From what I have gathered from this post, butchery is not bad, but Bladed Armor is superior to it and to 2H spec. I do not recall if I have seen a comparison of 2H spec and butchery. There *may* have been a comparison between Scent of Blood and Butchery earlier on. I get my threads all mixed up. So many!
What kind of tank spec is he that he has points to throw into Dark Convinction? Sounds like he's going into Blood to pick up VoTW, but if his threat i s an issue, he should go deep down Unholy instead, assuming the "main" tree he's using is Unholy.
Desecration is unreliable at best, due to how often bosses move. I would highly recommend Necrosis, as it increases Rune Strike damage. I also <3 Impurity as Unholy.
Honestly, it may not be talents, because in my experience my TPS is so far ahead of DPS (which, granted, are not t7 geared yet) I can't imagine struggling on single target threat. =\
I didn't say that everything depended on specc, but I do think it's one of the problems (since Naxx is not that hard we can work around it, but it's kinda frustrating to have the dps stop on patchwerk (25) when a offtank can't keep up his threat).
The specc he used up untill recently where this.
Fortunately, EJ isn't nearly as bad as most of the Internet. Sure, there are tons of egoes here, including my gynormous one, but at least people usually know about what they're talking about .
Regarding DnD, I honestly hate--and I mean HATE--the cost to use it. For the same 3 runes, I could generate 10+ more RP and com close in threat (I think). Correct me if I'm wrong, but DnD in Frost presence gives somewhere between 3.66-4.0 Threat per point of damage, right? How hard are the average DnDs ticking for in a 25m?
DnD is *not* a good way to generate threat on single targets. There's a lot of poor information being spread around. Please guys - check your theorycrafting versus your gear versus your experience. It's not helping us progress the tanking knowledge.
Again, my (as an unholy tank) starting rotation to maximize threat is to: PS IT BS BS SS (+/- RS) DC SS DC
Whenever I need a boost to threat, I use death coil.
PS - Plague Strike
IT - Icy touch
BS - Blood strike
SS - Scourge Strike
DC - Death Coil
I'm having issues joining the PTR -- very frustrating; otherwise, I'd be posting a lot more about the different talent specs.
I find the recent discussion of building threat and revision of builds in the frost vs unholy tree rather unhelpful. Either the discussion omits that a tank has to survive and therefore should not neglect its survival abilities, or relatively newly geared and raiding tanks are asking about tank builds which have been discussed previously.
One of the ways we can help with deciphering people's builds is to describe them and my suggestion would be this:
Single Target (Boss) Build ie MT
AOE Build ie OT or Heroic Build
My current build as per my armor is what I consider to be an OT / Heroic Build - yet I'm also the MT. Ability has a lot more to do with tanking than pure mechanics or gear.
This is a build aimed towards maximum survivability in a 25 Man environment.
Currently, I sit at base total avoidance of 60% and buffed with blade barrier I'm at 75%+. Trinkets help pushing the avoidance to 80+%. BS and IBF make that <20% hit manageable.
Furthermore, in observing people's discussion of generating threat through SS, Ob, BS etc I think people might forget that a death knight's Death Strike is one of the best abilities bar none to survive because you self-heal. Increasing your crit and dmg in death strike thus improves your survivability. A good tank should be maximizing diseases and death striking every moment and have runestrike macro'd in for maximum threat and dps.
/startattack
#showtooltip Death Strike
/cast Rune Strike
/cast Death Strike
The Death Strike glyph is about to be buffed - 20% increased healing and damage without having to have maximum runepower is a *good thing*. Not DS'ing on a regular basis is going to make your healers work harder. Tonight, my recount data for a 4.5 hour Naxx 10 full clear with our 2 wipes on Kel Thuzad (blame the 2 new guys who never saw him before ;-) showed that for the run, DS did as much healing as our OT Druid's leader of the pack -- TO ME ONLY. (This data was different for 25 Man Naxx but on fights like Gluth or Loatheb, it's obvious how important DS is). DS keeps you alive when crap is happening and your healers can't get to or you eat an unlucky RNG.
Again, if threat is an issue, then Death Coil (DC). If you have parry issues or hit issues then you must either obtain better gear, gem for hit or parry, or respec to another build (or a combination of all three). (I'm sitting on extra hit gear from 25 Mans until I get Inevitable Defeat -- remember a tank's main issue is parry then hit.)
Finally, if you need to push your dps, then SS and OB when appropriate, spam your runestrikes and DC.
Has anyone else experienced issues with AMS not working vs Sartharion's breath? I'm running a variation of a spec posted earlier in this thread to work on 10man Sarth+3:
I'm finding that AMS is mitigating no damage on the breath. AMZ seems to be a bit wonky with breath as well; I'll need to look over my logs more carefully for that. With AMS up though I should take 0 damage from breath, and instead I'm taking full damage.
I'm running AMS, BS, and DS glyphs for this fight. My suspicion is that there is a bug with either fully talented Magic Suppression or a bug with the AMS glyph, but I have not yet had the opportunity to fully test this.
I would highly recommend Necrosis, as it increases Rune Strike damage.
This made me think of something: Has anyone tested if the Necrosis component (the 10% shadow damage) from a Rune Strike also gets the 150% threat modifier on the PTR?
If not, Necrosis will be less useful for threat than it is now come patch day, though I still doubt it would make Blood-Caked Blade a better choice.
Has anyone else experienced issues with AMS not working vs Sartharion's breath? I'm running a variation of a spec posted earlier in this thread to work on 10man Sarth+3:
I'm finding that AMS is mitigating no damage on the breath. AMZ seems to be a bit wonky with breath as well; I'll need to look over my logs more carefully for that. With AMS up though I should take 0 damage from breath, and instead I'm taking full damage.
I'm running AMS, BS, and DS glyphs for this fight. My suspicion is that there is a bug with either fully talented Magic Suppression or a bug with the AMS glyph, but I have not yet had the opportunity to fully test this.
This was brought up already. It seems to be a bug with the talent Spell Deflection which causes you to always take 70% damage while in AMS/AMZ
I'd like to retouch on an issue I brought up earlier about a Frost tank I know.
I brought up the issue to him that he spams Icy Touch too much (for the record, he will frequently use it 4-6 times in a row). He proceeded to attempt to explain to me that "two ITs do more damage than one Obliterate." He pointed to his logs where his IT is dealing around 1.5k and his OBs are only doing 2k. His explained that his rotation only uses Obliterate to use Unholy Runes, and that he uses all his death runes to pop IT.
An advantage that I would like to bring up about using IT more in your rotation would be rime. If he specced that talent, every time you cast IT, you have a 15% chance for your HB to cost no runes. Just thought I'd point that out.
First, I apologize if this is already known or discussed elsewhere (haven't seen anything about it though), but there seems to be an odd bug. I got [Rune of Repulsion] tonight and I noticed something weird: if I equip it then use it, my parry actually drops after the use effect expires (~23% before Use, down to ~22% after the effect expires). My first guess is that the amount of parry chance that my parry rating gives diminishes due to the increased rating from the Use on the trinket, and somehow gets "stuck" after the effect expires. It goes back to normal if i unequip and re-equip the trinket, but obviously mid-combat this isn't an option and really makes the trinket seem near worthless. It could be, however, that the stats displayed on the character screen do not accurately reflect the true numbers, but I waited nearly 10 min to see if it would "update" itself and no luck.
This seems similar to the way that re-gemming does not provide the set bonus on the character screen until I unequip and re-equip the piece?
On that note, my other two trinkets are [Repelling Charge] and [Figurine - Monarch Crab]. I'm sitting at nearly 40k buffed HP so I was thinking that the [Rune of Repulsion] would be better than [Figurine - Monarch Crab] for extra mitigation and threat, though also considering dropping a lot of stam for def gems and replacing the repelling charge because I like the Use effect of the monarch crab... Any thoughts?
My final question is in regards to threat: while I very rarely have serious threat issues (only EoE which is understandable), my threat is significantly lower than the other tank classes and it comes close at times. My current spec is:
A few pts here might seem odd, I played a bit with a template to pick up some of the ones I personally like (such as Morbidity). I'm wondering if there are some other talents that are much better for threat, and perhaps that's where my problem lies. I considered dropping Icy Talons and using those 6 pts for various dmg boosts such as dark conviction, 2hd weapon spec, or other dmg talents in frost. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Can you elaborate on the 2% avoidance loss?
I was under the impresion that Gargoyle rune gives 1% dodge, 1% parry and 1% miss, vs 4% parry from Swordshatter.
They can not be compared without looking at the bigger picture.
This includes extra damage reduction on your IBF or extra stats from not having to gem / enchant with defence. The difference is much much smaller then 2% avoidance.
Can you elaborate on the 2% avoidance loss?
I was under the impresion that Gargoyle rune gives 1% dodge, 1% parry and 1% miss, vs 4% parry from Swordshatter.
Me too.
My script for total avoidance says it's a 2% loss. Either the script is wrong or the mechanics is different from what I thought. But if it's the latter, 2% avoidance is a lot to lose for 2% stamina or 350 health in T7 gear. I can get that from one gem and make up the avoidance on the rune enchant.
See my previous posts on defense rating, dodge, diminishing returns, etc. (ie. I know the numbers.)
They can not be compared without looking at the bigger picture.
This includes extra damage reduction on your IBF or extra stats from not having to gem / enchant with defence. The difference is much much smaller then 2% avoidance.
Those are rather nebulous and vague comments. Care to support your second and third statements?
25 Defense means what in terms of IBF? How much more stats can you gem?
These are all variables to consider, true, yet, in a min / max fashion, I think you're going to loose more avoidance than what you gain in stamina (for instance):
Armory my profile and see my trinket repelling charge. If I switched out the rune for defense, I loose 2% avoidance. Now I can switch out my trinket for the 111 stamina trinket. Sure, I gain 1600 health, but I loose over 4.5% total avoidance.
Alternatively, I can swap out my dodge trinket, and loose about 2.5% total avoidance and gain most of the stamina. 2% avoidance is a lot.
In fact, having reached defense cap, I can easily swap out several defense gems and push stamina -- a loss of less than .5% avoidance for over 50 stamina gained.
So you have options.. but with regards to my gear my options appear to be these:
-2% avoidance +350 health (with new defense rune)
-4.5% avoidance +1600 health (defense rune and trinket)
-5% avoidance and +2000 health (defense rune and trinket and re-gemming)
-2.5% avoidance +1200 health (parry rune plus trinket)
-.5% avoidance +550ish health (parry rune plus re-gemming)
My conclusion is that the new rune is not useful for *my* current raiding position / gear level.
After other testing tonight, I can say briefly:
- I do like that new defense icy touch sigil..... can we push avoidance even higher? (but I'm going to miss my dps / threat sigil)
- blood is interesting.. i tried a 52 / 8 / 11 (or something like build) and it seems to give a lot of AP, Crit, Expertise with the maximum frost mitigation bonuses .. I want to try tanking with it, but the dummy dmg seemed lack lustered.. Maybe the self-healing with be stellar for survivability.
- Unholy with blood spec 23 / 48 (extra expertise, max AP, crit) at the expense of 2% mitigation in frost -- is it worth it? I think it might be.
PS: I'm jealous you guys got the weapons you did...
I'm having some issues with Shadow of Death Talent. I seem to remember reading that when my health pooil hits 1% the spell activates and I become a ghoul. If this is true 1% of 34k hps is 340 hps. I cant imagine that this is often the difference between staying alive and not yet the healers are telling me I seem to go from fine to ghoul sometimes.
The other issue is they are totally unaware usually that I've died until they get the immune to heal message. On top of that recount doesnt actually record my death properly because technically i never actually died. I'm beginning to think this talent is more trouble than its worth.
While i like the 2% to str and sta and obviously have to take it to get the perma pet (not that I'm sold on his usefulness for raid tanking) I cant help feel I could use these points elsewhere, or atleast spec out of it to see if the healers have the same issue with my unexplainable deaths. Any thought?
I'm having some issues with Shadow of Death Talent. I seem to remember reading that when my health pooil hits 1% the spell activates and I become a ghoul. If this is true 1% of 34k hps is 340 hps. I cant imagine that this is often the difference between staying alive and not yet the healers are telling me I seem to go from fine to ghoul sometimes.
The other issue is they are totally unaware usually that I've died until they get the immune to heal message. On top of that recount doesnt actually record my death properly because technically i never actually died. I'm beginning to think this talent is more trouble than its worth.
While i like the 2% to str and sta and obviously have to take it to get the perma pet (not that I'm sold on his usefulness for raid tanking) I cant help feel I could use these points elsewhere, or atleast spec out of it to see if the healers have the same issue with my unexplainable deaths. Any thought?
I've definitely survived a few flame breaths on sartharion with significantly less than 1% health and not transformed into a ghoul -- activates on 1 HP afaik.
They can not be compared without looking at the bigger picture.
This includes extra damage reduction on your IBF or extra stats from not having to gem / enchant with defence. The difference is much much smaller then 2% avoidance.
Agree
the difference is nearly 0 because of the fact that you can change your socketted gems with only defence / mixed with defence.
Jackclark - There's a difference between Theorycrafting and testing in-game for proper usage. I find that using DnD in my rotation (for several rotations) gives me the edge I need in single target dps before I can go in to non-DnD usage. Now, at the same time - I've used DnD through a whole boss fight because my TPS was currently higher.
To work off of my above statement - my single target rotation was tightened even more and Omen stated I was pulling 4-6k TPS. Anytime it's 5K+ I just assume a string of lucky crits happened.
To other people: If you're breaking 35k buffed HP (no commanding) - could you please post your Armory? My guild is finding ways to scrutinize my tanking, they've already told me I should be gemming for +Sta soley with no +threat (+hit/+exp) since my HP pool sits at 34k buffed w/o commanding (it's 36/37k with). Honestly, I think I'm sitting at a very nice spot with my current gear but, in other's eyes, I guess I'm wrong.
Toyed around with Spellbreaker (-4% spell dmg) and +4% Parry last night while tanking 3drake Sarth. The last of 4% avoidance was noticeable. My BA was lasting maybe 20 seconds. Maybe it was purely RNG, maybe, but with the +4% parry BA was lasting upwards to 35 seconds.
For people that are tanking 3drake Sarth - how are you staying alive? I use BA, IBF, AMS, AMZ soley for his breaths. They are also spread out in an orderly fashion, so, AMZ first since it's the longest cooldown. BA -> AMS -> IBF if BA isn't refreshed. I found as the fight increasing, Sarth breaths more often. 2 separate occasions I had no cooldowns up, had to rely on a bubble from a priest, and then was instagibbed.
Our feral tank had a few attempts and said his breaths were hitting for 18k unmitigated. I found this odd since it usually hit me for 21k mitigated (usually 40-50k normal). Can anyone elaborate on this part, also?
Any help would be pro. Thanks.
(Bucknasty, no worries about egos. We're tanks. We're allowed to have ginormous egos. ^_^)
DnD is *not* a good way to generate threat on single targets. There's a lot of poor information being spread around. Please guys - check your theorycrafting versus your gear versus your experience. It's not helping us progress the tanking knowledge
...
Again, my (as an unholy tank) starting rotation to maximize threat is to: PS IT BS BS SS (+/- RS) DC SS DC
...
I find the recent discussion of building threat and revision of builds in the frost vs unholy tree rather unhelpful. Either the discussion omits that a tank has to survive and therefore should not neglect its survival abilities, or relatively newly geared and raiding tanks are asking about tank builds which have been discussed previously.
...
Furthermore, in observing people's discussion of generating threat through SS, Ob, BS etc I think people might forget that a death knight's Death Strike is one of the best abilities bar none to survive because you self-heal. Increasing your crit and dmg in death strike thus improves your survivability. A good tank should be maximizing diseases and death striking every moment and have runestrike macro'd in for maximum threat and dps.
Alright, you are literally wrong on all counts. If you need to dump more runic power as an unholy tank, there was a discussion a few pages back (with data) that showed UB was a better RP dump (after RS, of course), than Skill Coil. There is also plenty of data (with actual, you know, numbers) that shows that DnD gives you more threat single-target than any other use of those three runes. Raid-buffed, a single DnD does about 3800 damage for me (currently Frost). That's more than an OB-HS, more than a HB-HS, more than a DS-SS... so it already does more damage... and it also has a 1.9x threat modifier! That means that while it's up, in Frost Presence, DnD does around 1400 TPS.... by itself. Show me another way to use three runes that results in 14,000 single-target threat.
You're welcome to disprove the fact that weaving DnD is best for single-target threat... just be sure to bring numbers and values (or at least logs), instead of claims. I was chastised here yesterday for hand-waving and eyeballing numbers a bit. You bring no quantitative analysis at all.
Your point about tank survival is moot, and wrong. You can survive in Naxx after a couple days of heroics and some rep farming. The hardest encounters are about coordination and execution more than about sheer-tank-force. I rarely-to-ever see a DK coming in here saying "man, I have problems staying alive"... this isn't the Blizzard Forums... people here understand that you need 540 defense to start tanking. People understand that you need the base three talents, one of { Bone Shield, Unbreakable Armor, Vampiric Blood (in 3.0.8) }, and any extra goodies you can pick up along your tree and be a tank. The 'problem' is that people are unsure how to best spend their remaining talent points to optimally hold threat. If a tank can't survive, threat doesn't matter... if a tank can't hold aggro, survival doesn't matter.
Now, when it comes to Death Strike, you are, yet again, wrong. Remember, healing naturally only does 0.5x the threat of damage, and healing is spread across all mobs on the aggro table. If I'm AoE tanking, and find myself with an FU with DnD and HB on cooldown, sure, I'll throw in a DS. But I know that single-target, it never wins out on threat. Here are the numbers (mostly grabbed from the tanking spreadsheet)... My DS hits for, on average, about 1200 damage. It heals (if I were to spec Unholy and get a third disease) for 2.5 * 1200 = 3000 on average. Therefore, if I were to never overheal at all, ever, DS would give me ~5400 threat. My Obliterate, with 3 diseases up, would hit on average for 2700... or the same 5400 threat.
But, you're a tank, and you pointed out yourself that you have exceptionally high avoidance (as do all DK tanks). High avoidance tanks are often at full health. Death Strike overheals. A lot. In that case, DS will give less threat than Obliterate, less than Scourge Strike, and definitely less than Death and Decay. But again, bosses hit hard, and they hit in a spiky manner. If you're getting hit by small, consistent damage, Death Strike is useful. But 95% of the time, I'd rather ensure that Fury Warrior doesn't pull aggro before I give myself an inconsistent heal for about 1/4th of a Holy Light.
I used to be a big proponent of Death Strike... hell, I near-invented the "Death Strike Tank Tri-Spec" back in beta. But when I saw my Enh. Shaman slamming his head into my threat ceiling as I produced 2700 TPS and my prot warrior friend produced 5000 TPS... I realized I needed to focus my attention elsewhere.
Our feral tank had a few attempts and said his breaths were hitting for 18k unmitigated. I found this odd since it usually hit me for 21k mitigated (usually 40-50k normal). Can anyone elaborate on this part, also?
I tried to follow the discussion but it's page 44 now and I must admit that i'm lost.
Too many different specs have been linked...
Is it possible that somabody make something like a top 3 or 4 or whatever of the tank specs?
I'm mostly interested in Frost spec.
I tried to follow the discussion but it's page 44 now and I must admit that i'm lost.
Too many different specs have been linked...
Is it possible that somabody make something like a top 3 or 4 or whatever of the tank specs?
I'm mostly interested in Frost spec.
I tried to follow the discussion but it's page 44 now and I must admit that i'm lost.
Too many different specs have been linked...
Is it possible that somabody make something like a top 3 or 4 or whatever of the tank specs?
I'm mostly interested in Frost spec.
Thx in advance!
to be honest come the patch it will be all change again. It doesnt take long to browse some of the builds listed or click the player names on the left of posts to see builds to try out.
Best advice is if you are raiding avoid instance based talents (long range pulls etc) put the points into mitigation and tps building talents. I try to avoid anything with the word "chance" in it. If it not a guaranteed outcome I dont want it.
Has anyone had an opportunity to test the threat from DRW? I would think that could have a very significant impact on putting together an optimal Blood tanking build.
Now, when it comes to Death Strike, you are, yet again, wrong. Remember, healing naturally only does 0.5x the threat of damage, and healing is spread across all mobs on the aggro table. If I'm AoE tanking, and find myself with an FU with DnD and HB on cooldown, sure, I'll throw in a DS. But I know that single-target, it never wins out on threat. Here are the numbers (mostly grabbed from the tanking spreadsheet)... My DS hits for, on average, about 1200 damage. It heals (if I were to spec Unholy and get a third disease) for 2.5 * 1200 = 3000 on average. Therefore, if I were to never overheal at all, ever, DS would give me ~5400 threat. My Obliterate, with 3 diseases up, would hit on average for 2700... or the same 5400 threat.
But, you're a tank, and you pointed out yourself that you have exceptionally high avoidance (as do all DK tanks). High avoidance tanks are often at full health. Death Strike overheals. A lot. In that case, DS will give less threat than Obliterate, less than Scourge Strike, and definitely less than Death and Decay. But again, bosses hit hard, and they hit in a spiky manner. If you're getting hit by small, consistent damage, Death Strike is useful. But 95% of the time, I'd rather ensure that Fury Warrior doesn't pull aggro before I give myself an inconsistent heal for about 1/4th of a Holy Light.
I used to be a big proponent of Death Strike... hell, I near-invented the "Death Strike Tank Tri-Spec" back in beta. But when I saw my Enh. Shaman slamming his head into my threat ceiling as I produced 2700 TPS and my prot warrior friend produced 5000 TPS... I realized I needed to focus my attention elsewhere.
So if i understand your point -
DS heals (if I were to spec Unholy and get a third disease) for 2.5 * 1200 = 3000 on average. Therefore, if I were to never overheal at all, ever, DS would give me ~5400 threat. My Obliterate, with 3 diseases up, would hit on average for 2700... or the same 5400 threat
Then logically it would be prudent to DS Instead of OB when you are below 100% health ALWAYS
if you have a choice of OB or DS and both produce the same amount of threat when you are below 100% health...then what you are saying is that you should DS.
Oddly enough that is exactly what I do... OB at 100% and DS at less than 100%
I use DS a lot to heal and generate threat, but I also tank as Blood so mine is slightly more effective, especially when VB is up. I never use it when I am at full health of course.
I think using Death Strike instead of Obliterate is a very bad idea. Untalented, at a certain gear level death strike will out threat obliterate if your life is low enough to benefit from it. But there are a few things obscuring the truth here.
1. If your healers are not crap, your life will be 100% at all times. If it drops below, an incoming heal should be on it's way to heal you back up to full. Relying on death strike, due to lag, can seriously gimp your threat really bad. DPS will rip it off you and you'll be replaced as a tank. The threat from Obliterate is guaranteed regardless of your lag or health. Also you are helping dps the boss, and every little bit helps. You argue you are helping your healers out by death striking. I argue that I help dps the boss. My threat is guaranteed. Death Strike can't boast that.
2. The glyph of death strike is going to be nerfed hardcore. Using it right now is a bit OP and I think in a few weeks, those that are relying on it will be in for a rude awakening. I think many of the arguments in favor of Death Strike instead of obliterate (or scourge strike) are using their experiences with the glyph of death strike as a basis, even if they do not admit it to themselves.
When I use Obliterate instead of Death Strike, my Threat generate is guaranteed short of things like parry/dodge/miss (which shouldn't be happening either if you have the appropriate levels of expertise and hit rating).
Go ahead and use death strike all you want. I'll stick with a sure thing. Plus I know my healers don't suck.
12/18/08, 2:41 AM
.
Similar Threads
