blood>frost dw?

Hello guys, sorry if this has been dicussed before.

I've been studying DW tank for some time and acutally doing one myself, it's really facinating.
but my question is this:
Is a frost DW always inferior in TPS than a blood tank?
no matter the weapon combo(slow+slow/slow+fast tank OH etc.) and the sigil(hangedman vs def sigils)we use?

given the situation:
1. 25 raid single boss target
2. same tanking gear level

This is the current build and gear I'm using:
The World of Warcraft Armory

Because I'm in a guild where no one believes in frost DW or even frost tanking
and I've used Rawr to sim the TPS and it looked very much the same with frost DW and blood
guess I just don't like the idea that blood is the only way of taking the MT role

I do realize that comparing to blood, we DW have less hp due to weapons and talents
and we don't have the wonderful VB for a hp boost, but we do have more mitigations so that makes up for the less hp.
And if we can do the same or even more TPS than a blood tank, I just dont see why cant a frost dw be an effective MT for raids.
or am I missing something here?
I've tanked in most heroics and a few 10-man runs but never really in 25 since my main spec is dps.
Perhaps some of you veteran tanks out there can enlighten me?

Thanks for reading the long post

I've been running Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft with the [Frost Giant's Cleaver] MH and [Peacekeeper Blade] OH and am still getting RP starved with 3/3 SoB. I'm not having any threat issues so i was thinking of taking 2 pts from Bladed Armor and putting it into Chill of the Grave for more RP, would net me approx 30 more RP per full rotation, assuming a rime proc. Are any of yall getting RP starved too? And have y'all found a way to avoid that?

Im using 2/3 SoB and 2/2 Chill of the Grave while Rime fangs Claw and Peacekeeper im never rp starved even when in ICC 10. Though stil havent been able down marrowgar Even when i used a slow/fast combo with the same same talent set up i had great threat and never starved for RP. hope that helps.

Hi, I have a few questions but I don't think it's justifies a new thread, and since I'm just searching for quick answers and not a encyclopedia here they go.

First question, I want to tank (frost DW) instances and in a few weeks raids (TOC, and ICC among others), I have this 4 weapons available
2x Rimefang's Claw [Rimefang's Claw]
1x Peacekeeper Blade [Peacekeeper Blade]
1x Black Icicle [Black Icicle]

Should I go for main hand black icicle, and offhand rimefang, or should I go 2 rimefang's, or maybe something else.

Second question, I have read that 2 handed tanks do more TPS in general, but I seem to see this information only on the old threads, so is this still true, or is DW pretty much the same by now (going to tank mostly AOE/Offtank)?

Third Question, If 2 handed is indeed better, what weapon should I be aiming for (no TOC 10/25 and ICC weapons please), also if 2 handed is indeed better than DW can someone give me a link to a spec so I can get a general idea of what I should be aiming for.


Fourth and Final question, should I stack hit rating, expertise etc... until I get to the caps (or close enough to them) or should I stack stamina/dodge, I know this is kind of a case by case question, but I want to know if I should be aiming for the hit, expertise etc... cap or if I should just stay with the stats that the gear gives me and gem up for stam/dodge.

Thank you.

From the test results I've read and my own experience as a dw dk tank
the melee hit cap is ~8% which is fairly easy to aquire.
as for expertise, for a dw dk comparing to a warrior tank, the exp needed depends on the weapons you're using.
you'll need the exp (not rating)below to receive comparable number of parry-hasted attacks to a warrior.
25 exp for slow/slow (Main hand/Offhand)
28 exp for slow/fast
30 exp for fast/fast

correct me if I'm wrong

I have been looking more and more at dw tanking. I currently have 3 weapons in my inventory for dw.

1. The Grinder (245 heroic totgc10 anub)
2. Lionhead Slasher (258 heroic totgc25 Jar)
3. Singed Vis'kag the bloodletter (232 ony 10 man)

The big statement that I keep seeing is that fast weapons are bad for dw dps and dw tanking. My question is why? I keep seeing that statement of "attacks do more damage when using slow weapons", well to a point this is correct and to a point it is not. The only attack a dk has that gets a big bonus to damage from being slow over fast is Runestrike because it is not a normalized attack. But if we look at the other attacks is the damage increase from slower weapons enough to over come the large gap faster weapons have on white damage.

Even 2h'ing white damage is usually in the top 4-5 if not higher on damaging attacks when dpsing or tanking so it makes me think that white damage from fast 1h's might make up the gap of the lower damage from yellow attacks faster and easier.

Lets look at the top end of white attacks using the normalization equation for 1h'ers of

normalized_damage = base_weapon_damage + (2.4 * Attack Power / 14)
(numbers from list of 1h'ers above)(using my dk's ap while dw'ing as frost of 5121)

1. 665 + (2.4 * 5121 / 14) = 1542.89
2. 423 + (2.4 * 5121 / 14) = 1300.89
3. 605 + (2.4 * 5121 / 14) = 1482.89

At first look, there appears to be a huge difference in damage between the weapons. But if we look at a time frame of attacks where each weapon does with out haste a static whole number of hits. The number that I am using is 39 seconds. In this 39 second period, the 2.6 weapons hit 15 times and the 1.5 weapon hits 26 times or 11 more hits then the 2.6 weapons.

The total damage under perfect rng conditions of max damage will be as follows.

1. 23143.35 = 593.42 dps
2. 33823.14 = 867.26 dps
3. 22243.35 = 570.34 dps

When looking at these numbers, the damage trend shows that the scaling damage of faster weapons over the corse of a fight will come close to or beat the increase in damage of the fast 1 hander.

Remeber, this look is at the basis of 1 weapon, when we look at the basis of 2, the scaling of damage even with the misses from not being at the oh hit cap will still tend to higher damage amounts then 2 slow 1h'ers.

If this trend in damage is correct, will it be enough to show a usage of fast 1 handers with a good amount of expertise allowing the use of not just 1 handed dps weapons, but 1 handed tanking weapons for when more stats are needed and fast 1h dps weapons for maximizing threat.

Also would the lose in damage from the non-normalized runestrikes be made up from the faster white hits?

Not to mention the more frequent Rune Strikes. I use two fast weapons (rimefang/peacekeeper) and with anywhere between 28 and 32 expertise and dont see too much of a threat drop over my old slow/fast setup, actually I think I increased threat based on random omen readings. I don't know how to do parses or anything but if you guys could explain it next time I go into a raid I'll do a parse with both setups and post them.

Is this a fair comparison given that the fast weapon you are using is the highest ilvl, and thus has the highest DPS?

I would have added in others if I had them to mess with. But looking at the math for the 245 lionhead it is still appearing to be ahead of the others.

384 + (2.4 *5121 / 14) = 1261.89

32809.03 = 841.26 dps

With these stats, this would still put the 245 lionhead ahead of the slow 1h and ahead of the 245 heroic mace from totgc10. Notice the the 258 is only in best case rng only 26 dps ahead of the 245. So there is not much difference.

I am starting to think more and more looking at some of the parses that were linked previously that the white damage of 2 fast 1h's might produce almost equal threat to slow/slow and slow/fast

Stop comparing apples and oranges.
You first normalise the damage, to get the damage it would deal with an instantattack, then you go and pretend like the autoattack damage is calculated like an instantattack (normalised), which it ISN'T.

What you did with [Lionhead Slasher] is, you scaled it like a 2.4 weapon, but let it attack like a 1.5 weapon, you just manage to give it 60% haste without telling it anybody.

Your right, I wasn't paying attention and ran the normalized math against the autoattacks. But the fact of the faster doing more dps is still there

looking at just the 245 lionhead and the 245 grinder

1. LH = 384 + ( 5121 / 14 ) = 749.79
2. Gr = 665 + ( 5121 / 14 ) = 1030.79

Look at the best possible damage over 39 sec with no crits you get.

1. 19494.54 = 499.86 dps (324.91 dps oh) = 824.77 total dps
2. 15461.85 = 396.46 dps (257.70 dps oh) = 654.16 total dps

That is a 170.61 dps increase at my ap for the 245 lionheads (x 2) over the 245 grinders (x 2) is not a small amount.

Instead of just statements, has there actually been any shown proof or math that shows that the difference in damage from the yellow attacks (looking at a bias that doesnt include crits) is that far if at all ahead of the 170 dps increase the 1.5's would give the from the white attacks alone?