I have to wonder what weapons and gear some of you guys really have.. My OB hits harder than my HB in every situation.

As far as the IT only situation goes, I still find myself doing more damage and higher DPS using two diseases.



As far as blood boil vs pestilence... If you aren't getting any new mobs, you only need to pestilence when diseases are about to fall. If they're up, you blood boil. Pure and simple. High damage, high threat.

No... IT > Pest -> HB -> HB -> RP Dump requires you blood tap before you pull so that you have 1 death rune, 1 blood rune, and 2 frost/unholy runes.

Because there's a death rune at the start, if you maintain the cycle you'll always have one death rune and one blood run up.

If you always have a blood rune up, you will be hurting yourself in avoidence because Blade Barrier will never be up. THat doesnt seem like a very favorable situation, to me 10% parry is a big deal.

The rotation I plan on using is :
IT-Pest-BB-HB (with Deathchill macro'd to it)- HB(if Rime procs)-FS->BB-BB-HB-HB-FS-> repeat

If I start out with DnD:
DnD-IT-Pest-HB (will have a Deathrune up because of Bloodtapi think) then begin my normal rotation with the next set of runes.

One thing I would like to see is a HB glyph that increases its threat or changing the BB glyph from slowing to increased threat or damage.

You are misunderstanding what he is saying. The rotation follows that each time runes activate, you use all 6 (1 death, 1 blood, 2 unholy, 2 frost), proccing Blade Barrier. Each time you use that set of 6 runes, the death rune re-activates as a Blood rune, and the Blood rune re-activates as a Death rune (so, as you go through rotations, the blood runes go B->D->B->D->B->etc. The only problem with this rotation is that you're reliant on Icy Touch always hitting, or else the Death rune will re-activate as a Blood rune after the normal GCD/short rune CD (~1.5 seconds). Consequently, having both Virulence and a decent amount of hit (plus, in an ideal situation, Misery or IFF) would help the rotation work. Even if you do miss occaisionally, Blood Tap should be up most of the times to sort that out (the only problem is if you get two icy touch resists on consecutive rotations).

Your rotation will only work if you have Epidemic, or another DK keeping FF active (as far as I know, HB gets the damage bonus when there's any FF on, not just your own, but that could be wrong).

I've noticed something interesting. I have been recently been playing around with the tankcraft spreadsheet. Its telling me some interesting things that I wonder if you guy have come across as the same problem.

First My Spec is pretty much a cookie cutter frost build with a few quirks (like HC that I might drop in favor of something else). Morbidity for that 15 sec DnD which luckily I don't seem to be affected by the FPS bug.

Second, I'm linked to my armory build if you want to see my gear. I'm currently hit capped for melee with >8%

According to the spreadsheet, it says my optimal rotation for TPS should be PS>IT>BS>BS>OB

and when I plug in the (only) rotation with DnD it says I produce as much 500 Lower TPS then the optimal.

This confuses me as even on single target pulls I feel like i have more control with DnD down every 15 seconds or so then just a straight rotation.

Is the spreadsheet just wrong or should I trust what I'm seeing in game?

I did noticed that the DnD rotation in the spreadsheet is using a wonky rotation that seems to be more applicable for aoe tanking, perhaps that is the reason why. But there was no option to compare a single target tanking with DnD weaved in there every so often like DnD>PS>IT>BS>OB>OB>BS>OB etc...

Anyone else come across something like this?

So I looked at your spreadsheet, and while most of the fundamental math IS right, you are dealing with a lot of assumptions here. First, you're assuming a fully sundered mob, but not assuming any spell debuffs (ImpFF/Misery, CoE/Ebon). You're not taking into account the differences in scaling of melee and spell hit rating, you're not taking into account the fact that OB is going to be parried 8% of the time (it's a DPS spreadsheet... why would you... hence, why I use the DKTankCraft tanking spreadsheet, which, admittedly, needs to be updated a bit).

Now, you're right about OB scaling better, and probably right about OB being therefore strictly better at DPS-level AP-coefficients. But we're, as you so clearly put it, in the TANKING thread. Our AP is lower, and the differences between the two skills are smaller. Maybe tanks in Ulduar gear will have enough AP and a good enough weapon to make OB the clear winner... and maybe Blizzard will throw some more armor onto Ulduar mobs to compensate. All speculation.

You say not bothering to pick up talents for Obliterate is 'retarded'. Well, again, as you put it, this is the TANKING thread, so talents that boost DPS/TPS are at a premium. Something that is a no-brainer for a DPS might be hard to take as a tank (such as, say, Killing Machine, where dropping Annihilation really frees up points for it, if the math works out that KM is better since it works with Rune Strike and with the buffed Rune Strike glyph).

So yes, good work with that spreadsheet. It's pretty good. But let me respond thus: I'm a Financial Quant for a living. My job is to model various aspects of financial markets. Sometimes, the model says one thing, but the results say another. You can not stick your head in the sand and refuse to amend your methodology at that point. In my current testing, mainly on the PTR test dummy, it seems that HB wins out. On live, I have never, ever seen my Oblit hit harder than my HB... any possible OB superiority just comes down to hit/dodge/parry/crit rates. When the patch hits, I can take both specs to a raid and test them in a more "real" environment.

Theres a lot of talk in this thread about the Blood Tap -> IT Pest HB HB, IT Pest HB HB rotation.
However I'm curious if this actually works in practice.
The idea is that the IT and Pest will trade off using blood or death runes however in the opening you'll have UUFFBD and your initial Icy Touch is going to use a F, not the D. In fact by nature the D rune wont be used until the last thing, which will be a Howling Blast using U and D, meaning the new blood rune will be the last rune to activate in the next rotation and clearly doesn't allow for IT Pest HB HB.
That being said, HB HB IT Pest works fine, and does precisely the same thing in the long run _except_ the first two howling blasts are weaker, and they just so happen to be the howling blasts that matter the most. Perhaps this isn't relevant and its really just semantics but I just wanted to put it out there (unless somehow I grossly misunderstand rune mechanics but yeah).

/facepalm

I totally forgot about front vs behind (the armor DR thing is something I'm fixing too; adding a flag); at least I got the harder math stuff right :p.

Fortunately, it doesn't seem to matter--Obliterate still edges out Howling Blast (if it has all of it's talents, but no glyph) at spell hitcap, no expertise, 45% Phys DR, 7% crit, 2000 AP, miss chance from front, etc. For what it's worth, not getting most of the talents that buff Oblit is at least semi-retarded as they get you further into the tree to the deeper tanking talents AND boost threat output. Sure, ignoring some might be fine, but the vast majority will get picked up either way *shrug*.

The big one I see a lot of tanks skipping is Subversion. I'd *love* to have that 9% crit for Oblit/BS in my current Frost build, but I just can't get there while still experimenting with Acclimation. Of course, if I *drop* Acclimation, that'll be where the points go (almost certainly).

Yeah, if I had Accoimation, I'd probably skip Subversion too but I won't need a balls-to-the-wall MT build anytime soon (gear is sub par for anything past heroics... But just barely).

My offtank builds tend to have it (subversion) though and manage only 2-300 less dps than my pure dps builds (10-15% less so not bad for 10-15 lost talent points).

I dunno, that rotation just makes me a little nervous...maybe because I like to save my Blood Tap as an "oh $#!%" button or for once I'm established and comfortable in my rotation and want to squeeze something in. It's the same kinda "nervous" that is making me shy away from the new +defense proc sigil...yeah it's 100% in theory, but what if something goes wrong (ie. a missed IT?) Now I'm scrambling, Blood Tap is on CD, and my always-overzealous DPSers are nipping at my botched rotation's heels. ERW? Sure...but now you're down two "oh $#!%" buttons just to try to generate a "normal" amount of threat. It just feels kinda risky and RNG dependent, not to mention gearing for +hit capping is really only viable at pretty high gear levels and might require some uncomfortable talent point allocation decisions to finagle Virulence into your build (ie. maybe it's just me, but even with the FPS issues I just cant live without Morbidity...it just makes undead Gothikk, herding zombie chows, or rounding up Noth adds a breeze).

TLR, I see where you're coming from, I guess I'm just not sold that this is a "game changer".

I believe that Toughness is multiplicative with Frost Presence, so I'm not sure that's a good idea. Besides, what else would you use the points on? The only situation I could possibly see you wanting to skip those points is if you want to put zero points into the Frost tree.

I guess this could make it easier to get Dark Conviction, and/or a fully talented Rune Tap, in an Unholy build, but since a Blood tanking build is likely to want Annihilation, I can't see any other circumstance under which you'd even consider this.

Ah, the goal was to work in VotTW into an unholy build. Here was the build i was looking at:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

For that, I would think you'd want to look at the Sarth+3 build that's been discussed quite a bit in the last few pages.

Remember that as an Unholy tank, you lose quite a bit of mitigation in the next patch if you *don't* fully take advantage of the increased armor of Frost Presence. Dropping Toughness in addition to the nerf to Bone Shield would seem to be a double whammy on the mitigation front.

Can you do the numbers for 93 hit rating (2.84% melee, 3.55% spell) and 40 expertise skill (10%)? That's what i have in my best in slot tanking gear (gemmed for stam mostly). I'm pretty sure obliterate edges out even more. Its highly unlikely that we will be hit capped in tanking gear (and generally gemmed for stam and/or avoidance) until end Ulduar or maybe even only after that.

You're kidding, right? I'm nearly hit capped and "dodge" capped now and I'm nowhere near fully i213 geared. When 3.0.8 drops and I can regem/enchant a bit, I'll be capped for both, needing a better "food" choice (Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak, anyone?) to do so, at worst.

And this really isn't the place to ask someone else to do basic math for you. That's what the spreadsheets are for.

I have worked a spec from the idea of combining unholy tanking with blood and mixed in a frost for a frost based spec with blood for VotTW i also moved some points around for better RP gains in combat i found just frost speced RP was all being used on RS and nothing left to Frost Strike or Death Coil Here It is.

Thoughts?

You don't have Bladed Armor. You took Frost Aura. Two issues there. In addition your BS and Pest won't enable you to add in another OB (since you specced Subversion) every other rotation or even an extra HB with Rime or it just came off cd.

Here's a HUGE question - why are people giving up SOLID skills for VotTW? Are you *really* needing that extra 6% stam? It seems to me there's too much filler to get there. Spell Deflection? Bugged. Butchery? 20RP per minute adds up in the long run, I'll give people that one.

I guess, I don't see the positive side for giving up an extra 6 seconds of 50% mitigation every minute on top of more TPS. Adding on to I've had no issues tanking (once we figured out a solid healing rotation) 3dSarth without VotTW.

Well initial thoughts, it seems almost like this is the build you use if want to solo tank low lvl mobs which cast a lot of different spells.

Frost Aura, Butchery, Vendetta should all be swapped out.

I honestly hadn't tried to break it down beyond the overall raid stats. To give you a bit more insight that may or may not be relevant to the discussion:

On Sartharion, I was tanking Sarth; we left zero drakes up. I used HB whenever there were adds nearby or Rime procced.

On Patchwerk, as you can probably tell, I was a Hateful Strike tank. Since our Bear tank has more health, she ended up eating most, so I was effectively OT2 for that fight. I believe I only used HB after a Rime proc.

On Grobbulus I was tanking the adds, so I probably used OB without diseases up fairly often (bad habit of me, I know).

One other relevant note: our Warrior tank had just quit the guild that night and I'm 99% sure our DPS warriors didn't use Sunder on trash. Obviously, not having Sunder up skews things towards HB significantly. But I used HB on trash much more often anyway.

I'm a bit at a loss to explain what you noted in my WWS log, aside from the Sunders. Also, I do *not* currently have Obliterate glyphed.

Edit: Actually, sunders may explain the Grob/Sarth damage as well. With the Warriors moving away from Sarth for waves / to kill adds, it's likely that Sunder dropped a few times (possibly many). I was largely targeting slimes on Grob, they wouldn't have had Sunders either. So I guess my WWS is pretty much entirely irrelevant: I was using HB primarily when Sunders weren't up, and OB when they were. Ebon Plaguebringer was up on pretty much everything thanks to the Unholy DK, which benefits HB. So there really isn't a fight in there where conditions were optimal for both to compare. Interesting.

To be perfectly honest, overall really means nothing in the long run, at least for myself, I want to know what works well on the boss since trash works with pretty much anything.. if you are single tanking something or multi targeting something.. I don't know.

However, you only used the ability on rime procs but, it still did more damage on average than your obliterate however, since you did not use it as often as obliterate on those fights it doesn't matter in the long run because the results would be skewed. You thought obliterate did more damage so you used that more than howling blast which is why the averages between the two will be different. You struck more with one than the other so the averages did not even out (at least in my opinion).

Armor reduction has nothing to do with how much damage howling blast does (if memory serves) it is a spell so it would take from a bit from your attack power but, it does on your obliterates so I can see why you would do that however, I'm agreeing with the Raedix on the HB vs OB. It does very much seem that way right now.



*Note*- On Patchwerk and Sarth you used Howling blast 2 times which is roughly 12 seconds for the given cooldown on howling blast right now that's why I pointed it out.. out of your fights there was well, actually, 6 seconds between the two if you did use it in a row however it really doesn't matter since you told me you used it on a rime proc.

Hi there,

This is my first post so please be kind

I've been OT/MT in Naxx25 with a 23/5/43 spec for 2 weeks now.

I really like it and threat never been an issue.
(My guild's DPS aren't as big as those shown on some WWS tho...)

I just wondered if there was any good tool to estimate TPS or do I have to look at what Omen says?

Anyway, thank you for this great thread.

~