Lazare

Minor point, but this is quite wrong. Pre-TBC PPM effects (e.g. Crusader) did not adjust for haste, and would proc more with additional haste. TBC PPM effects (e.g. Mongoose) did adjust for haste, and would not proc more with additional haste. For whatever reason, KM is using the old Vanilla PPM mechanics, rather than the TBC PPM mechanics, which isn't really what most people would expect. Note in particular the TTT:
The base assumption these days is that PPM effects are modified for haste. It's just a wrong assumption when it comes to KM.

 

Pyros

While I've had mitigated results with Blood, you can't say unholy is better than blood because the DPS is higher, simply because it's not. 2H Unholy DPS is higher than 2h Blood DPS because of the pets mostly, and pets don't generate any threat so they go out of the window on threat, which puts blood ahead in almost most situations but a heavy armor situation. That's actually one of the important fact about blood threat, you need someone to sunder/expose your mob to generate optimal threat, which is less of an issue as unholy. Expertise is also more important(as well as hit) because the rotation is tighter.

With that said, Frost blows both out of the water, and is very good for AE tanking. For naxx clearing, frost is definitely my favorite currently. I can see uses for blood mostly on bosses, but I don't see myself using blood as a permanent spec because how terrible it is for trash clearing(unless you have a protadin doing the tanking I guess).

Edit: And something unrelated, earlier in this thread someone linked a list of threat generated by various abilities. It specifically had Rune Tap listed as doing no threat, but it does generate threat, at the usual healing rate. A full runetap in tanking gear is a pretty decent boost(6k? I'm unsure what's the final modifier on frost presence).

 

Gorgangio

Been reading through this and decided to take a blood route spec for tanking and must say i prefer it alot to Unholy and Frost. 1 thing i have been seeing is people are saying how they are averaging 7k TPS. My TPS on average i would say is between 2.5k-3k TPS and peaking at 4k TPS. What on earth am i doing wrong?

The World of Warcraft Armory

The rotation i use is:

IT --> PS --> Pest (If more than 2 mobs) --> HS --> DS (Should i be using Obli?)

Then i just spam HS and DS accordingly.

is it anything wrong with my spec, my rotation? Or just the gear doesn't cut it?

 

Funky Junky

Hey everyone hows it going? First I will start by just linking to my basic Blood build:
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Death Knight -> Talent Calculator

It seems to resemble most peoples talent trees, which isn't surprising, there is not entirely too much room for diversity from what I have noticed while trying to make builds by myself.

Basically I'm trying to skim through and see what rotations people are using, it seems most people are settled on diseaseless rotations which I rolled with last night in UP. I didn't seem to have threat problems once I got used to tabbing HS but then my hunter pal was starting to pull off of me in some moments and while it never posed a problem, I run with him all the time and I never had any problems keeping his threat in check with Unholy.

For trash I wasn't having issues between Death and Decay, spreading a disease, and hitting BB to establish my base threat, which for all I know may be the exact wrong thing to be doing at this point. Single target fights I was basically starting with DS>DS>HS>HS>DC>Blood Tap>HS>HSx4 and then basically work off of that. I just started working the spec last night so I wont be surprised if there is something fatally flawed about any of this

For the record I use Death Strike over Obliterate, which is something I have been trying to get clarity with between whats better for threat, but after running a few DPS comparisons, I didn't notice much of a difference between the two so I still comfortably use DS, thus the points I have in Vicious strikes in Unholy to help get to Shadow of Death instead of anything else. at the most I know Obliterate is probably the clear winner, but I haven't heard of Obliterate being fixed yet so I haven't been against switching back to Obliterate once I get confirmation on the RP gen bug

At first my concern was mitigation / survivability and my fears were quickly blown out the window when my shaman pal told me how insanely easy it was to heal, so I'm comfortable with not having spell deflection.

Blood gorged is circumstantial as most people can agree on, I love it for some concepts but i decided against going with it as opposed to any other options I had in the tree at the time.

Placing 2 points into Blood aura isn't something I wanted to do but I figured it was in the best interest to stay with the theme of the tree

So these are basically some common ideas I've had while forming this spec and trying to play it, I mainly need to figure out if I am using improper rotations or if anyone has any idea of a basic fundamental I may not have noticed


To top this off, let me apologize ahead of time. I know my posts aren't the most articulated but I try to make them as legible as I can

Thanks for any insight anyone can offer

 

Sonrisa

So, I tried Blood out for Sartharion 3D and second half of Naxxramas, and I have to say I didn't like it at all. It felt boring to play and much worse in general. First of all, the TPS was absolutely terrible both single target and AoE. AoE I was expecting it to be bad, but I was surprised at how bad my threat was on single target. I tried out a lot of different rotations: with and without diseases, using Death Runes for HS, just using Obliterate, weaving DnD, refreshing IT and not using PS, you name it. All in all the TPS was bad, and much lower than Unholy by quite a long shot, which is something thas as I said, I wasn't really expecting. Truth be told Unholy got a pretty big TPS buff through Necrosis this patch, I actually had to stop to not pull threat on Patchwerk.

Then there is the trash clearing which with Blood just fell really painful and made me want to kill myself because of how bad my AoE was, I was on par or lower than prot warriors and they are pretty much as bad as it gets for AoE threat. Also I don't have a meaningful debuff like Unholy does, the aura while ok is really not as awesome, MoB is terrible, and the only useful buffs that I brought to the raid were Hysteria and Abominations Might, and this one is usualy covered by an Enhancement Shaman so its redundant anyway.

Also despite the long Vampiric Blood uptime, the CD just felt very weak compared to Bone Shield or Unbreakable Armor, I didn't find using it to be meaningful or useful. If it weren't for Sarth 3D I could have not specced into it and I wouldn't have missed it at all. Also even as Blood I still relied on other people's CDs for Sarth 3D during Vampiric Blood, even after regemming all stamina and using Nightmare Seed at the same time, I'd still die if I had bad luck.

So in the end I specced back to Unholy for our 10 man clear and I actually enjoyed playing my DK again. Of course, for what I've been reading many people seem to be enjoying Blood a lot, so this might just be an issue of different playstyle tastes.

 

Zerath

Before any of us look in to this at all - we're getting 6-7k TPS on SINGLE TARGET threat situations. Not multi-mob. What is your rotation for Single Target? As an aside- my first rotation as blood was IT-PS-DS-HS-HS//HS-HS-HS-HS-[HS-HS] or [IT-PS].

Diseased Vs. Diseaseless Rotations:

Popped OB glyph in and using the OB sigil. Frost Presence. Horn of Winter.

Diseaseless Rotation: OB-OB-HS-HS//repeat

By replacing the the OB usage of Death Runes with HS lowers DPS, I found, thus OB for those 4 runes.

Net DPS: ~1050dps.

Diseased Rotation (w/o Epidemic): IT-PS-HS-HS-OB//repeat (No Annihilation)

Net DPS: ~1130dps.

Now, my Sigil was completely geared towards the Diseaseless rotation due to more OBs but the Diseased Rotation still pulled ahead.

Note: Naturally, Necrosis doesn't work on the dummy 100% of the time so, I watch that pretty closely to make sure it's not going to skew the numbers absurdly.

I'm able to come to the agreement that a Disease-less Rotation does not net us a larger portion. But, it's quite close from my initial testings to the point where one could use a rotation if they chose to.

Two specs to check: Epidemic'd which would move the 2 points in Ravenous to 2/2 Epidemic and an Annihilation build. The latter of this just seems like it would net less due to our taking Frost Talents we won't take full advantage of. We also lose out on SoD and Necrosis which is roughly hitting for 300 per auto attack for me.

Annhilation build: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000

Left over 1 pt which could be 4/5 Blood Gorge or 1/1 Lichborne.

Will edit with figures. I feel like spending absurd amounts of gold today respeccing.

**EDIT**

Above Annhilation spec (The DK trainer really should give us a discount for multi-respecs in one day...)

Multiple 5-7 minute sections of rotation: IT-PS-OB-HS-HS//OB-OB-HS-HS//repeat. Dumping DC when possible.

DPS Net: ~1200 dps.

Which, even when factoring in Necrosis ticking for 1 randomly, it doesn't bring up our DPS by 150-200.

This is the spec I'll be testing in 10man Naxx tomorrow now.

 

Frostx

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I raided this week using this blood spec and haven't been getting any of the problems highlighted by other bloodtanks so far in this thread. My rotation for single target is IT/PS/DS/HS/HS... DS/HS/HS/HS/HS. AOE rotation is DND/IT/PS/Pest... and then just using double Pests to bounce diseases so i never have to IT/PS again and DS/HS depending on (death)runes.

Glyphs: DND/IBF/VampBlood

Notable things i tanked:
Patchwerk(25) as MT: Averaged ~8k TPS or so. Healers did comment i took almost no damage. Might have a WWS if i can chase down the guildie who logged it. DPS did mention my initial TPS was low but ramped up fine after that.
OS3D (25) tanking lava adds and whelps: No problems picking up adds at all just like Unholy. Vampiric Blood is a ton better than Bone Shield here.
OS3D (10) 2 tank strat so i tanked everything except Sartharion: Had a Holydin standing near me with RF on to magnet mobs to him so picking up adds wasn't hard. Threat was pretty good for the most part (had no Hunters or Rogues in raid). Like in 25m, Vampiric Blood felt really superior to Bone Shield due to multimob tanking.

Hope this helps.

 

Crax

One vital thing that was pointed out in the post just before yours: the mob you're tanking needs to be debuffed appropriately for optimal threat.

For an Unholy tank, this is pretty much a non-issue, since they are guaranteed to have Ebon Plaguebringer up (unless they are a moron) and while there are other magic debuffs, this is by far the most important for them.

For Blood tanks, nearly 100% of their damage is physical. If the mob does not have a significant armor debuff (sunder or expose armor) then that is a *huge* reduction in Blood's threat.

This is one of the primary reasons Blood tanking is really more Boss/single-target focused: AoE packs just will *not* have an armor debuff, because there is no way to apply it to a whole pack. This is also the beauty of EP + Pest: fully debuff an entire pack for AoE magic damage in two GCDs.

Now, I've seen my threat in a 5-man be consistently 4.5-5k as Blood if I have a warrior along who is using Sunder. Without that, I'm 2.5-3k threat (again, in a 5-man). Obviously when I'm in a full raid, the threat goes much higher, but the armor debuff is the vital contributor.

 

Siawn

In my opinion, one reason many find Blood falling so far behind Frost is the lack of any useful RP dump. With 3.1k ap, which is roughly what I'm at with only HoW, Sudden Doom DC crits hit for roughly 2.2k. Frost Strike hits significantly harder than that. Add to that the fact that if you are hit capped for melee, which all tanks should be, Frost Strike is guaranteed to hit. The same cannot be said for DC. Do other Blood tanks find DC any more useful than I have? The damage really just doesn't seem to be worth the gcd.

 

• Lanky

Frost strike is basically always guarenteed to hit anyways. The main reason Frost outthreats Blood by so much is simply 32** runic power for FS vs 40 for DC.

 

Flamingcloud

A. Frost doesn't out threat blood at all to my knowledge, and if it does it is not by significant amounts. I don't know where the notion of bad threat blood came out of multiple people posting 7k+ tps on many encounters, but as I stated before I believe blood is highly dependent on blessing of sanc.
B. FS does not cost 23 runic power. I assumed you mistyped 32, but your argument has no merit. The vast majority of threat comes from runes abilities, auto-attacks, disease ticks, and rune strike, having a better rune dump isn't terribly relevant it is like saying assassination does better dps because its poison hits harder.

I will definitely agree that blood's aoe threat is just awful between dnd nerf and having nothing else and it has been the cause of trash deaths that didn't happen before.

 

• Lanky

Disease ticks do not account for much threat. Runestrike and Frost Strike are your single target RP threat moves. Obliterate is obviously the biggest ST threat attack, HB for packs. Having a second runic dump that cannot be dodged blocked or parried, and is also considered a high threat attack that ignores armor, does matter.

Glyphed, sigiled IT Spam plus Frost Strikes and Rune Strikes is a TON of threat. Add Morbidity DnD and you should be set for a single target.

 

Flamingcloud

A being better than B doesn't make X better than Y, even if A is a subset of X and B is a subset of Y. It does matter but it doesn't tell you anything that would allow you to conclude frost is better than blood.

 

Siawn

How would BoS help put Blood ahead of Frost? Frost Strike hits harder than DC, never misses, and if you have the glyph it costs less RP. If anything, BoS puts Frost even further ahead of Blood because unlike Blood, Frost has a useful RP ability. DC's damage is abysmal. If someone is seeing consistent 7k threat as Blood, I would love to see a WWS of it to see where their threat is coming from. I, personally, have yet to see any similar results from Blood.

 

Flamingcloud

Because blood's rune strike is significantly better. As far as I know Tundra Stalker doesn't affect Runestrike, Bloodgorged does. Not to mention blood's higher strength, crit rate, and 9% dmg from bloody vengeance. I've had it over 40% of my threat many times.

 

Zerath

For each person this page going "Frost out threats Blood!" - post numbers. Not thoughts like "IT spam is TONS more threat." - this is some thing that doesn't help this thread at all. Post numbers, spec, and gear - please.

 

Siawn

As Frost, I had 4-5k tps on most bosses. As Blood, I find myself in the 2.5-3.5k range. My armory should be correct, gear-wise. I'm hit capped and just shy of expertise cap. This is the spec I did 10 man Naxx with right after the patch. I was so disappointed with its performance that I respec'd to this to try out a diseaseless rotation. I haven't had a chance to test it yet, but I'm having serious doubts regarding Blood's effectiveness.

I knew going into it that its AE threat would be abysmal. We have a Prot Pally who can easily hold trash. I love VB and WotN, but if the tps isn't there, I can't justify staying Blood since it hampers our dps. Although I didn't have anyone pulling hate, so I almost wonder if Omen isn't registering something with Blood properly. I tend to doubt that though.

 

Zerath

The guy who makes the DK DPS sheet just said there was an error in his sheet, a disease-less rotation is not superior.

As an FYI.

(No reason to take Sudden Doom, imo, I have yet to have any RP issues even with spamming RS and DC at free GCDs.)

 

Siawn

I take SD for the crit. The RP cost is worthless, I agree. I don't really see anything else in the tree that would up my tps at all, so it was a "lesser of two evils" situation. Rune Tap I never used because I have great healers, Spell Deflection is rather situational, but might be worth taking if they fixed the bug with AMS, Blood Aura is a bit redundant with JoL.... you get the idea.

On a side note, I'm glad to hear the diseaseless rotation was a bug. It felt too much like playing a warrior with no diseases.

 

ramajuko

I have an interesting problem. I just ran normal HOL (Loken hates dropping the trinket), and I was getting crit. Not often, very rarely, but I'm at 543 defense. The mobs may have been behind me, but it sure didn't look like it from my screen, considering that my attacks were hitting. I'm over the defense cap purely due to stoneskin gargoye runeforge, is there a bug with it maybe? Can anybody offer a possible explanation as to why this mathematical impossibility is apparently possible? Am I just stupid?

Here's my armory

 

Drury

The Revenants have a buff that increases their crit chance.

 

Dirich

I currently use Glyph of UA, IT and IBF. I was thinking about replacing the IBF one to increase my dps/tps, so I ended up trying to find a way to evaluate Glyph of Obliterate and Glyph of Rune Strike (both in termn of dps and tps).

I thought I could use an old WWS of mine to check how many Obli and RS I use on average (NOb and NRS are the numbers of Obli and RS). All I'm interested in is NRS/NOb (since it turns out I do more RS than Obli). I try to get an average value for NRS/NOb. This will be my multiplier for the value I found for RS (I'm "normalizing" RS to match the number of Obli, this way I only need to find the threat and damage of the two skills).

WWS is an acceptable way to evaluate the times I use Obli and RS since it keep trace of any problem I have an the average of times I screw up with the rotation, evaluating this mathematically could lead to results far away from reality.

I should account for the additional chance for obli to fail due to dodge and parry (which are related to my expertise). Data for this part can be found on the dk faq thread. Of course I have to use the hit table system and do not forget to apply the crit chance. This way I find the average damage and threat for both skills.
If I'm not wrong the % of hit is (100 - % of miss - % of parry - % of dodge -% of block -% of crit).
I must admit I lack the average % of block for bosses so here's one problem.

The big problem I have is that wowhead gives a strange "150% + 0.15" damage in the tooltip of RS. Since I've found it's not really updated lately, I smell some error and thus I'm without means to evaluate the damage for RS.

Anyone that can help with these problems? Also any suggestion and/or comment on the technique I'm using to compare the glyphs is welcome.

 

ramajuko

Could've just said it was the "I am stupid" option. Thank you!

 

Pyros

The 7k TPS claims were almost all(if not all) on patchwerk, which is a terrible encounter to gauge TPS on since 1) runestrike is up permanently 2) he gives you threat everytime he hateful strike. It'd be interested to see "real" numbers on blood threat, against a more "normal" fight, even thought it's a bit hard to find one of these normal fights. Loatheb I guess would be good, if you don't take spores. From my experience, Frost offers the highest sustained threat and the best burst threat too, the only reason to take blood is for the interesting tools for sarth(necropolis mostly). Then again it's the only decently hard fight, so it makes blood quite an important option.

However, this is again from my own experiences, and unless someone comes and do some theorycrafting about the theorical highest TPS of each spec, it won't matter much because it's not absolute. If you think your threat is fine with blood, then just play blood, it doesn't matter, and if you think it's not, then try frost really. There's a ton of external factors that affects DK threat, even more so than some other tanks, due to the over reliance on damage(no +threat abilities but the new runestrike) and the lack of some self debuffs(mostly armor). I can do 2 consecutive raids with the same spec and lose 1.5k TPS doing the exact same thing.

 

Proust

Patchwerk WWS

I would have to agree that Rune Strike is where the bulk of the TPS is coming from.

Hey, has anyone taken a second to look at the armories of the posters who have had negative relusts with blood? Well, I have and it seems that in a majority of cases, as disease-less blood, their expertise is in the mid to low 20s. I don't want to sound like a dick here, but, minus a few DC, it's a 100% physical rotation. hit and especially exp are crucial to the whole thing working. One doesn't have disease ticks to fall back on if a parry or miss comes along.

Is the spec's success directly reliant on top-end gear? I think so.

Is it the best spec out there? Is there such a thing, to begin with? I think not.

Just some food for thought.