Any unholy tanks know of some kind of recount mod that records more hits than 10 or so prior to death, so i can see why i died, and not why i died as a ghoul ? Alternatively a way to spec out of the ghoul and not loose 2% stam ?

My guild finally got Sartharion +3 tonight with me tanking as 24/11/36....I thought the spec was weird enough but turned out well enough that it merited a post. It has the most tanking cds of any spec that I know of, and a TON of self healing potential.

24/11/36

As an aside, has anyone noticed AMS or AMZ not working on Sarth? Multiple times through learning the encounter I had the AMS buff up on my bar halfway through the cast, he breathed on me, I would go down to 20-40% HP and I would still have the buff on my bar...

Yet other times I would absorb 100% of it (like I'm supposed to). Similar behavior with AMZ. Anyone notice that?

As mentioned a couple times in the last page, Spell Deflection is bugged and overwrites any other anti-magic effect you have active.

A few pages back you would have noticed that a lot of people explained that AMS is up and you have spell deflection that spell deflection will take priority over AMS.

Currently bugged.. don't know if it will be fixed or not.

I read on another forum (tankspot I think) that the new parry 2her will be best in slot for 2 hand tanks. Has anyone taken the time to weigh the various tanking options for weapons against these? Dunno if I wanna blow all the money on these yet, and I currently have Black Ice.

The WoW Combat Log works perfect for this. I've had no issues re-tracing what killed me before I popped ghoul and then died in that form.

The +Def 2H will be superior. It's been stat weighed for quite awhile now and discussed for awhile. Black Ice will be better for threat while the +Def sword/axe (whatever it is) will be better for mitigation.

Umm... no. Given the fact of life which is Diminishing Returns, Black Ice will give you close to the same avoidance (maybe even more, depending on your Parry Rating and Dodge Rating) through Agi->Dodge than the parry two-hander. The +DEF two-hander will be best-in-slot avoidance (and STA), but you'll be giving up significant threat production. Currently, I too am using [Black Ice], and I will still be using it for any threat-sensitive fights, yet also craft a Titansteel Defender for fights that I anticipate having a comfortable threat lead.

I may also decide to use the Defender and re-gem for more +hit, considering the massive gain in STA and Def Rating that the Defender gives.

I seem to be having a little problem with threat in 25 man raids that do not have a protection paladin around to buff BoSanc. Last patchwerk kill as MT I was barely able to keep up 4500 TPS, while other tanks in the raid are able to do 5-6k+, sometimes even 7k.

I am frost spec'd atm, 10/51/10 with morbidity instead of subversion. My rotation is IT,PS,BS,BS,OB//OB,OB,OB. My main problem is that without BoSanc all my RP is spent on runestrikes and when my runes are off CD I am generally sitting there waiting for a few seconds doing nothing.

Is this a gear problem, in that I only have 125 hit rating and 7 expertise (including the 5 from tundra stalker), a problem in DK's needing BoSanc to TPS high or is there something do to with my spec, because I'm running out of ideas and can't really see expertise and hit making up 1-2k TPS.

I'm sure one of the veteran posters here can chime in with precise numbers, but I know that I still have the occasional problems with single target aggro and I've got more expertise and hit than you do. Dodges, parries, and misses are a substantial amount of lost threat, especially considering how much this disrupts your rune rotation. I think our specs are mostly the same, although I've got subversion instead of morbidity.

Now if the other tanks aren't hit/expertise capped (at least for dodge) either and you are still seeing that there is a large threat disparity, the problem would seem to be on your threat rotation and not on your hit/expertise.

From memory they are buffing the threat generated by frost presence to help with this issue if i remember correctly the patch notes.
(not sure since i can't find where i read that )

To answer your questions: yes, yes, and not really. I'm suspect of any DK tank that chooses [Betrayer of Humanity], just because of how important Hit and Expertise are to a DK's threat generation. We are a rotation-based class, which means that missing really, really hurts. During your first-phase rotation, GCDs are at a premium, and depending on your lag, "catching up" might be impossible. While the top-end of BoH is great, if you can't connect with it, what's the point? As any good DPSer will say, nothing is more important than being hit-capped... and since expertise does double-duty for a tank until the dodge softcap (6.5%)... that's vital as well. As a tank, we don't have the luxury of being able to stack +hit, so we should probably be looking for weapons with either +hit or +exp. I have 215 +hit and 21 expertise right now, and while I still have occasional threat issues (like inadvertently tanking Heigan in Unholy Presence :P) I had MAJOR threat issues when I was running with closer to 100 hit rating.

Second point. BoSanc is way overpowered. I've never had it in raids, and it (IMHO) is the major explanation as to why some DKs claim they have no threat issues and some claim they have big threat issues. BoSanc makes Rune Strike free, so you can do it every single time you avoid an attack. The only way I'm thinking of getting around this is stacking RP-generation... come 3.0.8, grabbing Glyph of Icy Touch, Chill of the Grave and Butchery might go a long way to ensuring more Rune Strikes, and thus, ensuring more threat. I assume you have Rune Strike macroed to your other keys?

Your spec looks fine, but remember that right now, DKs are the tanks that currently produce the lowest single-target threat... it took me a lot of practice and careful gearing to produce comparable threat to my warrior friend, but while I'm tightening my rotation, a warrior can simply faceroll his way to good TPS.

edit: To answer the other poster's question: no, they are not buffing DK Frost Presence threat modifier in 3.0.8. They are slightly buffing Rune Strike threat (used to be 2x damage, now is 1.5x damage with 1.5x threat for 2.25x threat). When this happens, maybe that Betrayer of Humanity, along with Killing Machine and the Rune Strike glyph, might produce some really good threat, even without the +hit. Try it on the PTR if you wish, but otherwise, that's just speculation.

The only threat change is that Rune Strike will be 150% damage, 150% threat from damage = 225% total threat, while now it's only 200% damage and 100% threat from damage = 200% threat. The change will make Rune Strike an even more important part of DK tanking.

Why would you take Subversion over Two-handed Weapon Specialization? 2 points in Subversion is 6% crit for Obliterate and Blood Strike. 2 points in Two-handed Weapon Specialization is 4% damage for Auto Attacks, Rune Strikes, Obliterates, Blood Strikes, Plague Strikes and even Frost Strikes.

I haven't done the Math, I just assumed Subversion would amount to more Threat. If that is not the case then you are absolutely correct that the points should be swapped.

Regards

Edit: If we put out 2 Points from Subversion to Weapon Specialization, I would put the remaining Point from Subversion to Dark Convinction, incase Subversion is really bugged. (Which remains yet to be proven)

For an easier overview: This would be the modified Build Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Unholy build

This is what I am going to take once I hit 80. I would like to remain Unholy to tank, esp. as I come from being a Paladin tank so the feel is nearly the same.

It seems to me that Necrosis is not worth the 5 points, and Corpse Explosion is very situational. Some of the points are spent in view of the reality of non-raiding/heroic time. I waffled on AMZ but it seems from parsing guilds' WWS data that any magical mitigation would be very helpful.

Desecration is nearly worthless in PvE. In the absolute best-case scenario, it's a 3.67% damage increase and a snare that doesn't work on anything that matters. In the likely-case scenario, you'll be barely Plague Striking at all (counting on glyphed Scourge Strike spam to produce threat and refresh diseases most of the time), in which case it's a total waste of 5 points. Take those 5 points out, and put them into Bladed Armor. Also, Outbreak is pretty useless as well, and those 3 points would be better put into Imp. Icy Touch.

Other than that, it looks fine... although EJ isn't really the place for a "here's my spec" discussion, but I'm beginning to accept that the readership of these forums has gone downhill since WotLK was released. Not that talking about specs and the like is a problem, but people keep posting the same specs, with no real substantiative commentary about specific changes they've made, whether through testing or running numbers.

I rolled my DK with an eye towards tanking if the guild ever needed it, which at the time there was no way I was ever going to tank in a raid.

Well things changed and the planning I put into it as I got closer to 80 paid off with being crit proof without having to go to a dual wield set.

my armory

In the end I sit around 23k health, 542 def and 37% avoidance (split very evenly between dodge and parry). What it left me with was with 4 gem sockets to work with. That's assuming I keep both of the JC trinkets on. [Figurine - Emerald Boar] and [Figurine - Monarch Crab]

Im using the vanilla frost tanking talent tree as a starting point, my avoidance is no where near enough to try anything exotic.

The blue sockets are pretty much +stam gem bound but I was trying to figure out if I should be looking for +dodge or or +parry for the other sockets. I have a vague feeling that 1:1 parry is a better choice but in a crowd with mob's behind me that dodge is better, I try to avoid the latter since that means I didn't plan something right.

Players can't dodge from behind.

Even so, Parry Rating is nearly useless for a DK tank. We get so much "free" parry rating through Forceful Deflection, that we're pushing the limits of the Diminishing Returns curve from the get-go. The parry curve is more aggressive than the Dodge curve, so you will get even worse and worse returns from each additional bit of parry you add to your gear. Unless you stole some gear from the GMs and have 2000 dodge rating, dodge is always better than parry.

Now, this doesn't mean to ignore parry rating if an item is an upgrade in other ways... but if you have a choice, it's Dodge.

I'm not sure what it is im doing wrong, but I'm finding I have a hard time picking up enough instant aggro while aoe tanking all the adds for sarth+2, +3. My rotation is : DnD, IT, PS, Pest, BB, HB, BB, BB, HB. I drop DnD right before the whelps appear so it is ticking as they spawn. I also lose threat on them to the healers while i pull them to where they will get aoe'd down. I also seem to be unable to generate enough threat on all the lava spawns to pull them along with the whelps.

my spec is http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=111213050406

my armory is The World of Warcraft Armory
In case it isn't updating correctly, im at 194 hit and 23 expertise, in mostly 25 man drops.

I have talked to my raid leader, and he says that so-and-so with so-and-so guild says he never has a problem so i better do it. I'm not sure what I need to change. I tried unholy tanking, That helped some, but I wasnt able to produce nearly as much single-target threat as I did frost spec, which hurt a lot for fights like patch or thaddius. Unholy also felt akward, like I was always waiting for runes to come back up. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

This is so wrong on many levels. First thing you want to do is try to read up about tanking stats in general, ratings in particular. Dodge is vastly superior to parry, due to less diminishing returns and much better rating>skill conversion. And you can't dodge from behind, only mobs can, all player avoidance is frontal only(but miss from defense/lichborne obviously).

As posted earlier, 2 points in Two-handed Weapon Specialization is 4% damage for Auto Attacks, Rune Strikes, Obliterates, Blood Strikes, Plague Strikes and even Frost Strikes.

Each point of subversion is 3% crit to Obliterate. Subversion is at the very top of the tree compared to 2H spec being down one tier, but that is irrelevant since the consensus seems to be that Bladed Armor is better than both talents put together.

Deep Blood or Frost specced tanks get an additional 45% damage bonus to Obliterate Crits, whereas Deep Unholy will be using Scourge Strike instead of Obliterate.

So the question is, does the +9% crit chance for the 245% damage crit obliterates(melee crits are 2x correct? im an armchair powergamer these days, so I'm pretty hazy on specifics) outweigh 4% damage for Auto, RS, Ob, BS/HS, PS, and FS, + an additional talent point to spend elsewhere. Maybe someone who isn't mostly allergic to math can provide some hard calculations that proves it one way or another, but my gut tells me that Frost and Blood will want 3/3 Subversion, and Unholy doesn't want either talent and would rather have 3/5 Dark Conviction, although most unholy tank specs I've seen are 53+ deep in the tree, which means you don't have the points to go past Bladed Armor anyway.

As you start to upgrade your gear with epics, you will find yourself replacing a lot of your gems for +def gems. Right now, I would use those extra sockets for stam, being that that gem is very much on the cheap side and will most likely get replaced (at least 1 of them) with your next gear upgrade.