dravok

[quote=Zerath;1030027]Are you speaking about current Frost of 3.0.8 Frost? I'm going to assume 3.0.8 Frost since you should be Unholy currently for healing sake.

The major glyphs are going to be these:
Frost Strike
IBF
Icy Touch
OB
Unbreakable Armor

Each have their pros and cons. As long as I'm 2H it'll be FS + OB + UA glyphs for me.

Minor stays the same for the most part, no matter what: Pestilence, Horn of Winter, and Blood Tap. I could see Horn of Winter dropped for Ghoul. An increase of 20RP in a pinch situation could be useful.

Thanks. If I should stay Unholy, when should I switch over to Frost for tanking?

 

Feanorr

Did you do it? if yes then show us; if not, dont reproch me to didnt do it either please.

About the Parry, we may have higher parry than warrior and paladin but unless you are gemming/enchanting for it, it still a lot lower than dodge.
But ok, I didnt made any math to prove my points. But they did it on tankspots, and it show that even if you have zero dodge on your gear, going full def is close to the best. Since we dont have zero dodge on our gear, I still think gemming/enchanting for def is better than for dodge, in general. With my gear (heroic/naxx10 level), I got more dodge than the 3:2 ratio recomanded and I got almost only +def gems and enchant.
So I think it's fair to say that in most case (i.e. anyone with a bit of gear, and then dodge on it), defense is a better avoidance stats than dodge, point by point.

 

Valhalla

Last time we did 25 Sarth +1 (maybe 2 weeks ago), the whelps came out of the portal and instead of going for the healers (like they normally do), the went right for the tank. I had to drop DnD on the tank to get the whelps off of him and right away he started telling the raid that his fps dropped down to 3. Other people in the raid have complained that when they stand in DnD their fps also takes a nose dive. I hope this gets fixed soon. This was while i had 3/3 morbidity, I have since dropped those points to put them eslewhere.

 

Fellwraith

I've done the math for warriors, DK math isn't that much different, but you have forceful deflection, which you seem to be completely ignoring. The reason I'm reproaching you is that you really don't seem to understand how the DR formula works. You're looking at a tankspot article written by a warrior tank to discuss our stat weightings without giving any consideration whatsoever to how your class' abilities may affect that. If your logic is faulty, I'm going to try to correct you, sorry if you take offense to that, but you're wrong.

The avoidance gains for each point of defense changes with:
• Agility
• Parry Rating
• Dodge Rating
• Strength (for DKs)

You understand that you don't get as much net parry % from defense as a warrior or paladin because you already have a lot of parry rating from forceful deflection, right?

In tank gear how much str do you have? 1k? 1.2k? So you're looking at a base of 250-300 parry rating just from forceful deflection, that translates to 5-6% parry pre-DR. You also have 540 defense (140 from gear), which also translates into 5.6% parry pre-DR. Let's say the total pre-DR parry amount is 11% to keep the math simple. After DR is taken into account, your net parry gain is ~9.2%. Now let's say this DK gains 25 defense skill. Pre-DR he gains 1% parry, post DR he gains 0.66%.

Compare that to a warrior who's str has no impact whatsoever on his avoidance. All it affects is his block value, which isn't a part of the DR formula. His incremental gains from defense are going to be much higher because he doesn't have the 5-6% pre-DR parry from forceful deflection. His parry just from defense rating is 5.6% pre-DR and 5.3% post-DR. This same warrior adds 25 defense skill. He gains a net increase to his parry of 1% pre-DR, post DR his gain is 0.81%. Why? Because he had less parry to begin with. His net gain from adding defense is much higher because he doesn't have a huge amount of base parry rating.

It's worth noting that both of these tanks are getting the exact same amount of avoidance from dodge rating and the exact same amount of miss and dodge from defense. Do you understand now why I say the ratio for DKs isn't the same as warriors or paladins? When a warrior tells you he's shooting for 3 dodge for every 2 defense, you really shouldn't care that much. He gets more parry out of his defense rating than you can (not to mention the fact that he's blocking and block has no DR so he will always get some non-diminishing benefit).

Is there a point where 3:2 is correct for a DK? Maybe there is, but it's after you've already added a significant amount of dodge rating. There's a very good graph in one of the tankspot articles that you need to understand (taken from this post)


See how much dodge you need in order for it to be equivalent to parry? The two curves are completely different. A stat like defense is in between those two lines you see for dodge and parry (unfortunately, without knowing the cap for miss, you can't graph out defense, you can only guess at it like that tankspot article). Dodge has the flattest slope of any avoidance stat and will give you the most % avoidance per point unless you've gone to extremes. Just because two stats are close in conversion to 1% avoidance pre-DR doesn't mean they're anywhere near the same once you start factoring in DR.

 

Zerath

3.0.8 is when a majority of us will be switching to Frost due to the "nerf" to BA and "buff" to UA. Along with some changing of Glyphs, the going theory is that Frost will be *thee* tank spec for mitigation and threat (either Single or AoE).

Right now, Unholy wins AoE and mitigation due to BA. While, some endgame tanks are already speccing Frost to get the hang of it - I don't see that as an option due to the increase of damage since BA normally stays up longer than 21 seconds (T7 4pc).

 

Pyros

It's BS, and I don't believe you should compare BS to IBF but to UA which is a set 20secs of melee only mitigation, while BS is usually way over 20secs of both melee and spell mitigation.

As for next patch, I still want to see Blood, it's not on par for pure mitigation, but the advantages are plentiful especially in self sustainability, and it might very well make up for the lower mitigation. I'm not a big fan of frost thought, so probably why I'm looking into blood. And unholy should still prove to be rather decent, Bone shield might go down to 20%, but it still has a higher uptime than any other deep 1pt tanking talent, quite often lasting over 30secs and sometimes up to a minute depending on the boss. And it'll only increase over time as gear improves, while the others are static in uptime.

I'm still waiting for someone to theorycraft the real change that's happening and see if frost really is better than unholy on a melee only fight, and then you'd still need to find out what's the status on "normal" fights with 75%melee/25%magic.

 

Waddy

Hey fellas, I'm back to tanking so I'm looking for a little incite after my switch.

This is the build I've decided to go with:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000


It's a DW tanking build, using fast/fast to maximize the km / bcb procs and the rotation I use is:

PS>IT>DS>BS>BS>RPDump
PS>IT>IT>IT>BS>BS>RPDump

One of my questions is should I use this rotation instead?:

PS>IT>BS>BS>OB>RPDump
PS>IT>BS>BS>IT>IT>RPDump

I've found that for OS buttons lichborne / MoB and IBF are great and the extra 8% stam I've gotten has really helped. That and my single target threat is pretty solid, I seem to be lacking however on aoe pulls obviously because of a lack of hb or ub but it's still managable.

Let me know what y'all think of it.

 

Namuh

So I went on the ptr tonight..

First thing I found was a bug...lol

On LIVE, My unbuffed hp with FP on is 29.5k

Logged into PTR 32.5k 0.o

Changed presence to blood and than back again...29.5k

I made the Axe(sword) with +def - well it shows to be a sword and I raised 2H Sword skill while I killed some mobs with it. So for all intents and purposes, it's a sword for now. Hopefully(for orcs) it will be changed back.

All of the frost gear now requires a Frozen Orb along with the original mats.

As far as testing goes, I think that at some point no CD on HB is going to be nerfed back to some kind of CD again. It's too powerful IMO.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE IT.
IT > PS > Pest > HB > BB Emp Rune Wep > HB HB HB > FS FS FS = HOLYOMFG AOE BATMAN

If they keep it we will own the aoe threat game by miles. I hope they do.

There is no tooltip change to IBF as far as DEF raising it's % of mitigation. I wonder if it is going to be a static increase or will suffer any dimishing returns. It would seem safe to assume that it's going to be static but honestly with all of the recent changes, who knows?

As to the person that suggested the JC trinkets with 3 41+ stam and 1 24+ stam gems - I did that and holy god 32.5k hp unbuffed(not bugged this time) and I still have a blue bracer to upgrade. I can't wait till patch so i can put on my 2nd epic ring(+49 dodge ring from H-DK) and the nerubhide cloak(+49 dodge) With those on and my current spec, I was 24% dodge, 21% parry, 25.5k armor, 552 Def(will regem to fix) and 32.5k hp unbuffed....and using the Def Axe(sword thing) and Def Rune..

All in all I am extremely happy with the changes as far as Frost Tanks go. Personally I have no experience as an unholy tank...never liked the idea of BS being hypothetically unreliable.

Icecicle - Human
Frost DeathKnight Tank

 

Zerath

It's a very common mistake for me to call BS -> BA. Used to be a D2 Necro junkie back in the day so, old habits die hard.

Now, I completely agree with you. MT'd all of 10man Naxx between last night and Friday night. 70% of the boss fights (outside of Patchwerk) my BS was lasting 50-60 seconds. But, that was extremely lucky RNG since that's never happened before in 25man. The "average" for BS is 25-30seconds with it lasting less more often than lasting longer than that range.

Upon knowing that for my spec and play style - those two things are taken in to account when looking at the superiority of Frost Vs. Unholy at patch time for myself. But, I will test both specs.

I honestly have no idea how you keep threat with none of your deep talent skills. On top of that you chose fast/fast + BCB and to exclude any mitigation skills for your healers.

Now, to answer your question - test those rotations in a live setting (i.e. not dummies in cities) because the vast majority of this thread agrees upon 2H is superiority and it is what we chose to use. But, with you only being able to use BS/IT/PS - it wouldn't hurt to put OB in to your rotation since you *have* to apply them immediately anyways due to those being your only skills (outside of DS).

PS->IT->BS->BS->OB//repeat

The chances of you having an RPdump that quickly is low due to Rune Strike being macro'd to everything. And the seconds you chose to RPdump while not having diseases up is TPS lost. So, try and RPdump before OB.

Blizz said it will scale to 35% max but they are "looking" in to it. Assuming it does go to a grander level - we will most likely stack a little more +Def, I assume, if it hits levels that it currently is. The average PvP DK won't be wearing 550def, if they are, they deserve to live longer than most people at that point since they are gimping their dps to no end.

**For Blizz - thoughts**

With DW Tank spec - they stated the Stone Garg will be 2H only due to 1-handers having tank stats already. But, if we're going DW, most of us will be doing so to increase TPS generation if they does end up being the superior way for Single Target Threat. Understanding that, we would chose to use DPS weapons over Tank weapons due to the increase of Hit/Exp/and AP.

Why can't we get a 1H Stone Gargoyle that has 1%Stam and 12 Defense on it? Adding them up equals 1 Def less than the 2H enchant which I think is fair, or even 1% Stam and 10Def. The majority of end game tanks won't be using DW Tank Weapons if it means a subtraction in TPS.

Am I just thinking a little too much outside the box?

 

Waddy

Well, the reason I went with dw instead of 2h for tanking is because of how easy it was to cap stats. I'm sitting at 6% exp, 9% hit, 541 def, 25k armor and 29k health. That and I've found that our biggest threat abilities are hb/ub which are aoe attacks and one is on a long cooldown and the other is a huge rp dump especially with us spamming rune strike.

I also found while I was dps, that some of our best damage comes from icy touch. So, the idea behind the build was to create a rotation around spamming as much it as possible, getting all dw and defense necessary talents and then increasing ps/bs/ob's damage to increase single target threat.

The kewl thing about the ob rotation is that I'm usually applying my next ps right after I hit the dc button, and since it only cancels the disease on one target aoe pulls are still fine.

I've found on aoe pulls dnd + pest and I have pretty solid aggro, hb and ub don't seem to be necessary so far atleast.

 

gamer88

Hi guys I've been keeping up with this forum since it started and finally just need to ask some questions. Well first I don't remember who it was but the thing about "I assume you mean frost for 3.0.8 cause you should be unholy", don't know why you would say something like that, I've been frost since wotlk came out and have never had any complaints...well minus patchwork...he sometimes stomps me into the ground ^_^. On the actual question subject though I've noticed that the frost tanking specs never take things like frost aura or acclimation,why is that? I understand that MotW from druids comes close to the same resist, but why wouldn't we pick up these talents when DKs where paraded as the magic tanks. Is there currently no fights that these things actually help with or something?

Oh my other question...what exactly do we gem for now with all these recent "def is still good after being uncrittable, parry sucks, etc"...I miss the simple days of get uncrittable then gem for stam, stam, and btw stam!

 

Trigonous

Once you hit the level of avoidance to keep up Boneshield for an extended period of time, Unholy becomes the best tanking build. But since it's getting nurfed in 3.0.8 to 20% instead of 40% reduction, and Howling Blast is losing the cooldown, Frost may very well become better at mitigation and AoE threat gen.

For exactly the reason you stated. Just like most Frost DKs don't take Imp Icy Talons because you'll likely have a shaman in the group. You can throw those five extra points into something else and save on redundancy. Since the resistance does not stack there's no reason to keep Frost Aura, it's just a waste of talents.

My advise is to get to 540 defense (the only reason to gem over it is if IBF inceases migtigation after 540 defense, and I don't see that happening), and then gem for dodge and stam.

 

Namuh

as far as that person's opinion on what you should BE - it was just his opinion that he decided to state as fact...happens allot.
Frost aura doesnt stack with Gift of the Wild - end of story - 5 mans its nice(not super useful except possibly on Loken and subsequent magic aoe bosses)

Acclimation is nice on any boss that has a steady stream of the same type of magic damage (auras, blizzard, RoF...) Saph for example is where that talent really shines - but its not NEEDED enough to outweigh 3 points that can be spent elsewhere.

I had it for awhile but have moved away from it as other options are more directly useful to me than 150 resist.

Gems - Dodge and Stam after Uncrittable 540

Icecicle - Human
Frost DeathKnight Tank

 

gamer88

thanks Trigonous and on a side note has anyone encountered a fight where acclimation is actually useful or does it fall into the redundant category also?

edit: lol thanks I just got your loaded on my screen ><'

 

huntcaudata

I have made a spreadsheet with all of the data from Tankspot so that one can see what the marginal increase of each type of avoidance stat is at any given gear level. There is one minor innaccuracy - the sheet currently accounts for diminishing returns in dodge provided by base agility, and parry provided by base strength. I don't think either of those is actually subject to diminishing returns. That should only vary rarely affect the outcome, though, especially, as you'll see, it takes an incredible amount of dodge rating before any other stat is worth more (1018 Dodge Rating in my current gear). As for the question at hand, because Defense Rating increases the rate of diminishing returns in Parry Rating as well as its own, Parry Rating will NEVER be more valuable than Defense Rating (at least not at values of defense rating less than 30,000).

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...G9ots9m2tacTHA

 

Zurai

Parry Rating from Forceful Deflection is absolutely affected by diminishing returns. I'm about 80% sure that dodge from agility is as well, but I'm not completely positive. From what I remember, the only things NOT affected are base dodge/parry/miss chances, straight percentage increases (from talents, racials, or enchants) and, apparently, straight skill increases (such as Stoneskin Gargoyle) that bypass ratings.

 

Feorthas

Most tanking builds pass on Frost Aura and Acclimation because the former doesn't stack with anything and the latter is somewhat self defeating (and not all that amazing for a talent that deep anyway). In order to stack acclimation, you must take damage from a spell, which a rising acclimation stack would reduce the chance of greatly, making it less likely for you to maintain the stack and, when it drops, result in a full damage magic hit :-/. Admittedly, lot of acclimation's theorycraft may be (is?) based on the old, less granular, resist model so it may actually be quite the gem of a talent that nobody has noticed yet because it would've been downright medeocre in the past.

Regarding gemming, I think I'm going to fall back somewhat to my Druid's preferences in BC:
1) Crit Immune
2) Stam to middle of the road 'safe' value
3) Avoidance/Survivability (which includes expertise)

I just passed crit immune and am looking for gear swaps that will net me more stam without dumping defense (Thaddius Trinket, I'm looking at you; please drop while I'm in a raid in the next few weeks!) and I'm sitting on a T7 glove token and will probably go with the tanking gloves as soon as I can take the Defense loss from dropping the crafted pair (all depends on whether the T7 gloves are an upgrade over the dps gloves from The Occulus without the 2pc bonus, which is doubtful).

I'll be in good shape as soon as I have a set of tanking gear worth enchanting a fair amount as I'll definitely gain some solid defense rating from that.

But after that, I want to hit 30k HP without sacrificing too much else. I'll probably get a leg up on that by powering up Jewelcrafting in the next week or two if I end up having time to farm mats & whatnot. After 30k, I'll probably re-focus on avoidance but it looks like I'll need a spreadsheet to tell me how to do that, exactly.

I am not your personal Frost Deathknight knowledge base. If you have a simple question, ask in the simple questions thread; if you have a more esoteric, specific, or complicated question, ask in the spec-appropriate thread.

My PM, WoWmail, and, especially, chat boxes are NOT the appropriate places for these questions.

 

huntcaudata

Absolutely. What I saw reported at Tankspot, though, was that parry from Forceful Deflection provided by base strength is not affected by diminishing returns. Again, this will only ever matter if you have 1k dodge rating, since the difference is greater than any effect this small miscalculation could have.

 

gamer88

So is 30k this road 'safe' value approximately? In current gear I'm at 543 def, 19.55% dodge, 18.55% parry, and about 26k health. I'm also a jcer, is it looking like good practice to just gem things like the crab with our holy freaking stam gems?

 

Feorthas

For 25-mans? No idea (probably not). Seems fine for our guild 10m runs though. YMMV, etc. etc.

I am not your personal Frost Deathknight knowledge base. If you have a simple question, ask in the simple questions thread; if you have a more esoteric, specific, or complicated question, ask in the spec-appropriate thread.

My PM, WoWmail, and, especially, chat boxes are NOT the appropriate places for these questions.

 

Lanlaorn

For the next patch Frost Tanking, has anyone done a comprehensive comparison of Howling Blast vs. Obliterate for 2H tanking? Currently on live my Obliterates are superior to my Howling Blasts in average damage due to Oblit's increased crit rate. However I'm concerned that's because I'm currently wearing [Horn-Tipped Gauntlets] and [Wapach's Spaulders of Solidarity] while using a mace (I am human). So my expertise is very high and therefore even attacking from the front, most of my Obliterates will connect.

With Howling Blast losing its CD, I am considering finally swapping out the above two items for some more survivable pieces and while dropping to low-to-no expertise should cancel out the crit advantage from Oblit, the Oblit glyph change has my math showing the two tied.

Has anyone done any testing on the PTR? Odd technical issues are preventing me from getting on it myself. Likewise, searching these forums just returns a glut of DW DPS posts.

 

dravok

I'm am going to use this spec til I reach 80 for easier leveling and questing capabilities:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I would like to ask others what their thoughts are on how Blood, Frost, and Unholy tank specs will look post 3.0.8 patch.

 

Asari

In regards to HP..

To get 30k in frost presence it takes a lot. Especially if you don't have 25 man gear.

With my gear (10 man stuff) I have to use the new defense enchant on my weapon, get the new defense sigil, then gem every piece of gear I have with 24 and 41 stam gems. That'll get me around 30k HP unbuffed. But I also end up with about 60% avoidance if I spec frost.


30k HP unbuffed is a lot. At the same gear level, our warriors don't even have that much (but they're close)


Right now I have like 26-27k unbuffed and I've had no issues tanking 10 and 25 mans. (I get 31-33k buffed, depending on what classes we have)

 

gamer88

So just looking at everyone specs on this page that are actually frost I only found one of you that doesn't have frost aura or acclimation, Icecicle. Your spec is actually very interesting and I'm curious to know if not have tundra stalker is hurting you at all? I realize that the increase damage from it might not be that awesome, but it helps to build aggro essentailly correct?

 

Consider

Frost aura is relatively worthless in PvE. Bad? Certainly not. Worth spending two points considering it doesn't stack with mark of the wild, and as such you get only a few points of resist from it? Meh, not really, not if you have any decent alternative - which you should, unless you don't need icy talons and what have you, and even then.

As to Icicle's spec, no guile of the gorefiend has to hurt for both threat and mitigation. But losing tundra stalker isn't too big of a deal since he makes up the expertise in VotW. All in all though, I have to question some of his choices. Spell deflection, for instance, has been proven quite buggy. Runic power mastery is kinda worthless for tanking purposes. Endless winter is of little use in pve. His spec seems rather unknowledgable to me, and not something I would advise using as a guideline for a frost spec.

But, anyways, I don't have frost aura or acclimation, if you care to look at my spec. It's the typical frost tanking spec, assuming you go the icy talons route. Aside from that, the only thing I would possibly change are the points in subversion to morbidity, but with morbidity's current fps issues, it's kinda a no brainer. Not to mention when HB loses it's CD, aoe threat will become even less difficult.