Reading this thread, it seems like people are starting to use DnD less and less, although this may only be the case for frost tanks with howling blast available for AoE threat.
I play as an unholy tank, and I find myself casting DnD as soon as the cooldown finishes, even in single target boss fights. In fact, after getting some advice from the forums I even ditched reaping, as I was pretty much ending up with 1 death rune after DnD which would be spent on blood strike anyway.
DnD is pretty much our only skill that provides extra threat(+rune strike post 3.08), but on the other hand it does cause me to let 1 or 2 runes sit there waiting for the others to pop up. Would I be gimping my threat by doing this? Would it be better to use a more dps-style rotation with reaping, using SS whenever possible and dropping DnD only at the start of the encounter, if at all? (assuming single target)
I honestly do not use DnD at all when single target tanking. I understand that many people think it is better to use for threat but imo it completely trashes any solid rotation I have found, which counters the addition threat built. If by using DnD I have to sit and wait for runes to refresh to even attempt a decent rotation I just assume not to use it at all on single targets.
I can understand the concern about a rotation, but I thought from a threat-per-rune situation, it was the best? If you're worried about using runes efficiently, wouldn't it be a good idea to start the pull with DnD and diseases to get solid initial threat(I am thinking of this more from an unholy perspective, not sure how to handle HB here) and then continue standard single target dps abilities?
Hi, I am new to tanking, and although I try to read this topic every day, you guys seem to post faster then I can read seeing number of pages increase in geometric progression.
Anyways, I got few questions.
Are there any "mandatory" talents for a 5ppl (10ppl) content? Dk is my alt so I wont be seeing 25ppl soon.
For instance I find death grip very useful to pull caster/ranged mob in DnD so lowering its cooldown seems pretty nice to me.
What are threat multipliers for frost presence/DnD/Rune strike (next patch) and how do they stack. i.e I mean threat difference between DnD and DnD in frost presence. And is dancing runeblade threat counted as yours?
Another math question, what will provide better mitigation in epic/blue ilvl200 gear after patch - bone shield or unbreakable armor?
Lastly, there seem to be very few "tanking talents" in depth of talent trees. The ones I consider best are in blood, so is it worth going blood in 3.08? Tree that resolves around self-healing seems suspicious to me
p.s. I beg your pardon if any of these question were in this topic before (and I'm pretty sure they were ) and also for any mistakes you find - I'm not native speaker after all =(
I can understand the concern about a rotation, but I thought from a threat-per-rune situation, it was the best? If you're worried about using runes efficiently, wouldn't it be a good idea to start the pull with DnD and diseases to get solid initial threat(I am thinking of this more from an unholy perspective, not sure how to handle HB here) and then continue standard single target dps abilities?
It's just personal preference for me not to use DnD on single targets. I have tried both DnD rotations and the standard Unholy rotations and I really can't find a noticable difference when both rotations are followed properly, which provokes me to use a more fluid rotation over a clunky one. I have even noticed in 25 man raids that the standard rotation, without DnD, generates more threat for me than a DnD rotation on single targets. This of course could be situational but the results for myself, may not be for everyone, tend to make me believe that DnD does not generate more threat than a standard rotation if followed correctly due to rune usage.
Keep in mind there is evidence against what I have mentioned (by some people) and that this is solely personal experience and can be misleading to some players.
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
I was looking at the same thing, though you can squeese in GoG if you if you drop 2 points from Anticipation. I'm reluctant to do so, because 2% Avoidance is well... 2% Avoidance. But when you start pushing 70% Avoid self buffed with Blade Barrier/Horn, effective health seems to become more important, even though at those numbers 2% Avoid reduces your average damage taken by a larger amount.
You'll be getting healed in a raid (often if you need it or not). An easier time surviving the hits would be nice.
The only concern I would have with the VotTW Frost build you linked is from a TPS perspective. Hopefully someone smarter than me can post on it to your satisfaction
I was looking at the same thing, though you can squeese in GoG if you if you drop 2 points from Anticipation. I'm reluctant to do so, because 2% Avoidance is well... 2% Avoidance. But when you start pushing 70% Avoid self buffed with Blade Barrier/Horn, effective health seems to become more important, even though at those numbers 2% Avoid reduces your average damage taken by a larger amount.
You'll be getting healed in a raid (often if you need it or not). An easier time surviving the hits would be nice.
The only concern I would have with the VotTW Frost build you linked is from a TPS perspective. Hopefully someone smarter than me can post on it to your satisfaction
Disclaimer: I am a Stamina Whore. I *love* having more Stamina, and even derive a perverse pleasure from "out healthing" the other tanks in my guild. It's a flaw, I know. Because of that, I've always been intrigued by Blood, and particularly VotTW.
I'm currently using a VotTW Frost build, and I've opted for full GoG and 3/5 Anticipation, since I've been having more issues with threat than survival. I've been thrilled with the results. My threat has been noticeably higher, to the point that our other tanks are commenting on it. You can see the exact spec in my armory (linked on the left). In 3.0.8, I'll go ahead and drop a point from my favorite convenience talent (Icy Reach) to push KM to 5/5 as well.
I'm also planning on trying a more "full Blood" spec. I doubt I'll go back to "full Frost" spec, but we'll see.
Lastly, there seem to be very few "tanking talents" in depth of talent trees. The ones I consider best are in blood, so is it worth going blood in 3.08? Tree that resolves around self-healing seems suspicious to me
Well Blood is currently non-competitive for tanking due to it's lack of relative mitigation/avoidance skills in favor of offering addition healing. However there is no balance as you need to survive to be able to be healed up - this is what especially the Vampiric Blood change will hopefully accomplish but exact details are tough to produce simply due to the style being different.
None of the other two specs take additional healing, instead they take less damage. As this changes how the healers have to handle your tanking the tanking styles are oddly different for being "just" different specs of the same class.
But since you asked about must have talents, you will want the specific mitigation/tanking talent of each tree (Vampiric Blood / Unbreakable Armor / Bone Shield), and for 5man/10man I'd consider the Aura a must-have as the chance of someone else bringing it and it being wasted points is fairly low.
SQUEAK.
-- (The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)
But since you asked about must have talents, you will want the specific mitigation/tanking talent of each tree (Vampiric Blood / Unbreakable Armor / Bone Shield), and for 5man/10man I'd consider the Aura a must-have as the chance of someone else bringing it and it being wasted points is fairly low.
Although the chance of someone else having Frost Aura is pretty low, the chance of no one having Imp GoTW is even more low, which means you're likely spending 2pts for a total of 6 resist.
Tastes like Awesome, because it's made of Awesome(TM)
Yesterday Ghostcrawler posted the following regarding a bug in DK threat.
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
We are looking into this issue and found one bug that we are hotfixing.
I will attempt to explain:
Most auras go away when you die, but some don't. Frost Presence and Defensive Stance have some effects that go away and some that do not (this is the bug). It ends up that a DK who dies loses some of the threat bonus from Frost Presence, but doesn't get it back when he comes back to life because the game thinks Frost Presence is still active and doesn't attempt to reapply the buff. If you change presence from Frost to something else and back, then all the buffs get reapplied correctly, but most tanks probably aren't doing that.
So it's entirely possible that if you die and come back without changing presences that you have just gimped your threat generation. You aren't losing all your bonus threat generation. You are basically losing the amount that we gave all tanks to compensate for pulling Blessing of Salvation out of the game.
If all of that confuses you, the take home message is we fixed a bug where your threat would be low after dying. Again, by the time you read this, the bug should have been hotfixed.
It is likely this bug was also affecting warriors in Defensive Stance and the hotfix will catch that too. It was not affecting paladins or druids because their spells work differently.
We don't know if this is the entire issue with DK (and possibly warrior) threat being low, but it should help, especially if you ever die while raiding. Some of the guilds who are seeing this problem have very high dps, which implies they have experienced the content a lot and might not be dying that much.
Effectively all DK tanks were losing ~30% threat if they didn't arbitrarily swap presences after death. This certainly explains my experiences with threat while tanking and DPSing with DK tanks (early on in an instance everything's glued to me/the tank, but later on it often gets inexplicably more difficult).
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
Reading this thread, it seems like people are starting to use DnD less and less, although this may only be the case for frost tanks with howling blast available for AoE threat.
I am a frost tank that has 3/3 Morbidity. Frankly, setting up Howling Blast is just too slow at the start of pulls as a mob could easily outrange the Pest/HB area (heal agro, dps starting early). This simple fact does not change at all with the patch either, while spam-able HB will be nice, at the start of pulls I use IT-DnD-PS-Pest, and this allows a significant amount of threat to roll on the adds. Howling Blast will be great for when those runes come back up. Given how easy the current DnD glyph makes knocking down trash of any kind, I'd be surprised if more people weren't using it (glyph being change to +20% damage at patch, it was nice while it lasted).
As far as this thread goes, I can understand that alot of specs listed here don't include morbidity, as it really doesn't grant any benefit when MTing that big bad boss. There are a couple "trash clearing" talents that are very good at speeding up clear times of instances, but are pretty much useless on boss fights. While I have 3/3 Morbidity, I also have Hungering Cold, and I have found that I will often pull faster than the 15 second cooldown on DnD "allows" (HC + HB is good snap agro on a pull).
As far as this thread goes, I can understand that alot of specs listed here don't include morbidity, as it really doesn't grant any benefit when MTing that big bad boss.
The other reason is that Morbidity is bugged on live (and on the PTR?) for some people, and causes huge framerate drops or disconnects when using D&D with anything other than 0/3. I would love to spec 3/3 since I run OT as often as MT, but I simply can't.
The other reason is that Morbidity is bugged on live (and on the PTR?) for some people, and causes huge framerate drops or disconnects when using D&D with anything other than 0/3.
The bug isn't in Morbidity. It's in video card drivers.
The bug isn't in Morbidity. It's in video card drivers.
That's what they said yeah, but I don't see how having 0/3 morbidity means no FPS issues, and putting points into morbidity suddenly makes you lag like hell when you DnD too many mobs, with the exact same config. That's the issue really, people having issues with morbidity only have issues when they take the talent, it seems weird talent specs would be affected by drivers, unless obviously the 1/3 to 3/3 DnD uses a different spell id, which bugs with various gfx drivers. And then, it'd be interesting to know why they need a different spell id for the same spell.
The bug isn't in Morbidity. It's in video card drivers.
False, unless, for some reason my graphics cards can't accept a 1/3, 2/3, or 3/3 Morbidity yet can accept a 0/3 Morbidity while pulling 20+ mobs without lagging. If that some how gets pinned on video card drivers, I would love to know how and why.
Death and Decay:
This isn't a "I think" statement - I have used a rotation weaving in DnD on SINGLE TARGET encounters for several weeks now and have posted numbers. DnD adds roughly 500-1k TPS to my rotation, I have yet to tank anything of value with Death's Bite (outside of 10man's and 25man 3dSarth), but, that weapon alone increased my TPS by ~300, also.
Normal rotation TPS runs borderline 3.5k-4k. While DnD Woven Rotation nets me 4.5k-5k frequently. I have spiked above 5k quite a few times but that was a lucky crit streak.
There is no frame drop with 1 target if you take Morbidity.
There is no frame drop with 1 target if you take Morbidity.
Until some idiot runs whelps into your DnD ^^. But yeah, Morbidity is ok if you're sarth tanking, and I take it even for naxx builds and stuff because it makes trash easier even if I freeze for half the fights. It's especially good for gothik tanking, I did it once with my sarth tank spec(votw/unholy, so no UB and no morbidity) and it was awful at best. But it is definitely broken on another level than just drivers stuff. The annoying thing however is when you report this officially, random DKs come in and chime on how their DX2 66 can't handle DnD or Desecration or Pestilence even though it's totally unrelated. It's hard to get people who actually understand the exact issue and it seems even harder to have someone from blizzard try to look into it. 3.0.8 solves most issues by nerfing DnD a lot and buffing HB and pestilence anyway, so it won't be as important than it is now even for heavy AE encounters.
3.0.8 solves most issues by nerfing DnD a lot and buffing HB and pestilence anyway, so it won't be as important than it is now even for heavy AE encounters.
How is DnD being nerfed aside from the glyph change? The glyph was simply overpowered, especially if one had multiple DKs dropping glyphed DnDs in PvE or PvP. I don't really see the changes to HB & Pestilence changing how I would use DnD, unless DnD has had it's damage/threat reduced (the new glyph actually makes it more threatening).
Until some idiot runs whelps into your DnD ^^. But yeah, Morbidity is ok if you're sarth tanking, and I take it even for naxx builds and stuff because it makes trash easier even if I freeze for half the fights. It's especially good for gothik tanking, I did it once with my sarth tank spec(votw/unholy, so no UB and no morbidity) and it was awful at best. But it is definitely broken on another level than just drivers stuff. The annoying thing however is when you report this officially, random DKs come in and chime on how their DX2 66 can't handle DnD or Desecration or Pestilence even though it's totally unrelated. It's hard to get people who actually understand the exact issue and it seems even harder to have someone from blizzard try to look into it. 3.0.8 solves most issues by nerfing DnD a lot and buffing HB and pestilence anyway, so it won't be as important than it is now even for heavy AE encounters.
The Unholy AoE tank in our guild ran a Heroic Magister's for giggles. Pulled the whole room of mana wyrms before the second boss at once and dropped DND. Result: his *entire* 5 man group DC'd.
There is definitely something whacked with DND, possibly in general, but definitely with Morbidity. This is one of the significant reasons I switched to Frost a few weeks ago.
Are these "Morbidity" problems demonstrable on a completely clean UI?
I ask this because when I am tanking in the spider wing in Naxx, or the Sartharion's adds, my entire computer grinds to a halt and sometimes I am disconnected. So I disable Omen and CowTip and everything is flawlessly smooth. Even though the latest Omen is more optimized than before, it's still doing a tonne of work for each mob in a pull.
I find there's a memory leak or something, and I think it's coming from CowTip. So I turn that off too to prevent my whole UI from dying mid-encounter.
Can someone please confirm that they are getting slowdowns WITHOUT addons?
How is DnD being nerfed aside from the glyph change? The glyph was simply overpowered, especially if one had multiple DKs dropping glyphed DnDs in PvE or PvP. I don't really see the changes to HB & Pestilence changing how I would use DnD, unless DnD has had it's damage/threat reduced (the new glyph actually makes it more threatening).
DnD is no longer affected by Crypt Fever, thus nerfed by quite abit.
DnD is no longer affected by Crypt Fever, thus nerfed by quite abit.
Yep that's what I meant, even if you're frost, chances are you have a DW DK or an unholy spreading ebon/crypt, effectively increasing DnD threat/dmg A LOT. With it not being affected anymore, even if you glyph it, you'll still be looking at a DnD nerf. Now if you don't have any crypt fever currently, with the glyph, it will be a buff. But for most people, it's a nerf, and it's a nerf for unholy AE threat in general(not like it will matter much considering how much AE threat unholy output anyway).
As for the morbidity, yes it can be reproduced at will. When I was looking at why it was happening, I ran some tests. You can probably find it somewhere in the thread, like 40pages back. I went to onyxia's lair and tested on whelps(easy to pull 20-25mobs at once, without dieing everytime, and without any fancy graphics around). I ran the tests on an entirely clean client(no UI, not even blizzard stuff, all graphic options turned off, combat log set to display nothing at all, still had sound on though, and cleared WTF/cache in case of too) with 0 talent points spent. With 0 it was working fine, I put 1point in morbidity(still the only talent learned), my FPS drops to 0 on next DnD(did it on different pulls, but also on the exact same pull since one DnD doesn't kill whelps without unholy talents).
If it's not linked to morbidity, I find the coincidence a bit weird, especially since I tested it twice(once on live to find the reason, then later on the PTR to see if it was fixed) and both in "perfect" testing conditions. If I was lagging all the time with DnD, it'd be an issue on my side. When I freeze only when I use DnD with morbidity trained on big AE packs, while I can run the game with full graphics, fraps and AEing(without it) in 25man raids with 25-35FPS, I have a hard time believing it's driver related. Unless again, morbidity uses another DnD graphic that's not optimized, but then it's blizzard's responsability to fix it to use the same one on both, not me to find how to fix my drivers.
I'm sorry if this is a noob question but I'm relatively new to tanking and I may be underestimating some talents and abilities.
I'm levelling a DK and planning to turn him into a Unholy tank (not as a main which means I will mostly be doing heroics and 10-man raids, it will be a while before I start MTing in 25 man runs).
After reading this whole thread there seems to be many different opinions about the relative value of some talents. Anyway, picking up what I could I came up with this build:
The focus is aoe tanking since most heroics are done through aoe pulls but I didn't want to nerf my single target generation. I believe I have all the core talents (yes I know I'm missing Lichborne) but I don't think that is a "requirement").
As for glyphs I'm aiming for SS, BS and DnD one. In my view, the SS glyph makes Desecration fairly useless.
I chose not to include Outbreak because many people here seem to find it lackluster (even more now that it doesn't include pestilence). I believe that using the SS glyph will result in not that many plague strikes being made in a tanking rotation, since SS will have a chance to refreh diseases. I may be completely wrong in this assumption though and I would like to hear from more experienced DKs regarding this matter. The damage boost of Obliterate was also buffed and maybe that increase in PS dot damage is worth it?
I also didn't include BCB simply due to the extra chance for parries and I don't know if any change was made recently to the parry mechanics (I seem to remember there caused the boss to perform an extra attack or something similar).
As for the rest, I know many people here don't agree with the whole ghoul talents in a tanking build. I can understand that but my decision was between the anti-magic talents or the ghoul ones. I don't mind micro-managing the ghoul and the extra taunt and chance of having it explode to build aggro on a bad pull seems appealing to me, especially now that they gave us avoidance skills through Night of the Dead). On the other hand, the anti-magic talents seem nice although AMZ seems a bit lackluster due to it's low damage absortion.
Necrosis and Two-Hand specialization are mostly there to increase single target threat generation (seems that it has been proven that Runestrikes proc Necrosis aswell so, in my view, it's a no-brainer especially if it is affected by Ebon Plague).
The problem is that I'm judging talents without much experience in tanking overall so I would like to get some feedback from more experienced players.
About threat problems i (and some others) have:
i specced into 27/44/0 (from unholy).
Yes, i lost 5% dodge, but gained about 1,5% parry, 3% lower chance to hit me and some stamina, and atm i don;t have any threat problems, i had spikes of threat, from 3k to 4k, now i can sustain 4,5k tps and up (on 10ppl patchwerk yesterday i got ~5,5k tps almost whole fight).
Also i did some changes in my gear: gemmed for str/exp/stam/hit, raid buffed i got about 4,7k ap and 15% crit, 28 expertise, 178 hit, my def stats havent changed much. Amount of Obli, IT and RS crits were insane, and tps was more static (and higher ofc).
I had to nerf some def, and about 1k hp to be exp capped and put some str gems, but what elixir of mighty defense is for? ;]
About Abnomination's might: this talent (along with butchery) i took for my group, i believe that tundra stalker would be better, but since we don't have enh shaman in our group i took this path.
About threat problems i (and some others) have:
i specced into 27/44/0 (from unholy).
Yes, i lost 5% dodge, but gained about 1,5% parry, 3% lower chance to hit me and some stamina, and atm i don;t have any threat problems, i had spikes of threat, from 3k to 4k, now i can sustain 4,5k tps and up (on 10ppl patchwerk yesterday i got ~5,5k tps almost whole fight).
Also i did some changes in my gear: gemmed for str/exp/stam/hit, raid buffed i got about 4,7k ap and 15% crit, 28 expertise, 178 hit, my def stats havent changed much. Amount of Obli, IT and RS crits were insane, and tps was more static (and higher ofc).
I had to nerf some def, and about 1k hp to be exp capped and put some str gems, but what elixir of mighty defense is for? ;]
About Abnomination's might: this talent (along with butchery) i took for my group, i believe that tundra stalker would be better, but since we don't have enh shaman in our group i took this path.
I haven't noticed any TPS drops, but I'll likely notice an increase when the KM ppm change goes live. The effective health boost is quite nice. The only reason I considered doing this is because I recently picked up my Repelling Charge and a couple other ilvl213 items that have allowed me to play with my gems a bit more and retain 540+ and ~60% Avoidance unbuffed.
I realize I could have put 5 points into Dark Conviction and picked up a little more threat, but 10% Rune Tap I feel has saved my ass (and my raid) numerous times, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make it a 20% heal. Besides... isn't a 20% Heal on a 35k Health Pool something like 4.5k threat for one rune?
The focus is aoe tanking since most heroics are done through aoe pulls but I didn't want to nerf my single target generation. I believe I have all the core talents (yes I know I'm missing Lichborne) but I don't think that is a "requirement").
As for glyphs I'm aiming for SS, BS and DnD one. In my view, the SS glyph makes Desecration fairly useless.
I chose not to include Outbreak because many people here seem to find it lackluster (even more now that it doesn't include pestilence). I believe that using the SS glyph will result in not that many plague strikes being made in a tanking rotation, since SS will have a chance to refreh diseases. I may be completely wrong in this assumption though and I would like to hear from more experienced DKs regarding this matter. The damage boost of Obliterate was also buffed and maybe that increase in PS dot damage is worth it?
I also didn't include BCB simply due to the extra chance for parries and I don't know if any change was made recently to the parry mechanics (I seem to remember there caused the boss to perform an extra attack or something similar).
As for the rest, I know many people here don't agree with the whole ghoul talents in a tanking build. I can understand that but my decision was between the anti-magic talents or the ghoul ones. I don't mind micro-managing the ghoul and the extra taunt and chance of having it explode to build aggro on a bad pull seems appealing to me, especially now that they gave us avoidance skills through Night of the Dead). On the other hand, the anti-magic talents seem nice although AMZ seems a bit lackluster due to it's low damage absortion.
Necrosis and Two-Hand specialization are mostly there to increase single target threat generation (seems that it has been proven that Runestrikes proc Necrosis aswell so, in my view, it's a no-brainer especially if it is affected by Ebon Plague).
The problem is that I'm judging talents without much experience in tanking overall so I would like to get some feedback from more experienced players.
Im a frost tank by trade but I do see something you are missing that you can pick up by Losing your "Ghoul Talents" or Morbidity.
You have 3/3 Morbidity and it's still broken so you can use those points to put 1 point in wandering plague and Unholy Aura
Wandering Plague - You want to focus on AOE tanking this is an amazing talent even 1 single point as it's still damage done to all around you.
Unholy Aura - even in 5 mans this has a great benefit - one of the best utility talents in that tree
01/14/09, 10:27 AM
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