I see a lot of people talking about how strong frost will be, but does anyone else find the flexibility of Bone Shield as a 5 min buff with 2 more charges as a strong enough tool to stay unholy post 3.0.8? I am the OT for 10 and 25 man everything, and I find that being able to bone shield while buffing before a boss and then doing another one during the fight as the ability's biggest draw.

anyone think the nerf to the dmg reduction outweighs the flexibility of the spell in general?

It's not a 5 minute buff. It has the ability to last 5 minutes. In which it will not if you are tanking anything at current endgame. At 5 charges it's lasting 20-45 seconds for me depending on Lichborne and amazing RNG, another tick would make that look like 25seconds - 50 seconds one would think. But, at the same time - with some one like enraged 3dSarth (increased atk spd), he tears through 5 charges so very quickly.

Our issue isn't mitigation only for all the Frost talk. It's threat. Unholy is going to be capping very soon at a near 4-5k TPS. Frost has the ability to go higher due to no Ghoul and Garg build in to that tree.

Could anyone inform me as to whether hit rating or expertise rating is more "important" for a tank. I'm currently dealing with threat issues due to attacks not hitting. I was looking over some recounts of Naxxramas and a few heroics. I'm being parried and dodged more then attacks missing. I was going to socket for expertise/stamina or hit/stamina in the next patch but I don't know how much expertise I want or if I should get my expertise from my gear.

I was also curious as to if using [Titansteel Destroyer] over [Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver] would be a better choice. I'm an orc so I would lose 5 expertise and .73% dodge but gain 1.65% hit and get the extra strength/stamina.

I'm currently at 12 expertise and 4.18% hit.

So with the new KM change... are we considering frost builds that don't take Icy Talons and Improved Talons generally better since we're relying on PPM?

e.g. builds along these lines:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Hit is more important, if only for the fact hit affects our spells(including taunt) and expertise only affect our melee attacks not counting runestrikes. For a DK, I guess it'd need complicated math, but I'm unsure if expertise is actually better than pure strength(for AP) for threat. It might depend on your rotations and how important landing melee attacks is though, but as frost you'd only need frost fever really, so expertise would be probably worth less than str for threat.

Obviously, this is all to soft caps(melee hit and dodge expertise cap), I doubt the stats retain a lot of their value after those soft caps. But cap hit before working on expertise that's for sure.

How do you think I should spend me sockets in 3.0.8? I'll be able to free up a lot and now I'm stuck deciding as to what I need to socket. I have two [Accurate Monarch Topaz] and five [Twilight Opal] that I was going to use to socket my gear.

I suppose you're also saying that the [Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver] would be a better choice over the [Titansteel Destroyer]?

No. You have to weigh the stats for each weapon. Is 5 expertise and .75% dodge worth more than 54 hit, 11 stam, and 34 str? In my opinion, no. The Titansteel would be better overall. Now if you were talking bout the Inevitable Defeat vs the Titansteel, imo the Inevitable Defeat would win because it would be overall more of an upgrade aross the board.

The way PPM works is that the chance to proc on any given hit is calculated with BASE weapon speed. So if a 1.5 sec weapon had a N% chance to proc on any given hit, a 3.0 sec weapon would have 2N%.

That proc chance is based on BASE weapon speed.

Haste, and specials, means you will get more procs per minute than the base rate. If anything, the PPM change makes haste even better for both 2H and DW builds that use slow weapons.

A similar situation arose before LK when they let druids use weapon enchant procs. Somewhat counter-intuitively, mongoose was excellent for bears (a 3.6 second base swing timer, but with specials just about every CD, and many specials hitting multiple targets means mongoose is up a LOT) but not very good at all for cats (1.0 sec swing timer meant 35 agi was actually better for cats, due to low uptime on the buff). It's also another reason why rogues with slow MH weapons saw a ton of mongoose uptime.

I'm being long and pedantic here because I've been seeing a lot of misconceptions about PPM mechanics.

The way I said pretty much, cap hit, then cap expertise. Soft caps(8%hit, 6.5% expertise, or well 26expertise). Hit is better than expertise especially in your example. Inevitable defeat is better than titansteel mostly because you can make up for the lost hit, and inevitable has higher dps so better threat, but generaly hit > expertise.

I like having one person say that hit is better then another saying expertise is better. I suppose I will just see for myself.

hey everyone I was wondering as a new tank what rotation do I use going heavy frost x/5x/x


I'll be doing mostly 5/10 man heroics and very little if any 25 mans unless time allows me to.

Some people start out with BT while other start out with DnD...I know to use DnD when pulling 2 or more mobs but Im just lost at the rotation to keep threat high on me and off everyone else.

both single and aoe general rotations would be awesome...

Also after the first 2 sequences do you just start all over?

Are we sure that the base speed is still (on the PTR) being used to calculate PPM? Do we have numerical evidence that shows over aggregated runs, the % chance a skill activates is the same regardless of haste via talent or otherwise?

Because if that's true, then yeah... haste is a lot more useful to have now - especially with a 3.6 speed 2 hander or DWing a 2.6 speed mainhand.

Expertise is much better than hit until 24-26 expertise (6-6.5% reduction) because it reduces both dodge AND parry. The rating you need for 4 expertise (1% reduction) is the same as the rating needed for 1% hit chance, but it actually gets you 2% reduction until you eliminate dodges. After that hit becomes better until 8% hit, then it depends on your spec. Frost is going to want hit rating more, while unholy and blood will likely either value them equally or favor expertise slightly.

Yeah ok my bad forgot that expertise actually double dip, so yeah it would actually be better than hit most of the time. I was counting under the assumption that 1%hit was equal to 1% expertise, and then the hit would affect more attacks than just expertise, but yeah since it reduces both parry and dodge it's better until dodge soft cap. Not like I had a lot of room for gemming, and I can't be bothered regemming stuff until next patch anyway when I'll probably have to regem everything. Getting to hit cap without gemming for it isn't too hard however, plenty of hit on various good tanking pieces, expertise is harder.

I've been toying around on the ptr with a dual wield tanking build that looks like This.

I was wondering if anyone else had been thinking of going dual wield with the patch or is everyone still sticking with a 2hander?

I read in this thread that most people like obliterate for single mob threat, but I choose to use HB instead since I wanted to spend those 3 points in 1 hand spec.
Anyone have any suggestions or any experience with this type of build and/or 1 hand tanking?

EDIT: posted this in the wrong thread but since I can't delete it I'm going to leave it here, still might get a good reply

I was wondering what you all will be doing in the next patch with the new sigil and runeforge. I'm having a hard time deciding what would be best. I was thinking of keeping my [Seal of the Pantheon] on because it gives a whopping 13 defense and that is basically half the runeforge used up and I only gain 111stamina if I ditch it. I think getting rid of extra enchants and gems for more then just stamina may be worth it. I could also get rid of the seal once I get better gear as well. I basically don't know what I'll be doing and I'm looking for some advice.

The sad thing is that you are half-right yourself Proc Mechanics.
PPM chance on white melee swings is calculated based on current hasted weapon speed. Abilities (everything yellow actually, old WF e.g.) has a PPM chance calculated on BASE weapon speed. So haste does not benefit PPM in any way (unless you have WF-like procs). PPM benefits from slow base weapon speed, number of abilities you perform and any WF-like procs.
So 5ppm proc; 30 specials (I dont know how much you actually do) per minute; MH only:
3.4 weapon - 5 procs from white hits; 28.(3)% chance to proc on every ability, this will generate 30 * 0.28(3) ~= 8.5 procs; 13.5 procs on average with a 3.4 weapon
1.5 weapon - 5 procs from white hits; 12.5% chance to prec on every ability, it will generate 30 * 0.125 = 3.75 procs; 8.75 procs on average with a 1.5 weapon
2.5 weapon - 5 procs from white hits; 20.8(3)% per ability, this will give us 6.25 procs; 11.25 procs on average with a 2.5 weapon
So analysing this, one may notice that DW vs 2H PPM is actually somewhat balanced already (if you dont have any WF-like procs); with calculated weapon speeds 2H will yield 13.5 procs and DW (with 2.5MH) will give 16.25 procs (11.25 from MH + 5 from OH).
Now, you've got BCB, if able to proc KM will favor DW alot and will scale KM with haste. So one thing they can do to balance KM around DW vs 2H is to make BCB unable to proc KM.

Well I definatelly going to get rid of that trinket, replacing it with [Valor Medal of the First War], and going for new runeforge enchant with tanking sigil.

As I tried it out on PTR, I am able to replace some gems for pure stamina, and also my bracer enchant for stamina, getting like the same amount of avoidance with a lot more HP.

Of course I will bow to the opinion of the experts here since I all I know I got it from this thread...so thx for that

Right, but since it lasts 5 minutes and it has a 1 min CD you can use it back to back to start any boss fight, or any other time you can pop it a minute before you engage anything. I am asking if people are taking this into account in their assessment of Bone Shield's value.

This definitely speaks to the heart of my question though- i've been tanking everything as Unholy and I am finding my threat is sliding towards insufficient as my guild's DPS is skyrocketing.

Personally, I plan on using the new tanking sigil just for extra defense. To me, it is just too risky to take the change of IT falling off and getting critted. I can think of several times when tanking large aoe pulls where i did not have it up due to not having the runes to refresh it. I currently have the sigil of awareness (yes, feel free to hate me) and the only time I ever use OB is for single target tanking, I will still use the sigil of awareness for single target tanking though.

I will also be going to the new defense runeforge. I am not sure if I will be using it for added avoidence or if I will replace a defense gem or 2 for added threat. The 4% parry, as nice as it is, suffers from too harsh of a DR and as i upgrade the last few pieces of my gear I will be able to make up for most of it.

On large AE pulls mobs are 82 since it's trash so you don't need the def rating to be crit immune. With that said, I'll be counting it in my build, and will just make sure it doesn't drop randomly. This is especially easy in frost builds. Most people consider it from the unholy perspective, where you spend most of your runes scourge striking stuff which refreshes diseases, but with a frost rotation you pretty much IT every rotation(not 20secs rotation, but basic 10secs rotation).