Hello allz,


It's been a while now i'm struggling with "best tanking spec research" (Search in which EJ has been as usual a great source of data) still i feel like i need and advice and a strong challenging of different specs i think about using for next patch.

I'm in a guild with an average progression (we're 4% on Thadius with the best geared members -unflasked- in raid), my role is mainly MT2 (so Ot and Dps).
We choose a DK because we had initialy noone so i ended up with the role and we've been doing quite well.

At the beginning i was frost because i had less than 40% mitigation (before DR), althought i didn't especially liked the gameplay of Unholy i respecced as soon as the 40% cap was obtained and i got use to it and now hope to not have to get back to frost. (only 25s without any mitigation timer on a 6m fight like PW helped us a lot to kill him even though we 'd lost an OT @74%).

I recently grow concerned about threat generation althought i always had some Expertise on my stuff and never felt too much problem here i expect that with a raid getting better stuff each days this might be a problem, after all if as an Unholy Dk my Ghoul is part of the balance of dps between dk spec but does not generate threat ain't we definitely the worst builder of all spec ?
(i repeat: never had any problem yet and i don't even own SoAw but concern is here)

My goal is to be as reliable as any MT, optimizing every last point i have in a) Mitigation b) Dps/threat c) Raid utility.

Here's My unholy spec for the next patch (after all BS even "nerfed" is still a very very good mitigation skill)

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=091704040506

Yes i always take DnD glyph -i'm totally addict since beta to the fear effect- it allow me to take huge pack of trash even in Naxx25 =) and i feel like bone shield and scourge are mandatory, maybe i'm wrong ?

I was thinking of putting my floating point in CE since it debugged to see how it work now and i find NotD to be an interesting talent althought as a tank maybe less than dps ...
master of ghoul feel really useless ( as a tank) apart ghetto taunting on Gothik. and i was wondering how ravenous dead will affect players (especially now that both Ghoul Rez spells are separated).

I find gargoyle to be invaluable as an assist dps while tanking (-once threat is established) and as a dps.

In this spec i really like the fact that i spread the Ebonplague on a whole pack 6s after pulling to help dps down huge pack and the time i can stay under some sort of mitigation effect.
I pull whole rooms of trashs in Naxx dnd,it,ps,pes,bt,bb,ub,if and watch averything get blizzarded down meanwhile spamming ss/pes/bb.

for frost i thought of using

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=091315040506

I droped Epidemic because more IT equal more Rime proc (and Morbidity is really a great build talent or so i believe) althought just 1 point in it would be usefull (maybe it's better to get 4/5 bladed armor and 1 pt epidemic for smoother rotations ?), put 1 point in frost aura because i needed a filer althought it is useless (probably Deathchill would prove way more usefull ?)

Here i feel very concerned about glyphes: i choose DnD, Obli and Runestrike for obvious reasons but i also feel like Froststrike or UA might be good choices.
Althought i tend to believe UA is crappy the glyphed version seems crazy, if anyone have information on armor (above normal ) importance (or fight where it does matter a lot) please share.


Heard also of smoother frost tanking build using scent of blood to generate the missing RP you have in your rotation. any advices from someone who has tested such build in raid condition ?


Last but not least i've always looked at blood, sumethin like this:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=092015040506

If Will of the Necropolis seems clumsy (assuming it work like Rogue and not like Pala-tin) i tend to believe used in cunjunction with glyphed vampiric blood it might get very interesting (any theorycraft on this ?)

Glyphe of runestrike seemed more usefull than obli (tanking priority) but reading recent reflexion on Blood strike glyphe i wonder how pertinent this one might be (assuming frosfire debuff is always up).

I feel like a lack not having lichborne and am also seriously wondering about DRW, i've noticed 10% supplementary miss on DRW attack (compare to a DK) and i'm not sure about the threat allocation of it (if anyone has explanations on those 10% miss and threat i'd take it gladly).

Same thing about Sudden Doom not sure it need to be maxed if your not a full dps and i tend to believe a non-maxed Runetap is useless, same about blood aura even buffed to 4% (again advice here are very welcome)

Please comment, the lack of stuff on our raiders probably is cause of my absence of problem toward threat generation and i sure don't want to have aggro problem before respecing, any help on all my interrogation will be warmly welcomed =)

Wrack

ed:typos

About frost build. Drop the 2 points from Merc Combat and put them in Glacier Rot, and 1 point from Frost Aura to Deatchill. It helps a lot in aoe situation, one Deathchilled HB makes wonders for threat , and you also replace OB with HB when cd allows, each time you tank 2+ mobs.

The points in Subversion and Morbidity i consider them personal preference. I do use Subversion to boost mys single target OB threat, but i replaced Morbidity with Epidemic, mostly because DnD kills my FPS, and doubling DnD casts is something of a FPS nightmare, and so far i found no reason to use more than 1 DnD/pull as opener.

About Glyphs, i went all out on defensive. IF and UA glyphs, with RS for threat, because from checking reports after runs, RS is the main source of dmg/threat (i have it macroed on every other strikes). After patch i will drop UA glyph and go for OB rune. FS glyph is a second good candidate, still not decided because i never have enough RP to FS as much as i like.

thnks a lot for your input, your definitely right about abo might and i'm quite sure you're also good on sudden doom.
Is your annihilation/OB,OB advice is based on possessing Sigil of Awareness ?
or just Obli is totally out-threating HS ? (considering that Sigil of Hauted dream will give us about 3.5%~ crit i had a strong hesitation on this, on the beta as a blood dk haunted buff seemed perma-up..)

Gotta macro RS in a few key ve'been lazy on this (and as i didn't felt threat problem spamming it asa up became less frequent, something i expect to change at the patch -definitely)

oops i had forgotten glacier rot from my build, i'd of course take it in a frost build (now i gotta find one last point )

toward glyph i was very interested in IF one but since i couldn't find it on my server i had to go around it, and now well, it seems like broken, in comparaison of what a FS or UA glyph could bring in a frosty, Obli and RS both feel mandatory.

thanks for your advices !

Here's the macro I use:

#showtooltip Obliterate
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/use 14
/cast Blood Fury
/cast !Rune Strike
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/cast [modifier] Death Strike; Obliterate
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Macroed in my racial and trinket, turns the sound off for those abilities so it's not annoying when it's spammed, uses Rune Strike when it can, Death Strikes with any modifier held down and suppresses all ability errors.

Firstly, I understand exactly what expected value and probability are; I kinda had to in order to pass real Prob Stat when the professor was one of the Math department's Four Horsemen (of the Apocalypse, yes. Their exiting class GPAs were retardedly low but they got kept at Georgia Tech because they could do research)). Anyway, I'll stand by my claim that two blood strikes will never be as good, or as bad, as a single Oblit; why? Because they have a much higher chance to do average damage and a vastly reduced chance to BOTH crit or BOTH miss. Oblit will spike around more but does about 18% more scaling damage when glyphed, offset by about 100 less bonus damage than the double blood strike. At 1250 average weapon damage, this means your 10% holds true; however, even crappily geared me registers higher than 1350 average, so I think your numbers are a bit low for discussing raiding damage or TPS output.

Furthermore, before making claims in a vacuum, you really should do at least the symbolic math with just the weapon damage and scalars OR consult a spreadsheet. There are a few frost sheets in the spreadsheets thread, one of them is mine, and it lives on google docs (publicly viewable) so there's literally no reason to not bring backup with your claims. And yes, my sheet says two BSes is better than an oblit 'in practice' (after DR, etc etc); HOWEVER, it's running on the old assumed oblit glyph math (1.2 scalar on Weapon only rather than on the end result with + damage and diseases added in) and I'm going to figure out how to get a rawr module written rather than invest more time in a spreadsheet--partly because the relative worth numbers for the current max-damage frost rotation make me nervous... but the math checks out, so......

Finally, using two GCDs each rotation for BS is counterproductive; it steals time that could be used to do a Frost Strike or Howling blast and will literally generate too much RP to burn, which would necessitate dropping the BS to dump RP (or drop +RP talents/glyphs to boost something else... But 1 FS > 1 BS so that's a bad call). So, while you might be correct at the lowest possible level--Glyphing Oblit is only resulting in a 10% increase (2% overall) at low gear levels--you totally neglect the fact that not glyphing Obliterate is counterproductive as replacing OB with two BS is counterproductive, which was what I was trying to suggest originally, but failed at miserably. At any rate, this thread is totally the wrong place to discuss Frost DPS (although TPS results directly from DPS so maybe it is in some tangential way?) and there is a thread with plenty of dscussion on that already.

That's clarity? This presumptive "math" shows nothing. I love the uses of the word "maybe". I appreciate the argument that BSx2 > OB in a vacuum, and you're right. But you're intentionally dismissing any effort to quantify the flexibility gained by BoTN, and static, immobile tank fights where your proof is most applicable is also the most rare.

First of all, let it be clear that any time a BoSanc pally is nearby, OB>BSx2 by a long shot. It's not even close. You need every available gcd to hit FS again, even on slow-hitting bosses like dragons. If there's not one around, BoTN is less valuable, but is quite solid on any mobile encounter where you have smaller windows to get in your damage. Heigan, Grobb, Noth, GWF, or really anytime you're tanking a mobile boss that may move and/or cast I find OB to be much better. I see your 25-man DK tanking experience is limited, so I'll illustrate what others may be seeing. On fights like Grob, I kite the big guy around the room. If I pull back to move him out of a puddle, and he stops to cast Mutating Injection or to Slime Spray (or both), I can potentially miss 2 GCDS waiting on him to catch up to me. With guys like Mnevis and Bogatyr beating on the boss non-stop, you need to make the most of your smaller TPS windows and the value of OB is higher than on say, Patch.

I think it's worth noting that BSx2 has situations where it's value is close enough to OB to make BoTN less valuable, but that's certainly the exception, not the rule. Feel free to speculate about Uludar and how many Patchwerk/Brutallus fights we'll see versus dynamic, moving encounters, not to mention more options about DnD/HB casting which does mean something. No tank encounter or rotation goes flawlessly.

TLDR: It's very difficult to quantify BoTN's contribution as so many circumstances where it will vary exist. It is true that it's lackluster at worst, invaluable at best. It is absolutely true that if your 25-man raid has a prot pally in it, BoTN is a no-brainer frost tanking talent.

Has there been any math presented that compares different tanking talents by how much threat they generate? In my guild we have a DK-tank that generates alot lower threat compared to what he probably should do and I'm fairly certain that some of it comes from him using what I see as "bad" talents but I'm not sure how I can convince him that they are "bad". Talents that I would be interested in include but are not limited to:

Early blood (butchery, subversion, bladed armor, two-handed spec, scent of blood and dark conviction)
where he likes to take scent of blood and subversion but not bladed armor.

Mid unholy (mostly how good desecration is compared to impurity and necrosis) where he swears by desecration.

Let's not get into a pissing contest about academic credentials. It's silly and pointless. I reacted to your comment involving the chance that both BS would crit... which was tangential, and I thus assumed a significant lack of understanding. Given the normal state of discourse on the internet, who could blame me?

The reason I wasn't bringing numbers to back up the claims that I (relatively accurately) eyeballed, is because I am trying to argue an untenable position. Of course a glyphed, fully talented Obliterate is better than two Blood Strikes, Blizzard doesn't mess things up so much that spending 5 talent points and a Major Glyph on something doesn't make it better. I was simply making a general claim that, if you're not overfull of RP from BoSanc, the two skills are roughly equivalent. That said, I have been using the tanking spreadsheet while making these general claims.

But you're right, this isn't the place to discuss Frost DPS. The reason this all started was a simple question of whether using Death and Decay in your single-target rotation was worth it, due to the fact that it limits one's production of Death Runes, and thus, decreases your total number of Obliterates. The thing that we (seem to) all agree on is that the main thing that Death Runes buy you are extra GCDs... well, mister, if you want a way to use fewer GCDs, weaving Death and Decay into your rotation is a pretty sure-fire way to do it. If you consult the tanking spreadsheet, chances are you'll see that DD-PS-IT-BS|HB-BS-DD|PS-IT-BS-HB-BS is the top TPS rotation. If you don't see that when solo and unbuffed (and the weapon damage of Obliterate wins out over your lower AP) you'll almost always see it when you add consumables and raid buffs.

As bucknasty pointed out (albeit rudely... no, I haven't DK-MTed most of the 25man stuff since beta... yes, I have DK-MTed every 10man encounter... yes, the issues of mobility are exactly the same, especially when your DPS is geared out in ilvl213s... I guess I need to apologize for my friends joining a guild run by an only-warriors-can-tank fossil... but, back on topic...) talking about rotations as max TPS really is oversimplifying things, as most fights require a significant amount of mobility. Again, this is another argument for using DnD... if you look at the rotation above, the great fact is that many of the skills used are ranged. Even on a fight where you're constantly moving, with a bit of practice on positioning the boss and the DnD, you'll be able to get the full duration out of it.

So, if you really want the flexibility that Death Runes give, of course, go ahead and grab BotN. Just don't drop Bladed Armor or Morbidity to get it, or you're really cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I'm not sure why he would want to use Icy Touch to generate his threat and then use the Icy Touch glyph, which reduces the damage that it deals. He's being counter-productive to his own proposed tanking "rotation." As you've pointed out, if all he does it spam Icy Touch at every chance, he's probably wasting a lot of Runic Power as well. Are those 1.5k Icy touches crits? It's been a while since I was frost, but I don't remember consistently getting Icy Touches that high unless they crit, and Oblit should be critting a whole lot more often than Icy Touch for less GCDs.

I would ask him to humor you and compare his normal Icy Touch heavy rotation against a more standard Frost rotation that included regular use of Oblit and dumping Runic Power on a regular basis.

This is entirely unnecessary. All you need is the :Clear as in the original version. Hide/Show doesn't do anything except possibly costing extra CPU time for no benefit.