Regarding the Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight:

The same can be said for a big burst of damage -- all it takes is a sudden burst of damage at a bad time and the whole raid dies. Choosing gear purely for crit-immunity at the expense of stamina is just as dangerous as not being crit immune. For me last night, being breathed on by two drakes in 3-drake-sartharion within 1.5s of eachother was a killer, even though I was crit-immune.

Unfortunately, there are always trade-offs to be made. I bought the sigil and then reworked my gear so that I'm only crit-immune when the buff is up. Does that mean that I'm not 100% crit immune at all times? Sure, but think of it this way:

I have a 0% chance of being crit while the buff is up. Before the buff is up, I have a less than 1% chance of being crit. In exchange for giving up the safety of being 100% crit immune at all times, I've now been able to re-gem my gear to gain over 1000 HP and a little more avoidance. How often am I vulnerable to a crit? Only when I haven't managed to land an IT in over 30s, and that only seems to be possible (given a frost spec) at the start of a fight if an IT is resisted.

In the end, the question is: am I more likely to die from a crit because the buff isn't up, or from a burst of incoming non-crit damage where 1000 HP would have made the difference between living and dying? In my experience there's no question that the extra HP is the way to go.

If I get to a point when I can easily stay crit immune without worrying about that extra 53 defense rating, I'll probably go back to a trinket to increase my threat, but for now it's an easy choice, one that allows me to socket optimal gems, instead of having to use defense gems all over the place.

So I am rebuilding the main post in this thread and I plan on creating a new one so that we can have an updated OP all the time.

I need some math-friendly folks to iron out a few things before I do. In an IIT build, is Bladed armor or the new KM more valuable? I'm thinking more likely it's no subversion/2h-spec, since the crit from subversion is wasted when KM is up.

I'd go with 12/54/5 because I don't see a reason for DC or Subversion if you have KM and I've never been a fan of HC. I still think Blizzard should make HC do some damage or just cause high-threat in general. I also haven't seen to many people in this thread report on how there TPS was as frost but I'm guessing that is because everyone is testing blood.

Good point but if you consider Frost spec tanks with GoG then the value of that 2.67% increase goes from .534% mitigation to around .804% mitigation due to the extra 6 seconds or to .9375% with 4pT7. I'd personally take .804/.9375% mitigation against all damage as opposed to 1% parry which is not useful when being attacked from behind or stunned. Only reason at all to prefer 1% more parry would be if you’re a blood tank I guess but I’m not. So then the tradeoff would be more like 1% parry for .804% mitigation and 2% stamina. Not to mention frost is already hurting for HP unless you go for votw. Feel free to check my math but I came up with the same numbers as you for the 12 second duration. At this point I’m sold on gargoyle.

How much trouble are frost tanks having keeping agro on large pulls (10+ mobs) in 25 man naxx since the patch? Assuming your DPS is pulling at least 3k each.

Cannot speak for nax 25 since I haven't doen that yet, however in nax 10 my dps also pushes 3-4k and I got no major issues there (with fewer raidbuffs than in 25). With killing machine and howling blast (even though it still has the cooldown) my aoe threat is fine there.

If there is a problem it is at the intial pull since I need about 5 secs for the intial icy touch, pestilence and howling blast. If dps goes all out too early I had to use death grip and/or dark command ocassionally to get a wayward mob back to me. After the first howling blast I had no issues with aggro.

I'm looking into a frost/VotTW build, and I'm trying to decide between:

3/3 Scent of Blood
3/3 Subversion
or 2/2 Butchery and 1/1 Rune Tap

Scent of Blood seems somewhat weak, since I usually have enough RP to dump to fill gaps in rune CDs, though my experience comes from Unholy tanking, so I'm not too sure if it'd be different with a Frost rotation.

I'm a little confused as to bucknasty's comment about the crit from Subversion being wasted when KM is up, since Subversion only affects BS/HS/Oblit and KM affects IT/HB/FS, so as far as I can see, there's no overlap.

Since Buthery's extra RP gen falls under the same category as Scent of Blood in terms of usefulness, I guess the real question for the last option is: How useful is Rune Tap for a tank? It looks like an extra healing CD to be used in the same situation as a healing potion/healthstone, but my concern is that with a tight rotation, I wouldn't usually have the spare rune to use it quickly in such situations (though I suppose ERW and/or a glyphed Blood Tap could get you the rune you needed).

For the time being, I was looking at something like this: Wowhead - Talent Calculator - Death Knight

Picking up VotTW doesn't leave me with enough points to get 3/3 GoG and FS, so I took one point out of Anticipation to get the last GoG point (trading a 1% constant mitigation for 2 secs of added mitigation for IBF and some extra threat), and I'm planning on using DC as my RP dump to replace FS. Would dropping another point in Anticipation for FS be a good idea, since FS seems to be the better RP dump (with GoG, MC, KM, BI, and GR all adding to its damage)? Perhaps taking a point of of BotN would be a better option instead, though then my rotation wouldn't be as smooth because of random Death Rune generation, which could lead to a whole different set of problems.

Since Blade Barrier refreshes on odd things (I think you mentioned Find Minerals), could you simply toggle Find Minerals or some such nonsense?

long time viewer of this thread, first time poster. i find this vottw frost build to be very nice in generating threat while still having decent mitigation. with all the KM procs now, HB is an excellent source of aoe threat - especially when you get a KM proc and follow through with a deathchilled HB. last night cleared all of 25 naxx as MT, without any problems on any bosses. in regards to vottw frost builds in general, there are always a few points that can be swapped, eg GoG to anticipation and the like, depending on your gear setup. with the 4 piece set bonus, i figured that 3/3 GoG is more viable than the 2% dodge.

I'm going to try this spec out tonight on 10man Plague Wing, Sapphiron, and Kel'thuzad. 51/13/7
I want to see how much more TPS I do on bosses with a OB rotation. I'll only be able to effectively test this on Loatheb, Sapphiron, and Kel'thuzad I presume. I also have to tank Sartharion 1D on 10man this week but I don't know if I'm on the adds or Sartharion himself.

You need to have both blood runes down to refresh blood barrier off random stuff. Not using the blood runes won't magically make your find minerals proc blade barrier, it would be too easy and the whole discussion would be moot since it'd mean BB would proc off all your other attacks anyway. The issue with sarth is that because he's immune, your runes refresh at an accelerated rate(or to be more precise, the cooldown on them starts at 1.5s left instead of the usual 10s). That means that you spend one rune with a bloodboil, then before you can use the other bloodboil, the first rune has already refreshed, making it hard/impossible to have both blood runes down at the same time. However it seems Pestilence is not affected by this, even though he's immune to the damage, the secondary effect(spreading disease) works so the rune is consumed. At least that's what I was told, haven't gone back since first day. So it's all fine if you pestilence instead. You could blood boil out of range when moving from walls during a breath, and it wouldn't randomly aggro blazes next to you, but well better than not having the 10% parry.

Counter_Break I’d personally trade one point out of BotN to get 1% avoidance. I don’t mind having 1 rotation per 5 with 2 blood runes especially if you go with Butchery 2/2 and RT. This is because with increasing avoidance I’m not sure about the usefulness of scent of blood. I’d rather have a constant RP generation for those times when I may have to OT and am not getting hit often. If you’re a MT then I guess it’s not that big of an issue but I have no numbers to support this. If you don't like choppy rotations or think the lack of death runes would hurt your TPS too much then just sacrifice the dodge. As for the FS issue I noticed most times I'm using up alot of my RP on my RS especially if you skip the FS glyph and have IT glyph.

Let it be known that I am a huge proponent (even after the KM buff) of the Frost/VoTW spec (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) as a general tanking spec. I think that it is the spec that both makes us act most similarly to Warriors/Paladins (from the healers'/dps' perspective) while maintaining our own advantages as well. Through game testing, I have seen that it does at least as much single-target threat as deep Frost (probably more, depending on some specifics).

That said, I specced Sarth+3 Blood yesterday (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)... similar to a normal Blood tanking spec, except one goes into Unholy for that extra 2% STA. We didn't end up going to Sarth, so I got a good test of this spec in Naxx25. The single-target threat was excellent... I nearly ripped off our Bear that was MTing Patch (had to stop attacking altogether when I smacked 105%). The AoE threat.... awful... now, when they fix Morbidity, maybe something can be worked out, but I was completely limited to tanking one, maybe two mobs when it came to trash. When real content occurs, this may be fine... but in Chain-Pull-AoE-ramas... I wasn't too crazy about it. The rotation also felt "forced": IT-PS-HS-HS-OB|[IT-PS/OB]-HS-HS-HS-HS. If Naxx wasn't still laggy as hell, then maybe the rotation would be better... but with so many parry-able skills, even when I'm hit/exp capped, it's tough to maintain.

So, back on to Frost/VoTW... the whole point behind the spec (other than the obvious, grabbing 6% EH in exchange for 2% dodge) is to have a simplified rotation (IT-[BS/Pest]-OB-OB), where each skill is buffed-to-the-teeth. I don't buy the whole "no reason to get +crit since KM provides crits" comment... ideally, you'll be using KM crits on Frost Strikes, generating huge amounts of RP from the IT rune (so you can still Rune Strike every time it's up), and still critting with glyphed-and-sigiled Obliterate a good 40-50% of the time. You really have two great sigils to choose from.. if you use a single-OB rotation, choose the Icy Touch sigil, it gets buffed significantly by talents to +300dmg, while the OB 420 is best-case and affected by armor... but on a 2xOB rotation, Awareness wins pretty clearly. Either way, it's a great build, just don't give up Frost Strike (especially if you're thinking of taking Butchery or Scent of Blood, but I would nonetheless recommend Subversion).

It's been discussed a few times, but the RP gains from Scent of Blood and Butchery really aren't worth the talent points, particularly for a tank. As far as Subversion goes, yes, it's a very nice DPS gain for Frost or Frost VotTW, but not as good as Two-Handed Spec. Rune Tap is nice, but I'm not a big fan of unimproved Rune Tap. As a Blood Tank, with 3/3 Imp RT, I really enjoy the 30 second cooldown and larger heals, particularly combined with Vampiric Blood. However, I just don't see it being that useful to a Frost tank. You'd need to Blood Tap to use it, or risk throwing off your whole rotation, since you only have one Blood rune per set to use (IT/OB/OB/BS assumed) and the odds are pretty slim that Rune Tap would be useful at exactly the correct time in your rotation.

So, short version, as a Frost tank, I'd go 2H spec > Subversion > Rune Tap for the three points you are looking to place. I'd only consider Scent or Buthchery if you are finding yourself *really* RP starved.

As far as dropping points from Anticipation: before 3.0.8, I was having some threat issues as a Frost VotTW tank, so I actually dropped 2 points from Anticipation to fill out GoG. It wasn't a noticeable survivability change, particularly with the extra 4 seconds on IBF, but it was a *very* noticeable gain in threat.

One thing I'm interested in is which tanking tree does the most personal DPS while tanking. All else being equal, in 10 mans and heroics tank DPS can be a pretty significant factor in overall raid DPS. That, and it's a nice epeen boost.

I find my current Unholy build (with MoG/NotD) does amazing AoE DPS, especially when corpses start hitting the ground and being exploded. My single target DPS is quite good, I can get up to 2200 DPS while tanking single-target. The ghoul helps a lot. He doesn't do much for tanking, but for 3 talent points, he provides essentially a 400 DPS dot.

Mostly, I was wondering if with Blood being viable for tanking now, how its single target DPS compares to Unholy.

Actually, I'm not sure anyone runs IIT anymore.

Couple of reasons.

1. Haste sucks for a death knight.

2. Most raids have at least 1 shaman.

3. Killing machine kicks alot of ass now.

I run 10/51/10 and have never had any problems, threat or otherwise. It gives me access to morbidity and bladed armor, and stuff usually sticks to me like glue.

KM is a 1 proc-per-point-per-minute talent, so plan accordingly. When I'm tanking it seems to proc all the time but I've run tests and it is indeed, 1 per point per minute. Subversions crit wouldn't be wasted tho, as it effects Obliterate while Killing Machine does not.

Hope that helps.

Was supposed to be doing OS 3 Drake tonight, but the raid was cancelled. In light of this, I preemptively respec'd to a 52/14/5 build. On the dummies (Not hitting multiple) I was consistently hitting 100-200 higher dps doing:

ob>ob>hs>hs
hs>hs>hs>hs


Should you take my word for it? Probably not. I'm too tired right now to do some screenshots of recount breakdowns, but I might in a couple hours or so. I just wanted to come in and say I found that rotation superior in DPS so therefore it should be in threat.

I'd like to note that I'm doing more TPS as blood then unholy. I'm peaking at 7k right now and as unholy I would peak at 6k-6.5k TPS. I also don't have any idea what to gem after I have my expertise soft-cap, I guess getting 8hit/12stam gems is next? I was thinking it may be best if I kept myself at 26 expertise and then go for pure stamina.

I use the crab JC trinket and Hadronox heroic trinket(120stam and absorb shield proc). I think it's slightly better than the hare trinket mostly because the proc can be remotely useful, if only to absorb a bit of damage even on single target, while run speed is erm... yeah. Other decent choices are obviously Repelling Charge if you want to use Swordshattering on your weapon, War Medal for avoidance and I guess there's a few different ones for threat(hit if you're not capped, or nobles deck). Oh and I was using the armor one prepatch, but obviously it's now sitting in my bank with no chance of being used.

The JC dodge trinket is the best trinket in the game though, by far, mostly due to the insane cooldown.

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong here based on what you guys have been reporting with your 6-7k tps on bosses. My TPS averages around the 3.5 - 4.5k mark, any blood tank saying they're doing 7k tps, could you please explain your rotation.

This is my gear: The World of Warcraft Armory

Major Glyphs: Rune Strike, Vamp Blood and Icy Touch

and my current rotation for single target is: IT, PS, HS, HS, DS, HS HS HS HS etc etc, i also use 40hit 40sta food.

@Locodawg
The highest TPS rotation I have personally found was OB>IT>PS>HS>HS//OB>OB>HS>HS//repeat. I don't see how you are doing ~4k TPS with that gear either. If I were you I'd copy my spec and do the rotation above.

I'll test out that rotation, thanks (I'll edit this post with results)