Zerath

Until patch I recommend Unholy Tank -> http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000

That has all the AoE threat you'll need a long with pulling 3.5k-5k TPS on single target fights.

If you're looking at Frost, go a long these lines -> http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000

There's a few points that you can move around, of course. I didn't want to take Imp Icy Talons as I wasn't sure if you had an Enh or not.

DnD is invaluable as a Unholy DK. It's used almost every 15 seconds while as a Frost you'll still want to use it but you do have HB to rely on immediately, also. After patch - DnD from a Frost won't be dropped that often I think. You'll also be using Frost Strike and Rune Strike as your primary RP dumps as Frost, while Unholy is Death Coil and Unholy Blight.

 

czokalapik

@rigormortis:
Morbidity is mostly picked up for shorter D&D cooldown, and that is useful for aoe tanking, if you will be single target tank morbidity is absolutely not required, as you won't use D&D much, also if you want to tank as frost Howling Blast will be enough for aoe groups in my opinion.


Ok, and now i would be thankful for some tips about frost build. I'm unholy spec normally, but i really loved Frost (in PvP) and after 3.08 i want to try Frost tank.
And my question is about build. I think i got my basic talents that fit for me, but there are few points i'm not really sure where to put:
Version 1:
Icy Talons, Imp Icy Talons, Deathchill(?)
Version 2:
Blood of the North, Chill of the Grave/Epidemic(?)

I had problems as frost to use rune power due to Sanctuary buff (i'm raiding only 10ppl), in frost this is not a problem with Frost Strike, but i don't think Chill of The Grave will benefit me in any way cause i'm usually at 40-130 RP. About Epidemic - i don't have real problems to keep up with diseases, mostly i'm using 1-2 FS after rotation of 6 runes and after that i have to recast IT and PS, and again this gives me more chances to proc Rime with shorter diseases. But then again, will Rime increase my threat at all?
And another version with Imp Icy Talons - i don't have melee haste buff in my group, and i'm sure tanks (including me) and retri pala would benefit from it, and it will be only haste, while BotN will increase my Blood Strikes damage, and will give me a chance to use Obli more often.

So i'm stuck and can't really decide what to do, any suggestions?

 

urotas

Unholy builds are skipping 2H-weapon spec because bladed armor is better, and you can't get more than 9 points in Blood if you pick up Unholy Blight and Lichborne. I'm guessing Blood builds will likely be including both, and Frost builds should not be skipping 2H-weapon spec if you can spare the points for it, especially in favor of lesser talents like Subversion.

Assuming you have 35% crit on Obliterate and Guile of Gorefiend without Subversion where x is your average Obliterate damage:

With 0/3 subversion 0.65 * x + 0.35 * x * 2.45 = 1.5075 * x
With 1/3 subversion 0.62 * x + 0.38 * x * 2.45 = 1.551 * x
Damage increase 1.551 / 1.5075 x 100% = 2.89% per talent point of Subversion on Obliterate and Blood Strike

Now 2H-weapon spec incrreases your Obliterate and Blood strike damage by 2% per point. That leaves Subversion with an extra 0.89% damage on Obliterate and Blood Strike against 2H-weapon spec increasing your Auto-Attack, Rune Strike, Plague Strike and Frost Strike damage by 2%. Obliterate and Blood Strike would need to do over 2.2 times as much damage as the other weapon damage based abilities for Subversion to come on top. Since 2H-weapon spec increases both white damage and Runic Strike damage, it's pretty clear which one is better.

For a typical Frost build something like 12/50/7 would be a good torso next patch assuming you have someone else providing melee haste. This leaves you with 2 points to spend over other talents. Subversion isn't a bad place at all to stick those remaining 2 points, but if you only have points for it or 2H-weapon spec, you're better off skipping Subversion.

 

Alk

Shorter CD DnD is for running heroics, you won't need it on high end content, HB does a good job at doing nice AoE threat bursts and costs less than DnD. That, the nerf to DnDs fear and the fact that HB wont have a CD next patch makes for some points against taking morbidity.

 

Griefknight

I guess it is safe to say that picking up IT and IIT is a much better TPS decision then picking up KM if you don't have anyone in the raid giving that haste, but what if someone in the raid is giving 16% haste? Does that 16% haste benefit you enough to where IT and IIT aren't really necessary?

 

Septus

I thought dodged/parried runes were refunded, but missed runes were not.

 

Crax

Nope, both are refunded, but it's not instantaneous so you can end up using an unintentional rune accidentally (say a Death Rune instead of a Frost) which can seriously mess up your rotation. Additionally, since we're so GCD bound anyway (frequently), those misses can snowball and make a real mess of trying to keep a solid rotation.

 

Raedix

Remember, haste is pretty useless for a DK. Using very, very high estimates, I'll say that Melee/Rune Strikes account for about 30% of my damage while tanking (again, a high estimate), and, of course, that's with a haste effect. Say I could get an additional 20% haste, well, that would increase my DPS by 6%... which is good, and well worth it for five talent points. Of course, this is entirely optimistic, and in reality, without haste, autoattacks and Rune Strikes probably account for 20% of my DPS/TPS, and

A page or two back, though, I calculated that the new Killing Machine, by virtue of adding 100% crit procs to tanks with very low natural crit rates, will contribute about 120dps unbuffed to about 200dps raid-buffed to a DK tank. Personally, these are 7-10% improvements on DPS! While, for a DPS spec, KM is well tuned (increasing their DPS by the normal ~1% per talent point), because of how the talent works, it increases a tank's DPS/TPS by ~1.5-2% per talent point! Just like Bladed Armor, the new Killing Machine is an exceptional increase to a DK tank's TPS, and will probably be considered as essential a talent as can be for Frost tanking.

 

methods

Maybe I missed this somewhere but I'm fairly certain the bonus armor from Frost Presence does not add AP via Bladed armor. I tested it on live last night just to double check (character screen). This may be old news but I'm not sure why blizzard would excluded the increase. Thoughts?

Edit: Never mind. I didn't wait long enough for the effect to show up.

 

Darmon

These numbers can variate a lot. For me, when tanking in raids, Rune Strike alone is 30%, with at least 20% melee, which I blame on BoSanc. But even when tanking heroics, RS and melee is still a big chunk of over 40% my total DPS output.

There is at least 2 more factors that can change the numbers in any direction: having a warrior doing sunders, which give a big bost to both RS and melee, and using Sigil of Awarness which is a huge boost to OB only. Between all these, i find the IT and ITT haste quite valuable.

 

Darmon

Frost Presence does increase AP via Bladed Armor. The AP is refreshed on a pulse of 30 sec, so you might have to wait a bit to see the change.

 

Namuh

I have been a big fan of the VotTW Frost builds and this Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - Was what I was planning on for the upcoming patch.

BUT...I feel like the napkin math I've done is wrong when deciding if

VotTW + Subversion + 2hspec + Dark Conviction
is Greater than
GoG + Tundra Stalker + Epedemic + Morbidity
.
Which would be Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I understand the benefits of lower CD of D&D, longer disease ticks for smoother rotations & 10% frost from TS and GoG's crit damage boost, but the only real tanking items seem to be GoG and TS...aren't these 2 talents at least matched if not surpassed by the talents in the first build?

All of the extra threat gen from 2h, sub, and DConv...the 6% stam, str, and expertise(which I can use all of it) seem to be more useful than the utility items from the second spec.

As far as Min/Maxing can anyone with the theorycrafting math tell me if I'm just seeing this incorrectly?

Thanks

Icecicle - Human
Frost DeathKnight Tank

 

Rayven01

I haven't seen it mentioned yet (edit: in this thread, specifically the tooltip change).. the Bone Shield Glyph on the lastest build on PTR has had its tooltip updated to reflect the two additional charges that have been noticed on previous PTR builds.

 

Pyros

It's been mentionned like twice in this thread, and twice in the upcoming DK changes thread, and it's even easy to find when using the search function, and it's on WoR and mmochamp pages.

 

czokalapik

After running some numbers i agree with you, but to be honest i though that's totally not true.
With my stats (~1300-1500 weapon dmg, 3k ap, 10% crit, and lets say i'm hit/exp capped - of course i'm not) 1 point in 2h spec would be 3,5%-4% dps increase and above 4% threat increase, and 1/3 Subversion about 1%

 

Ashigore

I wonder if I might ask some advice from the experts. I knew from the minute I created my death knight that I wanted to tank with it, I really loved the idea, and have worked hard to get the gear and practice to do it properly, even though I don't have access to raid level items very often (only VoA occasionally), and I like to think I have pretty decent gear for doing heroics now, but I have a problem with, of all the things, threat. I've spent ages reading all sorts of forums about which rotations to use and such, but mostly all I read is messages like "No class has threat issues atm, if you loose agro you fail" etc etc. Of course sometimes you do heroics with people doing < 1k dps and can hold agro with auto attack, but the times I've tanked VoA especailly 25 man and there have been dps doing > 3k dps, I have never had much of a lead. Mostly omen clocks me at around 2k to 2.5k tps, which can spike to 3k when I get some crits but I cant sustain that. Surely I must be doing something wrong, but what...

My Profile
I'm 13/51/7 frost spec with 2h, Glyph of Icy Touch, Glyph of Obliterate and Glyph of Icebound Fortitude and use a IT > PS > BS > OB > BS > FS rotation over and over. Im not sure the rotation isn't to blame since I end up refreshing my diseases way before they expire, but I've not been able to figure out a better one, everything is always on cooldown and can only get a max of 2 FS in before blade barrier will drop off before its refreshed although I don't seem to always have the RP for 2 anyway, likely because I have RS macroed into my BS.

Any advice would be much appreciated since I always strive to do my best and falling short is very frustrating.

Regards,

Ash

 

czokalapik

Strange, i have worse stats than you but my threat (in almost same buid) was 3k tps minimum, and when i get some crits it was something around 4k, ofcourse i saw druid (25ppl gear) who did almost 8k tps in VoA heroic...
Maybe you should drop IBF glyph and go for plague strike or rune strike? or any other glyph that will increase your damage. Butfirst of all drop IT glyph, IT gets boosts to crit, damage and crit damage in frost, so current version of IT glyph will nerf your tps pretty bad, get PS or RS instead.

You can try dropping Epidemic, i also refreshed diseases ~5sec before they ended so i get rid of 2 points in this talent, you can use those 2 points by getting 2/2 2h spec from blood. or maybe instead subversion and epidemic use 5 points in Dark Conviction? (with dark conviction, annihilation and raid buffed all your skills will have ~17% crit chance, RS 27% when glyphed, and IT ~32% with Rime).

Another case is i got sanctuary when tanking with my group, that's why i respecced to frost (to use RP with frost strike).

 

jacclark

I'm now pushing stamina. I have 60%+ base avoidance and 7.5% in expertise. In the next patch I will probably use the PvP shoulder enchant (30 Sta plus Resilience) and the new bracer stamina enchant. At this point I *may* consider rearranging my talents and going for mitigation / lichborne in Frost. (Becoming unhittable is really nice idea but is it needed when you're sitting at ~75% avoidance with trinkets blown?)

DKs need extra stamina to absorb the extra damage they cannot mitigate. The changes to bonus armor and bone shield / IBF are not going to be made up by the buff to frost presence so like Druids, when we get hit, we're going to have to be able to eat and live through that damage. 6% stamina from VOTW (6.6% in frost presence) is nothing to sneeze at - at 2000 stamina, that's 132 stamina...

I was doing mental calculations about the chance of avoiding successive attacks at 60% avoidance, 70% avoidance and 80% avoidance. For about 2-3% avoidance I can have 100-140 stamina in trinkets / gems. A 31.5k health unbuffed tank with 60% avoidance versus 33k health unbuffed tank with 58% avoidance? Fully raid buff that 1.5k health (through stamina) can be significantly increased (to 40+k vs 37+k) whereas avoidance can be increased by 1-2% at most. I'm leaning to more stamina at this point.

I'm really curious if anyone with druid tank calculation experience can figure out that time to live TTL at this level and what's appropriate.

 

Zerath

Honestly, with your gear setup, 3k is about right. Your rotation should be IT-PS-BS-BS-OB//OB-OB-OB-->start over. FS should be woven in when you have the RP after RS. I've noticed myself at 3k on some fights recently but it's the lack of hits landing (you'll get much more +Hit with epics) - so, that's some thing else to think about.

Currently, you're fine. What's limiting you is your rotation and gear.

 

dukes

czokalapik: By swapping out the Icy Touch glyph you lose 10% damage on Icy Touch for half a Rune Strike (or 2/5th with glyph as it currently stands). I'd rather keep the Icy Touch glyph and swap out IBF for Rune Strike in order to generate more threat from those Rune Strikes. This is a non-issue if you have a protection paladin for BoSanc though, as the runic power generated per dodge/parry is equal to that used by a Rune Strike (or slightly less in the case of glyphed Rune Strike, until 3.0.8), and you should swap the Icy Touch glyph out if you're consistently running with a prot paladin.

Adding to this, the Plague Strike glyph seems practically worthless in my opinion. 20% extra damage whilst diseases are up when half the time you will be applying it with no diseases up (as you want to put Plague Strike up first for Icy Touch because of Glacier Rot).

Ash: You should be using Rune Strike more. By only macroing it in to Blood Strike, you're limiting yourself to 2 uses per 10 seconds, and I'm sure that Rune Strike is more threat per runic power than frost strike or death coil is. Basically, you should be using it whenever you can. Also, the rotation posted by Zerath is much better - Obliterate is a much more efficient use of runes (both in time and damage wise), so you're better off using that when you can.

Gear wise you could swap some things around. Look at where you could drop a bit of stamina for some expertise or hit, or swapping things round while keeping the defence cap. The parry/def gem in your leggings could be exp/def, for example, or you could replace a stamina gem with a defence gem and get expertise on bracers. Looking at side-grades that gain you things, such as the [Ground Tremor Helm] is also good, as it gets you both hit and more defence, allowing you to look at expertise or hit as a trade off for defence elsewhere. You should also reconsider what you're using your dragons eyes in, as I think you're using some in slots that you don't need to, e.g. a 41 stamina gem (stamina = blue) in the blue socket in one of your rings, which is inefficient use of the prismatic quality of the gems.

 

Dirich

From the WWS I've seen, usually it's between 35% and 40% of my dps, in fights where I'm MT and the only thing I have to handle is the boss. I spam Rune Strike everytime I'm using my runes abilities, and when I'm in the RP dump phase I'm always careful to not use a FS unless I know I can get enough RP to use both FS and the proc of RS because a rune is almost ready.
These values are under the effect of imp Icy talon for 100% of the fight.
I have a little more than 52% avoidance when buffed.
Also, my build is a litte different from the ones suggested at the beginning of this thread (even tough, the only part which matters it that I put 2/2 in 2h spec instead of 3/3 in Subversion).


Note: Just to show you that someone could have really different numbers. I may have not being perfect in my rotation, but the difference with your "very, very high estimates" seems kind of huge and, to be honest, I can screw 2-3 times per fight on average (estimation).

 

Shadai

You shouldn't be refreshing your diseases until they are close to expiring. Hold back from doing it and wait for FU runes to come up so you can OB again and again until its time to refresh.

Secondly, if your having that many problems with threat you should find three points in that build and drop em in Morbidity. By weaving DnD into your rotation every 15 seconds or so, you should find that most of your threat problems will go away. Its not effected by your low +hit and +exp I don't believe since its an area of effect. You'll get the most out of its 1.9 threat multiplier. Its the easiest way to increase your threat if your not effected by the FPS bug (and from what I've heard, most aren't... its only a specific fight or two).

Like some of the other guys said, you might want to consider regemming in a few places. Ideally your looking for 540 def, then maxing hit/expertise (8%/6%) and then stam where you can. This will happen as you get better gear. I'd have more specific things but Wow Armory seems to be down for me as I can't open your profile.

Hope that general information helps.

 

Suno

I'm salivating at this next patch. While I appreciate the (needed) improvements to unholy, particularly the bone shield charge improvement and the Necrosis buff, I see little reason to stay in the tree. Frost just has so much. The KM buff turns it into a monster talent, and thank god I have an enh shaman who has 150% attendance (I didn't think that was possible either). Clearly unholy will remain more than viable, but the dominant shift from unholy to frost seems very apparent to me.

After further consideration, I don't expect I'll stick with a VoTW build, though I'll be testing it for sure. We've lost a large portion of our burst mitigation and, for that reason, maxing GoG will be something I favor heavily. Perhaps more important is the KM buff, and it's favoritism to tanks with low crit rates. The new KM is a good reason NOT to pick up dark conviction, and then subsequently VoTW. Not to mention, the crits gained by the new KM are enhanced greatly by GoG and Tundra Stalker. I consider the new VoTW frost and the new unholy together in terms of effectiveness (absolutely viable), but with a deep frost build having considerable superiority to both.

Ashigore: keep an eye on your Blade Barrier buff, I wonder if you're assuming that BB only lasts 10s after your blood runes are used, which isn't true. Using other abilities while your blood runes are on cooldown refreshes the blade barrier buff. You mentioned that you can only get in 2xFS before Blade Barrier expires. I'd wager if you keep a close eye on that buff that you'll see it refreshing constantly. That should add some more flexibility to open the threat door a bit more. Good luck.

 

Flamingcloud

It all depends on how will of the necropolis works to be honest. If it reduces any shot that would put you < 35% by 15% than blood is going to be the by far best single target tank in the game(assuming aggro is ok). If it only does shots that bring you from > 35% to < 35% it is pretty horrible. 6% stam, will of the necropolis and the best of the three 1 minute cooldowns.

 

Tel

Is this a new change, or something I've missed? i'm 99% sure that I haven't seen this behaviour in game. Maybe it's my buff mod not updating this correctly, but can you confirm this is definately functioning as described?