Fair catch, but I stand by my disbelief in his reported numbers. Also, if you are relying on Death Runes, you are looking at a pretty weak opening threat, since you would be unable to drop DnD if you wanted to DS for the runes. Of course, ridiculously low snap threat compared to other tanks is characteristic of all DK builds in both single target and AE situations.
Just a few quick questions based upon nothing other than being bored!
1) Can someone link a cookie cutter MainTank threat spec? I know that you should be using what you are comfortable with, but the thing is: I'm not a normal person. I can comfortably adapt to new specs/rotations without question, and do just as good as someone who has always loved the spec!
2) Gearing. I know I'm not in endgame gear, as my DK is my 2ndary toon which I rarely raid on. However, I was wondering if my gemming for Stamina is correct or not. My options for taking up the socket bonuses to add in some avoidance looked like a Gain of 1.07% Avoidance before Deminishing Returns, 4 Defense skill, but a loss of approx 627 Health. As the Main Tank, is the 1.07% avoidance before DR, better or worse than the 627 Health?
Im quite bored, and just throwing out random stuff to take you off track of your Bloodboil disputes.(Although for shits n giggles, Im also doubting the 4-5k Bloodboils. I ran blood spec tank since 3.0.4 and I haven't seen that high of Bloodboils. Maybe 2-3k with more gear, but not 4-5k... that seems a little overboard.)
I think my 14/51/6 build is about as much threat as you can get with Frost.
It is generally agreed that effective health is the most important stat for progression content. Socket bonuses are usually worth it, which is why JC is such a fantastic profession. That said, skipping +4 Def or whatever for another 12 stam is a fine tradeoff, especially if you don't have at least like 34k unbuffed HP.
I don't think it is worth it to base the sets around using 4pc t8.5. It's really a pretty awful set bonus.
In all of the normal situations where you'd use AMS extensively (Iron Council, Mimiron), the bonus 10% physical damage reduction drops as soon as the shield does.
At best, the set bonus will give you 5 seconds of 10% physical reduction every 45 seconds (1.1% reduction average), at the cost of ~27rp/min. It's much better to break the set if you can get any of the hard mode pieces.
On fights where one would actually use AMS for the magic dmg absorption as you mentioned it's indeed not wort it that much.
The strength imo lies in the fact that you make an ability, which normally is useless for anything else but magic dmg absorption, an ability usefull for melee dmg fights. Making the ability way more versatile.
Regarding Blood Boil, I seldom see it crit for 4K even in 25-man Ulduar DPS gear/spec, let alone tank gear/spec. While it's alright for grabbing snap aggro on adds that you facepulled or a pat you forgot about that crashes into your raid, it's not a spectacular AOE threat talent in my opinion. DnD provides more threat per rune than blood boil does, so far as I know.
I am a bit astonished that even after all these months, although there are multiple threads for dps for each tree, there continue to be these monolithic threads for tanking that always encompass all three trees.
Is there any chance of starting a tanking thread for each tree so the mechanics of each can be examined more closely without having to surf through pages of info on other trees?
That way, there can still be a general 'tanking' thread for gear, equipment, gemming, etc., and the others can get more specifically into how to deal with certain situations, encompassing both survival and threat, using their own unique talents, and also delve more deeply into specs.
1. For frost, you are right about Frost Presence, GoG and Frigid Dreadplate. Don't dare deny the ability of unbreakable armor though - especially if you get a Furnace Heart. Taking 1800 off everything and the strength boost (for increased threat and parry) is exceptional in a lot of situations. Getting hit thirty times for 2k or thirty times for 200 is a big difference. If I'm getting hit a LOT of times, I'd rather have them all lose a significant percent than get a bonus to healing. Vampiric Blood was nice but the extra minute I think killed it in comparison. If you doubt me, try it out.
2. Self healing from blood presence isn't really all that great. Assuming you do a nice 2k dps, that's 80 healing per second - which is pretty much nil when main tanking. If you're constantly below 100% health to have a decent effect aside from normal healing ticks (HoT), it's more of a healer problem than anything.
3. Self healing from death strike isn't exactly all that great either - yes you can time it so you help the healers out but more often than not it can screw up healing. Either yours goes off when at full health (about 90%) of the time or you heal yourself causing the healer to overheal. In that rare situation where you can self heal to save the raid, more often than not I find other ways to stave the pain. For example, ghoul + death pact or healthstone or potion or all the other "cooldowns" can usually save you as well. Death strike is also I'm finding lower in TPS - I've got the gear/trinket/etc and more often than not I wish I had obliterate. If you're that worried, you can do it for the same healing effect in unholy tree. In those situations I'd much rather have Rune Tap anyways if we're getting to brass tacks (which takes 4 points to be worth it).
4. Never used bloodworms for MT - nor have I really seen anyone else use it. Unless this is some hidden gem, they die 99% of the time or have such a low effect it's not worth it. I did have a crazy plan for dual-wield super haste blood worm swarm once...
5. In comparison, I like bone shield over vampiric these days. More and more fights are not about how much you can heal but how much you're taken in pure damage because healers have to move, watch mana, get silenced/thrown or the damage is just so much they're using bubbles/guardian/etc. If this was Naxx, I'd take blood in a heart beat because healers can just sit there and spam heals...or more often than not, go AFK while I self heal but Ulduar is another story. At minimum, bone shield will hold for 15 seconds with 5 charges - that's 15 seconds of 20% less damage. Yes you can't keep it up permanently but it's a lot easier to keep it up past 15 seconds especially in a single target Boss fight (which most of Ulduar is) and taking 20% less is a lot more effective than getting a bigger health buffer.
5.5 In all honesty as well, your argument about multiple targets....I rarely pay much attention during trash As MT for the guild it's pretty rare to have a point where I need to tank multiple things and bone shield was make or break the end all for that fight...half the time I don't even use IBF/AMS/etc except bosses. As a blood DK, you just give the AoE tanking to the paly/frost/unholy tank because they just do it better...and I got tired of those situations.
6. Losing the 6% health does suck but there's offsets to it in both trees that are comparable. 6% less magic damage is pretty dang useful in Ulduar. I've been there with 55k+ health...last week I had 36k unbuffed hp in blood spec but I'm telling you, Frost/Unholy at 33.5k is seeming to turn out a lot better. 2k hp for me has rarely been the save to keep the raid alive...but that lucky miss/dodge/absorb/etc has been.
Try the other side of the fence Blood was awesome but I think it got beat down like a red-headed step child in comparison to the other trees. Maybe when the world is in farm status we can go back to it but right now it's not there.
1- No, just no, UA is crap, unless you're tanking trash. Ask any other tank how they feel about their awesome block mechanics, they'll trade them for DK stuff in the blink of an eye. Taking even 2K off 16-24k hits is mostly crap, and that's using a trinket at the same time, trinket which could be replaced by one of the 150+stam trinkets instead. Trinket choice ends up being a matter of choice, but UA doesn't even compare to the other two when talking about boss fights. It's excelent for trash/adds spawns however, which is why my 2nd spec is frost.
2, 3, 4- I made a special note for Blood Presence, I don't have it, it's too low in all cases. Death Strike doesn't have to be timed to be useful, and it is high enough on threat because of the healing. My Death Strikes overheal on average like 65-70% of the time, but the rest of the time, they still heal, and it's ~4.6k heals, which next patch will be ~7k heals. It won't save you, but it's useful in a lot of cases, including thoses cases you refer later in your post where your healers can't actually heal. You also make it sound like Death Strike is a choice, and an exclusive one at that. Blood spam Death Strikes, it doesn't matter if there's damage incoming or not, and you can very well use Death Pact, Runetap and Potions at the same time, in fact you pretty much better do because Death Strike isn't a solution on its own.
About Bloodworms, I had no trouble finding 3 points to max them(it's a choice between Subversion which sucks if you don't go Annihlation for OB, Sudden Doom which sucks if you don't go DRM for HS spam and Morbidity, which is decent but not that great for single target fights anyway). The amount of fights they instantly die on is limited(Mimiron P2, Ignis, Iron Council as long as Steelbreaker is up). They also die fast during certain phases of other fights(Frozen Blows, Thorim lightingcharge on his back, Mimiron P4 Barrage or Shockblast, YG P1 on Guardian Death). They're a 200HPS ability on all other situations, and even on fights they die randomly, they still heal you for a decent amount between deaths. Not great, but not bad and couldn't find any other talents that actually helped tanking.
5, 5.5, 6- Bone Shield over VB is highly debatable, while BS might be slightly better, VB still has double uptime using your own figures, it's 15%more health AND better healing including your own healing, which adds up to blood already being higher stam btw. BS is good, no denying that. The issue I have with Unholy is the fact there's NOTHING else to support tanking in the tree, but a small magic dmg reduction. Magic dmg reduction which is offsetted by Blood's own magic damage reduction. 20%chance to reduce magic damage by 45% ends up being ~9% less magic dmg taken. Obviously, it's avoidance vs mitigation discussion, but on average it still works out better. AMZ is about the only trick Unholy get, and its usefulness isn't world changing really.
I know Healing isn't mitigation, but blood levels take it to a decent rate, and even if you don't account for the random passive healing, you'd still need to explain how 6%magic dmg reduction, AMZ and Bone Shield are MUCH better than Spell Deflection, WotN, Runetap, Mark of Blood, 6%stam and VB. And random Death Strikes healing for 7k(next patch) 3times every 20secs. Strictly talking about boss tanking here. For trash, I have another spec which is frost and entirely dedicated to AE tanking. I don't think Bone Shield alone is worth more than the rest of the Blood tricks including VB, which in my opinion is already pretty close in usefulness.
I went through the gear I could find and cleaned up the EH column. Let me know if there are any clear errors. Once it's proofread, I'll take a look at the sockets and their bonuses and adjust the stats accordingly.
3. Self healing from death strike isn't exactly all that great either - yes you can time it so you help the healers out but more often than not it can screw up healing.
I understand your point, really I do, but I don't know of a tank out there that wouldn't like to have two health pots *free* with every swing of his hardest hitting tanking ability. DS hits almost as hard as Oblit now - and comes with 10% of your heath back *free*. And since it is a percentage - it scales with your growing HP (and also scales with Vamp Blood).
In 3.1.2- it will give you 15% of your health back per strike - again... *free* (most standard rotations will see 45% of your HP healed every rotation cycle). In return for this - blood has slightly worse mitigation.
I went through the gear I could find and cleaned up the EH column. Let me know if there are any clear errors. Once it's proofread, I'll take a look at the sockets and their bonuses and adjust the stats accordingly.
I just don't think that a little healing from DS (Don't believe you can really time this to be optimal for healing, since you really need to maximize your rune usage for threat) is going to make the difference in a situation that is actually likely to result in your death. I also think it's ironic that you bash UA (and I admit it sucks) but talk about how great WotN is, when UA is basically 1.5 off every hit for 20 seconds, and WotN is 1-3k off ONE hit every 15 seconds.
But healing from DS isn't going to save you when you take 60,000 damage in one second on Thorim hard mode. WotN shaving 3k off one of those hits isn't going to save you either. A longer IBF could definitely save you, and Bone Shield might very well save you.
I'd like to see us reach some collective conclusions about what build is the best for difficult content, and I think the best way to do that is to find the situations in which we are actually worried about dying. For me, tanking 10 mans, the only boss where a wipe is often precipitated by the tank dying rather than DPS or healers getting killed by something the tank has no control over, is Thorim hard mode. As we start doing more hard modes, this might change, but the situations likely to kill tanks will probably be pretty similar. The best build is the one that is going to give us the most tools for surviving massive damage spikes, not the one that is going to let your healers afk on content that's not hard anyway.
For General Vezak I had to make a Blood tank spec to be most effective when Main Tanking him. It looked very similar to the standard blood build here in this threat with the Icebound Fortitude glyph to tank through the damage bonus he gets every minute.
For progression style tanking where you have one mob to tank and it hits hard and slow or just crushes you like Bruttalis back in Sunwell days, I find Blood the most optimal spec. Here is the reasons.
Blood has an advantage over frost and unholy on fights with slow/hard hitting bosses that are fairly healing intensive and have minimal to no magic damage attack. IE General Vezak. This is due to the combination previously mentioned of Death strike heals, Vampiric blood, highest health pool, and passive damage reduction on large hits via WoTN.
You could say it is the best progression tanking tree but only under these circumstances.
It has a very "Main Tank" look and feel. This is due to : larger health pool, health pool adding cooldown (Vamp blood+ Vamp blood glyph) and decent single target threat.
My healers all found it much easier to down General Vezak with me as blood than as unholy, however this is the only fight where is was noticeably different.
Personally I only pull out the blood spec when need be because the rotation feels clunky and the lack of aoe threat is painful. If surviving physical damage is the task at hand, you may find blood the most effective.
Last edited by Kaveli : 05/07/09 at 4:41 PM.
Reason: edit for redo. Bad initial post.
I just don't think that a little healing from DS (Don't believe you can really time this to be optimal for healing, since you really need to maximize your rune usage for threat) is going to make the difference in a situation that is actually likely to result in your death. I also think it's ironic that you bash UA (and I admit it sucks) but talk about how great WotN is, when UA is basically 1.5 off every hit for 20 seconds, and WotN is 1-3k off ONE hit every 15 seconds.
But healing from DS isn't going to save you when you take 60,000 damage in one second on Thorim hard mode. WotN shaving 3k off one of those hits isn't going to save you either. A longer IBF could definitely save you, and Bone Shield might very well save you.
I'd like to see us reach some collective conclusions about what build is the best for difficult content, and I think the best way to do that is to find the situations in which we are actually worried about dying. For me, tanking 10 mans, the only boss where a wipe is often precipitated by the tank dying rather than DPS or healers getting killed by something the tank has no control over, is Thorim hard mode. As we start doing more hard modes, this might change, but the situations likely to kill tanks will probably be pretty similar. The best build is the one that is going to give us the most tools for surviving massive damage spikes, not the one that is going to let your healers afk on content that's not hard anyway.
There is no build better than the others for "hard content" as you describe it. As DK tanks one of our greatest strength is the fact that we have 3 tank specs where there will always be one optimal for X fight while most other tanks have only access to small variations. You seem to be dedicated on bashing blood and countering everything related to it, it's somewhat annoying considering that blood IS optimal for some fights, just like frost or unholy.
But healing from DS isn't going to save you when you take 60,000 damage in one second on Thorim hard mode. WotN shaving 3k off one of those hits isn't going to save you either. A longer IBF could definitely save you, and Bone Shield might very well save you.
What is the 60k in one second? More than one strike? Magic or physical? "Longer" anything is not part of a 60k in 1 second discussion. All of our abilities can last for more than 1 sec. Since AMS absorbs a max damage amount based on HP - there is actually a slight advantage to being a blood tank using AMS (it will absorb more). And blood has access to IBF as well... What kind of tank queues up IBF 10+ seconds before a 60k damage burst (this is the only way a "longer" IBF plays into equation)?
There is a reason that Sarth 3D had two recommended specs - Blood and Unholy. I am not sure why you are trying so hard to argue against blood as a viable (sometimes optimal) spec...
So - the only build I have not raided in 25man Ulduar is Blood. That will change tonight - setting up some thing now in order to test this out.
As I post - know that I'm only speaking of Hard Mode encounters.
The above poster - Freya is a perfect example of where a Blood heavy build would be superior to some others. Healers will get locked out - it happens. In the time they get locked out, you need to be self-sufficient - Health Stones, Rune Tap, Imp. Death Strike, Blood Worms (minimal, yes) - all of this will help you live.
We still have IBF (12 or 15s) to rely on for mitigation along with the HP buffer of VB. WotN will be on constant internal cooldown, so, you can assume it'll be used every 15 seconds.
Common question - Why don't we go OS3 niche spec for certain hard modes?
-Simple: It's horrible TPS along with some hard modes - there are wasted points as AMZ is useless. Tweaking the 3 current MT builds is vastly superior.
Still on the topic of Freya - Unholy isn't as well as you want it to be. There is mitigation from BS but the RNG of it is what makes me lean to Frost more often than not for all my MT scenarios.
On Average - BS lasts 12-15 seconds pending if you have Dodge cooldowns and RNG. It's possible to last longer, yes.
Heavy Frost build increases IBF by 6 seconds, so, 12 seconds over 2 minutes.
BS Mitigation = 20%
IBF Mitigation = ~50%
For mitigation fights - Frost is superior unless you are one of the lucky players that can extend their BS for 30-45 seconds, which, I haven't been able to do since Pre-3.1.
--__---__--
You spoke of Thorim - Of course Blood would not be superior in that scenario. Our goal for that is to mitigate as much damage before he slams our face in to the ground. In this fight (with 2 tanks) I have found Unholy to be superior due to cascading cooldowns. IBF -> BS -> IBF, after that it goes to external cooldowns.
For Blood there would be a wall right there - VB would have to attached to IBF and then there isn't another cooldown to cascade. So, the next taunt you'll get insta-gibbed.
Frost - I *have* been able to have this work w/3 tanks and in that particular it's the best one to use due to the extra ~30% mitigation from each Unbalanced Strike. The extra 6 seconds can be used to your advantage to start the cooldown quicker pre-strike just in case one of the tanks get gibbed after your strike.
Personally I only pull out the blood spec when need be because the rotation feels clunky and the lack of aoe threat is painful. If surviving physical damage is the task at hand, you may find blood the most effective.
I think this is as much of an issue on the 'blood hate' front as anything else. Playing it effectively as a tank has a MUCH more demanding rotation than the other specs, and I know the first time I tried it I hated it and my threat was ass. Sure I lived but it was total ass. You HAVE to follow the rotation Suno posted in the cookie cutter spec. If you don't, or if you get a ton of missed hits, (In which case it's better to wait and start over than to 'wing it') your rotation simply won't work. That's different than either frost or Unholy where the rotations are pretty simple honestly, mainly due to the fact that with blood you're dealing with so many death runes that using things out of order will cause you to end up with situations where you've got 2 unholy runes or 2 frost runes and can't do your disease refresh or a death strike.
In terms of pure survivability, I think it's well established in this thread that Blood is a very strong tree. We're all tanks here, why is anyone arguing for or against a different tree? If you don't like it, don't use it. If you want to be the best tank you can be you'll understand the strengths and weaknesses of each (For instance while I find myself using blood 90% or more of the time in Ulduar, I also agree that its ae threat is simply lacking compared to the other two specs). There's a reason we have dual spec, Any fight where I'm tanking lots of mobs or picking up lots of smaller hits, I go frost (UBA is amazing for multimob tanking, and despite unholy's high AE tps, I prefer the huge snap threat of howling blast/killing machine gunning), if I'm tanking a hard hitting boss (A good chunk of Ulduar) I go for my blood spec.
My point isn't to say that everyone should do what I'm doing, but the point is that every spec has its strengths and weaknesses, and if you're not completely cheap you've got two of em to use. So make use of it. If you're unwilling to dual spec them, fine whatever, we're not guilded with you, but what's the point in coming into the thread crapping all over the one you 'don't like'?
There is no build better than the others for "hard content" as you describe it. As DK tanks one of our greatest strength is the fact that we have 3 tank specs where there will always be one optimal for X fight while most other tanks have only access to small variations. You seem to be dedicated on bashing blood and countering everything related to it, it's somewhat annoying considering that blood IS optimal for some fights, just like frost or unholy.
If this thread is useful it's because people can come here and get answers to their questions. Dismissing a critique of one build you favor for whatever reason as "Blood hate" isn't conducive to any furtherance of that goal.
I think I was pretty clear in saying that while Blood may be superior on some fights, it's inferior on most difficult progression fights, at least in Ulduar. There's no Ulduar fight where the primary challenge lies in healing a tank through extreme melee damage.
What is the 60k in one second? More than one strike? Magic or physical? "Longer" anything is not part of a 60k in 1 second discussion. All of our abilities can last for more than 1 sec. Since AMS absorbs a max damage amount based on HP - there is actually a slight advantage to being a blood tank using AMS (it will absorb more). And blood has access to IBF as well... What kind of tank queues up IBF 10+ seconds before a 60k damage burst (this is the only way a "longer" IBF plays into equation)?
On Thorim, I have been hit by his melee swing, his Unbalancing Strike, chain lightning, and Sif's abilities within one second. There is, indeed, no way to anticipate this kind of burst, but there is a decent chance you will take something close to it if his buff stacks get high enough. The only way to survive is to hit your mitigation cooldowns early, which is why 50% longer IBF is so valuable here.
Vezax normal is a total joke from a tanking perspective. The entire fight is your healers learning how to use the vapors. Could self healing be key on hardmode? We will see.
I think this is as much of an issue on the 'blood hate' front as anything else. Playing it effectively as a tank has a MUCH more demanding rotation than the other specs, and I know the first time I tried it I hated it and my threat was ass. Sure I lived but it was total ass. You HAVE to follow the rotation Suno posted in the cookie cutter spec.
Having a more complicated rotation to produce the same threat as another build is absolutely a weakness, to my mind.
Having a more complicated rotation to produce the same threat as another build is absolutely a weakness, to my mind.
If you're getting the same threat out of blood and unholy, you're doing it wrong. Not hard to average around 8k tps single target with blood, depending on the RNG rune strikes/miss streaks we all love, of course. Easily can spike upwards of 11-12k when it's in your favor.
All you lose is an autoattack when you swap, since the GCD is covered by the ability.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
If you equip the defense sigil after you cast Icy touch - it doesn't work. So it takes a touch more finesse to a rotation to put a sigil swap in the last instant cast before you will cast Icy Touch. Also - as was noted in the macros thread - if you don't have the needed rune to cast IT - it will still eat a GCD by equipping the sigil even though Icy Touch wasn't used (this goes for whatever instant you attach the "equip" to).
Since a large portion of our threat comes from Rune Strike, I am not sure if this is a net gain for tanking (if it resets the swing timer, it may not be worth it.) I'll do some testing tonight - and post the results.
Do you guys think the avoidance is really worth it compared to the threat you lose from the GCDs and loss of Awareness?
I don't think you understand how equipping a sigil works:
If you use the macro I linked to - you lose (at most) .2 seconds in a full rotation. Which means that awareness isn't lost on the strikes it boosts - and neither are GCDs.
What you may lose is an auto-attack (if it resets the swing timer) - and therefore a Rune Strike - I will test tonight to verify it resets the Swing Timer...
Ah, looking at the full macro in that thread I see what you mean. I was under the impression that people were just rotating the defense and dodge sigils without using Awareness at all.
05/07/09, 5:11 AM
As MT for the guild it's pretty rare to have a point where I need to tank multiple things and bone shield was make or break the end all for that fight...half the time I don't even use IBF/AMS/etc except bosses. As a blood DK, you just give the AoE tanking to the paly/frost/unholy tank because they just do it better...and I got tired of those situations.
