Homeyslice

I've been toying with several Blood Tanking builds over the past few weeks, and I cannot grasp the importance of Rune Tap. Maybe I'm fortunate to have good healers with me while raiding, but I see almost no use for this ability, especially for 25 mans.

Maybe in 10 man naxx and heroics Rune Tap provides a bigger benefit, and it makes sense that it does, but I never find myself underhealed in most situations.

Below are a few examples of where Rune Tap could seem effective, but I find my healers to handle it well enough.

1. OTing Patchwerk, the most heal intensive fight I've experienced, I'm at full within a GCD of being knocked down. A Rune Tap for one Hateful Strike out of say 8 I might take over 30 seconds will not make or break the raid.

2. Even on Gluth, after a Decimate. Our healers charge up big heals to hit right after he Decimates (I coordinate IBF and Vampiric Blood during this time as well) and I'm full health almost instantly after a Decimate.

3. Loatheb - This might appear to be useful during the 3 second healing window, but I rarely go below 50% hp at any point, and if I do, I work IBF and Vampiric Blood. If timed right, Vampiric Blood will last for 2 healing windows, making healing a joke on that fight.

4. Maylgos - I use AMS right after each Vortex to mitigate the breath he casts after he drops the raid. Once the new patch comes out, this fight will be much easier with the mitigation from Will of the Necropolis on the big breath attack.


The list goes on.....


I personally would rather take the 4 points put into Rune Tap and use them for mitigation or threat talents, as those are our primary objectives to being a successful tank.

If a situation arises where I desperately need to heal myself I can summon a pet and sacrifice him, use a Health Stone, Health Pot...not to mention Vampiric Blood and IBF, which I do not spam or rotate, but rather use strategically depending on the fight.






Changing the subject a bit, what do you guys think of Blood Gorged? The 5 expertise on top of 6 from VOTTW seems pretty badass for more threat generation. Not to mention 10% dmg when above 75%, which is more often than not, since being evasion tanks we benefit from being full HP through most of an encounter.

Here's a build I'm looking at that incorporates Blood Gorged for the upcoming patch.

Blood Tanking Spec

Might of Mograine doesn't seem all that amayzing in my eyes. Comparing it to it's cousin Guile of Gorefiend, Mograines seems a bit lack luster.

 

Pyros

About Rune Tap, it's pretty fight specific. I usually don't need it either. However when I'm tanking Sartharion with 3drakes, I've found it EXTREMELY useful, as I often get breathed on while I'm moving from a wall, and my healers are moving too, so I'm not gonna take heals for a few seconds. It's a real instant, so it's not affected by GCD and such so it's like a potion+healthstone, but every 30secs. It's definitely not necessary, but to be honest the top blood stuff is pretty lackluster if you don't take Forceful Deflection(because of the bug with AMS) so it's not like there's anything else to take.

About Blood Gorged, depends on the rest of your build, I guess skipping some points out of might of morgraine might be a good idea, but it'd need to be calculated if it's actually more threat having 10%dmg whenever you don't get hit, or a permanent bigger crit(around 25%crit rate in tanking gear+buffs) on pretty much every attack, including Death Strike. Again, matter of tastes until people do the math.

Most of DK stuff still has yet to be perfectly modeled and theorycrafted, so a lot of talent choices are mostly personnal, depending on your raid setup, your role, the way you play and the fight. I don't believe there's an absolute best spec like you can find for DPS mostly because there's plenty of different situations when tanking so you can't have all the solutions for every specific case. That's why I respec pretty much everyday, depending on what we're doing. I have my naxx clearing spec, my 10man spec, my "our guild MT is logged in spec so I'm gonna take a few dps talent to make it faster when I'm not tanking" spec, my sartharion whelps tanking spec, my sartharion MT spec etc... In the end, most choices have to be made depending on too many external factors to decide the very best spec. That's reinforced by the fact there's 3 talent trees that can tank(or will be next patch). Hell, I have all those specs I listed, and yet they're all unholy(but sarth MTing which is blood/unholy hybrid).

 

Coriolanus

Just read a few posts about the Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight. Some people seem to be approaching it only as an item that gives a nice proc for additional avoidance, but I hopped back onto the PTR and absolutely nothing has changed. It still gives you 53 defense rating for 30 seconds, and the proc rate on icy touch is still 100% with no internal cooldown.

Looks like a solid additional 53 defense rating to gear with unless you're rolling with a glyph of scourge strike or are relying on pestilence to refresh diseases. Unless you miss with your first icy touch of course, though this would seem to give even more incentive to pull with icy touch.

From the discussion i was reading, it seemed like people assumed that with the sigil Icy Touch would only proc the bonus defense rating some of the time. This isn't true, it's 100% of the time.

Happy new year by the way

 

Yurtalpus

The problem for me is not the proc rate. Its the fact that if I'm silenced I could lose the defense. Or for example a few bad luck resists can cause a few bad luck crits and wipe the 24 people I'm responsible for keeping alive. The problem with the sigil is that it is not 100%. Give me a sigil that just gives 53 or whatever defense it is all the time and cut the crap blizzard.

This forum is about min/maxing and a proc for something as important as your defense cap (specific number of skill needed for crit immunity, but totaly not a cap of any kind for sure) is unacceptable. I use the 420 bonus sigil for threat because its always there for me.

Sorry, that became a rant.




EDIT: for people that have a problem with the term defense cap.

 

mcthane

currently Spell Deflection AND Subversion are glitched so i dont know why u have them in ur build

spell deflection ~ if up while ams is up will negate ams or amz
subversion ~ causes reduced threat in all 3 presences

 

shed

Even tho the new defense sigil has a 100% proc rate, there is a chance it won't be up. You also run into issues if you are glyphed for Scourge Strike which most are.

I guess i don't understand why the gylphs can't be itemized like a ranged slot (gun/bow/etc) for warriors where the item has a lot of passive stats and stam. Compare our ~50 defense rating sigil to this gun Armor Plated Combat Shotgun - Item - World of Warcraft

 

Calamar

That's a topic that's been blue posted on multiple occasions. The reason that they don't do just that is that there are other aspects of the package specific to the DK -- like frost presence, and talents -- that make up for (or at least, are meant to) that perceived lack. Or at least, that's the result when Blizzard reaches its intended design goal. You can't pick out a single, tiny aspect of the whole package and directly compare it to what you think is another class's equivalent, because the reality is a lot more complicated than that.

"Gordon, the planet has been conquered by malevolent aliens. Humanity is depending on you. Here's a goddamned crowbar."

 

shed

I don't care what they say or what they think they know. Blizzard has clearly shown through WoW's existance that their itemization team and some of their class devs don't know how to do things the right way. All they've done so far is kept buffing Frost Presense and adding extremely powerful Rune weapon enchants.

 

Griefknight

I am assuming the 53 def sigil is still the best for tanking, seeing as how it gives .43 dodge/parry/miss?

 

Yurtalpus

Its more like .28 dodge/parry and .40 miss, about 1% avoidance total. (don't forget diminishing returns) Compared to the nax 25 sigil which adds a lot of single target threat. As an unholy spec tank I use a rotation of scourge strike (glyphed) and blood strike on single targets. This means that I can easily go more then 30 seconds w/o an Icy Touch. The Sigil of Awareness is about 21% of my scourge strike damage, which is a large portion of my threat. For this reason I wouldn't give up my current sigil for the new defense sigil. And no, I don't plan on switching to frost after the patch... but I may.

 

Darmon

The new sigil is a choice. Noone forces you to use it, since if you were a proper tank so far, you already are def caped.

Does it make you a bad tank if you use it/don't use it? It is just a matter of personal preference. I have tanked as warrior for 3 years. Sunder Armor has 30 sec refresh time. Demo Shout has 30 sec refresh time. Tunder Clap has 30 sec refresh time. This sigil has 30 sec refresh time. For me it is a clear gain, since there is no other tank oriented option and i already know that i'll have it up 100%.

Also the game is evolving all the time. Ulduar will bring new sigils, and so far Blizard showed that they can learn their lessons. If most DK's are incapable of keeping it up it will be changed/upgraded, but it will be still a choice everyone has to make depending on their skill.

 

Griefknight

Lets say you do keep it up 100% of the time, is it "better" than other choices even then?

 

Pyros

It's pretty obvious, if the fight is threat sensitive/you're having threat troubles, no it's not. If there's no threat issues, it's the only mitigation sigil anyway, so obviously it's better than nothing. Awareness is nice if you can get it, in my guild DPS DKs have prio on it and we're not getting terribly lucky on drops(2/5 currently) so for me it's more of a choice of either using one of the new blue venture co sigil for threat(which aren't quite as good) or the def sigil. I'm definitely going def.

 

Zurai

Source? This is the first I've heard of it.

 

Feanorr

Same, and I never had threat problem when I used it in frost presence (I dont have it since I respeced unholy though)

 

Coriolanus

I get the min/max thing, and rants are fine, so let me min/max back rant back at you tl;dr style

First, I agree (and posted above) that it isn't that great of an option if you're already def capped and using glyph of scourge strike. You would be forced to waste a cooldown on IT with little to use the unholy rune for, and that could cut into threat generation quite a bit.

Second, is it possible that you might be overblowing the whole "wipe 24 other people" thing a bit? Is it possible that you will get icy touch resisted the first time? Yes (hopefully this is on pull). You still have another frost rune, after the GCD cast it again. Is it possible that it will be resisted again? It sucks, but you know it does happen. By that point the boss is probably on you, and if you don't throw DnD there could be early fight threat issues.

I want to focus on the worst case scenario for a second: pulling a boss with 54 defense rating under the cap because this is the situation you seem to be worried about. A boss with quick, heavy hitting attacks is beating on you (pick one) and you have a global cooldown or slightly less to contemplate the eternal mysteries of gearing and what exactly your raid is doing right now.

a) You lose 54 defense rating. Worst case scenario, that's .52% crit reduction, dodge, parry, and miss that you lose for that window.
b) Why did you equip the defense sigil to begin with? it gives potentially 54 defense rating to a gear slot that was previously giving zero, meaning you could adjust your gear accordingly. Did you regem or equip item that to the point where you made it all the way back down to 540 defense but with higher dodge, parry, and stam? How far down do you dip into critability do you drop without the proc? Were you already hitting diminishing returns? Or did you just equip the sigil for the extra avoidance but kept your gear otherwise? This is a totally subjective choice, but does the small window of being critted by the boss in that opening outweigh the gear increase you gained by freeing up up to 54 defense from your other items? That's the key question.
c) Of course, that could be a key question you're discussing on vent if you have especially good luck and get crit twice immediately by that hard hitting boss as you wait to be ressed or are doing a corpse run.
d) Assuming you don't get crit pwnd, what is the rest of your raid doing? Your DPS is probably getting in final position or starting to DPS (it really depends on the right). You probably have a healer, maybe three, already watching you start. You're a DK. They know that avoidance tanks will go through strings of taking no damage followed by hard hits. If that crit comes, will they be able to heal you? Considering how hard some bosses hit normally, probably not, but that goes back to the chances you will be hit?
e) Is this the time to pop VB, UA, or IBF (if you have it glyphed?). If you are unholy, BS should already be up. Those are called "oh shit!" buttons for a reason.

And then it comes down to waiting for that precious global cooldown. As a tank, you know a global cooldown can be an eternity. The first button you'll be mashing is IT, and if it gets resisted a third time (which there is a remote but still realistic possibility depending on your hit rating) then it starts to really come down to RNG (or lacktherof). Will you be crit before you can get it to proc? You'll have to wait for the rune to refresh to try again.

Finally, in mid fight if you're not using glyph of scourge strike, you'll probably have epedemic and will have about 12 seconds between the time icy touch drops off and the 30 second proc drops off. That's a lot of time to put it back up.

As others have said, you don't have to equip the sigil, and lots of gearing comes down to trade offs and issues like the ones mentioned above. In my eyes, the value of the sigil is to be able to get the most out of other parts of gear. Of course, there are alternatives out there. If threat is an issue and you need a sigil that increases your threat output, then equip that. Different fights call for different things. Sometimes WoW comes down to RNG anyhow -- how big of a risk is created when IT is resisted three times in a row at the start of a fight?

 

Feorthas

Coriolanus: Any tanking done in a raid while knowingly being below crit immune is flat out unnacceptable; all it takes is one crit at a bad time and the whole raid dies.

Personally, when I'm tanking, I view it as a matter of respect for the rest of the group; I don't want to waste their time needlessly, so I make sure that I'm as well geared as possible--and crit immune--before even volunteering to tank. As things stand right now, I have to stack up at least 2-3k more HP before I want to tank 10m Naxx but that's beside the point (regardless, I COULD fill an OT slot now if I needed to, after a respec).

---

Addendum: how many hits does a tank take in a boss fight? 5 minutes of tanking @ 2s attack speed, give or take, so 150 hits. That's one or two crits.... Which makes a dead raid these days (and in the past as well).

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.

 

Asari

I've found that since I've gotten nearly hit and expertise capped, I'm able to hold threat a lot better than I used to.

 

Shimerra

Once again, and I agree with him and was actually going to type something similar but couldn't think of a good way to phrase it, you're seriously blowing the risks of using this sigil out of proportion. Assuming you were using this trinket to stay crit immune the only time you would be crittable(a very very small chance to be crit even) is at the very start of the fight as the boss was moving into melee range. Now if the proc was on plague strike you might have a slightly better case but the devs had the foresight to put it on IT which means you can fire up the sigil before the boss even reaches you even if it gets resisted. As was pointed out there's a 12 second gap with epidemic between when diseases fall off and the proc falls off. Plenty of time to refresh it even taking into account some of the longest silences in the game I can recall timed perfectly as your diseases fall off. And specifically to address you addendum, that's two hits assuming your sigil was never up which wont be true. To be crit while using this sigil to stay crit immune you have to be one of the sloppiest DK's in the world at keeping your diseases up that I'd recommend your guild replace you(exception being unholy DK's using SS glyph) and you have to be one of the unluckiest tanks in existence to get hit and crit in that millisecond it might not be up.


Of course every tank should be crit immune before stepping into a raid and even for easy content that's a rule that stressed heavily(well, maybe not with lolnaxx), but it's far from the end of the world to use this sigil to do that. However, I will continue to use the sigil of awareness the majority of my tanking because the avoidance gains to me are too small and unneeded at this point compared to the significant threat gain the sigil of awareness provides combined with my use of the SS glyph.

Either way I think we're splitting hairs here. With the new runeforge I don't imagine this sigil being used to keep people crit immune very often or for any significant amount of time while they gear up.

 

Shadowalker

The question then becomes, are you really going to be a liability? The only time during the entire fight in which you should be below crit immune is on the pull, and only if your icy touch misses. So lets do the math:

We will assume that you have a 5% chance to miss on your icy touch, this heavily depends on hit and raid buffs, so feel free to fill in your own miss chance.

At 5% chance to miss your icy touch, you will be critable on 1 in 20 pulls. With this in mind, it's probably best that we pull from 20 yards away, giving us 1 more GCD to cast icy touch. This reduces your chance to be crittable down to (0.05*0.05=0.0025) 0.25%. On 1 in 400 pulls you will be crittable when the boss reaches you.

The sigil gives 10.78 defense skill which equates to 0.4312% crit reduction. So in the 1.5 seconds between the missed icy touch and the next one, you will have a 0.4312% chance to be crit. This means that you have a (0.0025*0.004312=0.00001078) 0.001% chance to be crit on each pull. Therefore you will be crit on 1 in 100,000 fights because of this sigil.

So if we assume that your healers can't compensate for the crit, you will be wiping 1 in 100,000 fights due to this sigil. In comparison, you will be gaining stamina, and avoidance for 1 in 1 fights by getting this sigil. It's up to personal choice in the end, but I for one will be getting this sigil and using it on every mitigation fight.

TL;DR You will wipe 1 in 100,000 fights with this sigil, and will be gaining stamina, and avoidance for 1 in 1 fights.

If I've gone wrong anywhere here, feel free to correct me.

 

Zerath

You have IBF, Lichborne, and Bone Shield/UA for that. The possibility if it being resisted 3 times in a row is quite low.

I'm quoting this because people need to make sure they read this. I don't know why all these players diseases are that they are worrying about the Sigil falling off but mine with Epidemic are on an 18s timer. If you miss IT for 12s or are silenced for 12s - some thing is wrong. And now, I may even look in to other points instead of Epidemic with patch, so, 12 seconds timer on FF.

For Unholy people that use SS glyph - that's your own decision. We understand this sigil isn't the best for you at this point.

Here's my outlook - +Def sigil all the time. That enables me to switch a piece of gear to DPS, some thing that has +exp/+hit (chest from Maexxna (H)) while still holding +150 stam and +100(?) str. Increased TPS while lowering avoidance slightly for specific fights.

FYI - I know a handful of warriors that tank under "def cap" in order to gain more rage. If you're under the "cap" - chances are, you're going to start having much more Stam at that point so it evens out.

2s attack speed - that means you didn't get healed for almost 4 seconds. At that point, it's not a tank issue and it goes to the healers. I've tanked under "def cap" - it's not what you're making it out to be. Most DKs and Warriors cleared T7 content under the cap.

This is some thing I'm going to push for after patch. Even though I'll start to see higher single target TPS with Frost anyway but, it should be interesting.

 

Shimerra

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single upgrade that could compete threat wise with the Sigil of awareness. I can't make any claims for frost since the last timed I played it was on beta but I'm very skeptical of any claims that you could get more threat wise out of using the defense sigil and one piece of DPS gear as frost.

 

Feorthas

/sigh

If it's possible to become crit immune any other way, you should go for the Sigil of Awareness when tanking. With all of the new defense options becoming available post patch, you shouldn't need the sigil except to build your very first heroic tanking set after filling a dps slot for four or five runs to get the badges. Of course, by the same token, you could just tank normals to get the HoL trinket. Another "oldie but goodie" trinket is the one from the second boss in Shadow Lab as it has a passive 32 defense or so.

Put those trinkets together with the crafted gloves, rep pants, chest, boots, head enchant, grab the tanking weapon, Gargoyle enchant, some normal blues, few quest pieces, and you're near good to go for heroics (I'd pass on my pre-heroics list but I can't get on for another few days). There's seriously no reason you need the sigil unless you're lazy or impatient and a tank cannot be lazy or impatient.

Lazy tanks were the guys who spammed heroic strike and nothing else back in the day and the impatient ones were the retards who not only tank in shitty gear but refuse to get better stuff because they deserve the kickass epics in raids just as much as the guys who killed themselves to get the guild/raid to where it is.

Yes, this is a bit of a sore spot for me (and the guys I raid with) but I'm not gonna budge here; tanks need to be crit immune, without procs, prior to a raid. Heroics are negociable though.

Edit: correction; no pvp gems with resilience.

While I'm editing, here's a bit more on where I'm coming from: if somewhere, especially somewhere respected like EJ, says "sure, tanking in a raid without being crit immune is fine if...", some smacktard is going to drop the "if..." part and cause others a ton of grief. Unfortunately, I've been on the receiving end of this way too often in the past 4-5 years or so.

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.

 

Clandestine

There are no meta gems with resilience.

 

Shimerra

Yes there's plenty of options to become crit immune and it is being made easier in the next patch, that doesn't change the fact that you vastly overestimated the negatives of using the sigil to stay crit immune if a person chooses to do so. Whether you want to budge or not is irrelevant, there's seriously no reason using the sigil to stay crit immune until you have better options isn't perfectly acceptable and the people who can't keep it up 100% better be running the SS glyph or they have no business tanking on a DK anyway. That's what it is, another option, and its a perfectly acceptable one to use if you have half a brain.