You don't get 4% to overall damage from 2h weapon spec.

Additionally, if we were to get 5% for 5 points, that's Blizzard's yardstick in evaluating DPS talents (and therefore not that bad). However desecration, as mentioned no more than a page ago, offers just over half of that measurement.

Given how often this issue has come up, I would much enjoy seeing it resolved and put in the ground (and edited into the original post so that we can just refer people to it instead of repeating a discussion from before). My anecdotal experience is similar, but I could certainly see situations where one was superior to the other (especially with Glyphs/sigils, etc).

Given this is supposed to be the "endgame" thread, I would like to see a bit of discussion regarding gear choices. Two examples off the top of my head regarding threat vs. survivability are sigil choice (unfaltering vs awareness) and weapon choice (Inevitable vs Betrayer). The former in each case is the generally better "tank" item, however as far as trade-offs for threat go, the latter are good alternatives (maybe not awareness if your rotation doesn't use obliterate). Honestly, there is hardly anything in the game that seems to push our tank stats (3D might be it), so perhaps a threat-centric approach is better for the current endgame (granted it may change with Ulduar).

Yeah, you do. It could be an oversight, but:

Frost Fever ticking for 100. Spec into two-handed weapon spec, then equip a two-hander. Frost Fever ticks for 104.

When you reach 25m gear level you will have way more expertise than hit.

@huntcaudata

Please post the spec you would like us to consider if you're going to claim it's superiority. We don't want to re-enter it into a talent calc and armory isn't always up (like now).
I would have to disagree that Blood has any true problems with AoE threat. Yes it is obviously lower than Frost and Unholy specs but all that matters is we maintain enough TPS so that no DPS breaks the 110/130% mark, anything else is completely acceptable.
I've never had anyone pull entire groups off me because I spread around HS cleaves. If random mobs run off we have two ranged taunts, one with a tiny CD, to work with and usually an offtank. Plus we have a totally viable DnD Glyph and if it still feels like a problem, a hunter or rogue can MD as much AoE threat as possible to you.
If you use the tools available to you, I don't see any need to waste valuable talent points on AoE threat.

Your statements about VB don't make any sense. As a Tank or Healer you should love any talents that increase healing done, especially by 35% for 30 seconds. It can/should have 50% uptime so 17.5% extra healing done to you for the entire encounter, this creates a ton of mana efficiency. Having more HP makes you less likely to die from burst damage because healers have that much more time to heal you, especially combined with Will of the Necropolis. Additionally, intelligent healers will know the average damage output of the boss (and when it can/will spike) so with an increased HP pool, those healers can spend more time regenerating mana or healing the raid before you get to a dangerous level.
Also, I usually follow VB with IBF so that's another 12-15 sec of very healer friendly buff time.

GCD is only reduced on spells. IE haste affects howling blast not obliterate.

Sorry but there are many many situations where IT will consume a KM proc. When you are tanking watching your procs is about 5th most important thing. For every 1 KM that goes to an HB instead of an IT, you made up for like 10 KMs going to HB instead of FS.


This is pretty far off still.

First of all if you had 8% melee hit, after you factor in misery and spell hit getting more from rating you are looking at 13% spell hit not 11%.

Realistically however OB is not even in close to 25% more crit. Even if you had subversion, there is 10% more critical strike for spells from raid buffs/debuff than melee. So in a subversion scenario you are looking at 17% more, and in a non-subversion(which is more common imo) you are looking at just an 8% advantage.

Also there is partial resists which hurts HB.

The math really should be ran without the OB glyph, or the advantage of gaining the IT glyph(as FS and RS are way better) should be added. You will not add the OB glyph just to bring it even with HB.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is my build at the moment. The major difference is, no annihilation, hence a different rotation, and it does have Morbidity. It also fills out Blood a bit thanks to the lack of "wasted" points in frost. I don't know if Blood has problems, per se, but I find it hard to believe that no one has ever got a couple of crits on their AOE and pulled the adds off of you. I actually don't have a hunter or rogue in my raid, so maybe that is a large difference. And yes, taunts can be used, but that shouldn't strictly be necessary. Regarding the talent point cost, the alternative is to improve your single target threat, which is already very good. Your point is taken, however, and you may very well be correct.

As for VB, I am speaking from annecdotal experience to a degree about people disparaging +healing abilities in particular, and my statements are true. +healing is not as good as mitigation because it will not help with burst, and +hp is not as good as mitigation because it will not help with sustained damage (healer mana). However, both together are exactly as good as mitigation in a general sense, and better or worse depending on the exact numbers involved. I certainly wasn't arguing that VB isn't good. I was arguing that stating that blood "lacks proactive mitigation" actually sells it short, because it has something just as good.

More to the point, IMO, is that if you're assuming the Obliterate glyph in measuring Obliterate vs. HB, you HAVE to consider the effect that free glyph slot is going to have on the general HB build.

Another factor we may be overlooking is where the DPS are sitting, threat-wise, assuming comparable gear levels. If an HB build is still comfortably above the DPS on single-target threat, then does it make sense to glyph and spec for what will probably amount to a very small threat increase that only applies to single-target fights? I don't have the numbers from endgame tanking, but if DPS are peaking at 6k TPS, and an HB build puts out 7k TPS, to an Obliterate-focused 7.1k, then I think it's a waste of a glyph slot and possibly talent points (talking about Subversion).

I may be off base there, though, I don't know how closely DPS are riding on the threat coattails of frost tanks in endgame, but I hadn't heard that Frost tanks were having real single-target threat problems.

The HB vs. Ob comparison is difficult, just because there are so many factors to consider - the fact that they benefit from different stats and raid buffs, glyphs, etc. In general though, frost tanks are going to be glyphing for threat regardless. The only survivability glyph is UA, which is arguably not an end-game glyph at all for someone with decent armor + ancestral fortitude. That leaves, worst case, two slots for some combination of frost strike, rune strike, icy touch, and obliterate - all threat glyphs. I suppose you could make a case for IBF, but I feel like its unnecessary with 25 RP ITs and/or BoSanc. Also, keep in mind there's nice synergy between the IT and FS glyphs.

It would be interesting to see the breakdown of how the various threat glyphs stack up, but that's probably the domain of a full-blown spreadsheet rather than napkin math.

With Icy touch consuming KM, have to say i can't see it happening very often atleast with a standard OB rotation.
Is it possible ? yes but it only has a 1.5 second window. *depending on runic power*

With BoSanc and at least 50% avoidance with parry and dodge and a boss attack speed of 2.0, thats ~5 returns from BoS every rune CD ( every 10 seconds ) 100 runic power on average of course. Lets say your attack speed is 3.4 ( 0 haste effects ) thats 3 attacks every 10 seconds. So lets say you use runic power for all 3 attacks on runestrikes. For a total of 60 runic power spent on runestrikes leaving 40 left.

Now with the cycle of BloodTap IT-BS-OB OB ( RD - Frost strike ) repeat

25+10+20+20 = 75 runic power every cycle + 40 from BoS is a total of 115 runic power on average every cycle after runestrikes. Your frost strikes cost 32 for a total of 3 every cycle for 96 runic power with 19 left over.

So its reason to believe on average your cycle with consist of 3-4 froststrikes. 1.5 per global CD = between 10.5 and 12 seconds for a full cycle assuming you use as many froststrikes as possible before starting another cycle. The window for Icy touch to be used on a KM proc is 1.5 seconds or a global CD. which is in between the last froststrike and the start of the new cycle with icy touch. So chances are KM procs are going to your froststrikes at least 90% of the time.

You may even want to weave in a FS after a BS just so you don't cap your runic power and spread out KM procs.

BloodTap IT-BS-FS-OB-OB ( runic dump )


*note* i am really not good with math this is more or less the logic behind what i believe. Please correct anything thats false.

I looked everywhere but didn't see why runetap ends up in every blood tanking build I see. I would think those points are better spent somewhere else. Is it somehow generatating more threat then a heart strike in your rotation? Or is it simply another heal?