I'll be taking an Unholy build into Ulduar tonight, though it may not get used much as I'll likely be DPS much of the night.
Having a DK provide 100% uptime on EP is a priority. I'll be unholy for at least the first full clear.
Good luck to everyone this week, I'll be updating the op in the coming weeks with concrete data.
Why the D&D glyph over Rune Strike? Considering the amount of TPS that comes from Rune Strike alone, I thought the consensus was that the glyph of rune strike gave something like 9% increase in threat (I could be wrong but I knew it was high)
I think I'll be walking in with a frost spec tonight, BUT (hate blizzard, shoulda given more time with this change) because of the recent change to scent of blood, I'll probably be using something like this
The scent of blood change : (mmmmmm, sanctuary)
# Scent of Blood: Will now proc on a dodge, parry or when taking damage, and now grants 10 runic power per charge. Internal cooldown removed.
Why the D&D glyph over Rune Strike? Considering the amount of TPS that comes from Rune Strike alone, I thought the consensus was that the glyph of rune strike gave something like 9% increase in threat (I could be wrong but I knew it was high)
Likely because he mentioned he'll not be tanking and therefor DPSing or tanking adds. I still believe that rune strike is invaluable to a MT position.
Edit: With the new change to diseases lasting a baseline of 15 seconds, is epidemic past 1/2 really necessary or just an added bonus? Frost still seems like an expensive tree to fill out and with the supposed change to SoB it seems like it could replace the removal of bosanc's runic power bonus and become fairly necessary.
Last edited by Papertigers : 04/14/09 at 12:36 PM.
I think I'll be walking in with a frost spec tonight, BUT (hate blizzard, shoulda given more time with this change) because of the recent change to scent of blood, I'll probably be using something like this
The scent of blood change : (mmmmmm, sanctuary)
# Scent of Blood: Will now proc on a dodge, parry or when taking damage, and now grants 10 runic power per charge. Internal cooldown removed.
I'm not sure I understand some of the choices you made in that Frost spec.... so if I'm missing something please let me know. I'm a fairly new tank.
-You put only 3/5 points in Killing Machine which is such a huge source of threat and procs constantly with 5/5.
-You took lichborne which no longer reduces chance to be hit.
-You filled out epidemic but we have a flat 15 seconds on diseases untalented now and with so many more important choices I'm not sure points should be put there anymore. I suppose that one could be (and probably already has been) heavily debated.
-3/5 bladed armor is going to be a pretty big AtkPwr loss and you will lose some threat from that.
-Is Scent of Blood AND runic power mastery really necessary?
It's still a work in progress but the build I have so far is something like this.
I'm not sure I understand some of the choices you made in that Frost spec.... so if I'm missing something please let me know. I'm a fairly new tank.
-You put only 3/5 points in Killing Machine which is such a huge source of threat and procs constantly with 5/5.
-You took lichborne which no longer reduces chance to be hit.
-You filled out epidemic but we have a flat 15 seconds on diseases untalented now and with so many more important choices I'm not sure points should be put there anymore. I suppose that one could be (and probably already has been) heavily debated.
-3/5 bladed armor is going to be a pretty big AtkPwr loss and you will lose some threat from that.
-Is Scent of Blood AND runic power mastery really necessary?
It's still a work in progress but the build I have so far is something like this.
Eh, I had a brain fart with the lichborne.
About epidemic, currently diseases are 12 seconds untalented, 2/2 would give you 18 seconds, 21 seconds later today in 3.1. I enjoy more freedom in my rotations, which that extra 3 seconds will give me.
3/5 bladed armor isn't a big worry for me. The points in Scent of Blood hopefully will give me enough runic power to rune strike on cooldown. Runic power mastery is because I do anticipate huge runic power dumps, and I don't want to be stuck with a full bar at ANY point in time.
Two handed weapon specialization is more threat per point than bladed armor, You should fill it out first before you fill out bladed armor.
Either way, I'm not pretending to know how well it will work out, but for the moment I'm sticking with what i have (minus lichborne). Tommorow my spec will be far more optimized after testing tonight (I plan on going in with unholy tanking as my 2nd spec).
"Remember, the first rule of brainstorming is to openly mock the opinions of others. "
About epidemic, currently diseases are 12 seconds untalented, 2/2 would give you 18 seconds, 21 seconds later today in 3.1. I enjoy more freedom in my rotations, which that extra 3 seconds will give me.
3/5 bladed armor isn't a big worry for me. The points in Scent of Blood hopefully will give me enough runic power to rune strike on cooldown. Runic power mastery is because I do anticipate huge runic power dumps, and I don't want to be stuck with a full bar at ANY point in time.
Two handed weapon specialization is more threat per point than bladed armor, You should fill it out first before you fill out bladed armor.
Either way, I'm not pretending to know how well it will work out, but for the moment I'm sticking with what i have (minus lichborne). Tommorow my spec will be far more optimized after testing tonight (I plan on going in with unholy tanking as my 2nd spec).
I think the issue with 21 second Disease is whether it really gives you more freedom in your rotation, since 18 second disease actually sync pretty well with the current rotation for most things unless you had bad avoidance streak in a row. In that case 21 seconds of disease merely gives you an additional tick on your dot.
Why the D&D glyph over Rune Strike? Considering the amount of TPS that comes from Rune Strike alone, I thought the consensus was that the glyph of rune strike gave something like 9% increase in threat (I could be wrong but I knew it was high)
I would be very interested to see the math on the 9% overall threat generated from this single glyph. Please provide a source.
There is much to be tested in the near future. I have selected my build because I want to test it in a live environment and collect data, not because I'm certain that it will be the build I'm using in 2 months. If I was sure about that already, the OP would include the build.
I'm mainly interested in the snare benefits of desecration; I want to see who's immune and who isn't.
Regarding BCB, the warrior comparison was and is meaningless. Being parried less frequently is an advantage of our design. Risking additional damage for a very small amount of threat in any context makes no sense to me. Perhaps more importantly: if you're relying on this talent to gain a comfortable threat lead, you have bigger problems than BcB vs. Necrosis.
Bloody Vengeance is actually 9% (stacks 3 times) in most circumstances, so I corrected your numbers (changes I made are in bold). As you can see, with that in mind, Obliterate and Death Strike scale almost identically, though OB has more "variables" to it's scaling (both diseases *and* 3 stacks of BV up 100%). They are certainly close enough that it's definitely not worth taking the "filler" talents to get to Annihilation if you are speccing Blood, particularly when there are more tasty synergies with the threat talents in Unholy (e.g. Necrosis).
Edit: In addition, one change I'd make to your "skeleton" build: drop MoM. MoM isn't nearly the "required" talent for Blood that GoG is for Frost. Here's my alternate skeleton. The single point in Sudden Doom is strictly filler to get to Blood Gorged. It could be placed in Improved Rune Tap or MoM instead.
Isn't one thing you're missing being the fact that MoM doesn't affect Obliterate anymore but it does affect Death Strike?
About epidemic, currently diseases are 12 seconds untalented, 2/2 would give you 18 seconds, 21 seconds later today in 3.1. I enjoy more freedom in my rotations, which that extra 3 seconds will give me.
3/5 bladed armor isn't a big worry for me. The points in Scent of Blood hopefully will give me enough runic power to rune strike on cooldown. Runic power mastery is because I do anticipate huge runic power dumps, and I don't want to be stuck with a full bar at ANY point in time.
Two handed weapon specialization is more threat per point than bladed armor, You should fill it out first before you fill out bladed armor.
Either way, I'm not pretending to know how well it will work out, but for the moment I'm sticking with what i have (minus lichborne). Tommorow my spec will be far more optimized after testing tonight (I plan on going in with unholy tanking as my 2nd spec).
Blood Plague and Frost Fever are 15 seconds upon release of 3.1 which as of today I consider "currently". :P
I am hoping scent of blood is enough to almost be an equivalent to Blessing of Sanctuary after the changes and in that case will make runic power mastery unnecessary even as a tier 1 talent.
Also please address the 3/5 Killing Machine if you don't mind... i was especially curious about that one...
Isn't one thing you're missing being the fact that MoM doesn't affect Obliterate anymore but it does affect Death Strike?
While that does increase the value of MoM, it doesn't make it valuable enough to be a no-brainer threat talent for tanking, particularly that high up in the tree. Here's a little napkin math to illustrate:
On a recent Patchwerk kill, 17% of my damage came from HS, and 12% came from Oblit. If we assume that Death Strike will do that much (best case for arguing to *take* MoM), we're talking about 29% of my damage being effected by MoM in any way. Next, take the crit % into account: I had 25% crit rate on HS and a 19% crit rate on Oblit. That means I got a 25% * 45% * 17% = 1.9% more damage from HS and 19% * 45% * 12% = 1% more damage from Oblit (roughly). That's an overall 2.9% damage increase for 3 talent points. Not bad, right? But wait, when I shift this from DPS to TPS, my HS contributes only 14% of my Threat and Oblit 10%. That drops the Threat contribution from MoM to 2.4%. Again, that's not *awful* for 3 talent points, but it's not great, particularly when we consider that Death Strike will likely be *less* contribution percentage wise to my threat than Oblit was.
At that point in the tree, I want to spend 5 pts in that tier, at most. Since I'm dropping 3 in WotN and 1 in HS, that leaves one point for MoM. Not an awful way to spend one point, but not necessarily perfect, particularly since I'm pretty much set on dropping Subversion from my current spec as my way of getting the necessary points for Scent of Blood - and Subversion *doesn't* effect Death Strike.
So, after that wall o' text: No, I don't think that changes my view on MoM for tanking.
No, I wasn't taking Rune Strike into account and it seems that I overlooked it completely. When I do take Rune Strike into account it does seem to be a better choice to take Scent of Blood but trying to find what I should take points out of to acquire it is somewhat challenging. You can take a point out of Rune Tap and then the other two out of Two-Handed Weapon Specialization or all three out of Subversion. Although neither matters when you view Ulduar as a place where we need to prioritize survivability over threat until its on farm and we start to work on hard mode specs. Then again some may view that keeping maximum threat to burn through a boss (or phase) quickly would be important too.
I'd say if you wanted to maximize threat that getting Scent of Blood would probably be a wise choice. If you wanted to maximize survivability then getting Mark of Blood, Improved Rune Tap, and Spell Deflection would all probably be worth it. I noticed the change to WotN making it so that any attack that does less then 5% of your health would not affect WotN, this change doesn't really fix WotN on a fight like 3D but hopefully it proves to be worthy in Ulduar.
57/7/7 This is what I have come up with for a blood tanking build with scent of blood. I do not need Imp Icy Touch in my spec because we have 2 dks with it already. This was the only spec I've been happy with for blood where I got scent of blood and almost everything else I wanted. I feel that runic power mastery is very important to blood to maintain your runic power high enough to get max dmg out of death strikes. The only thing this is missing that I would like is Morbidity but I just could not fit it in. I'll be doing a HS x4 rotation with this build.
I'm eagerly awaiting an update to the OP for the new standard tanking builds but this seems solid to me now so I thought I'd share it.
Ok I am fairly new to DK tanking. With this new patch (3.1.0) i was wondering about a few things.
-Lichborne IMO looks completely useless now (please comment if this statement is incorrect)
-Also would it be a good idea to include Rune tap into tanking builds? i have been in NUMEROUS situations where i have to summon my ghoul and use Death Pact because the healers were on someone else ( -.- )
-I want to spec into deep Frost to tank can anyone explain why this is a good/bad idea
I'm having trouble deciding which is better between 3/3 subversion and 4/5 bladed armor or 2/2 two hand spec and 5/5 bladed armor for a frost tanking build. 15/51/5 is the build I've been looking at with those few points up in the air. Can anyone offer any insight?
I'm having trouble deciding which is better between 3/3 subversion and 4/5 bladed armor or 2/2 two hand spec and 5/5 bladed armor for a frost tanking build. 15/51/5 is the build I've been looking at with those few points up in the air. Can anyone offer any insight?
Unless there are changes to subversion I am unaware of, 2/2 2H weapon mastery outdoes subversion on all levels.
I would take 5/5 bladed armor and 2/2 2H weapon mastery.
57/7/7 This is what I have come up with for a blood tanking build with scent of blood. I do not need Imp Icy Touch in my spec because we have 2 dks with it already. This was the only spec I've been happy with for blood where I got scent of blood and almost everything else I wanted. I feel that runic power mastery is very important to blood to maintain your runic power high enough to get max dmg out of death strikes. The only thing this is missing that I would like is Morbidity but I just could not fit it in. I'll be doing a HS x4 rotation with this build.
I'm eagerly awaiting an update to the OP for the new standard tanking builds but this seems solid to me now so I thought I'd share it.
The only thing I would change with that build is take 1 point out of Rune Tap and 2 out of Runic Power Mastery then put 3 into Morbidity. I don't know why you took Dancing Rune Weapon, I'd move that point to CE or possibly take 2 out of Two-Handed Weapon Specialization and then put all 3 into Improved Icy Touch. I personally make it a rule to always use a 10/8/8 (optional +2) point setup for any threat/survivability build and any build in the OP will have Improved Icy Touch because not everyone has another person to apply the debuff.
57/7/7 This is what I have come up with for a blood tanking build with scent of blood. I do not need Imp Icy Touch in my spec because we have 2 dks with it already. This was the only spec I've been happy with for blood where I got scent of blood and almost everything else I wanted. I feel that runic power mastery is very important to blood to maintain your runic power high enough to get max dmg out of death strikes. The only thing this is missing that I would like is Morbidity but I just could not fit it in. I'll be doing a HS x4 rotation with this build.
I'm eagerly awaiting an update to the OP for the new standard tanking builds but this seems solid to me now so I thought I'd share it.
I like this spec. What rotation would you be doing with it? I was gonna go with frost still for tanking but this spec looks like fun.
Ok I am fairly new to DK tanking. With this new patch (3.1.0) i was wondering about a few things.
-Lichborne IMO looks completely useless now (please comment if this statement is incorrect)
That is because it is completely useless for a tanking build (unless we need to break fear for some reason).
Originally Posted by arobles11
-Also would it be a good idea to include Rune tap into tanking builds? i have been in NUMEROUS situations where i have to summon my ghoul and use Death Pact because the healers were on someone else ( -.- )
You need new healers unless its something like progression +drakes during a fire wall (for example). I use to include Imp Rune Tap but I'm finding that in 3.1 you don't really have enough points to get it unless you sacrifice something (usually threat).
I was curious if anyone knew which three points would provide more single target threat to a blood tanking build. Sudden doom or Might of Mograine. I was thinking of using This spec and I was wondering if i should trade MoM for Sudden Doom.
I was curious if anyone knew which three points would provide more single target threat to a blood tanking build. Sudden doom or Might of Mograine. I was thinking of using This spec and I was wondering if i should trade MoM for Sudden Doom.
Rather than trade one for the other, just drop the two points out of Improved Rune Tap and use 2/3 Sudden Doom. If you really need the extra from Improved Rune Tap, your healers have a problem.
I'm torn. Until now I've been an off-tank/Sarth tank and have spec'd Blood. I'm VERY comfortable with Blood's rotation. Yesterday I learn that Pally tanks are getting a big AOE threat nerf (I should have followed Patch notes better) and that I'll be the go to AOE tank.
Now until now I've been pretty comfortable AOE tanking as Blood. I'd take all the zombies on Gluth with little problem and with the buff to Blood Boil I was feeling pretty confident about AOE tanking as Blood.
Yet Patch day is here and I'm starting to reconsider. Would a Frost spec serve me better for AOE tanking? Yeah Howling Blast sits on an 8 second cooldown but would the change to Rime compensate enough? For an AOE tanking spec I'm considering something like this. Having tanked without Morbidity in the past I can safely say that I definitely miss it and consider it a requirement for AOE tanking. My glyph choices are obviously willynilly as I've been a baddy and just not followed Frost's changes coming into 3.1.
Or is this all hysterical nervousness? Should I just stick with a Blood spec and shut my dirty mouth?
I'm torn. Until now I've been an off-tank/Sarth tank and have spec'd Blood. I'm VERY comfortable with Blood's rotation. Yesterday I learn that Pally tanks are getting a big AOE threat nerf (I should have followed Patch notes better) and that I'll be the go to AOE tank.
Now until now I've been pretty comfortable AOE tanking as Blood. I'd take all the zombies on Gluth with little problem and with the buff to Blood Boil I was feeling pretty confident about AOE tanking as Blood.
Yet Patch day is here and I'm starting to reconsider. Would a Frost spec serve me better for AOE tanking? Yeah Howling Blast sits on an 8 second cooldown but would the change to Rime compensate enough? For an AOE tanking spec I'm considering something like this. Having tanked without Morbidity in the past I can safely say that I definitely miss it and consider it a requirement for AOE tanking. My glyph choices are obviously willynilly as I've been a baddy and just not followed Frost's changes coming into 3.1.
Or is this all hysterical nervousness? Should I just stick with a Blood spec and shut my dirty mouth?
I'd say it's a little bit of hysterical nervousness, but I suppose most of us are feeling it with it being patch day and all.
I've yet to test frost aoe extensively in 3.1, however I LOVE the control that howling blast offers as opposed to blood boil. It always seems to be far more "snap"py. I am also having a lot of the same issues deciding on how to spec tonight, and the specs you provided in your post are exactly the two I will be using, thank goodness for dual-spec!
I don't know how paladins are getting their AoE threat nerfed, but considering how great it was before I don't think a reasonable nerf is going to make them useless for the role.
That aside, Frost makes an awesome AoE tanking tree. Deathchill/KM proc + Howling Blast makes for amazing snap aggro and unless people have been wailing on the adds for a while you can get aggro on them pretty easily with that alone. With the changes to Blood Boil, I don't think blood will have a huge problem AoE tanking either, if you really want to stick with it. Blood Boil can cause some serious damage now as long as the targets have a disease on them, and with DRM you can use it quite a lot. If your paladin really feels like he can't handle AoE tanking anymore, you should be able to do it fine with either spec.
I took that 57/7/7 build and dropped Epidemic, Runic Power Mastery, Dancing Rune Weapon, and Blood Tap, and Death Rune Mastery in order to pickup Morbidity, Improved Icy Touch, Improved Blood Presence, and Hysteria.
My question is, do you guys think the rotation transforming Death Strikes into Blood / Heart Strikes outweighs the benefit of an additional 4% self healing and the ability to buff your raid's top dps with Hysteria?
I feel like the rest of the spec is without room for flexibility, so it comes down to where those 3 points provide the biggest benifit.
Generally speaking, I'll switch between the specs given the situation. Frost Spec will give me AoE aggro and better avoidance while Blood Spec will give me the best TPS and buffer/survivability. I always liked Blood spec but I'm worried about it as a pure "I'll afk and come back and the boss is dead" option it used to be. I'd give Unholy a try but I haven't seen much in the way of "OMG IT OWNS" and losing the 10% avoidance from BB sucks for Bone Shield..
04/14/09, 12:15 PM
