I'm continuously amazed at how many people constantly forget that Expertise raises your TPS as well. Apparently we've all forgotten how combat roll tables work, and that if you're reducing the chance be dodged and parried, you're increasing your chance to hit. Not to be confused with reducing your chance to miss however, as that can only be done via hit rating. If you've got the most minimum amount of Expertise (26), you're eliminating chance to be Dodged (6.5%), and reducing chance to be Parried by 6.5% as well. Which means you're moving 13% from the Dodge and Parry portions of the combat table over to the Hit portion. That is why Expertise is so important, not only for the reduction of Parry-hasting the boss, but because it scales twice as well as hit rating, until you reach 6.5%. After that it scales the same, minus Parry-hasting considerations.

I'm not sure if this was directed at me, or just a reply with your thoughts in general, but you quoted me... so, I can only guess.

At any rate, my gearing goals have always been melee hit cap and expertise minimum, then stacking as much expertise as I can without sacrificing too many other stats. I have the option of 35,500 HP unbuffed, but I prefer to tank Naxx with 29500, while maintaining 37 expertise (9.25), 293 hit (11.17% spell), and 30k armor. People ask me why I don't have 40stam on my bracers (opting for 15% expertise instead), and it's because I simply don't like being dodged/parried. I've run as high as 57 expertise (with food and elixir) with solid results, but I'm at a point now where all I want to do is generate more TPS and DPS... so I regemmed def (to remove the +27 hit gems), swapped to RotFC, switched to DB (for the +hit until I can get Grim Toll, thus allowing Inevitable Defeat to return), and added in Mark of Norgannon to make up for the loss in expertise from ID.

Math aside, I've found that after hours / days of testing, I always come back to "more expertise is more DPS/TPS". Now, I know there is a sweet spot somewhere in there between the absolute expertise cap, and less expertise but more DPS stats (like STR and CRIT perhaps) but I'm really not at the point where I want to regem specifically for anything other than hit, exp, stam.

TLDR version? Assuming you are going for max DPS/TPS as a tank, Hit, Expertise, then more expertise IMO.

I have a question. With the Frost tanking builds, on AoE, You exclude HB from the rotation. I don't understand why since HB is a AoE ability that consumes the same amount of runes as OB and about the same amount of damage, (Maybe 1k less or 1.5k), But is AoE instead of OB. Using OB seems less efficient/optimal for controlling AoE Mobs. The only way I could see why you would use OB over HB is if a rime proc was up, but let's say the proc is up, That just emans you can do another OB after/before you HB. That's just how I see it.

Personally I use DND -> IT -> Pest. -> Blood Tap+HB (with Deathchill) as starting rotation with frost spec in AoE situations. You do lose PS, but as frost it's not actually a big source of threat compared to the initial gain from HB-crit. While OB tends to deal more damage than HB on single target, whenever I'm tanking more than 2 targets I use HB instead if it's not on cooldown.

I've been running fairly deep in Blood ,for Sarth, to a point where I feel I can be confident I will live as full on blood spec and save on respeccing every time we go.

The AMS and IBF are the 2 cooldowns keeping me alive, Vampiric blood is a plus pre 3rd drake portals. Good heal rotation with protections from the priests, called in vent by me when my cd's are down no probs so far.
I will lose blood aura and imp rune tap which I hope arent huge enough to make a difference between a win and a wipe.

Although Blood isnt so great for AoE im kind of getting used to it and found I'm enjoying the spec more than Unholy.

I'll post some WWS after our next attempt.

Totally agree on above post though, threat has never been an issue, you stand for most of the fight on your own on Sarth til they burn him down. Plenty of threat at that point.

I'm not sure I would attempt this until your guild is comfortable with the encounter.

I have been hoping someone who has run this fight consistently as unholy or trispec would give it a shot and see if they found it easier or harder to survive. Any takers?

About Blood spec on Sartharion/3 drakes.

I'm sitting on 43k health and about 50k with Vampiric Blood, full raid buffed, with 225 Fire resist before engaging the fight.
With Vesperon alive, I would be : 34,4 k HP / 40 k HP

And according to this post on the druid section : http://elitistjerks.com/1095038-post136.html
The max breath i can take is 50414 damage.

But I have to take into account Will of the Necropolis. It help me soak 39.5 k Fire damage (34,4x1.15) without Vampiric blood. And 46k damage under Vampiric Blood effect.

Here are the cooldown I use for the bigs breaths :
- AMS
- IBF (1 or 2 breath)
- Vampiric Blood + Paladin/Priest cooldown
- Vampiric Blood + Paladin/Priest cooldown
- AMS
- IBF
...

Death strike is a bad idea. I've had upwards of ~5 whelps/blazes on me due to the healing aggro generated. Add tanks have taunts on CD enough as it is without having me make it more difficult. It should be obvious why having a single whelp strike you is a bad idea. It's relatively easy to time (I've killed him using DS), but those mobs "fade" in, and it's impossible to avoid that add aggro 100%. Additionally, if you do get the adds, you cannot keep up Blade Barrier indefinitely without BloodBoil/Pestilence (if he's immune). Dropping a pestilence on some lava blazes is a great way to solidify aggro on some adds.

You could effectively argue that, since threat is a non-issue, that you could just spam PS/IT instead of DS.

I prefer mark of Blood for the period when drake 2 is dead but the portal adds are not. It's during this period that you take the most damage. You take more damage from melee in Sarth3D than you do fire, if you're mitigating appropriately. During the peak of all damage (big breaths + 2x melee haste/dmg buffs), I find Mark of blood very useful (lichborne can also be nice here, but is still RNG-susceptible).

Regarding IIT, it depends on your guild's positioning. Mine tanks the drakes very close to Sarth, and my frost-DPS-DK's pestilence hits him without any repositioning. If our positioning is unique and a significant number of DK tanks find difficulty keeping him imp-TC'd, then I'll add/substitute appropriately. This build is popular amongst the leading DK's I stay in close contact with, but perhaps we're a minority.


Blood S3D:

This spec requires more external cooldowns. This makes it less interesting to me. I've had more than a couple kills as unholy with zero external cooldowns. Clearly, RNG can make things harder with any build, but that would be near-impossible as blood. Also, if GS is burned on you while VB is active and you'd otherwise be gibbed, VB's usefulness for that breath was lost. A paladin cooldown would be better for that case and save GS for when you have -no- cooldown available.

I know that many of you tank S3D as deep blood and I've noted its viability for that encounter in the OP.





EDIT - I wanted to comment about the OP and it's contents. I've trimmed off the top generic information, and added some additional links to outside references. If you haven't read this guide, you should. It has a large, comprehensive, accurate tanking section with information like IBF scaling and runeforge comparisons, as well as all basic tanking information. It's quite complete; restating many of those facts would be redundant and useless.

I do, however, want to make this a max-two-stop shop for all relative info, and there's a wealth of additional info that I read daily that I would like to share. I'll have it all compiled and added by the end of the week.

If it seems to be the consensus to paste the info in that guide into here and develop a post similar to Quigon's, I'll look into doing that. I originally had planned to have nearly every useful link available here and have this thread be a hub instead of a bible, but I'm open to suggestion.

If I max stam (at the cost of other stats) Boneshield + a priest shield saves me from a breath. Additionally, unholy gets anti-magic zone a self-sufficient breath CD.

My CD rotation:

AMS
IBF
AMZ (most often I'm back to AMS here)
If needed: BS+ shields. (certainly back to AMS here)
If needed #2: other class CD's.


Unholy also nabs spell deflection, so that's not an advantage of Blood.

My priests know to shield be before every breath, assuming I have BS up.

Obviously Blood is very viable for S3D. However, I find that I'm more self sufficient as unholy, and I can tank with no external CD short of a shield. I've tanked him as blood and I felt more vulnerable.

The only CD im getting is guardian spirit (holy) or pain supression (disc), and only when my own is on CD, so again where is the difference ?

AMZ wont save you from a breath with its nerfed state iir certainly didnt last time i tried it.

Seems to me each spec has 2 viable CDs and another that needs support.

I'm not trying to be arguementative but over all Blood seems to be easier to heal due to the increased hps and self heals. I just cant see where Unholy is better. Especially if you take the encounter as a whole into account.

Anti-Magic Zone now lasts 10 seconds or until it absorbs [10000 + 2 * AP] spell damage.

It is, as stated above, a self-sufficient breath CD.

Granted, it's not difficult to GS or PS a tank.


Edit- added the Lichborne/IIT build and modified the Blood build to point out its 3DS effectiveness.

I have always done Sarth3D as unholy, even post nerf to BS AMZ etc.. I recently re-gemmed and lost a decent chunk of HP so i usually sit on 29-30k with 3 drakes (including Commanding shout.)

With the BS glyph and popping dodge or parry trinket, the 6 charges usually last 2-3 breaths, and i survive each one with only the BS mitigation. AMZ still prevents a death. Altho, i do cut it close on the majority of breaths, we never wipe to my death. I have a Disc priest on me which helps, but since the BS glyph and the CD change on AMS, i rarely have the need for Pain Suppression.

I do want to try a Blood Spec in the future for a Naxx, as i am always looking for something different. but i dont think i will try it on Sarth...