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.
Yes to all of that. It's about being comfortable enough with your chosen spec to really discover the ins and outs and to make it your own.
Patchwerk is a fine tps test(though you should also test a low runestrike proccing boss aswell) assuming its patchwerk vs patchwerk and that tank doing the same role in both. I was over 6k tps on Loatheb last week but wowmeteronline doesn't do dk threat properly so linking it isn't terribly relevant.
While I know this topic is mostly focused on optimizing main tanking, I just wanted to share my experiences because I think they may help people at a similar gear/progress/role level that look to EJ for guidance.
For starters, I'm an Offtank, I run everything with my friend who Main Tanks as a Frost DK. My gear is heroic level, and I do Naxx10 (and sarth10/25 and vault10/25 but who cares) but I also run heroics. To that end, its ideal that I can be a main tank, offtank, and dps all in the same spec, and for people starting out, even in nearly the same gear. So I took a spec from the DW thread and modified it to suit exactly this purpose.
Additionally, I found it best to build a gear set that caps at 515 defense, using mostly defensive gear but some strong dps pieces like Spiked Titansteel Helm . Then for tanking I use a Titansteel Destroyer with rune of the gargoyle, and for dps I use Titansteel Bonecrusder and Grasscutter with crusader/cinder. This allows me to easily tank heroics, along with being sufficient to offtank naxx trash, main tank patchwerk, main tank noth, and other such tasks, while being able to quickly switch in combat to a much more suitable dps weapon set.
Additionally this uses three different rotations and presences
Tanking - Frost - IT PS SS BS BS UB DC | IT PS SS IT IT DC DC
AoEing Trash - Blood - DnD IT PS Pest UB | Hit stuff
Single Target DPS - Unholy - IT PS IT PS UB BS BS DC | IT PS DC IT PS DC IT IT DC
(Unholy does by far better single target dps than blood. I can go up to a dummy and do 1900 in blood and 2400 in unholy. Doesn't change in the field. Unholy is way better)
Ideally of course you have an "ideal tanking" set (patchwerk), an "ideal dps" set (maexenna, sapph etc etc), and then the hybrid set, but this takes a bit more gear collecting and double dipping getting drops which some people frown on (just dont run with other plate wearers obv)
Anyway, I've been enjoying this role much more since finding this spec so I just wanted to share.
Patchwerk is a fine tps test(though you should also test a low runestrike proccing boss aswell) assuming its patchwerk vs patchwerk and that tank doing the same role in both. I was over 6k tps on Loatheb last week but wowmeteronline doesn't do dk threat properly so linking it isn't terribly relevant.
Yeah but there's other issues to patchwerk, like the fact you actually can't do too much threat if you're OTing else you go past the MT and fuck healers up. I spend half my fight on patchwerk either autoattacking, or when I was unholy I'd actually summon a gargoyle instead of rune striking to add DPS without adding threat. All this on like a 2:30 fight so bloodlust time is really high, while another guild might have a 3:30kill which makes a rather big difference(since bloodlust > runestrikes). It is a terrible benchmark in my opinion, but yeah there's not that many good benchmarks. If there's a spreadsheet that can model KM and such, I guess you could just get theorical DPS with one of these spreadsheets(in tank gear) for each spec and that'd translate directly into threat since the rotations are the same. No idea if there's actually one that models KM and stuff like that well though.
I just got done tanking Sartharion 1D for my first time and I went in as blood. I doing generally 6k-6.5k TPS and I had all the melee buffs but sadly I didn't have BoSanc or Kings. I was using the IT>PS>OB>HS>HS//OB>OB>HS>HS// rotation, I think I've decided that I'll be tanking as blood when I only need to tank single target (IE EoE, OS, and VoA) or when I have an OT. I'll be going frost for heroics or when I'm OTing.
I don't think this if a viable comparison but... compared to my 10man TPS reports I was doing ~7k TPS while MTing patchwerk as frost, in a 25man. I would kill to test blood MTing 25man patchwerk but I haven't had that type of privilege in awhile.
Last edited by Griefknight : 01/26/09 at 12:06 AM.
The average boss was pulling 3.5-5k, spikes down were during lulls. Even seen consistent spikes to 7-9k TPS.
Rotation: IT-PS-OB-HS-HS//OB-OB-HS-HS//repeat [DC dump when possible.]
AoE was fine, set up for a large AoE pull with OB-OB on the prior mobs for the DRs. IT-Pest-BB-BB-BB-BB and they are pretty much glued to you for the time being.
I will see if I can tank 25man this week full through to get solid numbers from a 25man perspective and that will give me more of a baring/bearing (sp...) if Blood Gorged could be dropped for some thing else. Though, the EXP would be slightly sad to lose.
After that, I will test the Frost build several people in here have proclaimed to be superior but have not supported it with numbers.
After doing 8 man Sartharion, I was sustaining roughly 3-4k tps with no Enh shaman, which isn't horrid. The damage on my HS's seemed a bit low, considering I have the Blood Strike glyph, and had heard that it worked with melee slows as well, even though the description on the glyph says snares.
After the raid, I went to Ebon Hold and did a short test unbuffed with the dummy.
Two sequences
17 non-crit Heart Strikes each, using no diseases and excluding crits as outliers.
The first series I had my wife on her DK keeping up IT on the mob.
Minimum 701
Maximum 822
Average 761
The second series I had my wife spam Chains of Ice on the dummy instead of IT.
Minimum 749
Maximum 972
Average 908
Third series I moved to the Org dummy, and had my wife's mage spamming FFB on the mob.
Minimum 833
Maximum 957
Average 900
Fourth series I did on the Org dummy with no slows on the dummy just to make sure
Minimum 707
Maximum 796
Average 746
The difference between the snared and unsnared averages comes out to almost exactly 20%.
Clearly, the Blood Strike glyph works with Heart Strike, but is only triggered by literal movement slows. The DoT effect from FFB counts as a snare, but with all the FFB mages going Arc after the patch, this might cause issues with this glyph's effectiveness.
People were initially hoping that the change to the arcane mage talent (torment the weak) to make it work on attack speed debuffs also would change the glyph of blood strike, but it did not as I guess you found out for yourself with your tests :P.
It does seem like it would be a good change now that so many mages are going arcane instead of frostfire. I suppose however that it might be too strong of a glyph if it did, considering IT can be assumed to be almost 100% of the time up on the target.
ive been reading through this thread for roughly 2 hours now to try to figure out some questions i have. 2 hours later and i stil havent really figured out what im trying to do yet. lots of valuable info for sure. anyway, heres the jist. im normally a blood dps DK but recently my GL asked me if i could come up with a spec to still be able to dps efficiently but be able to pinch tank should the need rise. here is my armory link with my current spec (its very odd, yes) and in my tank gear.
-things to note: i just started building this set about 2 weeks ago so i still have a couple craptacular items
-my legs are still missing a red gem as i cant decide what to put in them
-i have a pair of Callous-Hearted Gauntlets bagged atm (i suck at linking items in forums, sorry)
-i have an Amulet of Autopsy bagged
-i have a Repelling Charge bagged
-my tank wep is not what i want but it was the only 2h i had available to stick gargoyle on
my uuh confusion? (for lack of a better tem) lies here:
defense level: i know people say "540 minimum" defense and im staying away from the hideous saying "540 defense cap". after 540 defense, is raw defense still the best stat for us? should i swap out the items i have bagged for the ones im wearing now?
gemming: which gems should i be using? i loaded up on parry / sta because my parry was the lowest avoidance. is it worth it to use +16 str gems? i personally think no because forceful deflection only puts 25% to parry whereas raw defense adds dodge and parry both. should i keep gemming def / sta or pure sta in blue sockets? armory isnt accruate on my stats for some reason. in frost pressence, unbuffed, i have:
28,755 hp
29,228 armor
543 def
20.63 dodge
18.57 parry
21 expertise (+130 rating)
183 hit rating
3045 ap
mitigation level: ive heard people sayin 40% combined mitigation is a good "starting" point to be able to tank 25 man content, but these same people turn around and say anything over 22% is a waste because of dimishing returns. what is the deal with this? should i keep trying for more dodge / parry to a cetain % or the higher the better?
my spec: its hideous at best. i still manage to do ok dps with it. most fights i average about 2400 dps. the roatation i use:
IT > PS > HS > HS > OB > DUMP
IT > PS > HS > HS > HS > OB > DUMP
can this spec be tweaked a little better to allow me to pull a little more DPS while still being able to tank? i was thinking about dropping Anticipation and maybe a couple points from Black ice and putting them into Blood Gorged. ecspecially since i picked up 3 new peices in the last couple days and pushed my dodge almost 2% higher than it was when i did this spec.
tanking rotation: what rotation should i be using when i am tanking? i tend to stick to the same DPS rotation i use but throw in Runestrikes as they come.
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.
Pyros, can you post the rotation you use please? I was unholy and after 3.0.8 switch to blood and while I find it "ok", I want to try a decent frost spec before I settle in on a longer term spec.
Also, why not have VotW in there for the extra 6% stam?
I would suggest going and looking at the FAQ, or reading the first few pages of this thread for a decent spec, further in there is extensive discussion around gemming, enchanting and rotations.
If you still can't find what you are looking for, try looking up the articles at TankSpot for deathknights.
Can someone explain the AMZ change in a bit more detail? From what I'm sort of gathering from the posts a few pages ago it no longer absorbs 75% of a massive attack and then gives up, rather than disappearing after the attack? Is that right? (Don't have any 20k+ attacking things handy to test on atm.)
Can someone explain the AMZ change in a bit more detail? From what I'm sort of gathering from the posts a few pages ago it no longer absorbs 75% of a massive attack and then gives up, rather than disappearing after the attack? Is that right? (Don't have any 20k+ attacking things handy to test on atm.)
I can also confirm spell deflection working with AMS, on yesterdays sarth 3D was getting full absorbs with AMS up. The talent also saved me a few breaths with no cds up + Wotn.
AMS without talents is 75%.
AMZ has a dmg cap. Its not enough to help on its own on 25 man, not sure about 10 man.
I ran as blood / holy spec on 25 man last night. It is much easier than unholy.
Oh, I always thought it worked as 75% reduction even if you were hit for, say, a million, and just faded immediately after. Well that makes experimenting with Blood a much easier decision then. Thanks.
Also yay, we can finally take Spell Deflection!
Edit: Removed question mark. Habit from the way the rest of the guild talks; it wasn't a question.
The answer to your question is literally above your post.
Some thing to note about my Averaging 5-6k TPS in 10man Naxx last night - we had no Sunders on the bosses. My threat generation would have been higher than that.
Speaking first hand - Unholy comes no where near this level of single target threat. So, as of right now - I have effectively thrown the possibilities of tanking full Unholy again out the window as it is subpar unless it is needed for a specific fight (100% AMS).
Trash does matter, I agree, while Unholy is the "king" of trash pulls due to DnD + UB + BB, Blizz just stated we will be using much more CC with Ulduar and further content.
After this week - I still plan on speccing Frost to see how that equates to the Blood.
I'm looking for some help regarding Sarth 3D. Currently I tank the whelps as Unholy and a druid is on Sartharion. This didn' work out unfortunately since he gets instagibbed alot of times when Shadron and Vesperon are on the ground (the big breathes are the problem). Even though I am quite pessimistic about my Health Pool (I dont know if i can reach 30k raidbuffed with the -25% Hitpoints buff) I want to try tanking Sartharion with a Blood/Unholy Build like that looks something like this:
So what I really want to know is, does spell deflection work for Sartharion breathes? And are the spelldamage reduction things like Frost presence (-15%), Runeforge enchant (-4%), Macig Suppression (-3% with the above spec) and WotN (-15% when going below 35%) additional or multiplicative?
In other words do I have:
15% + 15% + 4% + 3% = 37% Magic Damage Reduction
or do I take
0.85 * 0.85 * 0.96 * 0.97 = 67% of the damage (wich would be 33% reduction)
To survive the breathes I plan to use AMS first, since it is on a short CD, after that I wanted to go with IBF and the third breath could be countered with VB + Health Trinket. I'm not sure if this especially the last combination is enough to survive a Breath.
Current Armory: The World of Warcraft Armory
(But i'm plannig to use Frost resi breast and boots with stamgems and HP/stam enchant. I'm not sure if I should use Gargoyle runeenchant or the - spelldamage rune).
I'm looking for some help regarding Sarth 3D.
Current Armory: The World of Warcraft Armory
(But i'm plannig to use Frost resi breast and boots with stamgems and HP/stam enchant. I'm not sure if I should use Gargoyle runeenchant or the - spelldamage rune).
How, pray tell, are you planning on remaining over the Defense cap when you use the Frost Resistance chest and boots if you want to use the -spelldamage rune? It appears the decision has been made for you.
So what I really want to know is, does spell deflection work for Sartharion breathes? And are the spelldamage reduction things like Frost presence (-15%), Runeforge enchant (-4%), Macig Suppression (-3% with the above spec) and WotN (-15% when going below 35%) additional or multiplicative?
In other words do I have:
15% + 15% + 4% + 3% = 37% Magic Damage Reduction
or do I take
0.85 * 0.85 * 0.96 * 0.97 = 67% of the damage (wich would be 33% reduction)
If I had to guess I would say the straight magic reductions are additive totaling to 0.78*0.85 = 0.663, but the 15% from WotN will definitely not be additive(and I'm not sure on the runeforge) If you had spell deflection it would be multiplicative because it is a proc not a passive, and would only be additive with other procs that worked the same way.
I was ecstatic about Blood when we did 25 man, but not so much after doing a 10 man with very little buffs. I did have Sunders and Battle Shout, but I was missing Windfury, 5% crit, 3% spell hit and it was most definitely noticable. Just to reinforce that Blood can do some silly threat, but does very subpar threat if you're not buffed to the teeth. My prot warrior had to hold back on Patchwerk as OT, while he was going all out on the 25 man version and could not catch up. He even got some Misdirects on wednesday, because he was being bitter.
Clearly that doesn't make Blood bad. I still think Blood's clickie with Vampiric Blood is the superior one to Frost/Unholy and Will of the Necropolis is just godly on progress encounters. The problem I'm having is that the trees are all good in their own way, which will make me respec so often in the future I predict .
Has anyone put together a stat comparison, Id like to know at what point X dodge is better than XX parry, Also considering we can proc unique ability's from parry it would seem naturally more useful than dodge. How much is too much, and how much parry/dodge would you give up for armor IE The World of Warcraft Armory
Has anyone put together a stat comparison, Id like to know at what point X dodge is better than XX parry, Also considering we can proc unique ability's from parry it would seem naturally more useful than dodge. How much is too much, and how much parry/dodge would you give up for armor IE The World of Warcraft Armory
Stacking parry is never a good idea as DK, the parry DR cap is much steeper than the dodge one. Also DKs have naturally a high parry rating. Stacking defense (for avoidance purposes) is a similarly bad idea due to a very low miss cap.
How, pray tell, are you planning on remaining over the Defense cap when you use the Frost Resistance chest and boots if you want to use the -spelldamage rune? It appears the decision has been made for you.
Well if I'm not at the defcap with the FR Gear (and I think I will need the FR gear to get the neccesary HP) I'll need to go with the gargoyle runeforge, which isn't so bad, since it adds another 2% Health. Have to check my values with and without FR gear. And if everything else fails, I'm going to regem to defence and use my Death's bite instead of Inevitable Defeat.
01/25/09, 6:44 PM
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