Black Heart is pretty awesome. 120 stamina is nice, but the armor proc is outstanding. It is 7000 armor on what seems like a short ICD. The only bad thing is the armor proc looks like Hand of Protection, so may confuse people (sounds nice in PvP!).


Regarding the rant about Stamina stacking, nearly everything is affected by Taunt if you threat sucks, except for Vezax is immune, however you should be getting a few Misdirection/Tricks there to help. A high avoidance tank is hard to heal (miss, miss, miss, miss, dodge, parry, then 3x huge hits) isn't what a healer likes to see, since the proper healing style is spam heals.

Kal, that makes more sense that you're trying to balance stam and avoidance (erring on having enough health to survive hits). I'd still be curious to see some threat data. Unholy tanks have typically taken Bladed Armor over Black Ice because at the levels of AP we have, it performs better (this is what I remember, but maybe patch with the changes to toughness have altered this).

(As an aside, I'm always loathe to compare Boomkin/Warlock abilities being on par with EP. While it's technically true, it assumes single target DPS. When you start talking about multiple targets and AoE, EP is magnitudes stronger because it can be spread to all targets with a single GCD.)

With Virulence talent I'm 0.3% over spell hit cap. I have only a single hit/stam mix gem in my entire gear set and no hit enchants to achieve this, plus that's in a yellow socket with a +6 stam bonus so I'm not even missing much. It's needed for taunting on fights such as Thorim, Steelbreaker, and Algalon. Dark Command glyph can also be used if one prefers Morbidity talent, or doesn't even go into the UH tree for Necrosis.


a) Crit is diminished in PVE. Every crit % you have makes your next crit % gain worth less damage bonus to your exiting damage. If you have 50% crit and you gain 1% - only 0.5% more attacks are going to crit than before. This is less of an issue for tanks, since our crit is usually low, but even at 20% a gain of 1% crit is actually 0.8% more critical attacks occurring.

b) The dodge from Agi is less than the dodge from a dodge gem. Agi does give a little armor, however.

Don't discount agility gems, the difference between using 10dodge/15 stamina vs. a 10 agility/15 stamina gem for your red slots is .043% dodge vs. 22 armor and .211% crit BEFORE diminishing returns.

Before diminishing returns is the key since armor scales linearly and dodge doesn't. At high levels of avoidance, the tradeoff is more likely to be .025% dodge vs 22 armor and .211% crit. At that level, the armor offers more survivability than the dodge and the extra crit is just bonus.

Before suggesting agi gems to other DK tanks and providing misinformation to support it, I suggest you get refreshed on the basics.

For tanking, there's a point where more of a stat is overkill and therefore, people call that point a cap. You get benefit beyond, but it's not as valuable anymore therefore people say it has diminishing returns. When people say a stat keeps a stable value of worth without reaching any point where it significantly reduces in value, people say it scales linearly. The meaning of these words cause confusion because people see them differently... I could twist these around and say stats that overkill are DR and the point where a stat becomes less valuable is the cap.

I can argue that avoidance has increasing returns (even now, though at an insignificant rate because of the diminishing returns Blizzard implemented). Add 1% avoidance when you have 0% avoidance and add 1% avoidance when you have 98% avoidance. The avoidance added at 98% reduces total hits taken by roughly 50% while adding 1% at 0% only reduces total hits taken by roughly 1%.

I can argue that Armor is not linear. Add 300 armor when you have 0 armor and when you have 25000 armor. The armor added at 0 armor offers more damage reduction than at 25000.

What people found to be linear about armor is the amount of time to live without heals. With DR implemented on avoidance, TTL from avoidance is also made linear.

If you consider a stat for threat, such as Str, Agi, or Expertise as an option, the "cap" is determined by the minimum needed to simply hold aggro vs your DPSers. There's "DR" when you go beyond the "cap", as it only provides DPS then and the extra threat is wasted.

If you consider just going with Sta, the "cap" is determined by the minimum needed to not get 1 or 2-shot in such a short amount of time that cannot be helped by simple healing. Going beyond the "cap" makes overhealing classes more efficient. Stamina is relatively unique as it helps vs spells and unavoidable attacks.

As for your comparison between agi and dodge after DR, 22 armor comes no where close to being even with 10 dodge or parry rating. The armor from agility is highly negligible. Blizzard puts 448 armor on rings as an equivalent to 32 primary stats (14 armor worth as much as 1 rating on item budgets) if you want to take that into consideration... which would make 22 armor worth less than 2 dodge rating. It takes close to 113 agility for 1% dodge compared to 45-46 dodge rating after 3.2.

Taking the healing game into consideration: since bosses attack faster than most spell casts for much more than your fastest spammable heal and because they can also 2-3 shot most tanks, people spam heal. They only really consider stopcast if mana would be an issue. Good avoidance allows them to reliably make use of stopcast. This is the healing game Blizzard made for Ulduar and it'd be best to create synergy with healers to make them more efficient at keeping you alive.

Long story short: stamina is the clear winner when comparing all of the TTL increasing stats. Most tanks will find healers have no mana issues for virtually all fights, therefore gemming for avoidance is relatively wasteful. One the fights they find mana is an issue, it isn't because of the tank, but due to raid damage (ie. Steelbreaker or General Vezax HM).

To fulfill the meta activation requirement, I'd recommend:
- Under 26 expertise: Guardian
- In general (ie. extra peace of mind for holding threat over 6.5k+ DPSers): Nightmare Tear

We will know more when the main post gets fully updated. From the changes that have been made to the spec I assume that you won't want to respec untill you have 2 piece T9.

Yes Kal, Please post your parses on your next run. I would be very interested in how it statistically stacks up. I did notice that your avoidance is pretty impressive but you are lacking in hit and expertise. The stat parse will go a long way in examining the build, perhaps you've hit on something we haven't completely thought out.

Also, off the top of your head, what is the average up time of your Bone Shield? 40 secs or so?

Leladax, please get your arguments in order before coming here. Or at the very least, read what we've been talking about for the last 8 months or so. >.< You claim its "impossible" yet I can manage with gear that is not even in the same league as some of these end-game raiders that post here on this forum (I work a lot). Yes, both Hit AND Expertise. Two of your own arguments clash with each other, as your first point you claim it "impossible" yet on the third point you're advocating the use of the hit and stam gem.

I'm all for a good discussion but lets not rehash something we've iron out months ago. =D

I've always used my own specs, which usually are similar if not identical to some of the spec's I occasionally see here. Prior to 3.2 I was using a hybrid spec (Frost/Blood) which had all of the major strengths of both trees (as far as damage reduction and raid enhancement) that was extremely strong and versatile. Unfortunately 3.2 killed this spec with some of the nerfs. I've been playing with a couple different variants of Blood specs, and something came to mind that I figured would be good for discussion here.

As you all know, Parry was somewhat buffed in 3.2, with a slight increase in the effectiveness of rating, even though it is still subject to diminishing returns. I think that with these new parry numbers, taking Spell Deflection might not be such a bad idea any more. My parry is almost at 20% unbuffed, and I think a 1 in 5 chance to take 45% less damage from any direct damage spells would make vast improvements to DK caster tanking abilities, since we already have 3 effective interrupts (Strangulate, Mind Freeze, and Death Grip).

Any thoughts on this?

I don't know if this has been brought up before: Has anyone listed spells in Ulduar encounters that can be mitigated by Spell Deflection? From the wording of the tooltip, clearly AoEs and constant dots, like Overload, High Voltage, Profound Darkness, etc. can't.

Can we get a basic Stat weight added to each of your tanking templates? I have not figured out how to run the simulator correctly for the stat weights myself.

I noticed you don't say what the best AOE tanking build is. It used to be unholy but your comment saying its 2nd rate to all others leads me to believe that frost is a better AOE tank at this point is this true in your opinion?

I'll take a preliminary crack at this since searching the thread turned up only sparse comments. Main tank perspective only included below.

Spell Deflection Rank 3
You have a chance equal to your Parry chance of taking 45% less damage from a direct damage spell.


Razorscale - Fireball
Stormcaller Brundir - Chain Lightning, maybe lightning whirl
Thorim - Stormhammer, Frostbolt (hardmode)
Freya - Stormlasher various abilities
Mimiron - Plasma Blast, rapid burst, plasma ball (unlikely to be hit)

Northrend Beasts - Maybe Icehowl's cone and Wurms poison spits

This list is surprisingly small, though the comments on wowhead do metion that it works on breath attacks I have not verified this myself.