Zerath

Here's where the fun begins, sir. Will DC threat output RS threat with the buff in 3.0.8? This is why I'll be testing it in-game. DCs threat is damage while RS is dmg + threat modification.

"Extra Threat" will be built in with KM and a fast OH.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the increased miss rate, also.

Going DW, I wouldn't be glyphing OB anyways, so, my speak would be one of these two:

1.) http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=101911010405

2.) http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=101911010405

The second one I'll be trying first to see how it's going to be without Virulence. Yes, I took Merc. Combat - the last 35% is going to start getting a little more so of a threat fight with players, imo.

Glyphs may change from IBF to IT for the extra RP every 10-12 seconds due to no Epidemic. I won't be using PS at first to see how that effects my TPS, also for additional runes for HB (using Blood Tap all the time).

 

Crax

This is a gross over-simplification. Until you have 6.5% parry/dodge reduction from expertise, it is twice as good as hit for any non-spell attack. Now, for a Frost tank, you're probably right, since expertise only effects, for them, Plague Strike, Blood Strike, Obliterate and whatever white attacks aren't replaced with Rune Strikes.

However, for Unholy, and particularly for Blood, expertise is much more important due to their reliance on Scourge Strike or Heart Strike and Obliterate for a larger portion of their threat.

So, you're not exactly wrong, but these kinds of broad generalizations aren't really helpful here, at least in my humble opinion.

 

pindle

On this matter, where do people derrive the 6.5% from? Is this the believed "nice average" from last patch? Fully negating dodge afterwards only parry is negated?
I ask this because I noticed alot of attacks not landing yesterday (Loatheb being the most obvious, where 12.5% of my attacks did not land). I'm currently not exp and hit capped in tanking set, about 200 hit and 15 exp off the top of my head. I did not miss that much in fact, most of the non landed hits were parried (over 9%). I did notice similar stats on a couple of other bosses, but did not keep my mind on it all time due to trying a couple of achievements.

Did others notice this to? Boss parry rates far above the expected few percent?

 

dukes

Parry rate is ~15%, dodge rate is ~6.5%. The "soft cap" for expertise is 6.5% (after this point dodge is capped, and it will only affect parry rate).

 

Zerath

How does the roll system work, by the way? Is it: Miss -> (if hit) -> Dodge/Parry or is it one large bar broken down to 100, where 1-5 is miss, 6-25 (example) is Dodge/Parry, 26-90 is hit, 91-100 is crit?

(I understand how the roll system works on players but not entirely sure on bosses.)

 

dukes

The hit table is 1 roll rather than 2 roll, as far as I understand it. If it were 2 roll, you would never be able to reach 100% avoidance, and there would therefore be no reason for diminishing returns on avoidance statistics (and you would never have seen 100% avoidance "tanks" in TBC, such as rogues tanking gruul).

edit: Clarification: Actually, under a 2 roll system it would be possible to get 100% avoidance, you'd just have to do it without the miss statistic, effectively increasing the 100% avoidance cap by 5% (base).

 

pindle

Thanks for the reply, I was aware of those numbers but was somehow under the impression the parry rate of bosses wasn't a fixed number, are you sure it is now? Sure as in nearly always around 15%? I'm going to check my logs then cause then I'm sure I'll need more expertise first.

 

Raedix

So, somebody mentioned it earlier, and I'd love to start up some discussion on the fact... the DPS frosties are claiming that a rotation of IT|HB|HB|BS (starting with a Blood Tap to get a Death Rune) might be the best come 3.0.8 and the removal of HB's cooldown. I tested it on the dummies on the PTR and found I was getting an extra 200dps or so (unbuffed) from my current gear, and thinking of it, can see some other really nice advantages as well. Here's an example spec:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=101219010504

Here are some of the things that appeal to me about this spec:

1. Fewer Melee attacks. This rotation is both very simple, and heavily reliant on Spell damage. More spell damage means fewer opportunities to be parried... in fact, in every 10sec rotation, the only things that can be parried are the Blood Strikes (which can be removed if you Pestilence instead) and any auto-attacks that can't be converted to a Rune Strike.

2. Excellent Front-loaded threat. I take Icy Reach so that you have a full 30yards (most of the time) to slam the boss with a near-paladin-like frontload of threat. An IT and two HBs (one of them a guaranteed crit) will all but ensure nobody rips off of you on the open.

3. Less reliance on Weapon Damage. With the new 2h tanking weapons, there becomes a difficult choice between a weapon with more damage (any of the ilvl213 options), and a weapon with more utility. Well, the tanking weapons have a good amount of STR for AP, just not as high of a top-end. This build makes top-end matter less, so the decisions are simpler (more AP will usually be better). Combine this with the fact you have less worry about being parried, and the concept of a DW tank might not be so laughable (then again, it probably will still be laughable).

4. Less reliance on Expertise. Again, simpler is better. It's relatively easy to get to the Expertise softcap... very difficult to remove parries. This spec makes removing parries much less important for both threat and survivability.

5. Huge RP generation. This means more Rune Strikes and more Frost Strikes (since the main Rotation has only 4 skills, plenty of time for them as well). If you don't have a Protadin to raid with, this will make a huge difference (if you do, you can dump some of the RP talents for other ones).

6. AoE.

7. More IT = More Rime.

... And some concerns:

1. Less use for Expertise. The counter to point #4, Expertise is "better" for tanks, per item point, than +hit, even past the softcap. If you have a Mark of Norgannon, it becomes less useful... same with Inevitable Defeat... in fact, with this build, chances are one would use Death's Bite over it (if you're not using the Titansteel weapons).

2. High resist/immune/silencing bosses. Which will be a pain (although you can switch your rotation to PS|OB|OB|BS if you really need to), even more than with a more traditional tanking rotation.

So, what do others think about this? More testing and number-crunching is probably needed, but there are a lot of aspects of this spec/rotation that are really appealing.

 

Uhkt

My Raid Tank Spec


This is what i've come up with from the information in this thread. I've run it in 25 man nax and I find the threat generation is much improved, I'm now hitting 29.4k HP unbuffed and I still maintain Imp Icy Talons to buff the raid. the extra runic power and generation has been very beneficial to rune strike and frost strike spam. But i'm worried that i may be losing out with only 60% chance to make a death rune.


Suggestions?

 

Zerath

Well, what we need to figurenout is how important PS is in our rotation. Then figure out our basic BS with 2 diseases. Just assumption is HB is going to be higher.

 

Feorthas

Two blood strikes output more damage than a single obliterate so they'll be superior to a single howling blast. The difference is that an obliterate is a single GCD so you can do something else with the gcd you freed up (like frost strike a second time), outweighing the loss of a single BS.

Regarding howling blast, I don't know how many times I'm going to have to say this, especially considering that it's in my signature, is modeled properly in my dps sheet, etc, but howling blast is strictly inferior to a 2h obliterate. 300-500 damage inferior in dps gear (overall, expected). In tanking gear, it's more like 200-400 but the delta is still there and still big. Unless it's scaling is getting buffed, there is no reason to use FU pairs on HB in single target scenarios.

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.

 

Raedix

Well, all of this is pretty simple with a spreadsheet. PS, for me (with a 10sec rotation, and 10man buffs), averages 500dmg+88dps*10sec = 1380dmg. OB averages 2314 with 2 diseases, 2160 with one. HB averages 2200 with FF. BS averages 1125 with 1, 1224 with 2. IT averages 1410 + 1144(FF)... so one IT|HB|HB|BS rotation does 8079dmg, while the "naive" IT|PS|OB|BS|BS does 8696. On first glance, it seems the one-disease rotation fails for single-target.

But, it doesn't give the whole story (and is biased, since I have an ilvl213 weapon, but most of my other gear is ilvl200). While Damage-per-rune, the second one wins, Damage-per-GCD, the first one clearly wins. Plus, with only 4 skills, it leaves more room for two Frost Strikes (if the RP permits), or for Rime procs. It also has more skills that cannot be parried, and with Virulence and ImpFF or Misery, if you're melee hit-capped, you're also nearly spell hit-capped, so it doesn't really require much more hit rating.

You may be ignoring the fact that Obliterate will, at dodge softcap and hit-cap (and with Virulence/Misery) be parried around 8.5% of the time, while Howling Blast will hit every single time. You may also be ignoring the fact that Obliterate will not hit harder than HB if you only have FF up.

 

Shadowalker

A lot of the VotTW-Frost tanking builds being used of late do not include Virulence, which means they need significantly more hit than Oblit. Additionally, in tanking gear with a Demise my Oblit hit harder than Howling blast on average with only one disease.

Subversion should also be taken into consideration as there is little alternative for the 3 talent points (after the dismissal of rune tap a few pages back), and 9% crit can not be simply cast off as nothing, especially for snap aggro considering our low crit rate.

 

Crax

Obliterate also varies by a mobs Armor; with Howling Blast, armor is obviously irrelevant.

The biggest drawback I see to this rotation is the AoE. I do believe Ghostcrawler when he says that we won't *always* be able to just AoE tank everything. When that happens, and CC is important again, this rotation will require significant artistry at positioning to pull off regularly. However, I'm excited about the possibilities this raises both in gearing and speccing.

 

shed

Right now, you're not going to see tanks with a lot of hit, its really hard to reach the 8% mele hit cap in a full set of 'real' tanking gear let alone the 17% caster hit cap. So HB will miss quite a bit more than OB and it also has the risk of getting a partial resist.

To say HB will hit every single time is pretty stupid.

 

Pyros

If you're at the melee 8%hit, you only need Virulence and Misery/impFF to have full spellhit(or maybe you need 1% more I think it was based off the old 9%melee hit thingie). Remember that hit rating converts into higher spellhit than melee hit, so 8%melee hit isn't 8%spell hit. As for the hitcap it depends on the weapon you use mostly, I've been hit capped forever because I'm using Black Ice, once that stupid expertise mace drops I guess I'll be missing some hit, but I can reenchant my gloves for hit instead of expertise, and I'll only need a couple of hit gems to be at cap again. It's not that hard at all, unless you go out of your way to get the gear without hit on it.

With that said, OB should still be superior for single threat if you glyph it since there's no HB glyph, and you don't have to take virulence. Especially if you have any armor debuff on the mob, and you should have it if only for the DPS.

 

urotas

There's a few things that concern me, primarily having to use blood tap to set up the rotation. I usually use blood tap for easy activation of Unbreakable Armor/Bone Shield. If your blood tap is already on cooldown, you'd need to skip a howling blast to activate it. There are also encounters like Sapphiron, where you need to start your rotation again after a longish paush in fighting.

You might not absolutely need blood tap to start up the rotation though. You can just do IT+HB+PS+BS+BS for the first set of runes, then IT+HB+HB+BS for the second set of runes if you don't want to waste blood tap on it.

 

Raedix

Please do research before you say something another person says is stupid, or else you risk being the pot to the presumed kettle.

Are you ignoring the fact that melee hit requires more rating-per-point than spell hit? Are you ignoring the fact that a common debuff increases your spell hit chance by 3%, and a easy-to-pick-up talent by another 3%? Are you ignoring that you have [Betrayer of Humanity] as your weapon (with 0 hit rating), while a DK who wished to use this spec would clearly choose something like [Death's Bite] or [Black Ice]... Are you ignoring the fact that currently, in your gear, your HB will hit much more often than your OB due to OB's over-9% chance of getting parried?

You need ~270 hit rating to melee hit cap at level 80. With talents and debuffs, you need ~289 hit rating to spell hit cap. You're right that you'll see some partial resists out of HB... but I'd much rather a partial resist (that doesn't mess up rotations, etc) than a parry (that does mess up rotations, and results in more incoming damage). My assumption was also that by using one of the new tanking weapons, you free up a lot of itemization points, and can safely add some +hit gems to your standard gear set... you don't give up much, due to the fact that this rotation is less dependent on top-end damage, and most other 2h weapons have "wasted" itemization points (while the +DEF one is perfectly itemized for us).

 

Mandorin

New poster here.

I'm not sure if this is a valid question, but it is a question that I need an answer to.

I have noticed that a main topic in guild chat, LFM channels and the trade chat is the discussion of defense rating. I started running Heroics and capped at 540 fairly easily and quickly. At that point I was wearing all blue items. I am now in half epic, half blue gear but my defense rating has dropped substantially; it went from 543 to 518.

This forced me to add a couple of defense gems but I'm still only at 523. I do have a blue cloak I use for raids which bumps it up to 532 -- just enough to cap out with a defense elixir -- but it's still lower than it should be.

My question is simple: Why is it that the more epic gear I obtain from Heroics and Emblems, the lower my defense rating is becoming? I find myself disliking most epic pieces because it drops me below the soft crit cap. Obviously, this is a bit frustrating to deal with when so many players search for tanks with capped out defense.

I guess I am mainly asking if it is a big deal that I'm below this cap. If it is, I'm annoyed that "superior" gear is actually forcing me to use different gem combinations and search for blue items just to make up for the rating.

Sorry if this was a noobish post, but it's a question I find valid when considering how new I am to the tanking scene. Thank you for your responses.

 

Griefknight

The main things to remember are that in the next patch you will get 25 def skill from a runeforge, 10 def skill from a sigil, and that even though the "upgrades" have lower defense you gain dodge/parry/HP/threat/armor. I noticed the same goes for healing classes, my friend lost spell power while upgrades to epics but gained MP5/mana/haste/ect. The only reason I can not be crit is because I have almost pure defense gems in my sockets.

 

Zerath

Epics have more avoidance/stam/str on them thus allocating less to +defense. It's how itemization works, sadly.

Being under 540 is completely up to your RL/GL, imo. Naturally, you should be 540 min as it's not *that* difficult to get if you're already at 534 - make sure you have Helm/Shoulder/Back/Chest/Bracers enchanted with +def - those add quite a bit to the mix.

 

Livvia

Think I'm at a decision point, but wanted to bounce this off the community before I do something drastic (Ie. completely re-gem my gear) to try to identify the symptoms.

Our guild MT (warrior) could not make our Naxx25 run last night, so the other OT (prot paladin) and I split the responsibilities while our guild ret paladin respecced prot for the night. I'm currently Unholy (7/11/53), so trash pulls become a bit of an AoE mishmash between the 3 of us, but on the smaller pulls I'm noticing that I'm having a very hard time in the threat race against either of them. I know if they lead with Avenger's Shield straightaway, I'm gonna be at a severe disadvantage...but I'm trying to figure out what I can do to keep it close. Likewise, our stronger DPS (particularly the Titans Grip warr and enhance shaman) are starting to push me for threat occasionally.

Checking the WWS afterwards, I'm noticing my Miss %'s seem inordinately high (to me, anyway). For example, I tanked Anub and am seeing a 23.7% miss on my white swings, and 13.3% and 13.8 miss on Plague Strike and Scourge Strike respectively. As could be expected, Rune Strike made up the majority of my dps (and presumably threat) but at a whopping 31%.

So my suspected solution, and question for the group...I'm currently floating around 190 +hit. Would re-gemming my "available" (ie. not used to keep me at the Def cap) sockets to get me closer to the +hit cap provide a tangible increase in dps and therefore threat? I've currently been stacking as much Avoidance/Stam as possible, so crunching some fast numbers it would cost me approximately 120 Stam to gain 88 more +hit (putting me around 271). The response to the way I phrased that might come back "no $#!&", but I guess what I'm _really_ wondering are what my alternatives are to try to tighten up the threat race and increase my tps? Should I just throw up my hands and accept that I'm not gonna challenge the prot paladins for threat on the bulk of those mobs? Is it worth dumping 120 stam when you're running nearly 38k health raid buffed to become nearly +hit capped? Is it time to respec Frost? Will changes in the upcoming patch significantly impact the results I'm seeing?

And apologies in advance for the wall of text...

Edit : Just wanted to mention that doing some research to try to tweak/improve my rotation and I'm realizing I dont use ERW nearly enough to frontload a ton of threat via SS at the beginning of a boss pull. Just wanted to mention that I _havent_ been doing much of that at this point.

Edit #2 : I picked up Jawbone last night during the run. For the record, I was tanking with the heroic HoL 2h axe all night.

 

Crax

Livvia:

Taking a quick look at your armory, both your +hit and your expertise seem a bit on the low side. I assume since you are not DW, that the miss%'s you quoted are from a WWS report?

If that's the case, look a bit more closely at the repot. One of the annoying things that WWS does is combine miss/dodge/parry into a single combined "miss" category.

Since threat is definitely becoming more of an issue as DPS gears up, I've been setting some personal goals/priorities for myself, this includes, after some of the base mitigation/avoidance goals, getting to ~8% hit and at least 6.5% dodge/parry avoidance from expertise (expertise of 26+).

Raising those two stats should significantly help your threat. I know it's helped mine a great deal.

Edit: Another strong candidate for improvement is to get the 25 Emblem of Valor ring. It provides a *large* chunk of defense as well as both expertise and hit. I can't see myself taking that thing off for a *very* long time.

 

Livvia

Interesting, I didnt know that about the WWS, coming from a healer in TBC. Re-evaluating those numbers, it's saying 68% of my white swings hit, while 15.8% were parried and another 7.9% dodged. I presume the other 8.3% were flat missed? It also says 29% of my white hits were "glancing", which my untrained eye sees and thinks "lost dps/tps".

Or am I way off-base with these conclusions?

 

Davia

Dropping Lichborne to max Bladed Armor and 2H spec will net you a lot of threat.