Not sure why you're unable to get instant aggro. One thing that has helped me with Frost AoE tanking in the past is to ignore Plague Strike, so I can get that HB off in 2 GCDs instead of 3. On a similar note, I cannot imagine how any mob that's been sitting in a DnD for 5 seconds, and has been hit with a Howling Blast could possibly get healing aggro, especially as part of a pack. Healers just don't cause that much threat (remember, heals are cut in half and threat is spread between all aggroed mobs). It should be easier next patch when you can spam HB...

Additionally, while I'm pretty sure the elementals are immune to it, the whelps are not immune to hungering cold, or at least they weren't the one time I did Sarth with the whelp drake up, which was 2-3 weeks ago. While they wont stay trapped long, that still buys you at least a second or two of time to wait for runes to refresh, drop an optimally placed DnD, or just go straight into HB since they all have frost fever now.

Lava Spawns aren't terribly life-threatening to a healer unless they are enraged, or there are alot on them. I can't really comment on how long/how many elementals you have to tank during 2 and 3 drake sarth, but as long as you have a rogue with anasthetic offhand for a fan of knives after the lava waves go, it doesn't matter if one or two elementals is loose from time to time, as long as you get on them quickly.

Even on zero drake or 1 drake with whelp sarth, when a lot less is going on, you can't really be expected to have aggro on every single add. As long as you have most of them, and make sure that a healer isn't getting interrupted or the tank doesn't have one on him, you'll do fine. I assume you don't have morbidity for this fight due to the framerate bug. If you drop DnD before the whelps spawn, that means you are missing out on one or more ticks of DnD aggro, so I would instead pestilence your diseases from an elemental that you are tanking onto the whelps, blast, and then DnD.

Perhaps someone with more experience than me can comment or even correct me, as I've never had to deal with more than just the whelp drake, but quickly grabbing multiple adds is something that tends to have similarities regardless of the encounter.

I was having the same issue with adds on Sarth +3. We ended up switching me to sarth tank and having the warrior pick up the adds. Oddly the warrior actually has more tools to use. Intercept, Thunderclap and shockwave. Not to mention a ranged weapon.

Also the Dk has more tools to deal with the magic damage from Sarth. I actually ended up being easier to heal on Sarth and the warrior did an exceptional job picking up adds. So you may want to suggest that.

In terms of Glyphs our minor glyphs are dam right awful.

Somethings wrong if healers are getting aggro from whelps when they've been sitting in DnD for a few seconds, it just seems rather odd considering it's never happened to me. If you're still having problems we found one of the best solutions is to have a holy paladin with righteous fury follow our drake tank around (standing roughly around the melee). They typically get aggro on anything that spawns first and knowing who the adds are going to make it rather simple to place DnD and locate the adds. Other then that I don't really know what to tell you.

For three drake Sartharion (both 10/25, though we haven't completed the 10 man version yet) we've found DK to be pretty amazing for any of the three tanking roles present through the encounter. However, we have always found that a DK is most valuable tanking Sartharion as it severely lessens the chances of a insta gib happening (rotating CD's from priests/paladins can get hectic in the heat of the fight and it isn't a 100% guarantee that Twilight Torment will be removed everytime).

I have been going through a few things lately and trying to work out whether as a Frost DK it's Worth having some points in Acclimation. At this stage I do not have any points in it however for encounters like Sartharion, Malygos, Sapphiron etc it would make tanking and healing much easier as their is a higher probability of resisting the incoming magic damage from the bosses.

The only issue I have is where to take the points out of. I have been thinking about dropping Bladed Armor down to 2 points allowing me to put 3 points in Acclimation but this will significantly drop my Attack Power. At the moment without Frost Presence I am getting around 435 extra Attack Power with Frost Presence 735ish extra attack power. It that much attack power actually worth it threat wise?

The other thing I have noticed is that in terms of threat I can significantly out TPS our main Warrior Tank but I have massive issues keeping threat up with our Paladins. We have two Paladin Tanks in guild and I consistently see them pushing 10 - 12K threat whilst I am at best pushing maximum of around 9.5k - 10.5K threat I just find it strange that Paladins can push so much TPS our Warrior MT can only push around 7K TPS obviously it's enough to keep above the DPS but I am curious how many ppl have noticed the TPS that Paladins are putting out.

There was some talk about paladins being able to use both rank 1 and rank 2 of their shield slam ability in the same threat rotation. If that is still not fixed, I believe that would account for the threat disparity, if not, I can't imagine what is causing that much of a difference.

9.5k tps, huh? Where exactly are you getting this number?

It's what Omen is showing my TPS as. If I am in a Rune Starved Situation etc or have some issues not getting enough Rune Strikes in it can drop down to about 6.5K but honestly I have never had any issues with threat.

Also for those that do not do it using Icy Touch with Icy Reach and Howling Blast on an pull can give you a huge threat Boost even over other tanks. You can usually Icy Touch Twice and Howling Blast at least once on a pull which generates a significant amount of Threat around 12K base before the NPC even gets in range it's pretty hard for even the best DPS to catch up after that.

Your numbers seem way over what everything I've seen to be honest, I usually do 5-7k TPS depending on BoSanctuary or not, and protadins usually do 7k ish, on single target, sustained. With that said, paladins get more threat because shield of the righteousness has 2 ranks with different CDs, getting fixed in 3.0.8.

As for sarth add tanking, I've found DK to be the best class for it pretty much, if morbidity wasn't bugged. With morbidity dropping my FPS to 0 though, protadins are superior, but it's still over other classes imo. Deathgrip+darkcommand+IT+DC are all good ways to get anything that pops on you pretty much, and pestilence/UB will keep everything sticked to you easily. DnD on the whelps portal before they spawn and it's easy.

Just wondering what the downsides of are a build like this 24/5/42.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Picking up VoTTW and giving up end tree unholy talents + imp icy touch. I do mainly 5/10mans and seem to bounce around in health a lot when cooldowns not up so trying to get a bit larger health pool for healers to play with. This is main reason going down VoTTW path, gear should make up the health pool as I get it.

- 10% dps from Rivendare
- Unholy Blight which don't use much anyway
- Ebon Plaguebringer, have been raiding with another Unholy DK so overlap has been annoying me anyway, usually lock in raid for similar benefit.

+ 6% str dps (and associated parry)
+ 1 expertise (6 for VoTTW vs 5 from Rivendare)
+ 6% stam (main reason went down this path)
+ Runetap, semi improved (can see use in 10mans where run with 2 healers only usually)
+ Mark of Blood for another self heal/help

On Pale Horse/Gargoyle (when dpsing since usually OT) not sure how much use, but don't really like other options of basically virulence or 3% str. Maybe wrong here.

Howling Blast is just as good if not better I have found in most situation that DnD. Firstly it does not effect your FPS or the raids FPS due to the constant DnD spamming and in many situation I have seen that DnD can make it harder for the newer people to see the Zones spawning under their feet specially if they are AoEing in the area.

IT + Pestilence + Howling Blast has worked best for me in Naxx 25 and I was just a Portal Tank last time we did sartharion and picking up the odd whelp or elemental and pulling it to the Paladin Tank we had on that job.

We will be able to chain Pestilence next patch also to ensure that Frost Fever is being spread to the new adds which will make it much easier to contain them with Howling Blast.

Well the downsides are pretty obvious, AE threat(unholy blight) and imp icy touch(6%melee attack speed reduction). Other than that though, it's a decent build. I use a template like this for sartharion tanking, I don't take mark of blood and that one point of wandering plague, and max imp IT and drop one from toughness instead. Also I end up taking AMZ for obvious reason, but the build is pretty solid. You should drop 1%crit for fully talented runetap though, at least I would.

I dislike it for everyday tanking though, unholy blight makes stuff much easier, this build is too focused on single target tanking which is annoying to me.


FPS is only an issue on sarth add tanking though, and I wouldn't use current HB for that due to cooldown limitations on both pestilence and HB. Next patch though, yeah it will be awesome. As for zones and DnD, most of your raid should turn their graphics to low on sarth to see the zones better. DnD doesn't appear at all with low spell effects setting, so it's a non issue.


Don't know that still seems pretty high, but yeah I only get tricks and MD on pull, then I'm on my own, so might be the difference. At 6k only a few classes can actually pull aggro from me though, so I don't really see why there would be a difference between 9.5k and 12k, since no DPS can generate even close to that in threat per second. I've found warriors to be very fine for threat too, in fact they're usually more steady than me on fights with slow hitting breath casting dragons, because RS doesn't pop up that often in those situations. On fast hitting mobs however, I outthreat warriors easily(patchwerk is the most obvious, I usually have to try to stay under the MT on threat, so I take gargoyle in my naxx tanking build and skip every other runestrike). Threat is only an issue in some particular situations for me though, and I mostly blame it on unholy being a bit weak on single threat.

So tonight on the PTR I was playing around with frost tanking (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) and this whole idea of replacing OB with HB... what I discovered was fairly disheartening...

HB misses. A lot. This creates serious issues when trying to cycle through skills and dump RP before it's time to refresh diseases again. The resulting DPS from using HB over OB was about 100 less - which translates into less threat (on single target)

The build I'm using has 3 points left over in it, these might be put into virulence to increase the hit percent, which stacked with raid buffs might cap it... or they could be put into subversion for high oblit crit and reduced agro when DPSing (I actually DPS on about half the boss fights in current raids due to only needing 1 tank and my DPS is greater than the warrior or paladin as "prot")

Of I was thinking about putting the three spare points into Nerves of Cold Steel to see how DW tanking went - of course with such a high miss rate on HB, I'm not sure how realistic this is. (I'm at 7.35% hit and HB missed 15% of the time on the Nemesis Dummy in ebon keep.)

I use this atm and have MTed a lot of 25nax and all of 10naxx. At first I was Unholy Blight and sometimes miss the aoe madness, but I find the HP I get now is great.

My aoe suffered slightly, but I'm still years ahead of the other tanks (wars/druids)

I have a question about the non-stacking ebon plague, does not getting ebon plague let you have crypt fever on the target? I find my threat gets cut significantly when there's an unholy dps in the raid (almost always). As I understand it since ebon plague doesn't stack my scourge strikes are only hitting as if there are 2 diseases instead of 3 right?

Right now this seems like an untouchable spec for a MT. I've been using it since great success and I'm always called on to MT new kills because you can give your healers so much room with the different cooldowns and self healing, not to mention the massive HP pool.

What I'm wondering is if it will still be as hot after the patch. I guess with the increased overall mitigation, still being able to have 20% reduced dmg for most aoe's and the uptime on slow hitting bosses just seems pretty nice still. At 20% I don't know if you can still use it as an 'oh-shit' button, but maybe front-load it for an 'oh-shit' situation.

Frost looks attractive to a certain point. The problem is the congestion of points at the top of the tree. I can't seem to break away from the veteran hp/expertise though.

I was actually starting to play with a spec like this frost spec. The idea is that most non-frost specs won't have the -3% chance for melee to miss. Would that make up for the lost points in anticipation in order to fill out the blood and frost trees properly? Is it safe to say that -3% chance for melee to miss = 3% dodge?

I just encountered some odd behavior when combining DRW and Lichborne. For each DC I cast to heal myself the DRW casts two additional healing DCs, effecting triple the healing rather than just double. Has this happened to anyone else? I'm using the Glyph of Death's Embrace, which might be related.

I dont understand why people keep touting the next patch when "we'll be able to spam Pestilence and/or Howling Blast..."

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but wont those two abilities retain the same rune costs as they do now? So all it means is I'll get 2 bites at the apple (2 Blood for 2xPestilence, 2 FU for 2xHowling Blast) at which point we'll be idly auto-attacking for anywhere from 5-7 seconds? 2 x each ability followed by a >5 second cooldown is hardly what I consider "spammable".

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the dynamic of the patch change, but it doesnt sound like as amazing a change as some seem to be making it out. About the only real benefit I see to it is if you catch a Rime proc immediately after throwing out a normal HB, you can immediately hammer another one. Am I on the right track, or is my logic completely flawed?

While this is true in general, it may not be true for Blood tanks (+60% Pestilence damage from talent).

Also, the damage from Pestilence isn't really the point: it's spreading the diseases without having a cooldown to do so. When you combine this with the fact that Pestilence refreshes disease duration on all mobs *except* the original target, you get some very interesting rotation possibilities.

For example:

Initial Rotation: IT PS Pest HB BB *or* IT Pest HB HB (with Blood Tap) then

Rotation 2: HB Pest HB Pest (tab target between Pest)

Repeat rotation 2 until the AoE pack is dead ... or drag to the next pack and continue. This allows us to deal with "constant stream of adds" situations much better than we have in the past - possibly better than anyone else.

Honestly, I'm *so* looking forward to how much better I'll be as a tank after this patch that I'm starting to fear some nerfs coming in reprisal.

Yes, Virulence should be taken if you plan on using HB a lot. Yes, raid buffs help a lot. No, you shouldn't be getting a 15% miss rate. At a given hit rating, unless you have Expertise stacked to an absurd degree, HB will hit more often than OB. The reason OB theoretically does more damage in a two-disease rotation is due to talents that boost OB's crit chance, and the glyph that boosts damage.

The point of switching to HB is that in a one-disease rotation, HB hits harder, and (IT | HB | HB | BS) is both easier to maintain, uses fewer GCDs (more room for the inevitable attack misses and RP dumps), and does higher DPS than a two-disease frost rotation. Is it possible (even reasonable) that weapon damage will outscale AP, making OB hit harder than HB in the future? Sure. But for now, at least according to the spreadsheet I'm looking at and what I've observed in-game, HB wins out.

Blood Boil's damage is really not impressive as far as I'm concerned. Without Outbreak, it deals similar damage than my DnD ticks. So if you're going to deal pitiful damage anyway, why not refresh diseases in the process ?

Corrections:

-Oblliterate does more damage in a single disease situation as well.
-At 4750 AP, the highest amount of AP I've seen on my character sheet, OB does more damage than HB when both are hitcapped. Same is true at my base of 3300 AP.
-IT/HB/HB/BS uses the same number of GCDs as IT/OB/OB/BS but generates way less RP. WAY less.
-Howling Blast cannot outscale OB because OB gets 23.6% AP scaling whereas HB gets 10% (1/14*3.3 = 23.57%). Hell, OB even outscales with 1Hs (1/14 * 2.2). One catch: I haven't multiplied out ALL of each skill's multipliers but HB scaling just might catch up and surpass OB after EVERYTHING is multiplied in but probably not by a meaningful amount.

So how is HB superior again? Oh wait, it isn't unless there are multiple mobs or if you don't bother to get any talents for it (which is retarded as it's superior without the glyph), at which point DnD should be up prior to HB anyway (since this is the TANKING thread).

And feel free to check my math yourself. My spreadsheet can be found in the dps spreadsheets thread and the expected damage values for every ability are on the backend page. I'm totally revamping it right now to reorganize it and cut down on the insanity (and add some addl flexibility) but the fundamental math IS right.

See, that's my point. IT > Pest > HB > HB > RP dump isnt a viable rotation, because it requires 3 Frost runes. You're talking a ~5.5 second delay between HB#1 and HB#2 before you even hit your RP dump. Plus, you're not tripping Blade Barrier by activating both your Blood runes.

All the changes do is take us from a cooldown-limited situation to a rune-limited situation. While I understand your rotation was probably off the cuff, it still doesnt change the fact that most people trumpeting these changes dont seem to be taking into account the rune limits we're still going to have that will make abilities impossible to "spam".

If nothing else, when HB is hit capped it hits 100% of the time, when OB is hit capped, even if also expertise(dodge) capped, its going to be parried what, ~8.5% of the time? Presumably a DPS spreadsheet ignores parries since you're DPSing from the back but this isn't the case tanking.