That was something I'd considered, actually, as I noticed I was barely (if ever) using Lichborne as an "oh $#!%" button anymore. Also seeing a few comments that Outbreak is crap, and wondering if I should switch those points into BCB.

For that matter, my rotation seems pretty heavy on IT/PS...do I really need the extra 6s from Epidemic to keep them up? Or is my rotation just crap and I'm over-casting IT/PS and thus wasting GCD's?

EDIT : One talent I consider "must-have" that it seems doesnt get a lot of love is Morbidity. Picked it up after a few failed attempts at the HoS "gauntlet" and now cant live without it. Both there and on fights like Gothikk, it's just been invaluable. Even if I respecced pure Frost, I'd still want to find 3 points for it (on top of the mandatory 5 points in Anticipation).

The problem with Morbidity is that half the DK comunity has huge FPS issues because of it. Untill that gets fixed, tanking without it is not a problem, especially after next patch, with Pestilence cooldown removed.

Lichborne - I may drop this shortly, also. I don't find myself using it thus 3 points I could go else where with. Maxing BA is first priority. BCB - we're realized the parry gibs aren't noticeable so it may be worth a shot.

What is your rotation because with Epidemic my rotation runs on 18 seconds roughly. IT-PS-BS-BS-SS//SS-SS-SS//repeat.

My rotation is similar to yours, perhaps a bit abbreviated. Especially with BoSanc on, I see my runic power peg and think "I've gotta dump some"...maybe from the TBC rogue alt, where they say "dont let your energy sit at max". It generally falls something like... IT - PS - SS - BS - BS - SS - <RP dump> // repeat. Maybe I'm not giving my SS enough attention...I think I have a tendency to want to hit whatever comes off cooldown (typically IT & PS, since I used those first), rather than sit idle waiting for the Death Rune so I can hammer more SS's.

Continued reading/research (including my first real perusal of the upcoming patch notes in their entirety) is making me think it's time to switch to deep Frost from deep Unholy. The 50% chop in effectiveness of Bone Shield makes me think deep Frost will be the hardier spec, all things considered.

EDIT : Meant to specifically re-inquire what people thought about the "regemming all my Stam for +hit" was a worthwhile endeavour or perhaps over the top.

I found turning off specular lighting in video options helps FPS a lot when DnD is used.

You can't haphazardly use your runes like that. Stick to a specific rotation and watch your TPS, see if it goes up or down from what you're doing currently.

Read the past 10+ pages - Frost > Unholy for threat and quite possibly mitigation (physical, at least.)

Your gemming looks fine to me. You could losen up on some of the doge/stam for +hit if you wanted. I'm getting ready to over haul and setup for DW Frost.

// Designated the second part of the rotation, with Epidemic you work with an 18 second rotation. So, IT-PS-BS-BS-SS is the first set of runes while SS-SS-SS is the second. // spaces the two rune sets out.

The issue with going Frost now is the issue with HB on cd. You're gimping yourself going this early due to Unholy still be "superior" at this point with dmg reduction.

I am interested in your idea, but did you took into acount that OB was getting +15% of crit with rime (and another +9% if you take Subversion)?

Even after HBs cooldown being removed, am I crazy for feeling that Unholy for some reason still feels superior on the PTR?

I've been toying around with Frost and I don't just seem to "get" it, I suppose. It seems like I'm STILL waiting for HB to come up and diseases just fall off too easily. Might have more to do with not having a better rotation and just not knowing what the fuck for Frost though.

I didn't know shoulders and bracers could be enchanted, which is my noobish fault. Thank you so much for responding, I appreciate the help a lot!

Shoulders is sons of hodir rep stuff, or aldor/scryer if you're feeling lazy and rich. Wait next patch though they're adding a relic of ulduar turn in for hodir rep, and they're making them tradeable, so you can AH your way to exalted. Getting honored is rather easy with dailies though, takes like 5days or something, and it gets you decent enchant.

The bracer enchant is a BC enchant, it's only +12def, it'll get trash by 40stam next patch, but until then it's rather ok, and it's super cheap. Only issue is finding an enchanter with it since it wasn't very good in BC so most people didn't bother farming it. Takes about 10mins to farm if you have an enchanter friend though(bop only drop if you have enchanting).


The rotation is the same basically, you just replace SS with OB pretty much, and HB if there's AEing. You can use more "advanced" strats from the frost dps thread to increase threat, like actually not plague striking and doing more icy touches but not necessary. It's actually rather easy, but it feels pretty gimpy when you're tanking trash and you're used to unholy ease of use, at least until they remove the cd on HB. HBing on a single mob that some idiot mage just blastwaved away is so annoying. But other than that, and especially on bosses, it's very similar.

I've found it to be pretty decent(tanked this reset naxx25 as frost to try it out) even though my past experiences have been bad, threat was nice, AE was decent(not UB+wandering plague good, but still seemingly better than prot war) and I liked some of the tricks, like frontloading 10+k threat before the mob even reaches you. UA is so dull though, I didn't really like it, but well it's hard to beat boneshield.

Oh and in case you're not doing it, you get epidemic as frost too. Hell you get epidemic in any tanking build, at least I do, and I won't consider tanking without it ever unless a build without it proves to be MUCH more efficient for some reason. It's just too nice.

Hm. everyone seems to be going frost nowadays. My guild lacks ebon plaguebringer, so I'd say I'm stuck unholy for a long time. Now with outbreak being nerfed and all, how do people spend their 51 points? Is magic suppression and AMZ worth getting? Or should I go 3/3 virulence and ravenous dead? Taking AMZ practically forces you to go 52 unholy, and I'm not sure whether it's worth sacrificing BA, 2 points of ravenous dead and virulence. Is there any solid data on this?

1. Are you in Frost Presence? There is no way you're waiting 5 seconds for the second set of runes to pop. IT-PS-BS-BS-OB w/ normal latency takes ~8-9 seconds. You wait ~3 seconds -> OB, wait ~2 seconds -> OB-OB. By this time your first two runes should be activating and you starts over with IT-PS-BS-BS-OB.

2. "Frontloading 10k threat" is pulling with IT and HBx2 (blood tap) with Icy Reach. By the time the mob(s) reach you - you're solid. The main issue is you weren't able to spread FF to additional mobs but you do have threat on them and could do such a thing now.

3. If you aren't going to go 2/2 Epidemic, drop it. 3 seconds is an odd with our runes on either an 8s or 10s cd (it's been mentioned several times about 8s rune cds some time.) You'll either be waiting for a rune to pop or refreshing FF entirely too soon. With 2/2 Epidemic I can make it so the diseases are just falling off when I start my rotation over.

Why would you sacrifice Bone Armor for AMZ? AMZ isn't used much - I'm specced to it since it helps with Sarth. The additional 25% on AMS is amazing. 100% magic immune for 10 seconds is beyond words for amazing.

Whoops, I meant bladed armor. :P
With outbreak no longer buffing pestilence, which probably is the only reason tanks spec in it anyway(especially with the SS glyph), I was thinking of taking corpse explosion for AE threat. So if I don't take AMZ and magic suppression, I can spec 3/3 in ravenous dead and virulence, which are pretty much the best talents I can think of in order to get 50 points for UB.

If I do take AMZ, I'd have 52 points in unholy(with one point going into either ravenous dead or virulence in order to get to tier 5), hence one point less in bladed armor.

Or.. I could just get magic suppression, skip AMZ and keep the 4 points of bladed armor, I suppose.

Which would be the better spec? I haven't really used AMZ in a pve situation so it's kinda hard to tell.

Regarding "frontloading 10k threat", you don't need a (presumed post patch) IT-HB-HB-BS//HB-HB-BS rotation to do it. Personally I don't see the point in this 'advanced' rotation for a tank at all, it's still 2x BS 4x HB but just 2x IT instead of 1x IT 1x PS. Now certainly in a DPS dual wield build that gets Impurity and stacks AP 1x IT may be >> 1x PS + 6 Blood Plague ticks and a bit of BS bonus damage. I know in my gear that it isn't though, even factoring in Rime.

To frontload 10k threat just pick up Deathchill (not like there's anything else to get in your standard frost tanking build), pull with IT + Deatchilled HB then PS and 2x BS, Oblit, continue your standard IT-PS-OB-BS-BS//OB-OB-OB rotation as usual from this point. An IT and auto-crit HB is over 10k threat for anyone.

Just out of curiousity, what talents are you including in that 52 points in unholy? If you are including Reaping, you should consider dropping it and including DnD in your single target tanking instead. I'm typically seeing ~550-650 DnD ticks raid buffed in 25-mans, so it's generating over 10.5k-12.5k damage worth of threat before considering frost presence modifiers or criticals. DnD only gets a 50% crit modifier, but even a critical Scourge Strike and Blood Strike combined won't compare to a DnD in threat, and your crit chance is likely to be very low in tanking gear anyway.

It also only takes one global cooldown to cast compared to 2 minimum for SS and BS. DnD checks resists for every damage tick, so you'll never have to recast it after a miss, parry or dodge like with many other abilities. If you are using DnD as you should, Reaping becomes nearly useless for tanking. The blood rune it uses won't be converted into a death rune, so you'll never be able to convert 2 blood strikes into a scourge strike. A build like 9/11/51 (wowhead) works well with only 51 points in unholy.

The bug you mention is not in Magic Supression but in Spell Deflection from blood. The 30% reduction from that overrights AMZ and AMS reductions.

Interesting. What kind of rotation are you using? I'm finding it rather difficult to fit a 3-rune skill into my rotation. And does blade barrier stay activated properly without death runes?

A normal rotation would be something like this:
DND, PS, IT, BS
SS, BS, DND
PS, IT, BS, SS, BS repeating every 30 seconds (every 3 sets of runes) or so.

In practice however I use a priority system. Using a strict rotation can get you into problems when you get a parry or miss streak. I prioritize keeping up diseases first, using DnD secondarily if it's off cooldown and the runes for it are available within the next few seconds, and blood striking/scourge striking third.

I haven't had significant problems refreshining Blade Barrier, and using DnD can actually help you deal with miss streaks since it dumps 3 runes at once. Your death runes still count as blood runes for Blade Barrier, so having Reaping is not a huge help for refreshing it either. You actually have less attacks that can be parried or missed delaying the use of all your other abilities.

2xthe rotation above will have:
4xDND
4xPS+IT
4xSS
8xBS
16 parriable attacks
20 missable attacks
24 global cooldowns

3xnormal PS+IT+SS+BS+BS+SSx3 with Reaping will have:
3xPS+IT
12xSS
6xBS
21 parriable attacks
24 missable attacks
24 global cooldowns

Death and Decay can be problematic on bosses with important to see aoe abilities. In Naxx I usually don't use it on Grobbulus for that reason.

C'mon man...I'm ok with you calling my rotation "haphazard" because it's admittedly a little on the loose side. But do you really think I'm stupid enough (or could even be remotely effective generating threat?) to try to tank without being in Frost Presence? If you cross-check your math against mine, you'd see they more or less match.

You say you're idling for ~3 seconds, when I asked if it seemed right to have to do nothing but auto-attack for "approx. 3.5 secs". Even then, my experience was that OB (SS) wasnt the first ability to pop...it was IT. Which stands to reason, because IT (and the subsequent Frost rune) was the first ability I used in the rotation. This is where I admittedly get antsy and my rotation gets sloppy...because the urge to mash "some button, any button" gives in and I hammer IT again. Anyway, it seems to me that in order to use that next OB, I'd have to wait another ~1.5 secs for the Unholy rune to pop that was consumed off the first PS. See where I get ~3-5 secs?

And I just now tested it on the boss dummy in Acherus...

Initial rotation (IT-PS-BS-BS-OB) : 7 secs
IT pops : 8 secs
OB pops : 10 secs
OB - OB pops : 12 secs
IT re-pops : 15 secs

So ~2-3 secs of "idle" between the first OB and the second set of OB-OB. At 15 secs, IT is up again and can be re-cast immediately upon completing OB-OB. PS is likewise castable immediately. However, now that I've started the rotation over again, BS is not immediately available after re-applying IT-PS for ~3-4 secs...it's still on cooldown from being used in OB-OB as Death Runes, presumably.

I'm not trying to nitpick your rotation, I'm just trying to find the loose spots (for me, the spots where I have to force myself to sit idle and not hammer another ability just for the sake of doing something) so that I can apply it properly.

Also, I see your point about Epidemic being all-or-nothing. Without the 18 sec duration on diseases, it becomes very difficult to make these rotations work.

No, I wasn't calling you stupid. The reason I asked is because I've tanked in Unholy many times unknowingly. It hits me when our dps is riding my tail in TPS, I check, Unholy presence, wait until mobs are dead - run behind a pillar or a corner where people don't see me, pop Frost presence, and go back to tanking like nothing ever happened. Yeah.

If you're getting "antsy" with the current rotation - you're going to be bouncing off the walls if you ever go DW Frost since there will theoretically be less cooldowns used due to HB and no PS. :p

The rotation is the tried-and-true Frost tank rotation for single target TPS. If you start weaving DnD in to your rotation you'll see yourself sitting around "idle" even more so, too. There's always going to be times where you're waiting on runes to pop. If you want to do some thing else - un-macro RS and press it manually each time it's up.

Hehe, I've mistakenly done that in heroics with Blood presence a few times. Always embarrassing. I can assure you though, that I've never pulled in Naxx in anything other than Frost, however.

Well, I'm still curious what your experience is with the latter half of my "timeline". Are you likewise seeing another idle period while you're waiting for Blood runes to pop in order to BS-BS, once you've refreshed your diseases? Just curious if that's standard?

I can see that being a "single-target" pull, but how often are we pulling single-targets? Just off the top, I'd say it's really only bosses. And for that, I'm starting to think I might be more inclined to play with the IT - Deathchill - HB - PS - BS - BS - OB // <begin single target rotation discussed previously> for an early burst on my guild's stronger or overeager dps'ers.

I'm seeing a lot of negative comments regarding the change to Outbreak in the upcoming patch. Just wondering why that talent wouldnt still retain some value to Unholy tanking? It's still buffing Plague Strike and Bloodboil after all, which as far as I knew were staples of the Unholy tank AoE rotation?