I only calculated SS threat as 5484 with your values for some reason. I'm not sure where the difference is coming from.

(( 1670 * 1.338 * 1.13 ) + 120 ) * 2.0735 = 5484

You are also assuming using the Scourge Strike Sigil, which is a good idea since the intention was to show a SS favorable situation. Also DnD is slightly higher since Impurity adds 25% of ap and not 20%.

Out of curiousity I calculated what kind of threat values you'd be getting at a situation more favorable to DnD, so 5000 ap, 20% crit, and no Scourge Strike sigil. The sigil adds the damage directly to the tooltips base damage and disease bonus damage. I also included Rage of Rivendare.

SS
758 (Base BoH damage)
+ 5000 * 3.3 / 14 (Bonus damage from ap)
* 0.6
+ 190.5 (Bonus damage without Sigil)
+ 95.25 * 3 (1638 total with 3 diseases)
* 1.13 (Ebon Plague)
* 1.1 (Rage of Rivendare)
* 1.338 (with 20% melee crit rate, or 26% for SS)
+ 120
* 2.0735 (frost presence)
5897 threat from Scourge Strike

DnD
62
+ 5000 * 0.0475 *1.25 (bonus damage from ap with 5/5 impurity)
* 1.1 (with 20% spell crit rate)
* 1.13 (Ebon Plague)
* 1.2 (Glyph)
* 1.1 (Rage of Rivendare)
* 1.9 (Bonus threat multiplier)
* 10 (total damage)
* 2.0735 (Frost presence)
23197 threat from DnD

So with 5000 ap, 20% crit and no SS Sigil DnD generates as much threat as 3.9 Scourge Strikes. The difference is huge, and not including DnD in any Unholy rotation is sure to generate much less threat. Even if you include the SS Sigil, DnD is still well over 3 Scourge Strikes in average threat generation.

From the perspective of a deep frost tank, D&D does do marginally more threat than BS + Ob. With the glyph of Obliterate, glyph of FS, 15 more RP from BS + Ob, GoG, etc the difference between the two isn't massive. Also, maybe I'm just slow this morning, but I'm not having any luck putting together a sustainable rotation with D&D for a frost build. But you're right that D&D seems to be better threat. The difference would be much more significant with the D&D glyph, although I'm loathe to drop one of my current ones.

I'm still trying to figure out how you prioritize HB over OB though. Since neither has a threat modifier, it would seem to me that whichever provides a higher DPS rotation would logically also provide a higher TPS rotation, and the DPS rotations for 2h use Ob. My quick math also supports this (~3500 AP raid buffed, using [Death's Bite], factoring in 18% more crit from Annihilation + Rime). The only mitigating factor I can think of is that maybe using a D&D rotation means leftover KM procs due to the lower RP generation/fewer FS, which you'd spend on HB.

Maybe it's just that my gear is terrible, but my HB hits and crits for significantly more than OB on single targets. My weapon's a [Titansteel Destroyer], so it's got room for improvement, but HB is well ahead of my OBs for single-target DPS, and thus, threat. It's about 150% of my OB damage, roughly. And it's AoE, to boot.

I still squeeze in OBs if I have the runes and my HB is on cooldown, but it doesn't happen that often. And I don't see how an ilvl 213 two-hander is going to make up THAT big a DPS difference between the two, unless I glyph and possibly re-talent (into something like Subversion) just to improve Obliterate. My spec includes most of the generic Frost Obliterate talents; I took Annihalation so I COULD use Oblit when I had a Rime proc without reapplying diseases, Rime itself more for the HB boost than the Obliterate crit bonus, etc, so it's not that I'm deliberately avoiding Obliterate, it just is a secondary choice. It seems like a lot of effort to reglyph and respec to make Obliterate slightly better than HB, when I could make better use of the glyph and talents on other factors. I seem to recall some napkin math that supported this staying true even through endgame gear, but I can't be sure.

I do know it's definitely worse DPS, and thus threat, for me right now. And I can't see reglyphing everything to try and get it to catch up, when I could just use HB instead.

I think that SS works better though, because those 3 strikes will take effect faster then a DnD and I don't know what type of rotation you would do with DnD. You also can't use DnD effectively on multiple raid bosses which makes SS superior.

I already told Buck what spec to edit in for the blood spec part so no need to worry about that.

Thats my main problem with using HB over OB, Howling Blast using KM procs. With the new PPM system it almost always procs for Frost strike. Which i perfer to use my KM procs on. If you were to use Howling blast you would still be using an OB atleast once every cycle.

Blood Tap - IT-BS-HB-OB - Runic Dump (repeat)

Anyone know if using KM procs on FS over HB yields more threat. My FS seems to hit harder.

Presumably it relies a lot upon the weapon being used - for me, a crit HB is more damage (and thus threat) than a FS crit.

This is my first time peak at this thread and I like how it's turned out so far. But I must say I'm extremely disappointed in the weakness of the talent builds suggested by the OP. Now maybe it is just because my mentality as a tank is that your primary job is to survive at all costs and worry about threat after, but I believe the builds posted are much too focused on threat generation.
Before I get into the specific builds I would like people to note that in whichever tanking spec I use, I have Rune Strike bound(macro'd) to almost all of my main abilities to ensure that it is used every possible chance.

Please consider the following:

Blood Tanking (<-- link)

This is my favorite tanking build because it has very powerful cooldowns, excellent single target threat gen and brings great buffs for the raid. With this spec I have easily maintained 6-8k TPS on a boss before MD/TotT. If the cooldowns are rotated effectively and with a little help from the RNG you can survive incredible amounts of time without heals, almost 2 min in current raid content. But this is also the build I use to solo Doomwalker which takes 25 minutes, so that should also say something about the built in survival.
The only real filler or replaceable talents in this build are Subversion and Mark of Blood. I chose these over Blood Aura and Might of Mograine because the Aura is still trivial in most encounters and MoM is just too small of a threat increase even if it is only 3 points. Mark of Blood on its own is rather weak but when used in combo with Vampiric Blood and abilities like Prayer of Mending, Sacred Shield or Living Seed the boss/mob is unwillingly healing you for a great amount.

I think the Glyph choices are pretty straight forward although you can swap Glyph of IBF for Rune Strike. I personally don't like the Glyph of Rune Strike because this ability produces an incredible amount of threat on it's own. Admittedly, more than 50% of my white attacks are turned into RS so it is something I'm experimenting with right now but RS does eat a ton of your RP and you will very rarely use DC. Which isn't even a bad thing because our spells have a much lower chance to hit/crit anyways.
Also I do use Glyph of IT over DnD because AoE threat is not a requirement for boss encounters but these two are pretty interchangeable.

The typical rotation is: OB-IT-PS-HS-HS... and so on, very basic for single target.
For AoE start with DnD-Diseases-Pest and then just try to get nice HS cleaves to spread threat around.

Unholy Tanking (<-- link)

With this build I haven't noticed a major difference when it comes to single target threat other than UB providing a less spiky TPS, meaning it doesn't sink as low when you reapply diseases and such. As for AoE threat I've peaked out at 11-12k TPS because of DnD crits while spamming Rune Strike on individual targets. Bone Shield is excellent for minimizing damage spikes and although not as powerful pre-3.0.8, it should still be kept up as much as possible.
Glyph of IBF and IT plus Dirge are required to help you keep UB up 100% because, just like with Blood, Rune Strike will eat a ton of your RP.
The main reason I stray away from this build when tanking is the lack of cooldowns. I know big cooldowns shouldn't be needed/used in optimal situations but DKs are avoidance tanks which puts us at the mercy of the RNG.

Alt Unholy Tank (<-- link)

This is something I've been meaning to experiment with and is meant for higher gear level tanks. I never get Necrosis because I'm close to 70% avoidance with buffs which means I have very few white attacks causing threat. Corpse Explosion is not important but if a melee dps dies you can pop their corpse for threat and then raise ally. The perma-ghoul combined with NotD gives you a powerful 2min cooldown in Death Pact.

I know a lot of people will frown on the fact I don't get Wandering Plague but as Unholy you certainly will never need help with AoE threat and it's not going to make a big difference in single target.

Unholy Rotation for ST is the same as originally posted: IT-PS-BS-BS-SS... etc.
For AoE: DnD-Diseases-Pest-UB-AFK


In closing those are my thoughts and suggestions based on a very successful tanking career so far. I've received many compliments from healers in the form of "Lylo you're very boring to heal" and my blood tanking spec very much helped me become one of the first with Glory of the Hero on my server.
Interested to see your thoughts.

Your unholy builds are much more poorly designed than the one listed in the OP. Desecration is an awful talent for anything but PvP and virulence with our man RP dump being RS and your preference for UB over DC means this isn't the most amazing place to put points. Necrosis does apply to rune strike hits and now that it is 20% of auto attack damage it is showing to be a much more important player for Unholy DPS and naturally Unholy threat with my last WWS report placing it at 8% of my damage on patchwerk. Corpse explosion is a waste, period. You take it for comedy reasons and that's about it. Unholy tanks would agree with you that Wandering plague is not needed at all in an unholy build for aoe threat, however the single point in WP in the build listed in the OP is there for the sole reason to get higher in the tree and is arguably the most beneficial place to put it even for single target.


What makes unholy a potent tank build is exactly that synergy with our avoidance tank nature in that bone shield can be kept up for a very long time. To me that's a fair trade over the talents available to Blood and Frost and even post-3.0.8 Unholy certainly doesn't feel lacking in mitigation although we are yet to truly test any build with current content.

That was a typo, thank you. I hastily posted the thread without a thorough proofread. Nice grab.

We should have stat conversion in the OP aswell. Like how much agi, str, or rating = 1% avoidance (before DR of course), but on that note does anyone know if frost presence effects the armor from agi. IE

1 agi = 2 armor, then modified by frost presence and talents + Meta ?