Don't be silly. Change your runeforge to Gargoyle and equip the Deflection sigil. You'll gain a small amount of avoidance over the previous setup when the sigil's proc is up, as well as a large chunk of stamina.
Originally Posted by Apate
Yeah, I'm barely OK with myself being in the room while I have sex
Well from min/maxing point of view swaping sigils and using parry runeforge gives me about 2.5% avoidance. Thing is I dunno at what cost. If I lose 1 gcd in most situations its ok. If I lose 1 autoattack each 20 seconds I dont know the effects of that on my threat.
P.S. There is also this "using-pro-tricks-to-get-max-out-of-your-class" thing I love. Unfortunately blizz nerf it them 90% of time.
Since I remember reading about smth blizz did with gcd or some crap when swaping weapons it rises a question: Is swaping deflection for unfaltering only to refresh defence buff?
I'm not positive this is your question, but you incur a GCD when you swap sigils. I haven't thought about sigil switching in a while, but it seems you'd also need to use a cast sequence macro to swap and attack.
Hello fellow posters, I've sorta avoided posting in worries of being brutally bashed to kingdom come but my server is STILL down and I'm feeling particularly brave today :p
I'm here to propose or ask why no one else has tried this. I might've missed it of course as Im not gonna claim inventing anything but for the sake of discussion this is what I mean.
Blood tanking with 4/5 Necrosis. We know Runestrike is one of our biggest threat generators, and while necrosis woudnt have its threat multiplied... 16% of that damage as extra threat is nothing to scoff at. This assumes you have a pet frost dps DK in the raid.
I actually run a very similar build built towards max ST TPS, although I've left out Rune Tap because I believe that ability is a pvp/soloing old content ability. Nice to see I'm not the only one!!
I'm not positive this is your question, but you incur a GCD when you swap sigils. I haven't thought about sigil switching in a while, but it seems you'd also need to use a cast sequence macro to swap and attack.
Gear that can be swapped in combat (weapons and sigils) will reset the swing timer and trigger a GCD. However, swaps can be macroed in with instant abilities and only incur a swing timer reset as follows:
/cast Icy Touch
/equip Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight
This will (or, at least, did not too long ago) cast icy touch, equip sigil of the unfaltering knight, reset your swing timer, *AND* proc the sigil all in one GCD. It seems counterintuitive, but it works (or, at least, worked)
I don't think Abaddon is a clear upgrade from Inevitable Defeat, let alone a pre-hardmode best in slot. Most DKs are at or near the hit-cap in T7.5 stuff and dropping ID for Abaddon would probably be a pretty significant expertise loss. Tanking is a funny thing that way. Just because something is from the last boss of the next instance doesn't mean it should be considered as an upgrade.
Being expertise capped by other means allows you to use Abaddon to become close to hit capped and you get a large chunk of armor pen (which is fantastic for blood tanks) as well as a ton of stam.
As far as itemization goes, Abaddon is a very unique weapon that can be extremely useful in endgame tanking.
Just because something has a higher item level doesn't mean its better absolutely. Don't be so close-minded.
I've set myself on the path to getting one as of last week. Ive sunk close to 2k into the project so far >.< And ive found out im pretty bad at PvP.
That aside, for EHP and survival purposes I see them as the best two weapons in the game. If your going for a low defense setup trading defense for other stats, the resilience could come in handy. With no current threat problems anywhere nearby I really like the massive amount of health over any other option....
Its probly getting nerfed though.
I also see these two weapons as the best options in the game, specialy for blood tanks with EH approach. But, one thing is certain: a tank with EH approach to the game will most time take the SSG rune for the extra stam. And with def on regular tanking gear + SSG, you will always be def capped. So the expertise on these two weapons is still pretty useless.
Don't be silly. Change your runeforge to Gargoyle and equip the Deflection sigil. You'll gain a small amount of avoidance over the previous setup when the sigil's proc is up, as well as a large chunk of stamina.
This is a very good point. However, if you can roll with the Heigen sigil and Gargoyle, its definitely worth considering. Damage avoidance/mitigation is only one side of the coin. You have to consider your threat output too. A tank is really only as good as his threat, after all.
Tank gear in Ulduar is stacked with expertise, to the point that I'll gladly be equipping [Stormrune Edge] once I snag an [Aesir's Edge] off XT hard mode (I'm a DPS main-spec in 25 and tank our 10-mans). The higher weapon damage and agility are great for threat, enough to take off the greatness card and equip a hit rating trinket to make up the loss from [Stormedge]. Equipping it over a 10-man item gives me more damage per swing even with the STR/AP loss, plus it adds 4% crit, and the avoidance gain I was seeing was about 0.8% net (1.1% dodge gain, 0.3% parry loss). Unless you're desperately gearing for max stam, it is a clear winner over any 10-man non-hard mode weapon for threat and avoidance. And once you get the 25-man tier tank helm, it's not too difficult to get hitcapped without needing a trinket either.
Obviously if -another- [Aesir's Edge] drops on 10-man I'll take it for tanking as it's damn good and deconstructor hard mode is a complete joke now (we did it with several casuals). It has amazing stam potential and is hard to match for threat outside Voldrethar.
I like Power Aura to track procs such as Killing Machine, Rime, Fallen Crusader, etc...
Your character is surrounded with a graphic effect you can configurate (shape, colour, size..) as long as the buff is on you. The effect wears off instantly when the buff fades (some other addons I tried failed to perform this)
Vo3w and VB + IFP, Abom's Might + IIT. Rune Strikes hit petty hard and you always have hysteria to boost threat on touchy pulls.
I have the feeling not picking Guile of Gorefiend kinda defeats the purpose of picking Rime and Subversion, and I'm not sure this build would produce sufficient threat.. I could be wrong of course
I am curious on How effective this build can be In Mting hard modes, any suggestions or observations.
I am currently a frost tank and have no experience with Blood tanking anything you can contribute is highly appreciated.
This is a very good point. However, if you can roll with the Heigen sigil and Gargoyle, its definitely worth considering. Damage avoidance/mitigation is only one side of the coin. You have to consider your threat output too. A tank is really only as good as his threat, after all.
For the millionth time; mitigation, avoidance, and threat are different gear sets. It's ridiculous how many people in this thread make the same stupid suggestion - his entire point was about maximizing avoidance. If you're gearing for threat, are you really going to care about 1% avoidance?
Originally Posted by Apate
Yeah, I'm barely OK with myself being in the room while I have sex
I am curious on How effective this build can be In Mting hard modes, any suggestions or observations.
I am currently a frost tank and have no experience with Blood tanking anything you can contribute is highly appreciated.
I'm a Frost/Unholy tank with effectively zero blood tanking experience too. I just respec'd blood for tonight's raid and guess what I did to prepare? I used the search tool to find all relevant information in this thread regarding Blood tanking. I highly recommend it.
Regarding some recent posts :
Please do not migrate your general DK tanking UI discussions here. This thread assumes that you are competent in the fundamentals of game play including user interfaces. I chose to include the word "endgame" in the title to make it clear that this discussion should be relevant to :
Potential and recent DK changes that significantly impact tanking (i.e. Frost presence nerf, talents/spells, etc)
Specific (current endgame raid dungeon) encounter discussions within a tanking context
The role of the DK tank: interdependencies with other classes and their impacts on current content
Philosophy/Design of the class; strengths/weaknesses, comparisons of tanking types in Ulduar
High-end tank itemization
Talent builds - this one is touchy. Before posting a "new" build, please have very strong arguement for why it should be used over a more popular or tested build. If you feel a build has been overlooked or under-discussed, there's likely a reason. It's probably been discussed already, or there's some significant problems with the build. Please be very hesitant to post your favorite spec unless it's "new AND worthwhile".
Anything in this thread should probably be related to this non-comprehensive list in a direct way.
Let me be clearer: if you don't have direct experience with hardmodes of any kind (or at least a thorough understanding of them), you may have little to offer here. Obviously much of this site's analysis is theoretical and therefore appropriate to be discussed by anyone. However, it is the intention of this thread to be concise and concentrated on empirical and experiential discussion of (gasp) DK endgame tanking.
Gear that can be swapped in combat (weapons and sigils) will reset the swing timer and trigger a GCD. However, swaps can be macroed in with instant abilities and only incur a swing timer reset as follows:
/cast Icy Touch
/equip Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight
This will (or, at least, did not too long ago) cast icy touch, equip sigil of the unfaltering knight, reset your swing timer, *AND* proc the sigil all in one GCD. It seems counterintuitive, but it works (or, at least, worked)
Mmm yes, I had forgotten that you can slip the swap in after the ability and it can still affect the ability. IIRC from my moonkin days, though, this is not a 100% thing.
We used to do it with the Moonfire and Starfire idols but it appeared that the only reason this worked was due to latency. A macro slips the swap in closely enough client side that it will often get through to the server as being equipped before damage is calculated, as I recall. It ended up not being reliable enough to bother using because sometimes it wouldn't work and it would also push your GCD back a fraction of a second, as the GCD would start from when you swapped in the relic.
I would not rely on swapping for using the sigil to stay Def capped.
EDIT: According to my moonkin pals with better memory than I, the reason they stopped doing it was because the swap restarts your GCD, losing a chunk of extra time. They say it works differently now, so I will have to try it out to see what actually happens now.
On the sigil-swapping discussion: it may be worthwhile to note that Blizzard's new equipment manager does not trigger the global cooldown when it swaps your weapons/sigil. I'm not sure about the swing timer, and I don't know if it can be used from a macro or through other addons, but still...
For the millionth time; mitigation, avoidance, and threat are different gear sets. It's ridiculous how many people in this thread make the same stupid suggestion - his entire point was about maximizing avoidance. If you're gearing for threat, are you really going to care about 1% avoidance?
I'm not sure I understand your reasons for saying this a million times though. There are plenty of the hardmode fights that have heavy tank damage, in addition to a tight enrage timer, i.e. requires good threat. This leads to the desire to have an optimized set, that maximizes as many aspects as possible. Although the choice between survivability and avoidance is usually clear, the choice between defensive and offensive stats is something you usually have to find a good balance between, not go all out for one side.
The command "/equipset setname" can be used in a macro to swap sets using the equipment manager. Though it goes without saying that using that feature to avoid the gear swap penalty is probably not intended, if it does work.
I recently tried using macros to swap sigils, using what seems to be the common way (add /equip Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight to the plague strike macro and /equip Sigil of Deflection to icy touch, and always use plague strike first). Ideally, you'd use plague strike and immediately after swap to SotUK, then icy touch, get the buff, and swap back, without losing time because the sigil swapping all happens during the GCD used by the abilities. That said, my experience was far from ideal.
Though it does work, the system is rather limiting. Essentially, you have to time your strikes perfectly or you end up losing a lot of time. If you press either PS or IT before its rune is ready or before your GCD has ended, you still swap sigils and end up losing a GCD, and if it happens on IT and you swap to deflection early, you lose the benefit of swapping too. Now, maybe it's a bad habit to have gotten into, but I usually spam the buttons I want to use ahead of time, both to minimize the effects of latency and to maximize rune strikes, which are also macro'd to the abilities. That just doesn't work if you want to effectively swap sigils.
I'd love to get the benefit of both if I could, the problem is it would require a significant change in my gameplay to be viable, and even then it would carry the price of having to pay more attention to my runes and GCD than I want to. I have enough to worry about without dealing with perfect timing on PS and IT. I guess the question is how much of a loss you take in threat/rotation maintenance from losing the GCDs by sigil swapping vs. the extra defense rating. I suppose it varies a lot by fight...maybe the best solution is only doing it when you are sure threat won't be an issue but survival will?
I recently tried using macros to swap sigils, using what seems to be the common way (add /equip Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight to the plague strike macro and /equip Sigil of Deflection to icy touch, and always use plague strike first). Ideally, you'd use plague strike and immediately after swap to SotUK, then icy touch, get the buff, and swap back, without losing time because the sigil swapping all happens during the GCD used by the abilities. That said, my experience was far from ideal.
etc
I've been using the sigil swap method for a while and found it was just resetting the GCD costing me about 200ms or so per, which was acceptable, but I agree it feels "clunky" and requires some precision.
So I just have normal IT/PS with !rune strike macroed to two keys, and the sigil swapping versions of them bound to shift+those keys. On the pull I use the normal versions, and switch to the sigil swapping versions once I have a solid threat lead and care more about avoidance/EH than threat. If DPS are catching up to me on threat for whatever reason I go back to using the normal versions to ensure minimal threat loss, and I can toss an icy touch at something at a distance without having the wrong sigil equip.
Gear that can be swapped in combat (weapons and sigils) will reset the swing timer and trigger a GCD. However, swaps can be macroed in with instant abilities and only incur a swing timer reset as follows:
/cast Icy Touch
/equip Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight
This will (or, at least, did not too long ago) cast icy touch, equip sigil of the unfaltering knight, reset your swing timer, *AND* proc the sigil all in one GCD. It seems counterintuitive, but it works (or, at least, worked)
This doesn't work. I just tried it, it doesn't proc the sigil, and putting /cast IT after /equip gives the effect you would expect, namely it puts in the sigil and starts a GCD without casting IT.
I tried for awhile and just can't come up with any macros or combination of macros that actually let you swap between the sigils effectively.
First, I tried making a macro with /castsequence Plague Strike, Icy Touch and then /equip Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight. Then I added /equip Sigil of Deflection to all my other abilities. On the surface, it seems to work. It casts PS and equips Sigil in the same GCD, then casts Icy Touch. Using any other ability after IT puts Deflection back in, and no GCDs are wasted. For Blood tanking it works great, because you almost always cast PS and IT one after the other to refresh diseases.
However, there's two big problems with it. First, it gimps your threat immensely because your swing timer is reset when you cast Plague Strike, and then reset again when you cast whatever you cast after IT. So you reset your swing timer, cast PS + IT without swinging, and then reset the swing timer again. This can result in a 10+ second gap where you don't melee at all.
The other problem is if you hit the castsequence macro before the GCD of the ability you used prior to it has run its course, it sticks in the defense sigil, resets the GCD again, and doesn't cast anything. I can't think of any macro or combination of macros that can get around this fundamental problem, namely hitting a button too early screwing you with a "wasted" GCD that doesn't cast anything.
Originally Posted by Zurai
On the sigil-swapping discussion: it may be worthwhile to note that Blizzard's new equipment manager does not trigger the global cooldown when it swaps your weapons/sigil. I'm not sure about the swing timer, and I don't know if it can be used from a macro or through other addons, but still...
Were you in combat when you tested this? It most certainly causes a GCD for me.
Were you in combat when you tested this? It most certainly causes a GCD for me.
Hmmm. You're right; it works when starting combat (it actually appears to process the /cast before the /equipset, because I get the benefit of Unfaltering Knight when I have a /equipset DPS Weapons /cast Icy Touch macro), but not during combat. Sorry for the false alarm.
Whenever I see mid-combat gear switch macro's I shudder....
Its unnecessary for it to be done in any of the boss fights (and) just because you can do it does not mean you should be doing it.
Most of the time it provides nominal differences and the down-time triggered can provide an overall decrease in performance. Meaning for every time you swap pieces you are increasing the overall drop in performance, one time switch during a Mimi transition(Or similar situation) I could see viable only because of the time allowed.
I often will switch from Frost to Blood for phase 2 of Mimi, then back to Frost for Phase 3 and 4. This offers small gains in DPS as well as small boost in passive healing.
On a final note : I am pretty sure that any epic advantage in using in combat gear swaps would be quickly nerfed by Blizz.
I also see these two weapons as the best options in the game, specialy for blood tanks with EH approach. But, one thing is certain: a tank with EH approach to the game will most time take the SSG rune for the extra stam. And with def on regular tanking gear + SSG, you will always be def capped. So the expertise on these two weapons is still pretty useless.
This week I tried using Swordshattering instead of SSG wth [Furious Gladiator's Greatsword]. The change put me below defense cap; which was covered by resil from the weapon. Along with [Sigil of Deflection], SS seem to generate more threat and avoidance than SSG.
From my last two vezax kills, SS put out 6742 tps and 64.7% avoidance (tps), while SSG and [Sigil of the Vengeful Heart] did 6422 tps with 59.3% avoidance(tps).
I plan on testing sigil swap macros next week, but the swing reset associated with swapping appears to put slower weapons at a disadvantage.
This week I tried using Swordshattering instead of SSG wth [Furious Gladiator's Greatsword]. The change put me below defense cap; which was covered by resil from the weapon. Along with [Sigil of Deflection], SS seem to generate more threat and avoidance than SSG.
From my last two vezax kills, SS put out 6742 tps and 64.7% avoidance (tps), while SSG and [Sigil of the Vengeful Heart] did 6422 tps with 59.3% avoidance(tps).
I plan on testing sigil swap macros next week, but the swing reset associated with swapping appears to put slower weapons at a disadvantage.
There should be no reason for SS and SSG to give differences in threat. The difference between 6742 and 6422 you noticed is not significantly enough in reality. It just means one time you got lucky with some more crits or less parries.
06/03/09, 9:13 PM
