piken

You bring up a good point, but think of it this way. At good gear levels it is all about the type of avoidance that is the tanks preference.

SG for 3 % avoid and 2% stam, plus a slight buff to ibf

or

SS for 4 % avoid.

To me, they are very close and that is good. It leaves it at good gear levels to the individual tank to determine what is best for their play style.

 

Megaera

Further up the page, keep in mind point 3 of my guide to how this conversation goes. If you prefer SG to SS, then whetever's driving you to make that choice would also make you prefer to regem/enchant down to 540 rather than keeping 565. It's almost never going to be a choice between 2% stam and 1% avoid unless you're behaving irrationally, or are trying to hit a specific balance point most efficiently.

More importantly, this has nothing to do with tank playstyle. You tank the same with either rune. It has everything to do with how the fight is healed. If you're looking for situational uses for each rune, start by thinking "what demands could there be on healers that one of these runes might help with more than the other" and go from there.

 

Feanorr

I dont think anyone doubt that SS is better for pur avoidance.

But, with the current content, I dont think avoidance is the most important as a tank.
Avoidance reduce your overall damage, but, again with current content, the overall damage is not really important. Why? because healer dont have mana issue. What make a tank die is big hits and boss's special abilities. And I cant think of one boss's ability where you will like to rely on a chance (avoidance) rather than on your HP pool.

Look at it this way: if avoidance and/or overall damage was really important, DK tanks would be far superior than others tanks, because we do have a lot better avoidance and we do take a lot less damage overall.



PS: it may change with futur content however, if healer mana become a problem.

 

Carnerro

I have a few questions regarding comparison in talents. Up until this point survivability was my main concern and though it still is, since my guild is somewhat slow on progression, I would like to understand how to improve my TPS/DPS generation.

I was reviewing the “Recount” from Thaddius attempts yesterday and it reported that 26%-30% of my damage came from melee attacks, 6% from PS, 6% from BS, 10% from SS. I was not tanking him so there was very little RS damage. The rest of the damage came from diseases and runic dump via DC.

When I tried to add up number of hits from PS, SS, BS, RS etc., it did not add up to the melee number which leads me to believe that those were auto attacks.

Is this a reasonable/correct assumption?

This is my armory;
The World of Warcraft Armory

This is the spec I am thinking about
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Death Knight -> Talent Calculator


I have currently DnD, PS, and corps explosion glyphs which I will change to DnD PS and SS.

Survivability is still a prime concern for my guild progression. We go through 3-4 tanks on Patch, some get squashed, some healers are unable to keep up. I do not think that I am ready to drop VotTW for more DPS oriented talents in the tree, and I am unprepared to switch to frost yet since I don’t think that my gear supports it.

 

piken

And you missed the statement pertaining to level of gear. Once you get into mostly 25 man gear you can maintain 540+ def with out def gems and with out def enchants. That leaves all gemming to stam and avoidance. Once your at that level of gear the rune you use pertains purely to the play style and build of the tank. Not the healers. Some go for more HP at that point some go for more avoidance, the same as people go with different builds around their play style.

That is the beauty of the DK class. Unlike every other tank class that has 1 tree and way of looking at pure tanking stats, we have variety.

You can push more avoidance with a deep frost build, you can push more aoe with a deep unholy, you cna push more stats with a deep blood build. It is purely about the play style of the player. And when they have the gear to allow their gems, enchants, and rune lend to their build and play style things become better for that player.

 

Flamingcloud

There is a problem with that statement. The best in slot gear set does not have 540 defense with SS, no def enchants, and no def gems. Not even close, not even if you count the sigil, and use the defense trinket(which I wouldn't say is even part of the best in slot set anyways).

 

Megaera

I'm looking for posts to this effect by you and others to link back to, but the search tool isn't friendly with item links. Buck, when you're remaking the thread would you mind including a reference to this in the runeforge section, perhaps with mention of specific items (platinum mesh, impregnable, etc) that people are using to hit 540 without gems and enchants that are, in fact, inferior survivability items?

Thanks again for remaking the thread, by the way. It's work I wish I had time to do.

 

Orlgin

If you are going to contradict the man, at least make sure you know what you are talking about. He was talking higher levels of gear. I can do that pretty easy, here's what each slot has:

Head - 59 Def
Neck - 46 Def
Shoulder - 34 Def
Cloak - 38 Def
Chest - 53 Def
Wrist - 38 Def
Hands - 50 Def
Belt - 43 Def
Legs - 50 Def
Feet - 55 Def
Ring - 25 Def
Ring - 57 Def

Total: 548 defense. No trinkets, gems, no socket bonuses, no enchants. Search Wowhead for 2 minutes and you'd know that.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Mindaika

This argument has come up in another thread. How is the best in-slot gear the best in-slot, when the composition of the gear fails to meet the minimum tanking requirement of 540 defense? The quality of gear for "best in slot" tends to presume that you are at the defense cap, and/or will remain at it using some single piece. Consequently, Wowhead lists [Obsidian Greathelm] as the best in-slot helm for DK tanks, despite the complete lack of defense on it.

So: does the best in-slot gear have 540 defense with SG, not using gems, enchants, trinkets or the sigil?

This went up after my post. I'm using the wowhead filter to generate my listings of what is "best in-slot" which does not comport with Origin's values.




Edit: More info

Tastes like Awesome, because it's made of Awesome(TM)

 

Jazzdruid

Yes that adds up to 548 Defense Rating, not Defense Skill. I think you are at about 512 Defense Skill with your numbers. Not even the SG rune would get you uncrittable.

 

Flamingcloud

Not only that but those items are again, not even close to best in slot. Impregnable and Mesh are not best in slot. Boundless Ambition is a toss up, t7 pants are hardly best. Whatever boots have 55 def aren't best in slot, etc.

Being able to put together a set that is over 540 is easy, but that doesn't make it best in slot.

 

Megaera

Things that calculate best-in-slot (Preferably things more sophisticated than Wowhead. I suggest using the Warrior tankpoints system and disregarding items with block value) are just what they claim to be, an analysis of a particular slot in a vacuum. Sadly, we still have to do a little bit of thinking when putting together a set, which these tools aren't trying to model. These tools are also imperfect in that they fail to catch things like dodge rating scaling positively, so if your dodge is particularly high overall you might want to weight dodge-heavy pieces slightly higher when doing close comparisons.

While there are certainly good pieces that allow you not to use gems/enchants/SG, there are better survivability pieces that put you below 540. Maybe this will change in Ulduar, but for now juggling gems and enchants to stay capped as your gear improves is a reality, and that reality lends utility to SG long past the transition from blues to epics.

 

Asari

In regards to SS vs SG... gargoyle can increase your avoidance over SS when you have both the 84 dodge trinket AND the parry trinket off 25 man sapph. It's not much of an increase, but you do have higher total avoidance - in addition to 2% stam.

Of course to use both avoidance trinkets, you have to give up your 84 defense trinket and any stam trinkets.

Take a look at my armory, raid buffed I have just over 40500 HP and about 66% or 68% total avoidance. I'm also essentially hit and expertise capped for threat generation.

I tried using my T7.25 chest, bracers of the unholy knight, and the naxx 10 helm which has higher avoidance... and the result was I could get like 75% total avoidance, but my threat generation was total crap. And since my guilds at the point where we're almost all in full 25 man gear, DPS is actually able to rip threat away from tanks if they're lazy.


I honestly can't think of anyway to improve my gear right now except for swapping out my defense trinket for sapph's trinket and using SG over SS once I do that.

 

Mindaika

So to sum up: You can drop your avoidance rune, and your defense/stam trinkets and replace them with a defense/stam rune and avoidance trinkets?

Tastes like Awesome, because it's made of Awesome(TM)

 

Flamingcloud

Now that I have time to post.

This is what I would consider best in slot(not a best gear set, just best in a vacuum) for pure survivability:

[Helm of Vital Protection]
[Nexus War Champion Beads]
[Valorous Scourgeborne Pauldrons]
[Cloak of the Shadowed Sun]
[Valorous Scourgeborne Chestguard]
[Bracers of the Unholy Knight]
[Inevitable Defeat]
[Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight]
[Valorous Scourgeborne Handguards]
[Ablative Chitin Girdle]
[Legplates of Sovereignty]
[Kyzoc's Ground Stompers]
[Sand-Worn Band]
[Keystone Great-Ring]
[Figurine - Monarch Crab]
[Essence of Gossamer]

Total is 544 defense rating counting sigil, if you add def socket bonuses, chest, cloak, helm, and shoulder enchants you get 625
(and in my opinion +275hp to chest is better and you shouldn't count the sigil because you cant swap to one for threat if your gear set requires it on, but lets ignore that.) which is 64 short of the uncritable. Even if you gem Stam/Def in every yellow socket you are still not uncritable. (As a side note the above set puts you exactly at 26 expertise with one of the 5 expertise talents)

So basically it is not possible to as was stated "No trinkets, gems, no socket bonuses, no enchants" defense cap in best in slot items.

Notable Gear Exceptions:

[Keystone Great-Ring] can be replaced by [Gatekeeper](gain 28 hit for a little loss in survivability)
[Helm of Vital Protection] can be replaced by [Valorous Scourgeborne Faceguard] for 4pc bonus and little loss
[Nexus War Champion Beads] while better could be hard to get(or you might choose the dps version) so [Boundless Ambition] and [Heritage] are pretty interchangeable depending on if you need hit or expertise.
3rd best trinket being [Valor Medal of the First War] if you aren't a JC, though [Indestructible Alchemist's Stone] is very good, I am just going to ignore it since the profession passive bonus is horrible

 

Suno

I have posted an OP to a new thread, found here. It is only the first block of an eventual encyclopedia. I have a lot more to add, but things are picking up at work today. Please don't anticipate information heavily redundant in general tanking threads, or even generic DK info that can be found in this very forum. I will scrub this thread early next week for the rare gems that it has produced and find an appropriate place for it over there. If you have any suggestions, please PM them to be to keep clutter down.

Thanks.

 

Rangeins

I have both the defense trinket and sapp's parry trinket and my testing has shown that due to parry's horrible conversion rating and parry's horrible DR's, the defense trinket is superior with my current gear setup. I am quite confident the same will apply in your case. From the non profession specific avoidance trinkets, I have found that after DR, the heroic embelm dodge trinket is the best choice. My combination of choice is the gossamer stam trinket and the dodge trinket. Especially considering how the gossamer trinket scales with buffs and frost presence and the DR's on the def stats.

Other than that, personally I would prefer Razuvious's Bracers to yours. Mainly because of parry's crapiness aswell. Seeing youre not expertise soft-capped you may also want to have a look at Kel'thuzad's Necklace, I think its fairly superior to yours, with your current gear setup.



EDIT:
Regarding the subject of best in slot items:

I think you have very well proven with that, how useless a "best in slot, in a vacuum" point of view really is and how futile it is talking about it.

Especially looking at how greatly diminishing returns affects us, and how certain stats scale with buffs in a raid environment and some don't, many of those items you linked, as you correctly ackknowledged indirectly with , are quite far behind other items when looked at in a complete gear set.

I think the most obvious case for this are the Malygos Legs. While good when looked at them independantly, completely geared parry takes such a hit that they become less and less useful, combine that with the situation that depending on your spec and rest of equipment you get enough expertise to be soft-capped, you will want the T7,5 Pants.

So instead of focussing on, whatever is best in slot if you were naked otherwisely, we should focus on what's the best "whole picture", since we rarely are completely naked except one piece :P

Regards

 

Flamingcloud

I'd like you to explain how you think t7 legs are better than the Malygos pants.

If you socketed dodge/stam and def/stam for socket bonus in t7 you get:

13 stam 43 armor 2str 28 def 57 parry 66 expertise

vs

72 dodge 35 hit

Even if you ignore the massive difference in threat stats(and damage reduction expertise actually provides) 13stam, 43 base armor, 28def and 57 parry is better than 72 dodge.

Please tell me what items are "far behind other items when looked at in a complete gear set". Looking at your armory you use t7 pants, Impregnable and Sabatons of Endurance however that does not compare favorably against what I have suggested even after dr.

Soverignity, Kyzoc, Keystone vs T7 pants, Impregnable, and Sabatons

2 Sta
580 Armor (after base on sovereignty is multiplied)
94 Parry

vs

33 Defense
41 Dodge

Plugged into tank points for my current gear that is
2stam and 0.38% reduction on physical vs 0.3% avoidance

Seems pretty clear to me that I have it right. Your set is far closer to a threat set (gains 62 hit vs 7 expertise and 14 strength).

The only reason I indicated that it was not a complete gear set is that in a perfect gear set I would rather use T7 helm over vital protection for set bonus, and gatekeeper over keystone for hit/stam instead of dodge/armor.

 

Cloudgatherer

I'm not sure I agree with that assessment. I would like to see a bit more discussion on gear selection, as early in WotLK release DK tanks were talking about how their threat was suffering. Given that there aren't many fights that seriously challenge our abilities to take damage, I made sure to get my hit/expertise up, and never really saw any threat problems. There are actually several items I'm looking for, which simply aren't dropping, and I am using less optimal gear choices. In short, I'd like to see a few more gear trade-off discussions for the current content, so that we can make more informed choices on how we should be geared going into Ulduar.

For example, Flamingcloud's post above this one spells out the comparison pretty well. The maly legs certainly look to be better than Valorous. The avoidance provided by Valorous might be slightly better (need to math that out), but the extra expertise seals the deal there IMO.

 

mtrixis

I actually completed my T7 set bonus earlier this week... and then put together a set that broke my bonus completely, but capped me on hit and expertise, because we kept running into threat issues on Malygos. Granted, a lot of that is due to the mechanics of the fight, but even so, after I looked over my stats, I felt the loss of raw tanking power was easily made up for by having melee specials capped, expertise removing dodges, and spells 1% off cap.

I'll give the more 'offensive' set a try in our next nax clear, but I know I was getting pretty sick of having rotations thrown off by a miss/dodge/parry.

I'm not sure about anyone else, but most of the time our healing in nax is so overdone that a few % off your raw avoidance and maybe 2-3k less hp isn't such a huge big deal most of the time. For the fights where it does matter, you just have a different outfitter set up that piles on the tank stats (Sarth mostly). There's also some value in having more damage coming from your tank, 1% wipes are never fun.

 

Asari

I have the neck, the loss of stats from Heritage isn't worth it. I also drop under hit cap by a good amount. Same reason Im using the chest and bracers over high avoidance items.

The parry trinket is worth over 1% avoidance, dropping the defense trinket losses me 3k HP for 15 seconds every 3 minutes. This results in slightly higher avoidance using SG over SS, and a constant HP increase.

I tried using both the JC stam trinkets for a raid (with 41 stam gems), what I have now gives me 5% higher avoidance at the cost of about 5k HP.


The truth is I don't need 45000 HP for current raids. And when I do, there'll be better gear I can get anyway. 40k HP and over 65% avoidance is better overall, especially considering the benefit that avoidance gives in terms of RS and BS.

 

Flamingcloud

Well I am at around 73% avoidance(counting scorpid, night elf, and boss base miss) with 46500 fully buffed hp. Personally I was not pleased when before when I had around 80% avoidance and got parry gibbed and died in one second because I didn't dodge 4x in a row. Luck is basically gone now, can take two hatefuls, two Faerlina enraged hits without a heal and not die. That 6-7% avoidance for 8k+ hp is a pretty good trade off.

I am quite happy with the results, healers just spam us with overheals for the most part anyways. There really isn't a fight currently where we need to minimize our raw damage taken because heals are limited, but it is my intention to build an avoidance set for if one arises.


As an aside, why do people put their +41 stamina gems in the trinket all the time? One would think that is a slot you would want the flexibility to swap in and out.

 

Pyros

I think the point is to have one heavy stam trinket just like gossamer, but yeah doesn't make much of a difference when you have everything equipped, but when you remove the trinket for something else it's a bit stupid because you don't have prismatics on your gear anymore. I use my prismatic gems to get the bonus off yellow sockets myself on my armor, even though in most cases 4parry rating or whatever isn't going to help much anyway. However, I never remove my JC trinket anyway, it's the best trinket in the game in my opinion, so even if I gemmed it with prismatics, it wouldn't make a difference.

 

Rangeins

As I don't have the time to go through every single piece and since we are both wearing exactly or closely to what we personally consider a BRGA Set I have bothered to make a little RAWR calculation.

Raidbuffed, without Boss Debuffs: RAWR sees me at 71,7 percent avoidance, and you at 65,6 percent avoidance. (To get correct results I have fixed the defense Sigil in RAWR so permanently grants the correct amount of defense). Now 3 percent of the avoidance difference is from frigid dreadplate, leaving us with a avoidance difference of 3 percent.

Now we have pretty much the exact amount of armor, and you are a little less than 2,5k Health (buffed!) ahead of me.

Other than that you have somewhat worse threat stats than me.

While I absolutely agree with your previous statements that health is an important factor and we are already well off on avoidance stats, I think 2,5k Health for 3 percent avoidance and some threat is, while not exactly a horrible tradeoff, is definately not what I expect from a "best raiding gear set" either. And this is what i meant about best in slot and the vacuum.

I have a small picture here to illustrate the rawr calculations.
RAWR Screenie


Now for Asari:

For me the parry trinket is worth exactly 1 percent parry. The def trinket gives me roughly 0,6 miss, 0,5 dodge and 0,4 parry. Thats roughly 1,5 percent avoidance compared to 1 percent avoidance plus the advantage of spreading out my tanking stats some more.

I hope you realize that before the expertise soft-cap the expertise will do you more good than being hit capped, both as a threat stat and as an avoidance stat.


Regards

 

Flamingcloud

Rawr doesn't work(like always). Bonus armor is not added at all, buffs don't work properly(try clicking devo aura for example). My health is about 800 lower than it is in game unbuffed, not sure if that is the same for you. It is no wonder you are using the wrong items, when bonus armor is given a value of 0. If they can't get that right who knows what else is screwed up.

I would avoid Rawr like the plague. Last year when I used it, it was just as bad.

Not only that but you gave yourself the +53 defense from the sigil but not me.

Edit: Oh and Rawr gives you tauren health bonus but doesn't give me 2% miss. Good job Rawr, you really are the king of simulators.