Concerning the DW avoidance tanking situation. One thing to point out, is with the one-handed weapon speeds combined with higher avoidance, you would be able to deliver many more rune strikes over a given time. Until we can test it out properly, it's hard to say if we can rune strike as much as needed, while still having enough power for frost strikes.

It is something I may consider after 3.2, but it really depends on what type of encounters we'll be facing in the Coliseum (fast attackers, ala Algalon). Stacking stamina and going blood were king for Ulduar hard modes, but the advantages from that will be much smaller come 3.2, but it could still be enough if the bosses are similiar to Vezax.

That's the obvious concern with DW tanking: Rune Strike. It will generate less threat per strike but it will strike more often (although not much more with slower-hitting bosses). With a fixed cost, it becomes very RP-inefficient. The stats gained will probably be worth this cost only very situationally, if at all.

Actually, for threat-per-strike efficiency it's more relevant to compare Rune Strike to the other threat options for using RP - which for DW will only really be FS or DC. Obviously, FS will have the same problem RS does. DC will have the problem of not being terribly synergistic with a Frost build. Regardless, it's almost a guarantee that RS will still be your #1 RP priority, even Dual Wielding.

The question becomes will we generate *enough* threat with DW, and will the extra survival stats be worth the trade off. There will certainly be much math and testing to do when the PTR becomes available.

I thought this discussion was focused on 3.2, in which FS will _not_ have the same problem as RS, as DW Frost will be able to pick up ToT and have the relevant strikes, including FS, hit with the offhand as well. Until we know the exact numbers, including how bonus damage is calculated and what "Off-hand strikes are roughly one half the effect of the original strike" means, we can't be sure how damage efficiency of DW and 2H strikes will compare. The point Suno et al. were making is that RS alone is excluded from ToT, and given the percentage of total threat RS makes up for a typical 2H tank, that is a potential deal-breaker for DW tanking.

I'm not sure FS would be our best RP ability seeing as it can now be dodged, parried and blocked. Which is why I'm curious about RS grant you the speed bonus might be enough to bring up the threat.

Just doing some napkin math here on the Runestrike DW vs Runestrike 2H, so bear with me here. Comparing specifically just two items generally we would see any non hardmode 25 ulduar tank using. [Titanguard]x2 vs [Worldcarver].

Remember that this is based off the idea that EVERY strike is being converted into a Runestrike.

First off just by looking at the Strength stats, this affects our AP bonus from strength. Worldcarver gives us 274 AP through strength, whereas Titanguardx2 gives us 148 AP. This is already a loss in AP of 126.

Lets assume the DK tank has 3k AP unbuffed, which is very reasonable for tanks not in full ulduar gear, or hardmode gear.
In that assumption, the MH has an ability of approx 800-1200 damage. The Damage from a runestrike at the average of 1k, would then be 1.5k. This threat is then translated into 2.2k Threat per Strike, 4.4k Threat per swing timer of Worldcarver. Worldcarver produces 1400-1800 Damage, with an average swing of 1600, this becomes 2.4k damage, translated to 3600 Threat per strike. Now with parry haste, Worldcarver might get a few more strikes in, however so will titanguard, however not as much. the difference currently is 800 threat per strike in favor of DW tanking.

Parry haste from a swingtimer on Worldcarver reduces its swingspeed by approx 1.4 seconds, whereas on Titanguard its only 0.6 seconds.

At Parry Hasted levels, assuming one attack was parried by Titanguard and one wasnt, and a parry with Worldcarver:
2.6 Seconds on Titanguard produced: 4.4k threat, 2 seconds on Worldcarver produced: 3.6k threat. At first this is looking like for burst threat, Titanguard with Dualwielding produces more threat, however lets bump this assumption to 10 seconds, where these values can overlap.

4.4k*4=17.6k Threat.
3.6k*5=18k Threat.

Now Worldcarver has outshined Dualwielding by 400 Threat over 10 seconds. Judging by that math alone, 2H is still much stronger than Dualwield, however, 400 threat over 10 seconds is 40 TPS, which ISNT going to make a very LARGE difference in threat over a fight, because in the end of most boss fights, you have a large threatlead over the dps.

Can anyone verify that my napkin math is at least close, or am I way off the chart here?

Edit: Also note, that to help out the parry hasting, you COULD have the option of having [Titanguard] in the OH only for those stats, and then place a DPS weapon with a 2.6 speed into your MH slot, which would also increase the damage it deals. Like[Vulmir, the Northern Tempest] for example. And to further add to this, remember that we would then be using the 2% parry runeforge, so parrying with Dualwield will be 2% to 4% more of a chance dependant on if we use a different runeforge for one weapon and the 2% parry for the other or not.

People comparing DW Runestrikes to 2H Runestrikes should remember that RS still costs 20 RP a strike and it's completely unrealistic to compare a runestrike every 1.6 seconds to one every 3.4. And no, Scent of Blood uptime is simply not high enough that the more frequent swings of DWing would make up for it (it has little overlap unless tanking lots of trash/adds in my experience).

A better method would be to calculate your total RP generated and convert that into X number of 1.6 speed Runestrikes vs. Y number of 3.4 speed Runestrikes + RP Dumps (FS/DC).

Frankly, although I would like to try DW Tanking a bit just for the sake of novelty, I don't think the minor avoidance stat gains would warrant the TPS loss and greatly increased parry haste rate. If you choose to use slower DPS onehand weapons then the whole argument becomes silly since you lose the avoidance stats that are the entire point of dual wielding and are simply doing it for style points/fun (which is fine, but should be recognized as sub-optimal).

Also be reminded that with the current Nerf's to the main RP dump of Frost Spec, Frost Strike will no longer be as an optimal RP dump, and we may very well be just sticking strictly to Runestrike as the only RP dump, due to how fast you are swinging, also please note, that they have removed the SoB's internal cooldown of 10 seconds now, which would account to having a possibility of higher uptime of it, and alot more RP generated due to faster swings with 2 weapons. This possibly could fix not being able to RP dump in the first place, so we may very well still have the 40 RP to dump with frost strikes still.

The Scent of Blood change is just a tooltip fix. It doesn't have an internal cooldown on Live either.

* Death Knight T9 Tank 2P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Dark Command ability by 2 sec.
* Death Knight T9 Tank 4P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Unbreakable Armor, Vampiric Blood, and Boneshield abilities by 20 sec.

^ anyone think that will be better than the tier 8 peices?

The T8 2pc is much better then the T9 2pc. The T9 4pc is much better then the T8 4pc.

Unless T9 has hard mode gear that makes having 4pc T9 not an option, then having 4pc T9 will be required.

Straight from the horses mouth: However I will say that the Coliseum fights should focus less on the blow-your-cooldowns-or-die style of encounter. (From MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Warrior Community Let Down.)

Also haven't seen this mentioned yet:
Death Knight T9 Tank Relic: Each time you use your Rune Strike ability, you have a chance to gain 200 dodge rating for 20 sec.

The 20 second part is a huge step up from the 5 seconds we get now, but depending on the proc chance (and maybe an ICD), it's hard to tell whether it will be better or not.

The stats on the heroic tier is also pretty amazing. Nearly a 60stam upgrade to most items. Seems like most of the tier is itemized pretty well too! Cant wait to get in there and clear that place.

Also, the 4p t9 is going to be amazing and Im sure very helpful for every fight. Vamp blood is going to become more of a very frequently usable cool down if the CD is shortened that much instead of saving it for clutch periods of a fight.

The Sigil of Insolence currently has no internal CD and a 100% proc chance (or I'm very lucky). The case seems to be the same with the dps sigil.

I'm also defense capped without gems and enchants in the new tier of gear, one quality below 25-Heroic. No defense from trinkets, no defense on one ring, stoneskin on weapon.

If it has no internal CD and 100% proc, then it will be VERY powerful. Probably OP in fact. We would basically build in another 5% dodge, as there is no way that you aren't getting a rune strike during a 20% period.

Looking at the parse from a Vezax kill on Monday, I had Shadow of Death (the proc from [Sigil of Deflection]) up 61% of the fight.

I imagine that there will have to be an internal cooldown on it, my guess is ~1 PPM. I haven't gotten to test it yet, but I just can't see it NOT having one.

Unfaltering knight's proc rate is 100%. So a new sigil with the same rate may indeed go live, but may have less dodge.

RNG based items don't appeal to me when tanking, gaining 200 dodge at a random moment in a boss fight doesn't let me have any control over the fight or my EH. A 1 minute ICD would make the new sigil have less average avoidance than deflection gives over the course of a fight:

200 / 60 seconds = 67 effective dodge rating
If shadow of death is up 55% of the time (being conservative) that is 74.8

So I can't see how that would work. SoD would also give you more consistent threat through RS > proc > RS generation versus a 20s threat spike from SoI in that case.

I can see SoI not being ludicrously OP given that it's a good number of ilevels higher; things in collisseum sound like they're going to be a big leap in difficulty over even hard modes in Ulduar for gear rewards to be this big of an upgrade between tiers.

The way I read it was just a tooltip correction. On live it says 2% per RP upto 25%, while on PTR it says 1% per RP upto 25%. I don't see a difference there in the overall wording of the tooltip.

Regardless of a possible nerf, I don't think a DS nerf affects tanking noticeably.

Just one comment to this and perhaps this is a gross oversight on my part, but,

are we getting some sort of 1h defense rune?

Because if not the 25 defense rating to two hands is really more valuable than anything that all this tank-crafting is worth >< The 25defense already gives us 2% avoidance (1% of which is dodge, a much better stat than parry) So you would only be minimally gaining avoidance from the weapons you use and have to gem/swap gear or use defense trinkets causing you to lose significant EH. So unless we get some sort of 1h rune (which we wont since we're meant to be 2h tanks) then duel wield tanking is not going to happen IMO.

SSG is 3% avoidance. Swordshattering is fine on fights that don't have a strict EH requirement, and as you said you'll be gaining defense rating from weapons. People are still going to try to dual wield tank no matter what, so there's a separate thread to discuss that specifically.

The avoidance gained from SSG via defense would actually be less than 2% parry to each 1H weapon.

The 2% stamina loss from SSG would be made up from the increased amount of stamina gained from each 1H. In addition, there will most likely be more avoidance to be found on 2 1Hs instead of a single 2H.

The main loss if you are using SSG would be the 25 defense, in which you would indeed need to re-gear/re-gem for, but it isn't necessarily carved in stone that it would be a loss to DW tank as opposed to 2H tank on the basis of stats alone.

No, we aren't, but while I agree that DW tanking won't be viable, it is NOT because we don't have a SSG for 1h. If you look at the Tier 9 gear, there is a ridiculous amount of defense on everything. The regular 25-man gear will provide almost 10 more defense (59.7561 on 25-man T8 vs. 68.69919 for 25-man T9) and the T9 heroic gear will ANOTHER 10 defense on top of that (78.04878). Looking at the craftable BoE bracers it seems that the other gear will have a similar jump in defense.

With the extremely high defense on our gear, the avoidance that we take from defense is going to start being more effected by diminishing returns than what we are currently experiencing. I imagine you'll see most DK's with SSG sitting in the 560's for defense.

I agree that we won't be DW tanking, but it will not be because we are losing out on defense not having SSG for a 1h. The stam loss would actually be a bigger loss to us in that case, especially considering the nerfs to Frost Presence and VotW.

Where do you get this? Something like [Worldcarver], which is currently the preferred pre-hard mode tanking weapon, has 136 stamina and [Aesir's Edge] or [Voldrethar, Dark Blade of Oblivion] are both in teh 140's with two sockets. [Sorthalis, Hammer of the Watchers], [Last Laugh] and [Titanguard] are the three best 1h tanking weapons. The stam from a 2h is equal to that of two 1h, and actually exceeds it when you add the extra 2% for SSG.