As I have been discussing with Darzog, the real test of any kind of value in TF would be to see if its debuff stacks with frost fever. I would still like to see how much threat it can pull consistently, if the reapplication of the debuff generates additional threat, but the reduction in attack speed would be an essential part. Does anyone know if the TF debuff stacks with frost fever? I still have had no luck finding a DK with a TF.
Give me specifics on what and how you want me to test and I will.
I am/was gear capped if you are looking at pre-3.1.0 and I have a TF.
The large increase in RP generation has allowed me to start using Death Coil heavily for ST Threat. This has resulted in a rather significant increase in TPS, as I pretty much spam DC in between rotation cycles. I haven't had a good chance to test so far in ulduar; instance server problems are hindering our progression past flame leviathan, but I'm rather overjoyed with the changes. As soon as I can get Sigil of the Vengeful Heart I except even higher increases.
The only change I'm not comfortable with is the increased cooldown timer. I agree with the parry -> mitigation move as a lateral change, but the cooldown timer change was unneeded imho. Any other thoughts?
I have been testing Mimiron today with Blood DW (just had to try it) and it worked out very well.
I was able to keep up good threat values, given the fact that you have to keep Runic Power for cooldowns.
Sure the DD´s could not go all out, but I begin to think, that Dualwield Blood (which simply is my favourite) can definetly keep up in terms of threat production.
It might not be as broken, as I feared, after all.
After reading the latest changes, I would go like this:
I like the Glyph of Disease a lot, since it really fits into Death Rune Mastery combined with the fact, that my main attack Heart Strike only uses one Bloodrune. That will make up for a lot more threat since I have one strike more in my rotation.
Have you tested your talent build on live? Could you provide a rotation for your spec?
my tank isnt really well geared but i want to try DW tanking cause 2H just isnt very appealing to me..i also want to try something new
im thinking of running with Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
im taking Morbidity cause seeing as i want to AoE tank i think it would be wise to have the DnD CD shortened by 15sec
im also taking runetap cause seeing as im not fully geared survivabilty is a bit of an issue
im trying this mainly cause seeing as runestrike causes threat wouldnt it be reasonable to get it in there asap? having 2 weps increase chance to parry since i will use the swordbreaking runes on both wep. im also not fully understanding this parry thing that a boss will do can someone plz explain a but further?
1.) Bladed Armor is mandatory. 800-900 attack power is too good. Take that.
2.) 1 point Icy Talons? Take 5/5 or drop it, it's useless this way.
3.) Merciless Combat will improve your threat generation when the mob is under 35%. Who needs extra threat at 35%?
4.) Chill of the Grave: Extra RP. Get it.
Other than that, it looks ok. What rotation do you have in mind?
I updated the first post. If you encounter some Ulduar experiences as a DW tank, please share them so I can keep the first post up-to-date.
Originally Posted by Torn
In contrast to DW DPS, DW tanking was neither popular nor overpowered even before patch 3.10. Of course it was possible to spec insane spell dps builds as a DW tank, too. However, most of these talent specs were not seen as competitive tanking specs since they lacked important survival and mitigation talents. In patch 3.10 spell-based DW talent specs have been nerfed to hell so they're not an option anymore.
Highlights of this thread:
1) DW Blood Tank: TPS reports from Naxx 25 & talent build [LINK]
2) 3.09 vs 3.10: How has HB and IT damage changed? [LINK]
I think I will stick with blood dualwield tanking.
Since I had some thread problems the last few days, I changed my talents a little bit and did some benchmarks yesterday in Naxx25.
Jaycroft produced 4313 tps vs Full report
(This is a report for complete Naxx25 + 4 Sartharion trys)
I was maintanking Faerlina, Gluth and Sartharion.
I was offtanking or dps´ing the rest.
I only had around 5k tps vs. Patchwerk because I was a little distracted at this time. Should have been more... Jaycroft produced 5079 tps vs Patchwerk
And I had some tps spikes around 9-10k from time to time, even though only for a handfull of seconds.
I really like the big hp pool (49k hp with Vampiric Blood) and besides that it provides a few buffs and debuffs which can prove useful in some situations. For example I can Hysteria myself when realizing that thread needs an extra push or Hysteria others when it seems appropriate.
I believe it to be the safest spec but I think it might be the most geardependent one. Jaycroft@Armory
But I´m really wondering why there is so little discussion about blood dualwield tanking.
Jay, can you please post what your rotation is for your current spec (armoried today). Why you changed to your current spec from your proposed 47/14/10. And why you are taking Lichborne over Rune Tap.
I tested out your spec today in 10man Naxx, unfortunately I only had access to [Red Sword of Courage] and a DPS 1H sword, I was able to get [Slayer of the Lifeless] however and will be doing further testing as such.
I think the three different specs you posted, the 47/14/10 spec listed above, 47/15/9(your current spec), and and 49/15/7 have great potential if we can all agree upon one final spec and I think letting them go to waste is well...a waste. Hopefully you get back to me because despite the fact that it was my first time trying out anything of a Blood Spec, my TPS was pretty good. Unfortunately I don't have any TPS reports, but I can say from watching Omen I was hovering at around 5k TPS on most fights while pretty much winging it. I was competing with the MT in my guild who was completely gear capped pre 3.1 and doing a decent job. Anyway, thanks in advance.
IT -> PS -> OB -> HS -> HS (Rune Dump)
OB -> HS ->HS -> HS -> HS (Rune Dump)
I was trying something similar, I'll see if i can get higher TPS with this rotation. I was being retarded and RP dumping in weird places, which was probably screwing with my rotation.
i got a question about your build
why did you get "On A Pale Horse" and "Improved Unholy Presence"??
When you get stunned, u cannot block, dodge or parry. Because I rely heavily on avoidance, it is required to reduce stun duration as much as possible (as I save IBF for it's damage reduction)
As for Imp Unholy Aura, as a tank you are required to response fast to situations as they come up; being able to respond as fast as possible is ideal.
So far I've done Iron Council, Auriaya, Ferya, Hodir (MT), and Thorim 10 man and Ironscale (rotating MT), Deconstructor OT and Iron Council OT-MT (original MT died during phase 1)
Multi target tanking I have no problems with threat or mitigation; single target I normally use a IT - PS - PEST - BS - SS / SS - PEST - BS - SS
@Kyosujin: I included your build + rotation in the first post. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
As for my deep frost build: Tuesday was my first day in Ulduar-10. I (successfully) MT'd Razorscale and XT-002. While XT-002 is not a totally static fight like Patchwerk, it's still a good threat indicator (heart damage not included). According to my TPS report, FS and RS produce a similar threat per strike in 3.10. This was not the case in 3.09. Looking at the total threat generated, HB is a bit lower than in 3.09 while its threat per strike is similar. I probably messed up with my rotation while helping out with adds and such. (It was our first night in Ulduar and we were learning the bosses.)
Threat per strike breakdown, pre-patch:
#1 HB
#2 IT
#3 RS
#4 FS
Threat per strike breakdown, now:
#1 HB
#2 RS, FS
#4 IT
The IT nerf is noticed (as expected) but the FS buff helps a bit to compensate the lost damage (and threat). Still, 4k TPS is a bit disappointing (even for 10man where lots of buffs and boss debuffs are missing). DW deep frost tanking builds could perform on a more competitive level if FS was changed to strike with both weapons.
This is my first post, though I have been reading the forums here for as long as I can remember. This might be a long post, if so bare with me.
First off, here is a link to my character: The World of Warcraft Armory
My spec is 12/51/8, I don't take frost strike in my build, but for other details, please check my sepc as I don't want to have to type out where each point is spent.
Now to the real post:
I have played death knights since beta, trying both Dps and Tanking. Pre 3.1, I went from tanking, to dps, to tanking, trying both 2h tanking/dps and DW tanking/dps. I found both times that I much prefered DWing. It's more fun, fits my play style, and ultimatly, is comparable to 2h tanking threat, and can pass it up in terms of avoidance. Tanking with DW did get nerfed a bit with 3.1, in fact, tanking over all got nerfed for us, we lost our ability to "cool down" tank but in no way are we under powered yet. From what I see, a huge buff to us is that we no longer rely on icy touch for everything, while yes, most of us still have the 53 def. rating sigil, and we care about imp. Icy Talons, with howling blast (henceforth "HB") applying frost fever it makes our rotations much cleaner, and (!) allows our blood boil to hit for more, thus increasing our snap aggro. Another buff is black ice. It applies to shadow damage as well now. With Death and Decay (DnD) already generating much of our early threat, having it do more damage is ideal and blood boil does even more damage which further increased AoE aggro at the beginning of a fight. In addition, with my spec, since I ignore frost strike, it makes my death coil's hit for more which is a huge bonus. So thats a bit of where we stand post 3.1.
Things to have as a Duel Wielding Tank:
All of my moves have rune strike the rune strike macro which allows for a bit of spamming, though I have another bar right above it with out the macro's to save runic power (I use bartender 4.0 I recommend you get it now). My avoidance is about 64% unbuffed against bosses (I use tanktotals to get that stat, I recommend you get it now, too).
And now to my experience with DW tanking:
I've main tanked WotLK has to throw at us so far. Heroics have always been a breeze, as was Naxx (of course). I spent most of my time in Naxx however as an off-tank, which, while it seems less glorious, and everyone here might get angry over, we are better at. Sure we can main tank. We do a darn good job, but I challenge any other class to pick up adds like we do. In Ulduar it is almost vital to have a death knight off tank for so many reasons. Two of them: Auryia: Drop a DnD on the floor as she walks over, you get aggro on the cats, MT grabs the chick and you are all set... and Iron Council. Death Grip is a god-send, even more so for hard mode. Being able to yank the little guy out of the power runes is amazing. Now thats more of a general thing, not really about DW only, but the nice thing about both those fights is that with DW you can build up huge amounts of threat while you wait for your team to start dps'ing your targets. We generate threat on a much more consistent level than 2h tanking does. I have never had a problem holding aggro (except against our resident huntard who is almost fully BiS, but thats only when he bows his CD's). I feel like the extra avoidance has saved me a few times, against Kologarn it makes his armor reduction shot hit less which is a huge advantage. While keeping def. capped with the new Ulduar items that seem to have forgotten def. is a touch harder with DW, its not bad, and it just makes us more avoidance tanks instead of meat shields.
Conclusion:
Dual Wield tanking is viable, as most people here have said. We can generate a ton of threat, we make great avoidance tanks and we look totally B.A. The nerfs hit us, but over all, surprisingly, overall, we got a nice buff. I thin I didn't use a ton of spread sheet numbers in here, but this is mostly another summary of our where we stand as DW tanks, what I see as our main moves and where we can be the most useful as death knight tanks in general. Hope this post helped you, and contrary to most people, feel free to contact me if you have questions, tips, or think I'm a complete idiot, I'd love to hear it.
PS: If frost strike is ever changed to hit both weapons I'd pick it up in a second, until then though, DC is my runic power dump of choice.
Email: lyeth.master@gmail.com
In-game-mail: Regalis, horde side on Dragonmaw (you should know that if you checked my armory)
Or send me a PM.
Last edited by Veritas : 04/27/09 at 1:00 PM.
Reason: Frost Strike
I finally found a DW Tank build that I'm happy with. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Weps: Slow/Fast
Rotation:
1. PS-IT-HB-PEST(or BS)-PEST-FS
2. HB-OB-OB-FS
3. HB-OB-PEST-PEST-FS
Rotation goes 1-2-3-(2-3, repeating)
The rotation gets tweaked slightly depending on Rime procs as you'll break for the extra HB each time, so you'll need to adjust where the PESTx2 falls into the rotation depending on disease time. Reason for the double PEST is simple, to keep the diseases ticking. I've found that without burning both blood runes on it when they're up you cant get the OB off in part 3 without the disease falling off.
The large increase in RP generation has allowed me to start using Death Coil heavily for ST Threat. This has resulted in a rather significant increase in TPS, as I pretty much spam DC in between rotation cycles. I haven't had a good chance to test so far in ulduar; instance server problems are hindering our progression past flame leviathan, but I'm rather overjoyed with the changes. As soon as I can get Sigil of the Vengeful Heart I except even higher increases.
The only change I'm not comfortable with is the increased cooldown timer. I agree with the parry -> mitigation move as a lateral change, but the cooldown timer change was unneeded imho. Any other thoughts?
The points in on a pale horse and imp unholy presence are very unnecessary (yes i read your reply to someone else's comment on this as well) Off hand i only recall one mob in all off Ulduar that stuns, that being one of the adds in the Thorim event (and possibly one mob on the trash to general dont remember for sure), making these points relatively useless. As for imp unholy aura, while i am always a supporter of faster movement speed, you are missing some key talents such as death runes(more scourge strikes) and bladed armor( much better than scent of blood) to spend points on movement speed.
i would use something more like this build Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
may consider swapping some points out of bladed armor to black ice though i feel the ap boost to all your moves out weighs the dmg boost to frost and shadow damage.
i also think the glyph of unholy blight may suite this build better more DCs vs 15% more dmg on fewer ones
Ok guys, I have thought about DW tanking as frost but I know I don't have the expertise yet to back it up. I have been trying to tank H-AN the last boss but I keep failing and not sure why, could someone please look at my spec and tell me if my spec or my rotation is fail
Well, just my opinion on your build Sonjia, but the two points in two-hand spec are a bit wasted if you're a dualwield tank - My guess is you tend to switch between dualwield and 2h tanking regularly, as you currently have a Titansteel Destroyer with the stoneskin rune on. I think before anyone can really give you advice (Since at first glance the build is mostly sound - as a personal preference I'd move the points off Improved Frost presence into Chill of the Grave for improved RP gen => improved threat gen through more rune strikes / frost strikes being available), we need to know where you feel you are going wrong. Maybe answering the following could be useful:
- Are you mainly a dualwield or twohand tanker? What are your dualwield weapons?
- Are you starved for RP?
- Are you getting a lot of misses, or dodges/parries? (Checking by using recount on a ?? training dummy would be useful, though you'll get more misses and dodges/parries on those).
- Are you losing aggro? If so, what to? Healers? DPS?
Someone else may be able to spot something I've missed, but I do not think your build is to blame - it's mostly the equivalent of what I took when I first started tanking as my DK (that is, before the tree reshuffles and nerfs).
If you want to discuss gear, gemming, enchants, etc. drop me a PM instead of replying here, I know the mods don't like handholding in public
This is my first post in these forums, so bare with me Anyways, I am responding on the call for people with experience in tanking in Ulduar as DW tanks.
My current spec: 13/51/7 (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)
My tank: The World of Warcraft Armory
Bosses I still haven't downed on 25man as of this writing: Algalon, Yogg, General, Mimiron, Thorim (Although Thorim is close to a kill with the guild reaching phase2 now)
Priorities of skill usage in my setup:
Rune Strike (On a hotkey for itself, so I can use it as often as possible, not having to wait for macroed abilities to be ready with runes)
Pestilence (if diseases are about to run out)
Bloodstrike (only if Blade Barrier is in danger of running out)
Howling Blast (Primary active aggro ability)
Obliterate (when howling blast is not available)
Some points I've noticed:
-Scent of Blood give me alot of runic power, yet the RNG nature of the talent makes for an uneven curve of RP income.
-Most of the time my RP goes to constant rune strikes. When I hit 100 RP (and I remember it) I use Frost Strike.
-Sigil of Deflection is pure love for a DW tank due to increased amount of Rune Strikes produced.
Haven't got any WWS reports of interesting bosses as we don't subscribe to the service (so the reports eventually gets removed from their server) and our data collecting is on somewhat random basis when people remember to do it. So far, though, I haven't heard any copmlaints from dps about threat and it's not uncommon for a prot warrior to give me Vigilance when I MT for even more damage reduction making me quite the tough bugger usually, with the increased avoidance from tanking weaps on higher uptime on sigil of deflection.
I have been reading this thread for a long time now, and I am very interested in DW tanking, and I want to try doing it unholy specced. I have only done tanking with 2h now, and I'm willing to try dual wielding.
What does it look like? Rotation is something like: DnD -> IT -> PS -> Pestilence -> UB -> SS -> BB -> DnD and so on, refresh diseases with pestilence. Runic power dump for death coil.
How much is good TPS? My guild's tanks say good one is around 4-6k, is that true?
And what about gemming? Def cap is of course the 1st target but after it, will I gem for hit and expertise cap, and after them to avoidance and stamina? What do you wise ppl think?
Thanks
EDIT: Tested this spec many times now, and works very well. I like it.
Rotation: (Rune Strike Is Macroed To Nearly Every Skill)
PS > IT > HS > HS > DS > DC
DS > HS > HS > HS > HS > DC(x2, Usually)
Without a single hunter or rogue, I was able to hover 6.5k - 8.2k TPS via Omen. I only wished I had a WWS or WMO to acctully get a good read on it, really you can only take my word for it at this time. What I do have tho, is some screenshots of my recount for the fight, quit a few even, so you can se the breakdown of every spell and ability.
Another possibly interesting thing I happened to use this fight, was duel cinderglacier runes. I figured hell, im using weapons with defensive stats, why not use offensive enchant, as opposed to an offensive weapon with a defensive enchant.
Some things I'm going to look into within the next week or so, the Fallen Crusader rune. Right now, I've forsaken 4% parry with the idea, that procing a truck load of +20% damage procs for my constant Death Coil spam would produce a lot of threat, but death coil is only #4 on my top damageing attacks, rune strike holding a commanding lead at #1, and my top 3 being melee even...
So FC might be the way to go, in terms of a threat rune. Also adds some extreamly mild parry, via forceful deflection, and the 3% heal *Increased by Imp Blood Pres and Vamp Blood talents?*
Probably also going to, oddly enough, try to find more gear with +hit on it, and/or def so I can swap out my yellow gem slots with +hit/stam. The goal being, to hit the spell-hit cap... Im finding my rotation can get a little held up with a failed Icy Touch, and a rather noticeable threat loss, when one of my Death Coils, or free death coils via Sudden Doom fails to land, also brings me close to, albeit not at the duel wielding hit cap.
To be blunt, I'm not sure why you would use cinderglacier. You are ignoring some pretty potent synergy by going out side of your already well amplified physical abilities.
Yes, giving your death coils 20% bonus on top of your 30% is nice no doubt about it, but rune strike is and always will be your primary threat generator. I would suggest you give dual fallen crusader a try (or even cinder MH/Fallen Offhand), I used it when I was DW tanking with a heavy unholy build because healing yourself for 3% per proc, as well as gaining 30% strength boost that stacks (or at least did when I was still DW tanking). With a blood build, it's even more of a benefit for you.
Throw in the darkruned 2 pc bonus and the sigil and you're not going to have any problems.
04/14/09, 11:42 PM
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