I just recently started tanking 25-man Ulduar (I switched my main from Rogue to DK because tanks weren't showing up to raids). I started last Wednesday with Freya and General, and since then have seen every fight once from a tank perspective. I'm running a Blood spec with Morbidity and have a couple of questions:
1) Those of you who MT Hodir, how much FR do you wear, and otherwise how do you deal with Frozen Blows?
2) Those of you who Blood tank, what is your dual-spec? I find myself having to switch to DPS occasionally because a few of our tanks started coming back, so I picked up Morbidity instead of having two tank specs. My current dual-spec is Unholy DPS, but I'm wondering if another choice might be better.
2 - my main & offspec are blood. blood single target DPS seems solid, and bring same raid buffs which works well since we have a frost DK always about.
Couldn't seem to find an answer for this, so I'll ask here. As a frost tank, which two talents gives the most threat per point spent, Bladed Armor, Scent of Blood or Two-Handed Weapon Specialization ?
I think it goes to the order of BA > 2hspec = SoB. SoB is hard to quantify, depending if you tank aoe or single target.
There's no reason to not get them all and 1-2/3 SoB in a solid frost build.
I just recently started tanking 25-man Ulduar (I switched my main from Rogue to DK because tanks weren't showing up to raids). I started last Wednesday with Freya and General, and since then have seen every fight once from a tank perspective. I'm running a Blood spec with Morbidity and have a couple of questions:
1) Those of you who MT Hodir, how much FR do you wear, and otherwise how do you deal with Frozen Blows?
2) Those of you who Blood tank, what is your dual-spec? I find myself having to switch to DPS occasionally because a few of our tanks started coming back, so I picked up Morbidity instead of having two tank specs. My current dual-spec is Unholy DPS, but I'm wondering if another choice might be better.
1) You shouldn't need any FrR gear, especially since threat is such a big deal for hard mode. You can IBF every Frozen Blows, and stack other CDs if you need them. AMS, VB, Guardian Spirit, Pain Supression etc. Also, you holy paladins should be using Aura Mastery with Frost Resistance Aura for at least 1 of the frozen blows. If you are doing hard mode, you usually hero/bloodlust on the second Frozen Blows. Lastly, ret paladins should make use of the raid-wide shield wall.
2) Blood spec'd tank for Boss fights. For the first night I usually dual spec frost for trash tanking, very useful for hodir trash and freya trash. Not needed but I like having more control. Otherwise I spec for pvp
This would be better overall. This type of build will probably work better in 3.2 than it will now, since the change to Unholy Blight will increase the synergy of the build. That being said, you don't really gain much, if anything, compared to a standard blood build. You lose the threat from MoM and Blood Gorged as well as losing Improved Icy Touch. What you gain is the excellent TPS of necrosis. but I don't know if you can justify going all the way to Unholy Blight.
If you want Necrosis, the real workhorse of the Unholy tree, and don't mind losing IIT (if it's provided by other people) then you can easily get 4/5 Necrosis with a standard Blood build.
Necrosis works with rune strike, making it a great threat talent. Also, BCB can be parried. Going 3/3 morbidity plus 3/3 sudden doom and 3/5 necrosis has currently given me top ST threat in addition to having low-cooldown DnD for AOE utility on some fights and trash if I'm not MT or am part of a tank rotation (thorim arena/hallway, freya, mimiron adds, etc).
Any points spent on outbreak are wasted unless you're actually an unholy tank. If spending points to get at the new UB, morbidity or necrosis are where they should go IMO. Even points spent in ravenous dead would result in more threat per talent point than outbreak since plague strike is used only once every two rotations as blood.
This build has thus far worked splendidly for me tanking animus on HM Vezax, Thorim and others (25).
If wanting to get the new UB, this would make the most sense to me, sporting lower raise dead CD allowing a ghoul sac more often. You'd still go 3/3 sudden doom and morbidity, and glyph dark death for boosted DC damage. IMO this build would not generate as much threat due to the loss of blood gorged and MoM so the real tradeoff is threat for more frequent ghoul sacrifice and more spell damage dealt versus physical damage, which might result in more threat on certain fights, but you'd need 3 points in virulence to make the most use of DC and you'd be more focused on gearing for hit rating. I feel it would be suboptimal and builds going this route will not be as viable for threat as sticking to the first build I mentioned.
I'm looking into the blood spec for Tanking and I have a question...is blood gorged actually worth the points? Or would it be more benefical to drop those as well as Hysteria and Aboms Might to pick up Rune Tap and IRT and then go down some points into frost to get two points into Frigid Dreadplate?
Blood Gorged is well worth the investment. Even if you get the 10% dmg boost half the time, that's still 2% armor pen/1% dmg a point, which is rather incredible.
There's really no way to get Frigid Dreadplate as Blood. It is simply too deep into Frost and there are too many valuable talents in Blood, unless threat is literally no concern (in which case there are better builds you can do, anyways). The closest you can get is a VotW/GoG build, which is more Frost than Blood, but certainly more viable than any HS/DP combination.
Frigid Dreadplate is a really overrated talent IMO. 1% melee avoidance as miss per point is underwhelming. Misses don't proc rune strikes so you gain no threat.
Sure it's a talent you pick if tanking -as- frost but any build I can envision which is mainspecced into blood or unholy and tries to go down frost to get it, is just awful for threat. If you want 3% avoidance, gem or gear for it.
The value of RT/IRT is subjective and has been debated further back in this thread. Generally it's a talent you take as filler over other talents when going deep blood (I use one point for RT because I only need 2/3 SoB).
Hysteria is great utility, give it to your feral druid when you're tanking so they can burst 10k dps for 30 seconds. Give it to someone else if you have threat issues. Either way a talent which boosts your RDPS significantly.
BG is essentially almost 2% threat per talent point if your healers are good, which they should be. You will often be topped off during a fight. The 10% ArPen isn't great since you're not stacking any on your gear so the dps increase isn't all that much, but it boosts the damage of a vast majority of your single target attacks so it's just icing on an already good talent.
Blood builds which skip BG and MoM to try go deeper down other trees for avoidance or other types of damage output just don't cut it for threat at the endgame right now.
This is the only blood build going deep into frost which I can see having any viability whatsoever, specifically for being an offtank or part of a tank rotation (thorim) which brings raid utility via IIT, hysteria and abom's might, using OB instead of DS as your death rune generator. If you want to be a buff class for your raid then I'd go with it.
Currently for our Hodir 10 man regular kills I stand in place and jump. I will only move to accommodate healer range or if there is a moonbeam relatively close (not across the room) I will strafe Hodir to that point.
I have done a bit of research on my own and there seems to be a balance between getting the melee as many buffs as possible while not moving them too severely.
Am I doing enough? Should I begin developing better movement practices for the fight in preparation for hard mode?
Currently for our Hodir 10 man regular kills I stand in place and jump. I will only move to accommodate healer range or if there is a moonbeam relatively close (not across the room) I will strafe Hodir to that point.
I have done a bit of research on my own and there seems to be a balance between getting the melee as many buffs as possible while not moving them too severely.
Am I doing enough? Should I begin developing better movement practices for the fight in preparation for hard mode?
Moving Hodir will just cause problems. If a Frost Nova goes out when you went to move him you have frozen melee that are losing DPS time. It's better to just keep him in one spot. You should have more than enough DPS to beat the timer in 10 and 25 man without ever moving the boss. In addition, if you use AMS during Deep Freeze you will not get Ice Blocked. This can be handy if you don't want to move for the Deep Freeze as well.
On that note is there a "best" place to stand Hodir during hard mode? The tankspot video uses one of the corners as this forces NPCs to congregate towards Hodir, but I've also read keeping him in the middle very near the original NPC position allows the raid to break them out of ice using incidental aoe.
Blood Gorged is well worth the investment. Even if you get the 10% dmg boost half the time, that's still 2% armor pen/1% dmg a point, which is rather incredible.
As a blood tank, is a point in Blood Gorged better for threat then a point in Necrosis?
On that note is there a "best" place to stand Hodir during hard mode? The tankspot video uses one of the corners as this forces NPCs to congregate towards Hodir, but I've also read keeping him in the middle very near the original NPC position allows the raid to break them out of ice using incidental aoe.
There is a trick that I have discovered making the hardmode a little more melee friendly.
I bring him directly in front of the mage (Mage located on the right side if your facing Hodir) on the pull the first ice falls usually throw the mage against the middle of the wall(Again middle of the rightside wall). When the mage is against this wall she will often times ignore the flash freezes completely(I would say 1/3 times) once you get your aiming right I find some fight she will not get frozen at all.
Now I do not know if you call this creative use of game mechanics but I find it very helpful for keeping melee dps maxed and fires for me to stand in. If I do happen to get hit with frost nova(Or melee) the fire buff helps the healers out.
I use frost for the fight as the threat generated is quite incredible. I can often fight off a mage breaking 14k dps with a good opening.
Of late I've been looking at the 3.2 changes (Unholy's AE threat getting torched) and decided to flip my AE tanking spec over from Unholy to Frost.
The question I have, and pardon if this has been answered already but I've combed over this thread and can't seem to find it. But in several of the Rotations i've seen listed for a deep Frost tanking build the use of Plague Strike is omitted.
Could someone post the logic behind that for me? I'm not doubting that its a valid rotation, I just can't see the reason behind it.
Single Target Rotation - IT-BS-OB-(Blood Tap if no Death Rune)OB RPDUMP = RS/FS
Alt-Single Target Rotation - HB-BS-BS-OB OB-OB-OB RPDUMP = RS/FS (assumes HB Glyph)
Both of those in the first post omit the use of PS which means no BP on your mob. I just want to see the logic/numbers behind it if anyone could post it or link me to a post that contains it that would be sweet.
Both of those in the first post omit the use of PS which means no BP on your mob. I just want to see the logic/numbers behind it if anyone could post it or link me to a post that contains it that would be sweet.
It's pretty simple.
With the first rotation, you effectively use DRunes to trade the PS in the first sequence for an extra IT in the second sequence (which makes the second sequence identical to the first, unlike most DK rotations). The damage and RP gains for IT are high enough that it more than compensates for losing the BP effect.
With the second rotation, you replace IT and PS with HB. Again, the extra damage from the HB outweighs the loss of damage from BP. This also synergizes very nicely with Killing Machine (no wasted procs for relatively weak IT) and Rime (where you simply replace the HB with another OB).
If you're using Frost as an AOE build, you'll be using the HB glyph and thus should generally be using the second rotation.
As a blood tank, is a point in Blood Gorged better for threat then a point in Necrosis?
Yes, because of the double dps benefit.
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During a regular GV HM fight, how much would a blood tank be expected to heal?
During our last 10 man hard mode kill, in 6 minutes 19 seconds, I had ~276k effective heal with ~34% overheal. That may be a little higher than average because we have no caster DPS in our 10 man, so I can afford the threat hit of holding onto FU runes to death strike with.
During our last 10 man hard mode kill, in 6 minutes 19 seconds, I had ~276k effective heal with ~34% overheal. That may be a little higher than average because we have no caster DPS in our 10 man, so I can afford the threat hit of holding onto FU runes to death strike with.
Holding onto the Unholy and Frost runes hinders TPS? What would a good rotation be? I am assuming you would use DRM?
I was wondering if anyone had numbers regarding the relative TPS value of Sudden Doom vs. Subversion vs. Necrosis.(preferably shown both with and without DRM) There were some statements bandied about earlier in the thread on these talents individually, but it never seemed to be a coherent, definitive answer about how much more or less threat is gained in a tank+spank senario using any one, or combo thereof.
I don't have numbers at hand, but point-for-point, Necrosis is the best of those three talents. IIRC, Sudden Doom is the worst, but I'm fuzzier on that. It's a massive win for Necrosis if you're not using DRM, as the threat gain from the other two rely on Heart Strike spam.
07/25/09, 11:20 AM
