Just noticed you used heart strike exclusively. How does the damage of blood boil hold up in comparison to heart strike for you?
Really from what I had found, BB just dosent hold a candle against HS, at least using my spec. But thats simply because I pretty much built my talents, glyphs and even my rotation right around using HS, and trying to get as many free Death Coils * for its none weapon damage bias damage * and runic power generated for my Rune Strikes * I tend to see an averadge of 2-3 per cycle * as possible.
Originally Posted by Kyosujin
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, 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.
Aye, I'm actully dueling crusader on live as we speak. Just dont have to many more instances I can get into to test the differance, as im locked to mostly everything.
And a small correction, crusader dosent stack, at least anymore. Dunno about previously in WotLK, I was playing my prot warrior as my main mostly. Either way, dueling it seems to give me a much higher uptime on it, so im happy.
One thing I want to do sometime, once I acctully get "good" weapons, is to duel Blade Ward... =/ I've only found a handful of posts on the forums about the usefulness of it, as a DW DK and trying to stack it as high as possible and when you parry, release a fair ammount of bonus damage. Seems like it could be a potentially decent threat combo, that dosent sacrifice a whole lot of avoidance. Just gonna cost me an extra 2k, whereas all my other weapon enchants are free.
On an unrelated note, I notice most people skip out on Blood Gorged in there DW blood tanking specs. Any real reason for this, outside of the "Im a tank, I'm not above 75% health enough to make the talent worth it." argument? I mean sure, I myself only spend about 35-40% of a boss fight, above the 75% mark, but I would think that for 35-40% of the time having +10% damage, and a static +10% ArP would still outweigh most talents you could pickup threatwise, in other places.
The only possible place i could move those points right now would maybe be Spell Deflection, maybe pickup some of the cooldowns I skipped going down the tree... But considering how much DW specs struggle on threat, I cant see myself moving them any time soon.
This is a theorycraft for Veritas post which can be found HERE.
To sum up the post it basically states that as DW tanks, we should avoid attacks like Obliterate and Frost Strike that rely on Weapon damage and focus more on HB and DC. I would like to say that this seems like a sound idea since threat can be related to damage done and therefore as a DW Tank a DK would want to maximize damage in order to maximize threat.
After looking at the glyphs out there and searching this forum and the internet, I was unable to find a good rotation to use for this BUILD. As I always want to keep all my runes on c/d and minimize runic power through dumps such as Rune Strike and Death Coil.
The rotation I found and am using is based loosely off of my rotation for frost dps with a 2h weapon. It goes
HB>BS(BB)>BS(BB)>DS and repeats. For single target I BS due to the crit damage and for AOE I BB.
After a few days of testing out this spec, I really liked it, I haven't had a problem getting or holding aggro, but something seemed off. Blood of the North seemed to be pretty redundant. While a 15% boost to BS seems like a good idea in theory, I have found that converting blood runes to death runes is a waste of a feat since this spec avoids Obliterate at all costs. I did some looking around in the Frost tree to see if I could find a better place for these 5 talents and Placed them in Endless Winter and Glacier Rot. Endless Winter gives free interupts with Mind Freeze and Glacier Rot increase damage of HB by 20% when the target is diseased. I also figured that I don't like using Death Strike as it doesn't hit for more than BB or BS so by moving the Points from Morbidity to Death Rune Mastery My rotation becomes
HB>BB(BS)>BB(BS)>DS Runic Power Dump
HB>BB(BS)>BB(BS)>BB(BS)>BB(BS)> Runic Power Dump and Repeat
And the Final Build looks like THIS.
I was wondering if anyone else had tried anything like this? I am only lvl 65 on my "Tank" DK so I'm not sure how this is going to work at lvl 80. I do know the other day in Blood Furnace I was ripping aggro from a pally tank in blood presence. He had all his buffs on including righteous fury, but he couldn't keep aggro off of me and he was one level above me.
If you're deep frost (and according to your talent build you are), it makes no sense using DC instead of FS. FS damage has been buffed significantly in patch 3.1. FS has now a similar threat-per-strike as RS.
Yes, FS is weaker when striking with one weapon. Still, it produces more threat than DC (glyphed or not). If you want to use DC, don't spec deep frost. It's very simple.
Glyph of Disease and Morbidity 3/3 are needed for the rotation to work.
Why d&d in single target tanking?
Answer : because it does more damage and more than double the threat of a scourge strike if you have a quick weapon(remember we are dualwielding, so our strikes are not so strong as 2h), and the blood strike you loose by using D&D (blood rune) does really worthless damage anyway.
Strong points of the Build :
-Almost entirely non-strike based : a full rotation counts only 3ss+1bs, while a scourge strike classic rotation (with reaping) counts 1ps+2bs+4ss .
-Fulled 5/5 bladed armor, desecration, impurity, rage of rivendare : dw weak point is the threat, and this build is the only one that lets you take ALL the major 5/5 threat-boosting talents together (all without giving up mitigation talents like anti-magic zone).
-No Blood Caked Blade = less strikes = less parries from boss .
-Few strikes means we are less dependant on mainhand speed, and we all know that 90% of the tanking weapons are fast (being [Broken Promise] our wet dream for main hand, and knowing that many dualwielders when need more tps, swich the main hand for poor blues like [Infantry Assault Blade] because they need the slow speed)
-A little but still useful point : the rotation becomes just the same in single and aoe tanking, similar to paladin tanking, in this way you easily pick up eventual adds that are present in various encounters, without loosing threat on the boss.
Weak points :
-Movement based encounters where you need to walk the boss around (see Hodir) can be hard to play because of D&D (but for those bosses you can just swich the d&d for 1ss+1bs) .
-D&d and Desecration together can be problematic for some ground effects of some boss encounter , although i personally never had that problem.
-Casting and pointing on the ground D&D in each rotation requires a bit of skill, and it's much different and definitely harder on the long run than other brainless strike-spam builds.
-Lack of Scent of Blood, that for me is pure love while tanking, generating tons of RP .
Without it I find myself often having only enough RP to cast Unholy blight + feeding of runestrikes,and an occasional DC....while i'd like to spam much more DC.
the only possibility, if you are in a raid where other players with high attendancy already slow the boss strikes, is to give up to Improved Icy Touch and take SoB . But never do it if you can't rely on others, 6% physical mitigation in 3point is huge as we all know, and we should never give up to it .
Debating :
I still am not sure if in this build is better to use Runestrike or D&D glyph , asking help here. (Bone shield and Disease are mandatory obviously)
Results :
I have a stable 4.5tps at minimum in naxx10-25, with spikes of 5, 5.5k tps in stationary encounters like Patchwerk, with swordbreaking runes on both the weapons for full avoidance : this is by far the best for me, and far from the 3.5, 4k maximum tps i could achieve with frost or scourgestrike-reaping builds with the same gear in 3.1 patch.
If you want you can report in the main post for visibility after having verified the validity of the build, at least from my experience this is for far the best dw spec, threat generation wise in a raid-contest, and it could even survive in 3.2 being only little dependent on strike damage.
I'm honestly curious with the new talents on if DW tanking will be viable. While the ToT added damage to our standard strikes is without a doubt a nice change the talent doesn't include Rune Strike as it currently reads. By excluding RS which is a huge threat output while tanking I'm curious if DW will be able to keep up in threat.
I'm honestly curious with the new talents on if DW tanking will be viable. While the ToT added damage to our standard strikes is without a doubt a nice change the talent doesn't include Rune Strike as it currently reads. By excluding RS which is a huge threat output while tanking I'm curious if DW will be able to keep up in threat.
Only time will tell really. I would hope with a change like this, DW-Tanking will become publicly viable again, instead of it being restricted to the choice few, so brave enough to even bother anymore.
On an unrelated note, anyone looking at 45/5/21 as a possible spec, come patch time? It lacks the flash of ToT, but if you make it a Heart Strike heavy build, you will use 6 Heart Strikes over 2 cycles, each with a 15% chance to launch a free Death Coil, spaming that many moves will generate enough rage for 1-2 more Death Coils at the end of each cycle, and to top it off, you can dip into unholy, to pickup Morbitity, the new and improved Unholy Blight, then glyph for Dark Death and Unholy Blight, and become a Death Coil based, shadow damage launching machine...
Its only problem that ive ran into, talents spread thin as you have to pickup Death Rune Mastery and Sudden Doom, but I'd think it very possible, this spec could generat insane ammounts of threat.
Edit: Just to point out, which I'm sure youve noticed if youve read this far, with only 5 points in frost, you both dont have Imp Icy Touch and Nerves of Cold Steel. Really about the only thing keeping THIS SPEC duel wield, is duel wieldings synergy between Necrosis and Blood Caked Blades.
So I was just playing around with the talent calculator a bit, Came up with this build although im clueless on which glyphs to take, so if those glyphs are wrong correct me please.
There are 5 points left to distribute because i cannot make up my mind really. I was thinking of maxing out bladed armor for the huge boost to threat.
First off, a lot of people would suggest going into shadow for necrosis and BcB, for the dual wield synergy. But an interesting theory has come up in the dual wield dps threads about this new Talent ToT. The conventional thoughts are that Necrosis and BCB are needed for dual wielding to offset the relative loss of dmg through strikes. ToT fixes that to a large extent and possibly frees up the possibility to go into the blood tree instead. Also the need to get both blade barrier and anticipation for tanking builds prevents you from reaching BcB anyway.
So going deeper into blood can get you increased AP and increased RP generation through Scent of Blood. With dual wielding and going through std rotations you should be able to consume those 3 charge between boss swing timers or possibly overlapping only one swing. Greatly reducing your chances of overwriting charges and losing potential RP.
Talent choices im unsure of are Glacial rot, Killing machine and Chill of the grave. Killing machines procs should increase through DW should increase unless im mistaken, but CotG should provide good RP generation to keep Runestrikes and Frost strikes rolling in. Which also adds more synergy to procing KM as much as possible for the crit chance on FS. Glacial rot seems like a solid threat talent to me and very reliable so im assuming its the less negotiable option of the 3.
Im thinking perhaps maxing bladed armor and moving the points out of CotG and getting 3 in KM. Something like this.
Also what would be the best weapon enchants for dual wielding 2 tanking weapons? Should it be the runeforged parry enchants or the tanking enchant added recently in 3.1 I think it was?
I would like some feedback on this build since i am not really sure on dual wield tanking yet. But first i will explain some of my choices.
I took epidemic since it allows me to get 21 second diseases, which allow for more obliterates during one rotation, seeing the fact that runes are on a 10 second cooldown. This way your diseases wont ever be down if you do it correct.
I hardly ever see people taking subversion, but i think it is a pretty good talent. Cause obliterate is not on the killing machine proccs it is good to have 9% extra crit on it. Since you wanna get as much tps as possible cause rune strike will hit for less with dual wield then with a 2 hander. Same goes for blood strike, which isn't in the rotation as much, but still some hits.
I left out CotG cause of the removal of the internal cd of scent of blood, i dont think runic power will be any issue with dual wield, since you hit pretty fast.
I haven't decided glyphs yet, but because of having some lower defence then a 2 hander build i will go with this sigil. So icy touch needs to be in the rotation once in a while, so i think the howling blast glyph isn't that good for my build. Thinking about rune strike + frost strike + obliterate glyphs. This way you max dmg output and tps. If tps isn't that much an issue you can change one of them into UA possibly.
As I said, i'd like some constructive feedback about ups and downs on this build.
So I was just playing around with the talent calculator a bit, Came up with this build although im clueless on which glyphs to take, so if those glyphs are wrong correct me please.
There are 5 points left to distribute because i cannot make up my mind really. I was thinking of maxing out bladed armor for the huge boost to threat.
First off, a lot of people would suggest going into shadow for necrosis and BcB, for the dual wield synergy. But an interesting theory has come up in the dual wield dps threads about this new Talent ToT. The conventional thoughts are that Necrosis and BCB are needed for dual wielding to offset the relative loss of dmg through strikes. ToT fixes that to a large extent and possibly frees up the possibility to go into the blood tree instead. Also the need to get both blade barrier and anticipation for tanking builds prevents you from reaching BcB anyway.
So going deeper into blood can get you increased AP and increased RP generation through Scent of Blood. With dual wielding and going through std rotations you should be able to consume those 3 charge between boss swing timers or possibly overlapping only one swing. Greatly reducing your chances of overwriting charges and losing potential RP.
Talent choices im unsure of are Glacial rot, Killing machine and Chill of the grave. Killing machines procs should increase through DW should increase unless im mistaken, but CotG should provide good RP generation to keep Runestrikes and Frost strikes rolling in. Which also adds more synergy to procing KM as much as possible for the crit chance on FS. Glacial rot seems like a solid threat talent to me and very reliable so im assuming its the less negotiable option of the 3.
Im thinking perhaps maxing bladed armor and moving the points out of CotG and getting 3 in KM. Something like this.
Also what would be the best weapon enchants for dual wielding 2 tanking weapons? Should it be the runeforged parry enchants or the tanking enchant added recently in 3.1 I think it was?
In reply to your questions I will link a spec very similar to yours and justifications with 3.2 how they answer the questions or confirm what you have stated above.
Keep in mind I only use this spec for trash pulling, or AE threat encounters like Razorscale, Thorim, and the like. It is not intended to suppliment a strong single target threat spec unless the Maintank for the encounter has died.
Killing Machine
First on the list is killing machine. With the implementation of "ToT" KM Frost Strike will always generate more threat than Rune Strike while dual weilding and runic power useage should be prioritized for frost trikes over rune strikes if a killing machine proc is available. I have so far noticed on test that with a very slow mainhand such as Razorscales Talon or Broken Promise, (depending on what content you have access to) that the speed of your offhand weapon has a minimal effect on TPS with this build when forced to single target tank a long encounter. Faster offhand weapons are giving additional Km procs, while slower offhand weapons are giving more threat when using specials effected by ToT. The one factor I have noticed without question is two slow weapons with this build generates a significant amount of extra threat on your primary target at the begining of the pull due to one higher damage OB, and Frost strike at the first seconds of the encounter.
Glacier Rot
I find Glacier Rot an absolute must in all AE tanking situations especialy when you have the best of the best dps to contend with and they are highly motivated to get you through raid in a time effective manor. Dont simply take the additional 20% dmg and write it off. Make sure to consider all other frost dmg multipliers in your spec.
Bladed Armor
Keep in my mind that this talent is a considerable amount of AP in high end gear, and will generate aditional dmg with all mellee, specials, and spells.
Most of the other points mentioned in your thread were fairly accurate. The glyphs are good choices. With some practice and personal preference you may wish to replace glyph of howling blast with glyph of frost strike. Without Chillbains you are only slightly reducing dmg done to you, and slightly increasing already insane snap threat for either 2 global cooldowns, (if not using DnD for this pull) when you consider that your next two GCD applications in a standard rotation would be for a PS and a Pest, or for 6 seconds if you have used a DnD and a HB back to back. (there is also 6 rune threat ae pull wich i often used when using howling blast glyph... DnD-HB-BB wich is a very effective use of threat per rune and threat per GCD for very large trash pulls that I used until my gear improved and I replaced glyph of HB for glyph of FS for additional single target viability in emergencies due to having zero threat or healing issues without glyph of HB)
It is a matter of personal preference or situational use and in my experience either glyph set choice has its merits in AE or ST situations.
With the introduction of the new DW talent in the frost tree, DW tanking becomes finally viable threat-wise. Talent specs and rotations can be easily derived from the DW DPS talent builds.
Rotation:
If you don't like fix rotations, you should basically just burn your runes to keep the diseases and Blade Barrier up. Death Runes should be used for OB whenever available. Consuming the Rime procs together with a KM proc is a good idea. However, KM'd FS are fine as well.
Glyphs:
The major glyphs included with the talent build are all offensive. Switch them if you're feeling too weak but I don't think this should be a problem.
Weapons:
Slow/Slow produces the greatest threat. However, new slow tanking weapons are yet to be discovered. So you can either use slow DPS weapons or mix a slow dps main hand with a fast tanking off hand.
Rune Enchants:
+2% Parry to each weapon, especially if you're using dps weapons with no tanking stats.
(A2) ??
-- feel free to contribute
(B) General Hints
(B1) Macros
1) Macros[/b]
Use a RS macro for every ability, for example here's a macro for IT:
#showtooltip
/cast Icy Touch
/cast !Rune Strike
The '!' modifier on the Rune Strike makes sure that it won't toggle off RS.
I did some testing of DW tanking this weekend and had some mixed results. (almost identical spec to the frost one in first post)
It may be down to my weapons but I found threat to be a lot harder to build. My 2 hander of choice is worldcarver and to test DW I was using 2x Peacekeeper Blade (1.5 speed sucks). I'm guessing it's due to the speed and lower amounts of expertise due to the massive stacking of it on worldcarver and the fact that I'm an orc (racial).
If anything I've proven what we already know and that is stay away from fast weps.
How dependent is DW frost tanking on hit rating? Should we be shooting for the same as with 2hand or is more a must?
Also how does the boss parry mechanic affect our damage taken? (maybe one for the simple questions thread, apologies if already answered)
Regarding threat: First: I think threat is relative. Second: I think threat has been a non-issue throughout WotLK. As a DW tank who has been DW tanking since Naxxramas in January my impression of 3.2 DW threat was: Hah, this has never been that easy! Holding aggro was possible even pre-3.2, but of course you had to work harder. (Disclaimer: I've tanked everything up to and including General Vezax pre-3.2 but haven't done any hard mode encounters.) From my perspective, everything's so much better and easier now. Yes, ToT doesn't affect RS which kinda sucks. The reason why Blizzard didn't do this could be the following: The frequency of RS is higher when dual wielding, so adding RS to ToT might result into DW generating more threat than 2H. Clearly, that would not be the goal of Blizzard as they keep reciting like a mantra that DW should not be better than 2H.
Regarding weapon speed: Yes, one should stay away from fast/fast. One should at least pick up a slow main hand. It will most likely be a dps weapon since I haven't seen any slow tanking weapons on the PTR loot list.
Regarding hit rating: Don't aim for the hit cap of white swings. Spell hit cap is fine. So just use the values the 2H tanks use. DK are missing a flurry like talent or combat potency like talent, so I don't see the point of aiming for the hit cap of white swings.
Regarding the parry mechanic affecting our damage taken: Unsure. Parry-haste might not be active for the hard hitting bosses (I haven't seen any complaints that there's an Illidari Council 2.0 in the game). Also, parry-haste might not be that bad if you're at the anti-dodge expertise cap and your wielding slow weapons.
Comment: If we want slow/slow weapons then obviously the only good choice in the whole game is Broken Promise. With its high defense values and expertise, and it's all powerful 2.5 speed this seems to be the best weapon even compared to the rest of the gear post 3.2 (note, none of the new gear seems to be a slow speed tanking weap)
At the moment however I can't seem to fight the nerdraging pallys to get my grubby hands on even one Broken Promise so I'm stuck with twin Slayers of the Lifeless, so I'm pretty much SoL.
My question is in regards to threat from Rune Strike. I remember early on during the first nerf to the skill that ghostcrawler said that the base threat from the skill itself would in effect be "all that mattered." so the way I interpreted that was that the damage of the skill wasn't the main component of TPS from the skill; that there was a base value of threat given and any extra damage was just DPS threat that came with it but not the crux of the skill itself. Am I seeing this wrong or are DK's at a point where every single point of damage squeezed from that skill is the lifesblood of our threat?
Personally at the moment I've gone for a tanking OH and a slow DPS MH. Blizzard seem to of missed out that we require slow weapons to make the most of our abilities, the fast tanking OH I am not finding to be a problem.
Overall though I'm not finding the nerfs to of been too hard a hit to us.
Regarding threat: First: I think threat is relative. Second: I think threat has been a non-issue throughout WotLK. As a DW tank who has been DW tanking since Naxxramas in January my impression of 3.2 DW threat was: Hah, this has never been that easy! Holding aggro was possible even pre-3.2, but of course you had to work harder.
Hats off to anyone holding threat before the patch, it seems hard enough now even with the extra talent.
I'm a DPS DK most of the time but just testing this stuff for the sake of it.
With the cookie cutter frost 2h spec I never have anyone even close to me on threat and average I think around 5k tps (without tricks of the trade etc) on a single target nuke fight in a 25 man raid.
Swapping that 2 hander for the 2x Peacekeeper Blades and respeccing for ToT etc dropped me around 1k tps to about the 4k mark.
I'm hoping for a decent slow 1 hander to drop in this weeks Ulduar clear and will post my results again after I get it. I will try to include a WWS for pulling apart and see if we can shed some light on the parrying questions.
Just a note, since Warriors/Paladins prefer fast tanking weapons and while DW tanking seems to work it isn't the best method, after Broken Promise there will be no more slow tanking weapons.
The item level stat gain means you likely shouldn't be using Broken Promise forever, so I slow dps weapon/fast tanking weapon is the best setup as you get access to better than Naxx25 gear.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
I have done one Uldar-10/Crusader run as DW frost again after the patch (I was sticking with 2H Unholy for a while) and I have some thoughts.
It's really important to have MH slow, I ran some with MH fast and the difference is very noticeable on Omen (I was not set up for good data collection, this was more of a "proof of concept post-patch" run). I have concerns about Rune Strike, even with a slow/fast setup, compared to its cost vs Frost Strike, but FS is parry/blockable. I think this is mostly because my "slow MH" is not up to snuff with the rest of my gear.
As far as initial threat goes, depending on the situation, I start out with IT, HB, (as I run in, then...) FS, PS, BS, BS then start a more normal rotation (I have to re-arrange my talents though, I am taking the extra 5rp it/hb/ob talent, and I am going to try swapping with scent of blood). D&D is not part of my rotation, but on fights where it is applicable, I try to lay it down a good 5s before I engage so that it will get maybe 1 or 2 ticks on the boss...just something extra in case one of my initial attacks misses.
Cautiously optimistic about this setup being viable. I want to find a good fight, and try to get some good data on RS vs FS, just in case we can make some kind of priority call there.
We went to Ulduar-10 yesterday, here's a TPS report from Auriaya (I forgot to turn on the combat log but my guild mate did. However, he uses a German client, so the report is German.): Tormens produced 4470 tps vs Auriaya
The interesting fact is the threat per strike breakdown:
Frost Strike: ~3000
Rune Strike: ~6000
As I understand that log counts TPS for each hand as separate strikes. This means that each actuall use of FS with ToT produces double of threat shown in your log which is higher than in pre-3.2 log.
I've been dual-wield tanking for the past 1-2 months. I've tanked all content up to and including Naxx25, and VoA 25.
My spec of choice pre-3.2 was, and post 3.2 will continue to be, Blood with Unholy sub-spec, because after extensive respecs, and tests, I found it puts out the best DPS and TPS considering I'm stuck with fast/fast weapon, as well as the fact that it's blood, the best mitigation spec with the most OP cooldown (vamp blood) and best self healing via Death Strike, which is not weapon damage based, thus I still fully benefit from Death Strike healing.
I ran with this spec The World of Warcraft Armory
But I'm considering moving points into WotN, but I'm not sure where from as it would have to be a threat talent, possibly MoM, and I hesitate to worsen my threat.
My basic theory was to buff up white damage and generate most of my threat through my increased Rune Strike frequency plus my white damage and necrosis. I was able to out-threat my entire Naxx25 pug minus one warlock without rune strikes as off-tank on Sapphiron (had issues with MT dying and noone being able to pick up to save us from a wipe). Heart strike still makes up a considerable portion of my damage, though either rune strike or white damage will top out depending on the encounter.
Just a note, since Warriors/Paladins prefer fast tanking weapons and while DW tanking seems to work it isn't the best method, after Broken Promise there will be no more slow tanking weapons.
The item level stat gain means you likely shouldn't be using Broken Promise forever, so I slow dps weapon/fast tanking weapon is the best setup as you get access to better than Naxx25 gear.
06/08/09, 2:56 PM
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