DW Tanking Builds 3.3 - updated 12/01/10 - Page 5

Ilmatar · 01/06/09, 5:21 PM

This may be a stupid build plan, but it seems like there isn't much synergy in the unholy tree with DW tanking. There are some red herrings like Impurity etc, but it seems to me like Blood/Frost is stronger. I'm going to give a 23/45/3 build a try.

TS for VotTW may be a mistake, but it seems like it's a 6% sta/str for 10% frost damage trade. Dropping 2 points in Anticipation seems a little crazy, but part of the driving force for a DW tanking build is being able to use tanking weapons. 2% fixed mitigation seems like a decent trade-off. Is there something terribly wrong with Scent of Blood? It is a weak talent, to be sure, but it seems like it's a decent investments of points trying to reach VotTW for a DW spec concerned about RP generation.

Edit: Not really sure how I missed this in the first round, but wow Scent of Blood is a terrible talent. Butchery would generate 10RP/20 sec, and Scent of Blood is best case 15RP/20sec.

dukes · 01/06/09, 7:28 PM

Originally Posted by Ilmatar

Scent of Blood is a terrible talent. Butchery would generate 10RP/20 sec, and Scent of Blood is best case 15RP/20sec.

You might want to check that.

a) Butchery is 2rp/5sec for 2 talent points, giving 8rp/20sec, or 4rp/20sec/point
b) Scent of Blood is 15rp/20sec for 3 talent points, or 5rp/20sec/point, but on a proc basis.

While tanking, Subversion is probably equivalent to Butchery, but Butchery is guaranteed generation compared to the proc for Scent of Blood. Butchery also has the secondary effect, although that's basically a non-factor while raiding. Both only generate enough runic power to enable you to rune strike once per 80-100 seconds, for each talent point, which just seems terrible to me.

If you want Dark Conviction, I'd go with a build like this. It doesn't waste any more points in Blood than necessary (you're effectively using 8 points to get VotTW - the options are mostly pretty worthless apart from possibly rune tap fully improved), and it gains both the 2 points of Anticipation you were previously missing along with Virulence which is a significant threat upgrade and helps provide stability to both rune usage and threat throughout. You also get 3 points in Tundra Stalker, which is 6% damage to all abilities (not sure if rune strike is included - it's an auto attack for KM purposes, but I would guess it counts as an ability for this) and 3 expertise.

As to the value of 2 points in Anticipation, I currently run with about 25% dodge / 23% parry base, plus 9% miss. Take off 2 points of Anticipation, but add blade barrier, and you're looking at a total of ~65% avoidance, or 35% hits taken. Going from 35% hits taken to 33% hits taken is a damage decrease of approximately 6%. It it worth skipping 2 points to avoid 6% total physical damage? I wouldn't do that. Any tanking build I try building, I always start with Toughness, Anticipation and Blade Barrier as the base, and inevitably work my way to Frigid Dreadplate. Having 18% increased avoidance from talents is just godly. As a comparison, each point of VotTW is approximately 600hp with a 30k health pool (technically it's worse than that, as that's 2% hp rather than 2% stam). Is 1.2k health really worth dropping 6% (effective) avoidance?

As an addition, if you're going to bring up the strength benefit to parry from VotTW, each point is worth 2% strength. At 1000 strength, this is worth 20 strength/point, which is 5 parry rating. 5 parry rating converts to approximately 0.1% parry, before diminishing returns. I really don't think you can count this as significant. 6% strength is probably equal, or possibly worse, than the 3% hit to spells / 6% ability damage you gain from Virulence / TS, however you do lose out on 3 expertise.

Gnomeover · 01/06/09, 7:44 PM

as a dw tank do we was slow/fast or fast/fast? thanks.

Soulsbane · 01/07/09, 1:02 AM

Originally Posted by Gnomeover

as a dw tank do we was slow/fast or fast/fast? thanks.

Not yet known, as our rotations will still probably contain a minimum of 3 weapon-based instants (not counting Frost Strike) and will also contain an unknown number of Rune Strikes while fast/fast increases Killing Machine procs (by around 33%) for more crits from the primary damage ability (Howling Blast).

• Aldriana · 01/07/09, 7:24 AM

I think it's going to depend on which variant of the spec you end up going with; if you go for one of the more shadow-oriented variants, with BCB and Death Coil as a rune dump, fast weapons will be a lot more tempting; but my preliminary analysis of the deep frost variant (15/51/5, in particular) shows slow/fast to be significantly superior to fast/fast. In particular, it appears that in the OH the priorities are 1) speed and 2) stats, with weapon damage being, honestly, almost irrelevant; while in the MH the priorities are 1) slow 2) high damage, with stats - while not *un*important, much less of a priority.

Zerath · 01/07/09, 8:13 AM

Originally Posted by Aldriana

I think it's going to depend on which variant of the spec you end up going with; if you go for one of the more shadow-oriented variants, with BCB and Death Coil as a rune dump, fast weapons will be a lot more tempting; but my preliminary analysis of the deep frost variant (15/51/5, in particular) shows slow/fast to be significantly superior to fast/fast. In particular, it appears that in the OH the priorities are 1) speed and 2) stats, with weapon damage being, honestly, almost irrelevant; while in the MH the priorities are 1) slow 2) high damage, with stats - while not *un*important, much less of a priority.

I'm building two weapon sets for this reason. For OH I'm going to have a fast tank and fast dps. Going to try the same for the MH and figure out what is the best for TPS. The only *large* issue I see is the loss of Stone Garg which is amazing for us to switch out a few pieces of gear for.

Barden · 01/07/09, 5:06 PM

I can testify that DW DK tanking works well in 10man Naxx. Threat is never an issue and neither does mitigation seem to be. Is anyone tanking 25mans with DW yet?

The World of Warcraft Armory

The 2 pts in Epidemic will me moved into Dark Conviction making it 12/54/5.

Eonan · 01/08/09, 1:33 AM

Originally Posted by Barden

I can testify that DW DK tanking works well in 10man Naxx. Threat is never an issue and neither does mitigation seem to be. Is anyone tanking 25mans with DW yet?

The World of Warcraft Armory

The 2 pts in Epidemic will me moved into Dark Conviction making it 12/54/5.

I did it on Gluth tonight with 10/31/30 (trash tanking the rest of the night as well) and had no issues with threat or mitigation. I am sitting at 24 expertise with food buff (use +hp Flask), throughout the fight I stayed at ~4.5k TPS spiking as high as 7k at one point and as low as 3.6k at another while tanking him. Did the same on Grand Widow last night as well though died about halfway through due to two frenzies in a row not being dispelled and had similar results.

Afabar · 01/08/09, 3:30 AM

Originally Posted by Eonan

Did the same on Grand Widow last night as well though died about halfway through due to two frenzies in a row not being dispelled and had similar results.

How can you say you don't have Mitigation problem and die on a Frenzie ?
With our guild we do the "zerg" way as ours priests do not seems to be able to do a correct MC and I stay alive the whole fight even when I was heroic/Naxx10 geared.

Eonan · 01/08/09, 3:45 AM

Originally Posted by Afabar

How can you say you don't have Mitigation problem and die on a Frenzie ?
With our guild we do the "zerg" way as ours priests do not seems to be able to do a correct MC and I stay alive the whole fight even when I was heroic/Naxx10 geared.

And you could get two unlucky hits back to back while frenzied with no heal in between and die just as I did. My point is that DW Spec didn't cause the death and performs as well as 2H Tanking does.

Afabar · 01/08/09, 6:02 AM

Originally Posted by Eonan

And you could get two unlucky hits back to back while frenzied with no heal in between and die just as I did. My point is that DW Spec didn't cause the death and performs as well as 2H Tanking does.

I don't think that it's your DW tanking that have killed you but,
If you had Unbreackable Armor, a longer IBF or Bone Shield, you could maybe have lived.

Using your spec, you have not a lot of tools when thinks go wrong.
And some time things goes wrong. Because of a personal error of someone,a bad RNG or a DC.
Of course you can throw back the fault to the person, but as MT you have to be prepared and ready for anything. And not expect that everythings will appends as expected.

Zerath · 01/08/09, 8:23 AM

Originally Posted by Eonan

And you could get two unlucky hits back to back while frenzied with no heal in between and die just as I did. My point is that DW Spec didn't cause the death and performs as well as 2H Tanking does.

Quoting this for next.

Originally Posted by Afabar

I don't think that it's your DW tanking that have killed you but,
If you had Unbreackable Armor, a longer IBF or Bone Shield, you could maybe have lived.

Using your spec, you have not a lot of tools when thinks go wrong.
And some time things goes wrong. Because of a personal error of someone,a bad RNG or a DC.
Of course you can throw back the fault to the person, but as MT you have to be prepared and ready for anything. And not expect that everythings will appends as expected.

No, it has nothing to do with mitigation problems during Enrage (we don't MC, just do Momma Said Knock You Out! every week), at one point tanking 10man Widow she just barely missed 3 shotting me (a heal came in right before the 3rd hit which saved my life). That was *with* BS up. She hits like a truck and if she hits even remotely higher than normal and goes on a 2-3 swing streak, it's easy enough to watch tanks collapse to that with no heals in between.

But, I do agree with your second paragraph. As a tank it is your civic duty (haha) to spec in to an actual tank spec for max mitigation. There is no reason to be MTing in a semi-tank/dps build. That can lead to unnecessary wipes, pissed off healers, and people thinking DKs are horrible. :p

Illundai · 01/08/09, 11:58 AM

Just chiming in on this thread, I've been thinking of going DW tanking for a while now.. Especially with the coming patch, one of the major upsides to me is that I can ditch my defense trinket and get two stamina trinkets while also having the option of putting the new stamina enchant for weapon on both my onehanders for a 150 stamina increase. Stamina is the major thing for me at the moment, because I'm hitting DR on dodge so easily and there's not a lot of parry out there on gear.

I'm just tossing out there, since people seem to be stuck up on mitigation from our runeforges (which are nice, I'm not saying 4% parry is something to sneeze at, especially since parry is not yet on my DR) but from my experience (tanking all 25 mans) the major thing to stack at the moment is stamina, for sure. YMMV.

Eonan · 01/08/09, 11:59 AM

Originally Posted by Zerath

Quoting this for next.

No, it has nothing to do with mitigation problems during Enrage (we don't MC, just do Momma Said Knock You Out! every week), at one point tanking 10man Widow she just barely missed 3 shotting me (a heal came in right before the 3rd hit which saved my life). That was *with* BS up. She hits like a truck and if she hits even remotely higher than normal and goes on a 2-3 swing streak, it's easy enough to watch tanks collapse to that with no heals in between.

But, I do agree with your second paragraph. As a tank it is your civic duty (haha) to spec in to an actual tank spec for max mitigation. There is no reason to be MTing in a semi-tank/dps build. That can lead to unnecessary wipes, pissed off healers, and people thinking DKs are horrible. :p

I am curious what tank abilities (Minus UA/BS) you consider to be missing with this spec. Originally I had a spec that included BS but found that threat was an issue, so went deeper into frost.

Crax · 01/08/09, 4:51 PM

Originally Posted by Illundai

Just chiming in on this thread, I've been thinking of going DW tanking for a while now.. Especially with the coming patch, one of the major upsides to me is that I can ditch my defense trinket and get two stamina trinkets while also having the option of putting the new stamina enchant for weapon on both my onehanders for a 150 stamina increase. Stamina is the major thing for me at the moment, because I'm hitting DR on dodge so easily and there's not a lot of parry out there on gear.

I'm just tossing out there, since people seem to be stuck up on mitigation from our runeforges (which are nice, I'm not saying 4% parry is something to sneeze at, especially since parry is not yet on my DR) but from my experience (tanking all 25 mans) the major thing to stack at the moment is stamina, for sure. YMMV.

Emphasis mine

Are you sure you aren't hitting DR on Parry?

I'm personally at 460 parry rating (largely from Strength) vs. 249 Dodge rating. Given that they are on the same curve with Parry having a lower "cap", I'm much farther into DR on Parry than Dodge. I'm fairly certain this is the case for all DKs.