note that I have all 3 of these talents. I'm also glyphed for Obliterate because, if I wasn't, I'd be putting annihalation to waste somewhat; note that blood strike does not have a comparable glyph. You may also chose to note that I have stuff like Hungering Cold in my spec; let me tell you how nice it is to be able to pop that to spread FF when I'm Short on GCDs and time--both for dps and tanking for snap AoE (and yes, I also glyphed Icy Touch so I have more RP than I know what to so with).
Aaaaanyway, that takes us to:
Oblit: ~2500
BS: ~1325
BS is still higher after +15% damage vs +20% damage you say, and you are correct; however, you have forgotten that obliterate will crit 15% more often and even with a 30%-after-talents critrate on blood strike, there remains only a 9% chance that BOTH will crit. Whereas Oblit still has a 45% chance of doing double damage.... In half the time.
Additionally, GCDs are more precious than you seem to realize, as is flexibility. Most Frost rotations are pretty tightly GCD limited and, while they all have time to 'dump' RP and procs, there really aren't any more GCDs to spare on swapping one Oblit for two BSes. Not to mention, tanks usually want some flex with their GCDs so they can react to a changing situation; having no spare GCDs means that your maximum threat generation must stop and finally get rolling again as runes become available, which can also be unnacceptable.
Hello, my first post here in elitist jerks, so I hope I will give some help in the discussion here.
I'm using a frost speccd DK, and maximing my TPS/Equipment is my aim. So I started reading this thread.
I'v got caught by your last discussion and tried out in-game if using 2 BS is better than using 1 OB.
Here are my Recount Charts in a 6 min. fight against a Dummy (obviously this chart is faked in the melee/frost strike)
Where in the left corner of the image, is me using OBLI when the 2 B runes become D runes and in the right corner is me using BS even when the 2 B runes are D runes.
The test went a little bad, because in the second 6 minutes (the right chart) I had an high amount of parry/dodge.
I think using OB with the 2 D runes is the solution because of:
1) The high risk of f****g up your cycle (i.e. parry, dodge, miss)
2) The high risk of not refreshing blade barrier in time (when i was hitting the dummie, i managed to see the BR buff down a couple of time... too much, I think)
3) The low dps cycle... yeah, teorically 2 BS makes more DMG than 1 OB, but you are not counting parry/dodge/miss that are moltiplied by 2 when you do the second cycle (that is, IMO, a little bit forced and "harder" to do)
I have to appoint a thing, that the second cycle is more "free", you can change your cycle in any way, like hitting with 1 BS, Blood Tapping and be able to OB again or making HB).
Sorry for my rust english
See you
Thanks, I found this very helpful. Think you could run something similar on a DnD spam rotation?
I want to ask you a thing.
How much TPS do you do? In a normal fight?
With and Without DND, obviously.
Because i watched the cycle for DnD Spam: DnD - PS - IT - BS - OBLI (SS) - BS - DnD
and calculating the number of spells: (6) multiplied by GCD (1.5) = 9 secs
DnD takes 15 seconds to refresh, so what are you doing in the remaining 4 spell slot?
Spamming DC?
In 9 seconds, if you have windfury or icy talons in raid, you swinged like 4 time (more or less) and rune strike proccd 2-3 times if you have a good avoidance, so you don't have so much RP.
Whare are you doing in that void time?
It doesn't look like a "normal" rotation since of the unequal cooldown DnD has.
Mine changes per situation but normally close to: DnD-> IT -> PS -> BS -> SS -> BS -> DnD. Maybe 2 seconds wait. I just tested it. After the second DnD goes down, you start over IT ->PS ->BS -> SS.etc.
Your math is wrong then, because with that gearset you should be very close to the armor cap with non-glyphed ua. I will be well over 30000 armor after the patch if I wear double armor ring. Regardless there is 0 fights in the entire game at the moment where the danger comes from physical damage so why bother. If you don't think you will have inspiration very much then maybe you could get the glyph, but I still think it is pointless.
If you don't mind, this subject is really interesting for me, so I'd like to know where my math went wrong:
WoWWiki also notes that the explicit armor cap for 75% DR is 49905 armor, and this falls short by about 18540 armor.
* If I throw in a Glyphed Unbreakable Armor for an additional 1.4 multiplier, the final multiplier increases to 2.95596 and the final armor increases to 42678, which is 71.95% DR (7226 armor short of cap).
* If I throw in a Glyphed UA and Inspiration for an additional 1.25 multiplier, the final multiplier increases to 3.69495 and the final armor increases to 52577, which is 75.97% DR (2672 armor over the cap).
As far as possible mistakes, it's possible that UA/Inspiration includes bonus armor, since it doesn't explicitly state "armor from items" like Bear Form/Frost Presence do, but I find that unlikely/inconsistent.
Edit: Meh I suck. I don't think Inspiration affects bonus armor however, it's not in the list, but I've seen someone say the bonus armor isn't affected by anything anymore, including buffs.
If you don't mind, this subject is really interesting for me, so I'd like to know where my math went wrong:
As far as possible mistakes, it's possible that UA/Inspiration includes bonus armor, since it doesn't explicitly state "armor from items" like Bear Form/Frost Presence do, but I find that unlikely/inconsistent.
Corrections are very welcome
I think it is extremely likely that UA/Inspiration affect bonus armor, don't see why they wouldn't.
You are missing armor from agility(probably around 1000 armor), around 3000 armor from devotion aura, and if the fight is less than 4 minutes long you can gain another 3500 armor from 2x indestructible potion, another 800 armor from elixir(as 800armor+45agi is much better than the flask)... If you wore that item set you would way over the armor cap without the UA glyph.
Anyone given any tought about the Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight?
I think this is a rather poor idea for a defensive item as defense is something you are supposed to be able to rely on. This sigil does not help much in making def cap easier to reach and linking it as a chance to a skill I use once in two rune cycles is even worse for uptime. Now if this would be changed to "Your Icy Touch also increases... for 20s" for example, I'd see some real use.
I've been dreaming a lot about this sigil.
53 defense plus the 23 defense / 2% rune enchant... Right now with my blood runes activated, I'm 65+% avoidance. Through in my trinket and i was over 70% avoidance raid buffed. Sure, through me another 6% avoidance... look at my armory, I have significant spots to increase my my gear. I'm thinking with trinkets popped, I can probably get to 80% avoidance with this new sigil.
12/16/08, 1:17 PM
.
Similar Threads
