Sonrisa, what is your raid buffed health (pre-Sarth debuffs) for doing Sarth3D?

So I've been reading this thread and love all the helpful information here. I am predominantly a Frost tank and love it to death, and for Sartharion go with the 24/11/36 "0 threat high survivability" build. I found that on my last 3 drake kill, RNG was nice enough to not require a single External cooldown, so thank you to whoever posted that build.

On to my point (feel free to refer to my armory link). There are a couple things I'm sure some people will notice; first is my spec. I use 3/3 Morbidity and 1/1 Deathchill. Let's face it, trash is a very real part of tanking and having morbidity just makes it that much easier. I chose Deathchill (macro'd to my howling blast) simply because I like having an on demand crit, and felt it better than 1/2 2 handed weapon spec.

The second (and more important) thing I'm sure people will notice quickly is my lack of hit and expertise. Let me start by saying I have only once ever had a problem with threat (lucky three sparks on Malygos for about 10 seconds). I only have 2.78% hit and 12 Expertise (3%). I'm sure this would set an alarm for most people for me to regear or regem for more hit and expertise. My only problem with more expertise is that the majority of my threat comes from Rune Strike, Frost Strike, and Howling Blast, none of which are effected by Expertise (to my knowledge). Now I know that more hit would likely benefit me, but like I said, I'm not having any problems with threat as it is currently. Furthermore, I am a bit addicted to avoidance. In combat with Blade Barrier and my Sigil proc up, I am at 69.5% avoidance (including Miss from defense + base). My HP is ~30500 unbuffed in frost presence.

The point of this is to get any feedback on whether or not I'm simply "doing it wrong". I find that my HP and avoidance are in a good spot, and my threat is good enough at the moment so i feel I don't need to regear (and don't sell the DPS in my guild short, they are all very good).

P.S. Sorry, don't have any WWS atm for my threat

All feedback appreciated.

P.S.S. I have passed on the Malygos pants three times now because of the lack of avoidance compared to what I have. Am I too addicted to avoidance?

After looking through the TPS charts on patchwerk, I noticed everyone (except one blood tank) has BoSanc. I have 38 RS and only 7 FS. My TPS for the fight was 7903 with no ToT, MD, or BoSanc.

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish

I see all of the other top 7 tanks (as frost of course) have a range from 27 - 46 FS, and obviously averaging more RS as well. Also, they all have FS as their second most threat causing and dps ability, actually one guy even has it as his first which kind of blows my mind that he let that beat out RS. Mine was my sixth with IT beating it out -_-

Looking at all of the statistics for the different top frost tanks, I'm pretty convinced that BoSanc will bring AT LEAST 1000 added TPS, maybe up to 1500. I'm curious to know what everyone else has to say on the subject.

I completely agree. I find myself Runic starved constantly when I don't have BoSanc. My guild recently decided they needed me to tank for Sarth + 3 so I got pretty much all the tank gear that dropped for two weeks. Since then I've convinced our Prot Warrior main tank to respec Fury and let our Paladin tank for my own greedy BoS related benefit

Without BoSanc, my threat is not anywhere near where it should be. It's almost required for DK tanking.

I don't think you are "doing it wrong". As long as you are to the point where you can tank the bosses with relative ease, and threat is not a problem for you, then I don't see any issue. Yes, your expertise and hit are low, and in a frost build I'd say raise your hit first, as IT and HB are significant damage. If you ever get the urge to go threat crazy, then yes, your low expertise will hurt you significantly in that department, especially with any spec other than frost or if you sigil/glyph for Obliterate.

As far as the Malygos legs go, I had wanted them for a long time, but I finally got Inevitable Defeat and managed to get to about the expertise cap without them. If they drop now, I'd probably pass them to another tank that needs them before taking them myself.

Very nice thread so far. but I've got a question about the OP's original link to tank gear. especially in regards to trinkets.

Two Questions in fact.

1. Defender's Code? really? I've been under the extreme impression that that trinket was garbage. Is the Use: just so amazing that it carries it out?

How much does the armor actually help? and is the benefit from armor only good if you have certain talents?


2. Why is Rune of Repulsion listed higher than Valor Medal of the First War? the Static and Use numbers are slightly lower but I thought dodge destroyed parry for DK tanks?

I do notice tho, with Icebound fortitude (21sec 1min cooldown), Unbreakable Armor (20sec 1min cooldown), Defender's Code (20sec 2min cooldown), and either of the Rune/Valor medal (20sec 2min Cooldown),

you could have a 100% cooldown uptime. 41 sec of every minute IBF/UA, and then alternate those 2 trinkets.

Is this why they are listed as high as they are?

Thanks for the reply. Good thread. keep it up.

And does anyone use defender's code. Is it worth it?

I use the [Defender's Code] on a few fights. I prefer it over the [Essence of Gossamer] for Patchwerk, Grand Widow Faerlina, and even Maexxna.

I really haven't thought about it but I don't even see a fight where using the Defender's Code isn't a better choice, besides obvious 100% magic damage fights.

Hey guys I played around with this spec this morning because after reading all the posts in all the tanking titles my head hurt me. I lve all the work many of you have put in. I was a DW tank up until the last couple of days.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

1. Primarily because my threat just wasn't able to keep up with the DPS that had all the BIS items now. I always seemed starved for more threat. I was using the cycles and rotation that were provided just didn't seem to be that free flowing.

2. I don't need the stats on the extra weapons.

So I made this spec up today and it really felt awesome. I want you guys to tell me why it sucks and why no one has posted based on what I have read anything on it. My threat went up. I had threat for AOE and I had threat on ST. I love the extra health and the extra crits and such.

My Dodge when I use horn is a little over 28% and my Parry is at 22% Just so awesome. I was parry and dodging like all day Am I missing something from this spec that should be in there? I get the mitigation benefits of Lichborne and Unbreakable armor. I get the Stats and + damage for Threat in Blood and I get the little extras that are needed from Unholy to make sure AOE pulls rock.

I am open to any criticism but please make it constructive. I am really loving this build right now. Granted I wasnt in a raid situation but will be today so I will have a better judge on things.

Thanks again for you time and effort on this

Gordasius

Your spec seems quite similar to Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft , which I would recommend as being excellent for both AoE and single target threat.

The mains issues I have with your spec are your reasoning behind taking Death Rune Mastery in a spec that is designed around obliterate damage, as blood strike doesn't do nearly enough damage to justify using it over obliterate. Another issue is epidemic: sure, it's nice on trash, but it seems useless on bosses, as the highest damage / threat frost rotation is (BT) OB / HB - OB - IT - BS, or variants of that, which doesn't require any points in epidemic.

All in all, I'd recommend giving 23/45/3 a trial run. Yes, you lose 2% dodge, but in mostly 25 man naxx gear, you do not take nearly enough damage to really notice the difference. You also lose morbidity, but personally I don't miss it at all. IT - PS - Pest - HB - BB gives you alot of threat on mobs, and in our raids at least, mobs usually die before you need to generate any more threat than that on them. With 23/45/3, you also gain frost strike, which is a much, much better RP dump than deathcoil, and definately worth getting if at all possible.

Basically, while your spec isn't horrible, I just don't think its benefits outweigh Frost Strike, Subversion, GoG, and BotN.

A lot of good info and a lot of good specs here, but right now I'm not seeing the things I want. Right now I am Blood Tank / DPS spec and while I like it a lot, I would like to focus on my racials as an Orc and hit up the Unholy tree. I really like the spec Buck posted, but it does not have the Master of Ghouls talent for the permanent pet, which is something I really wanted to have. My main question is this... if I go with Buck's spec, does anyone actually have a variation I can use without losing anything too valuable to get Master of Ghouls? I was wondering if that 1 point in Wandering Plague would mess me up, considering I only have 10% crit in tank spec, but almost 30% in DPS if I moved it?

Oh yea, a link to my char so you can see the gear set I am using...
Ghaele

I leveled Unholy for the most part and I miss having my companion Ghoul. I went to frost to tank originally and then tried the spec I have now as a way to tank and dps without respeccing. I wanted to go to Unholy tanking so I could get the ghoul and pop some extra DPS and capitalize on my racial Command. I know it has no real effect on my tanking, I just miss my little buddy and wanted to see if I could get a spec that wil not sacrifice too much and still have him.

Just do a little shuffling and you can end up with something like this: you're basically cannibalizing Outbreak and 1 point out of 2H spec for Gargoyle, the ghoul, and NotD. For the most part I find the additional damage on BB sort of unneccessary as Unholy has excellent AoE threat anyway.

thanks much, will try it out, see how it handles Naxx 10 guild run tomorrow

I was wondering if anyone ever tested out a standard frost tank build but forgoing subversion in order to pick up DRW. The idea behind this comes from the 21/50/0 DPS build where you can obliterate and blood strike to achieve 6 death runes and then just spam icy touch. With chill of the grave as well the glyph you generate 25 runic power per icy touch which is pretty massive and can be used to dump into FS for what i would hope would be massive threat.

Has anyone ever tried this, could this potentially work and be better at generating threat than a standard rotation? I'd test this out myself but my gear for the most part is rather terrible and so my TPS is accordingly also low.

i've been tanking since beta. i've been predominately an unholy tank and i completely love it. i have amazing aoe threat. my single target threat superb. no issues whatsoever. i've had best in slot gear for months.

after getting on the ptr last night i find myself for the first time confused about my spec.

i need some help here fellahs. it pains me to ask for it. but i truly do. the slight loss to str and sta in the unholy tree for whatever reason scare me and make me wonder if i shouldn't be an unholy tank anymore.

has anyone had the time to test any of the new PTR tanking builds? for all 3 trees? if so, please post your findings asap. thanks!

Unholy in 3.1: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...4&version=9614

Blood in 3.1: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...4&version=9614

Frost in 3.1: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...4&version=9614

These are all just basic builds, they each have a few points you can throw where you think they would be better spent. The trees each have a chance to have more changes made by the time 3.1 is released too.

@Strasbourg, I don't mean to state the obvious but CE is a pretty a wasted talent point and I think Unholy Aura points would also be better spent somewhere else. Wandering Plague is a great talent for extra AE threat which really makes Unholy stand out compared to Blood or Frost (AE threat).

see i would think something like this for unholy.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9614

since the changes to BoS, this would allow for more runestrikes.

why the moves to Blood?

This spec makes more sense to me link.

Black ice easily outdps bladed armor(it gives 10% shadow damage too, if I'm wrong), in addition you get lichborne.

We could really use more information on Scent of Blood, from the current looks of it you have to go through roughly 7-11 seconds for all three melee strikes to hit (this is highly dependent on when SoB procs and what your weapon speed is and what haste buffs you have))

You would generate about 80 RP if it took you 10 seconds to get the third melee strike off and if SoB procced the next second, this obviously would almost never happen and if you were to look at it more realistically you would actually get about 45 RP every minute from SoB and this is guessing that you have SoB proc every 20 seconds.

@Griefknight: why didn't you choose death runes in your blood build?

My guess is he prefers rune tap and its kinda hard to find room for both DRW and rune tap