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.
Agreeing with Dave above ^.
But you should post (or look over yourself) the TPS/WWS parses to see the differences Crit %/# of Runestrikes, Fight Duration, ETC.
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.
There is a difference: rune strike. It proc on avoided attacks (dodged & parried but not on missed attack if i remember well). So having an extra % or two in a pure avoidance stat such parry provide a bit more runestrikes and a little bit more aggro by the way.
However, compairison of two indivdual records won't help a lot because of the variability in the fight (%crit, buffs presence, and so on). With many records it could be helpfull.
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.
While, as noted, a single pair of parses is not particularly useful, SS will of course provide higher average threat than SSG. In addition to additonal rune strikes as noted by RabbitMaster, each parry also hastes your next white swing. Assuming you have enough defense on gear, SS will always provide more threat and reduce damage taken more than SSG. I really only see it as an issue when you would have to re-gear or re-gem in order to reach the defense cap without SSG.
You're looking at something in the order of 50 to 75TPS increase though, not 300. Threat will vary from week to week with the exact same setup depending on your luck.
Wondering if anyone knows the answer to this: If you have only 2/3 Ebon Plaguebringer, via a 23/5/43 spec to get the extra stamina, does the debuff even go up on mobs that already have one of the 13% extra spell damage taken debuffs on them? Or does it fail to apply and actually reduce your TPS over just taking Crypt Fever to get the third disease?
I wonder if people still agree with this statement from the OP :
Frost Strengths
* Arguably best in ST threat (at worst tied with blood)
I have been Frost speced as a Tank (my main role is DPS but I often have to tank) and I've had huge problems with threat in this spec (I tried 13/51/7 and 15/51/5, switching Epidemic for 2-Hand Spec)...
Couple days ago, I switched to a Blood Spec because I thought it'd be easier to deal with Mimiron's Plasma Blast in 10 man hard mode encounter. My threat with this spec (a spec that was not even made towards maximizing threat) is amazing : I was around 6-7k constantly when I was tanking Freiya, while I was stuck around 3-5k with my old frost spec.
Was I doing something fondamentally wrong in my old frost spec, or does blood threat simply beat the hell out of frost nowadays?
I have been Frost speced as a Tank (my main role is DPS but I often have to tank) and I've had huge problems with threat in this spec (I tried 13/51/7 and 15/51/5, switching Epidemic for 2-Hand Spec)...
Couple days ago, I switched to a Blood Spec because I thought it'd be easier to deal with Mimiron's Plasma Blast in 10 man hard mode encounter. My threat with this spec (a spec that was not even made towards maximizing threat) is amazing : I was around 6-7k constantly when I was tanking Freiya, while I was stuck around 3-5k with my old frost spec.
Was I doing something fondamentally wrong in my old frost spec, or does blood threat simply beat the hell out of frost nowadays?
A big part of threat generation, particularly on 10 mans, is the available debuffs. If you have a Warrior or Rogue debuffing the mob's armor, then Blood's threat will go up significantly. If you have an Unholy DK, a Boomkin or a Warlock debuffing the mob for the 13% more magic damage taken, then Frost's threat will go up significantly.
That's why it's so hard to say "this is better for single target threat; this is better for AoE threat." Group composition, and playstyle - not just the DK's playstyle, plays a huge role.
Personally, I'm a bit of a nut about emphasizing EH, so I'm typically Blood (though I've raid tanked as all 3 specs). I have yet to find a spec that doesn't have "sufficient" threat for most fights, but when Blood I've definitely noticed my threat suffer significantly when I don't have a pocket DPS warrior that is willing to Sunder.
Well of course, I wasn't comparing 10 man frost threat with 25 man blood threat, I'm not THAT dumb. I was merely explaining why I switched spec.
My point is : in a 25 man raid, my threat in Frost is nowhere near what it was when I switched to Blood. And I didn't even have Sunder Armor since it was Freya. While Frost, I tanked pretty much everything in 25man raids and had all debuffs on, and still my aggro was terrible. Sorry if it wasn't clear.
3-4k TPS is very low for a frost spec, even in a 10 without ideals buffs. Is your +hit in tank gear very low? Frost and unholy suffer the most from low +hit. Did you use a mod to display your KM procs, so that you could use them efficiently?
That said, sounds like you're doing fine with Blood now. It's a very good spec, does great threat, and gives you a ton of health for hard modes. Then you hit Algalon, and he laughs at your stamina stacking.
I wonder if people still agree with this statement from the OP :
I have been Frost speced as a Tank (my main role is DPS but I often have to tank) and I've had huge problems with threat in this spec (I tried 13/51/7 and 15/51/5, switching Epidemic for 2-Hand Spec)...
Couple days ago, I switched to a Blood Spec because I thought it'd be easier to deal with Mimiron's Plasma Blast in 10 man hard mode encounter. My threat with this spec (a spec that was not even made towards maximizing threat) is amazing : I was around 6-7k constantly when I was tanking Freiya, while I was stuck around 3-5k with my old frost spec.
Was I doing something fondamentally wrong in my old frost spec, or does blood threat simply beat the hell out of frost nowadays?
3-5k with Frost seems very off, be sure you're actually using the rotation that Suno posted in the OP (somehow everyone tends to miss this), and see how your threat does.
I agree with the two above posters, something is off. I've tanked as both Blood and Frost in 10-man hard modes and I found I tend to have higher threat with Frost. As for buffs, our physical and magical debuffs have been about equal. We bring an Arms Warrior, Feral Druid, Enhancement Shaman, Warlock, and an Elemental Shaman/Boomkin. At first I was worried switching to Frost would hurt my survivability on our Mim 10 Hard Mode attempts, but I haven't noticed any issues thus far. As with the OP I found Frost to be a more interesting and exciting spec overall. I already DPS as Blood and needed a change in scenery.
Hey I was wondering about gemming...... seems every DK tank I inspect sockets pure stam... I have a DK tank and I've actualy socketed to match most socket bonus but mainly socketed dodge+stam. My personal thoughs are avoidence = not needing the huge HP pool.... I could be wrong Help me out my DK is just below 31k unbuffed 40k+ buffed and 62% avoidance buffed also
Hey I was wondering about gemming...... seems every DK tank I inspect sockets pure stam... I have a DK tank and I've actualy socketed to match most socket bonus but mainly socketed dodge+stam. My personal thoughs are avoidence = not needing the huge HP pool.... I could be wrong Help me out my DK is just below 31k unbuffed 40k+ buffed and 62% avoidance buffed also
Progression Death Knight tanks are socketing for pure stamina because with the DPS Ulduar bosses deliver, and with the HPS healers do combined with their levels of mana regeneration, effective health is the only important survival statistic right now. Avoiding damage and lowering your overall damage intake is less important than having the most possible effective health allowing you to survive worst-case scenarios.
I "lawl"ed at this. I quite agree with the rest of the post, as I have even socketed for mainly pure stamina. Only point at which I did not socket a stamina gem, was to push my Expertise to the softcap, while picking up a 9 stam socket bonus. I normally wouldn't mind about expertise as a Frost DK, as most of the threat comes from Frost Strike's(which are not subject to Parry or Dodge), however I plan on swapping back to a Blood Tank to help push the guild along in Ulduar(Currently 11/14, Mimiron was beating us up for a while, although I have theories as to why it has been happening).
Having a Blood tank for Mimiron/Vezax makes the encounters much much easier.
Also later on when you're fighting stuff like HM Thorim and Iron council, (steelbreaker in particular can hit for 50k+), then stacking stamina will make you the best tank for those encounters period.
I'm running with around 52-53k HP raid buffed now, so over 60k with vampiric blood up, and even then sometimes steelbreaker can hit for more than my total hp pool.
If you are doing Steelbreaker last and people (besides tanks) are dying on phase 3, he gets an increased damage buff. If he is hitting you for more than 50k, your raid is doing something wrong. Looking at WWS from my last Steelbreaker kill, his max melee swing was 39 687 in phase 3, and that was with 3 deaths.
Having a Blood tank for Mimiron/Vezax makes the encounters much much easier.
Also later on when you're fighting stuff like HM Thorim and Iron council, (steelbreaker in particular can hit for 50k+), then stacking stamina will make you the best tank for those encounters period.
I'm running with around 52-53k HP raid buffed now, so over 60k with vampiric blood up, and even then sometimes steelbreaker can hit for more than my total hp pool.
Like the poster above said, that means other people in the raid are dying. The ONLY deaths you can have are the tank deaths, any other deaths heal him for an extra 10% (20 if you don't have a healing debuff up), increase his damage, and you're losing another player.
Of course my guild has always done Runemaster->Stormcaller->Steelbreaker, but I've heard that doing Stormcaller->Runemaster->Steelbreaker makes the DPS check much easier to achieve. But I'm not sure how much more possible that makes doing Steelbreaker last while losing more then just the tanks.
Only gear swaps that I could do easily would be Saronite Legguards for T8.5, but I put myself under the expertise soft-cap. And then obviously 2 stam trinkets over 2 Dodge. However I'm trying to keep myself Hit and Expertise soft-capped to keep my threat as high as possible (7% hit + 1% Draenei incase anyone was wondering). And the Sigil of Awareness over the Rune Strike Dodge one (name is escaping me atm).
Issues so far:
1. Survival - We run 6 healers, with 2 Disc Priests (sometimes a Holy Pally) healing me Pre-Animus phase. I find myself using almost most of my Rune Tap CDs immediately, and having them heal for a good portion. I realize this is good for my healers, but should I be keeping my avoidance set on? As I see it an extra 4k health probably isn't going to save me when Vezax hits for 2xk~. How should I be using my CDs? How I've done it in the past (on normal) is..
Surge 1 - IBF + VB
Surge 2 - IBF + GS
Surge 3 - IBF + VB
and so on.
However with both priests specced Disc - Losing GS and gaining PS means going from a 1 min Healer CD to a 2.4 min.
With hard-mode I try to have my VB available when the Animus is spawning so that it's up during the pick-up. However sometimes the surge will come long before the Animus spawns, and with PS down / being saved for the Animus phase, I find myself in a risky position having only IBF up during a surge. Should IBF be enough for a Surge of Darkness? Should I ask healers to heal more during Surge? Or am I being over-paranoid?
2. My biggest issue thus far is the Saronite Animus is the pick up - We've tried 2 different positionings thus far.
1 - The raid is positioned towards the entrance of the room where Vezax is facing by default, and I pull him to 36~ yards and turn him around. With this positioning I have to let Animus run through me as my back is faced towards his spawn point, and then hit him with an IT as he runs through me and pray that sticks until he runs back into Melee range.
2 - The raid is positioned towards the left side of the room (left from the entrance), and I pull Vezax about 10 yards towards the entrance of the room. The issue here being the Animus drifting (2nd paragraph down from this point).
So the issues are that the Animus is untauntable (to my knowledge, I've had multiple attempts where I get immune on both DC and DG (please correct me if I'm wrong here). A healer or melee spamming some dumb AE ability will usually take aggro from my primary IT before I can actually start any real threat. That or some trigger happy ranged will Incinerate while he's still running through my DnD. However with the Animus phase needing to end as quickly as possible, are there any other DK's that could give me some advice as to how I should be positioning Vezax and picking up the Animus? My only thought is to keep him where the Animus will spawn.
Secondly, with the Animus' hitbox being smaller then a regular players, he often drifts towards a side rather then staying directly on top of Vezax. The issue here is that when he drifts away from the raid, the raid has to collectively move towards Vezax, lowering the amount of time they have to dodge a shadow crash, effectively killing off the entire raid. However repositioning while tanking both Vezax and the Animus is fairly difficult, and I think finding a better pick-up strategy would be far more efficient.
I apologize if this post is really unorganized, I'm writing this after having worked for about 14 hours straight, then coming home to do HM Vezax :P.
Try 2 tanks for Vezax, it should solve most of your Animus issues. Are you staggering your outs? You should never need 2 outs at the same time especially not IBF and VB. Can probably swap your glove enchant to +18stam, I would use 1-2 HP trinket since your HP is a tad low.
So the issues are that the Animus is untauntable (to my knowledge, I've had multiple attempts where I get immune on both DC and DG (please correct me if I'm wrong here). A healer or melee spamming some dumb AE ability will usually take aggro from my primary IT before I can actually start any real threat. That or some trigger happy ranged will Incinerate while he's still running through my DnD. However with the Animus phase needing to end as quickly as possible, are there any other DK's that could give me some advice as to how I should be positioning Vezax and picking up the Animus? My only thought is to keep him where the Animus will spawn.
Secondly, with the Animus' hitbox being smaller then a regular players, he often drifts towards a side rather then staying directly on top of Vezax. The issue here is that when he drifts away from the raid, the raid has to collectively move towards Vezax, lowering the amount of time they have to dodge a shadow crash, effectively killing off the entire raid. However repositioning while tanking both Vezax and the Animus is fairly difficult, and I think finding a better pick-up strategy would be far more efficient.
I can confirm that the animus is immune to taunt, its a real pain in the behind. I also tank both of them for hard mode and tend to just keep Vezax exactly where he starts out, his aggro range is ridiculously small so much so that you can almost melee hit him before he will register you're even there. I tend to move in from the left hand side and try to restrain myself from launching my Icy Touch until i'm on top of him, although coming in from the left is more habit than anything else.
With him spawning on top of vezax we had a few problems with him eating a melee sometimes before he would stick to myself (he seems to have a 'warm up' period where you can attack him but he doesn't register the threat) but we solved that by just having the melee back up 10yds as soon as the bubble formed around vezax then hopping back in as soon as the animus was heading to me. Regarding the animus moving around a lot, there isn't much to combat it unfortunately as he just loves to move into awkward positions, we also tend to only run with 1 or 2 ranged dps but usually they stand behind me on the left hand side of the room so that side movement doesn't matter too much.
What I find works the best is first calling out that the Saronite Vapor are forming the animus. This way your DPS is aware, and will not do anything that might pull threat. Second, I use a target macro. /target Saronite Animus works just fine. When I get him as a target I have to scoot up a bit as he has a small hit box, and I drop as many Heart Strikes as I can in to him. He's stuck on me like glue for the rest of the fight.
A small note is that on the pull I run through Vezax to bring him just a touch closer to the door, and then I swivel back around. Looking at General where he starts I am on the left (next to his right arm) basically, and scooting back allows the Animus to take the spot closer to the raid when they are both on me.
For threat good benchmarks are 7,000 TPS for normal mode, and 5,000 TPS for hard mode.
EDIT: Added a picture to clear things up.
I am the maroon dot on the left. The purple circle outline is where Vezax starts. I move him to the filled out purple circle so that when the animus spawns he will take the position where the green circle is, and be in range of the ranged dps (red circles). The yellow is melee. I hope this is helpful for positioning for a one tank strategy.
What I find works the best is first calling out that the Saronite Vapor are forming the animus. This way your DPS is aware, and will not do anything that might pull threat. Second, I use a target macro. /target Saronite Animus works just fine. When I get him as a target I have to scoot up a bit as he has a small hit box, and I drop as many Heart Strikes as I can in to him. He's stuck on me like glue for the rest of the fight.
A small note is that on the pull I run through Vezax to bring him just a touch closer to the door, and then I swivel back around. Looking at General where he starts I am on the left (next to his right arm) basically, and scooting back allows the Animus to take the spot closer to the raid when they are both on me.
For threat good benchmarks are 7,000 TPS for normal mode, and 5,000 TPS for hard mode.
EDIT: Added a picture to clear things up.
I am the maroon dot on the left. The purple circle outline is where Vezax starts. I move him to the filled out purple circle so that when the animus spawns he will take the position where the green circle is, and be in range of the ranged dps (red circles). The yellow is melee. I hope this is helpful for positioning for a one tank strategy.
This positioning looks great after talking with my RL. We'll be trying it out on our next raid night. Thanks alot for the strat/positioning!
Apologies for this, but you're tanking both the Animus and Vezax on 25M? This is always the case for us in the 10M version as the damage is easily dealt with. I haven't really taken a hard look at the Animus' damage on the 25M version but I always believed you would run into scenarios where your tank might just fall over if you attempted to tank both. If this is the case then I'll just solo tank it next week!
When Animus spawns I throw a DnD on top of him and from there on out it's pretty much stuck to me. While we don't have the exact positioning that was previously posted (though, it's something we will most likely do, as where the Animus spawns is annoying) we sorta do the same thing. I usually enter from the side, and swivel myself on an angle so that it's easier for the disc priests (who are taking shadow crashes to heal me). It's also useful for what paladins you have in the raid so that they can remain in melee range of Vezax and still hit the range with DG. I found that just keeping him mostly where he starts can cause issues with DG reaching the range, which are at the biggest risk of dying during the Animus stage.
I usually do this fight with just 4PC as I find the bonus pretty nice for surges. As far as CD's I start with both going at the start (not only because IBF will be up for the first surge, but because I've been killed pretty quick), IBF/AMS every surge (paired with an avoidance clicky), and VB/IBF/AMS every second surge. I also pop my armor pot when the Animus spawns as it should last for the duration of the Animus if not more.
06/08/09, 2:14 PM
