Suno's Fireside Chat - DK Endgame Tanking - Page 156

Cloudgatherer · 01/06/10, 2:02 PM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

In general, just a little more NR is hardly noticeable, but for Festergut the NR enchant may prove better in the long run. You are better served by asking the Shaman or Hunter to put up NR aura than swapping your cloak enchant.

I assume you mean Rotface instead of Festergut (I can't seem to keep them straight myself). If you are the OT kiting the slimes around (a good role for a DK tank in that fight), then the NR cloak/helm enchants + rings of binding are decent choices. Any tanks who prepped for Aunb in ToGC25 will likely have at least some of those. Of course, you can easily OT without any of those items, they are by no means essential.

Festergut is nearly all physical damage (shadow to the raid). On our 10 man last night, I started out tanking him, our druid took over for the 3 stack phase, and we killed it before we got to the next 3 stack phase. With 3 healers, it went down easily, with 2 healers if one gets the disorient in the 3 stack phase, the MT is dead.

Noak3 · 01/06/10, 2:21 PM

Originally Posted by easttuth

I agree. When I make decisions on when to use CD's (and which ones to use), it is to achieve a few important things:

1) Normalize spike damage. This one is obvious. Bringing high damage down to a more "normal" level, so your healers don't have to drastically change healing style for 10 to 15 seconds.

2) Buffer transitions. When your healers have to move, their spike mitigation and overall thoroughput go down.

3) Buffer tank switches. Sudden influx of damage can kill tanks, if healers aren't expecting it. This can be mitigated through good calls or just very attentive healers. Sometimes it hits the fan, though.

Chaining cooldowns can sometimes be the best way to use them. But this is only in situations where the incoming damage is both heavy and consistent, and the healers have a very static role. We've come a long way from Patchwerk, and this type of situation is increasingly rare.

My question was less in regard to when CD's should be chained/used and more in regard to what should be used in what order for the greatest benefit when you are chaining them. Has any math been done to equalize cooldowns that shows their exact benefit to your mitigation assuming various conditions (equalized boss damage, healing, buffs, hp etc)?
It would be more beneficial to know values on a boss-by-boss basis or an equation to provide mitigation based on player stats instead of an average, but I'm unsure how complicated this math would be.

runeblood · 01/06/10, 2:42 PM

Blood threat is mainly based on melee damage which where the hit cap is 8% while UH threat gets a bigger proportion of threat through diseases (compared to blood) which is capped at spell hit of 17%. I can easily achieve the spell cap through gear, buffs, talents etc.. My question is how much more threat does this generate? Unless I am missing something this seems to be the key to tanking effectively in UH.

Pyrius · 01/06/10, 3:03 PM

Disease ticks can't miss and despite UH using more magic damage for threat, the main threat generators (Rune Strike, Scourge Strike) are capped at 8%. Spell hit isn't that important. If it were, Virulence would be a must have talent for tanks (which it isn't).

runeblood · 01/06/10, 3:16 PM

That makes sense but why does my disease damage increase as my hit goes up? For instance if i eat hit food the damage of my diseases go up on my Dr. Damage tool tip. Does the add-on calculate it incorrectly?

Pyrius · 01/06/10, 3:25 PM

Unless it's approximating disease damage across a series of targets spread by pestilence, I would say it is.

Na8 · 01/06/10, 5:05 PM

So I am currently running with the DW Frost Tank Spec however it seems DK Blood Spec Tanks seem to be more succesful and easier to heal in ICC not just becuase of the stamina buff but the self healing. Does anyway else feel that Blood Tanking is the way to go in ICC?

keebz · 01/06/10, 8:38 PM

Originally Posted by Na8

So I am currently running with the DW Frost Tank Spec however it seems DK Blood Spec Tanks seem to be more succesful and easier to heal in ICC not just becuase of the stamina buff but the self healing. Does anyway else feel that Blood Tanking is the way to go in ICC?

To each his own. There's nothing particularly weak about Frost and Unholy in ICC. Blood seems to be getting better use out of it's self-healing because the damage is divided into smaller hits that come at a faster pace. This leads to less over-healing done by you, generally. As for the stamina buff, I daresay that stamina buff isn't at the forefront of a Blood DK's survivability - managing your self-healing is.

bv728 · 01/06/10, 9:23 PM

Originally Posted by runeblood

That makes sense but why does my disease damage increase as my hit goes up? For instance if i eat hit food the damage of my diseases go up on my Dr. Damage tool tip. Does the add-on calculate it incorrectly?

Last time I checked, Dr. Damage, the Mod, will apply miss chance to abilities which cannot miss. It was also pretty far out of date, but I havn't looked in while.

Illu · 01/07/10, 9:00 AM

Well, disease ticks can partially be resisted, so maybe that is why the damage is lower? Though I have no idea if it actually shows missed. Maybe from pestilence?

I also completely agree with Keebz, the stamina gain from Blood is easily offset and surpassed by frost's passive damage reduction. Personally I feel that Frost is in a very nice place right now, but I'd like to try Blood out some too in ICC.

Does anyone know if Acclimation procs from slime duty on Rotface (or Spell Deflection for that matter)? I know those talents are a bit vague, but imagining upcoming bosses I'm wondering if this instance will see more use of these talents..

edit: Thanks for the reply regarding acclimation, I was looking to try it out myself but it's difficult to fit the points when I need to bring ITT

Muggins · 01/07/10, 10:20 AM

Originally Posted by Illu

Does anyone know if Acclimation procs from slime duty on Rotface (or Spell Deflection for that matter)? I know those talents are a bit vague, but imagining upcoming bosses I'm wondering if this instance will see more use of these talents..

Acclimation works for both the shadow and nature schools flying around on Rotface. I was the kiting tank last night and it was handy if you had to take a dip in the slime pool rather than lead the ooze through the raid as combined with anti-magic shell the damage taken was minimal.

I didn't notice it working on Festergut or Putricide(I'm on abom duty on Putricide, which probably affects it), it may well have procced on Festergut but i just missed it due to having larger concerns at the time, i'll keep an eye out next week.

Livingsin · 01/07/10, 10:34 AM

Originally Posted by pindle

That. Chaining them is of little benefit as in most fights the healers will be landing at least 1-2 heals per 2 sec on you; which would probably just increase their overhealing. The most important thing is to know the fights: know when you're either getting some spike dmg due to a boss ability or due to other people failing, and know when your healers will have it hard (e.g. they need to run, heal up the raid, etc etc) to use them in conjunction.

This is so true to any Raid you may encounter. As a personal Example in the fight with Lord Marrowgar, you may have the MT Heals Bone Spiked, and your will need to use w/e CD/Trinket, you can to Mitigate your own, dmg.

Nari · 01/08/10, 2:05 AM

Originally Posted by Pyrius

Disease ticks can't miss and despite UH using more magic damage for threat, the main threat generators (Rune Strike, Scourge Strike) are capped at 8%. Spell hit isn't that important. If it were, Virulence would be a must have talent for tanks (which it isn't).

Are you sure? You can check it out. At least I see a lot of floating text "Miss" ticks from D&D when I'm low on hit. Missing Icy touch or Pestilence is a headache too (both use spell hit). You don't need 17% for sure, but I value these points in Virulence almost as must have.

RabbitMaster · 01/08/10, 4:45 AM

As far as i know, only the first tick of DnD can be missed. And with 8% hit plus somone in your raid bringing the +3% spell hit buff/debuff, Virulence isn't that good.
Bottomline, there is always better ways to use these 3 talent points IMHO.

Pyrius · 01/08/10, 9:53 AM

DnD, even when missing a little hit, is still powerful enough to hold mobs. Missing Icy Touch or Pestilence is a minor inconvenience. The rune is refunded, you cast again. You might be able to make a case for missing Pestilence on a tight GoD rotation, but even then, the cost of the miss is having to recast IT+PS.

My response was really clarifying more that getting spell hit capped won't suddenly make Unholy competitive with Blood for ST threat, not by even a long shot.