[quote=dhthomps;1345708]I'll take a preliminary crack at this since searching the thread turned up only sparse comments. Main tank perspective only included below.

Spell Deflection Rank 3
You have a chance equal to your Parry chance of taking 45% less damage from a direct damage spell.

To add to this list, would this also work for Algalons Big Bang? My guild downed him for 10man and I was generally absorbing the Big Bangs, first w/ ibf + ams , 2nd with ams + VB + PS, 3rd was same as the first. But a few points into that instead of one of the UH talents since threat isnt really an issue might make healing a little easier after the portals. Was just curious on that.

Also, about the standard spec on the front page. For a lot of fights with aoe (mim hard), ive found it pretty advantageous to get rune tap + glyph for it. It provides pretty significant heals over the duration of the fight. I just dont see how you can pick up some of those threat talents such as imp IT, and not get runetap + Mark of Blood for tanking. Those seem like pretty standard cooldowns in terms of tanking.

Im also curious as to the 4p t9 bonus. With glyph for vamp and the 4p bonus, VB will last a pretty significant time. Much longer than any "burst" a boss may have. With this bonus, does anyone else thing bilzz is definitly pushing for blood to be the main tanking spec?

Final question, Im not sure if I missed this or not but does the new sigil for dodge outweight the Sigil of Deflection?

Bolded the important part. Big Bang is an aoe effect - he doesn't target you and cast it on you; it just affects anyone who's not in a black hole - and since Spell Deflection doesn't work on any other such (as far as I'm aware) it shouldn't work for BB either.

Big Bang is also Physical, which means AMS is useless unless you have 4pc T8.
I can say it works on Sartharion's flame breath. So, "direct damage" should say something like "targetted".

I would look at it in a less broad way. You are all trying to discount it on AOEs. The description reads "direct damage" - this doesn't necessarily mean all AOE. Direct damage to me, means (1) it isn't indirect, so for example, damage from other players who are charged with a debuff like say, Ionar's static charge - the spell isn't directly cast by the enemy, it is supplemental damage from another player who was debuffed. (2) it has to be instantaneous, non-periodic damage - you can't deflect damage over time spells, or spells that have that component.

Previous to 3.2, I had spell deflection on my hybrid build. It worked amazingly well against nearly any caster type mob I tanked, reducing the amount of direct damage I took considerably. After 3.2, I did not spec into this, in favor of a slightly different build, and have noticed that in fights where spell damage against me is coming into play, my health drops far more quickly in the first few seconds of the fight than before. I'm going to try speccing back into it and will check my recount results and see what I get.

Also, if memory serves me right, most AOE's for bosses have physical damage component as the damage factor (with some exceptions), with individual resist checks if the AOE is resistable, right? Ones that do not, like Sartharion, are frost damage but can be reduced by resistance.

I'm comparing that to my current Trinkets. Furnace Stone will give an on demand 5152 armor which is sweet for my UA use. I will not replace that with Black Heart in any scenario (even if big hits aren't optimal for UA, it is a main tool in frost tanking). I'm more concerned about Rune of Repulsion. I was about to replace it in 3.1 but then I heard of the buf given to parry. I'm not convinced yet to replace it but I'm tending to.

It's possibly a better idea to replace Rune of Repulsion with Repelling Charge so that SG rune has a base 540 defense to work on for extra undiminished avoidance.

Isn't that open to interpretation? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Rune of Repulsion is bad for DKs Always has been.

All of the following are better: Valor Medal of the First War, the Black Heart, the Furnace Stone, heck, the last time I checked, Repelling Charge even delivered more avoidance (the added damage mitigation boost to IBF ain't bad either).

Only if you don't consider diminishing returns. DKs have roughly 250-300 built in parry rating, which, combined with parry's significantly lower DR cap, means that parry is still much less valuable, point-for-point, for DKs than dodge is.

At the moment I followed an approach on Rune of Repulsion that may sound Heretic to most but it's surprisingly on par with the FAQ. I replaced it with Repelling Charge and not a stamina trinket so the defense on base stats before a Rune is 540. With SG Rune total defense reaches 565 but the extra 25 of the Rune are undiminished taking full advantage of the Rune. I see that rarely - surprisingly - on Armories of high end guild players.

I played a few bosses today on toc10 and uld10 and avoidance seemed smooth even on lower stamina. Being an OT seemed to also be a right role for such high mitigation setups.

Here's a parse of last night's raid for those interested in my build's performance - WWS / WMO

It's not ideal, there really isn't an example of me tanking solo or all the way through a fight. I'm DPSing on XT and Auriya I'm only briefly picking up the adds. I'll post some more as the week goes on. We ran a solid 10man AC, which no one caught a log of. And for anyone interested in the multiple deaths on Beasts, we had a pretty frightening healing situation that fight, and I was more or less sacrificed. One healer in tank gear, one dc'd, and I think one or two might have died as the fight progressed. A pretty sad testament to the ease of the encounters that we still downed them.

There is a point I'd like to make though, especially to anyone testing the build - it relies heavily on cooldown management and proactive mitigation. Gormok's killed me fairly regularly and consistently late into the fight because of his ramping damage, knockdown (which, I think, prevents dodge or parry), and impales. While I'm tempted to blame healers, I should have survived through like our other tank, but didn't save IBF for the right time.

Edit: It's not WWS, but here's the breakdown and DPS data from recount after the AC10 that I tanked.
Northrend Beasts:

Jaraxxus:

Sadly, I don't think the WWS had any fights appropriate for threat evaluation. The high avoidance leads to more Rune Strikes, but considering Frigid Dreadplate doesn't contribute to procs, I'm still unsure if it the loss of other talents is reducing your threat.

I am trying to work out a blood aoe rotation. The one posted at the start of the thread does not really do the job to well and requires shifting targets pretty often.

I noticed that a BB on a fully deseased target hits for 2k-3k for me and wanted to try and work out a BB spam rotation.

Would the following work?

IT, PS, Pest, BB
Blood Tap
BB, DS, BBx4

DnD is higher threat per second than anything you're going to get from an extra blood tap.

For me, on large AOE pulls, I do DND, IT, PS, Pest, Blood Tap, BB, and then start into my normal rotation (DS, HS, HS, DS, DS, HS, HS) since I do not use DRM. I have Morbidity 3/3, so shortly after, I can cast another DND if it is really needed, and my threat never gets beat. What is your hit rating at? Maybe you're just missing spell hits too much and not getting the threat you need out there.

Your spec seems a little off. Why Blood Worms - they give you no threat, and you shouldn't need the healing from them. Mark of Blood is very situational, and seems like a wasted point as well. DRW got nerfed hard this patch, and if I remember right, also doesn't give it's threat to you, not to mention it is more of a DPS talent. You also don't really need 3/3 in Scent of Blood - you generate more than enough RP with 2/3 in it. So that's 6 points you can reassign elsewhere for better threat and AOE abilities. Personally I have 3/3 in Spell Deflection (testing it's effectiveness with the Parry normalization numbers, so far, very promising) and 3/3 in Morbidity to help with AOE tanking so my threat never is an issue on large groups of targets.

Right now, I average about 2300 DPS on any given heroic, including heroic ToC. As a tank. Never have threat issues. Every healer I've had has said that "healing you was a snooze". So might want to look at tweaking your spec some?

Just recently made a DK for tanking and I'm confused as to why this Single Target rotation for frost is even effective...?

A rotation I'm using includes the following

HB (Glyphed for it) > PS > BS > BS (to keep blood runes on CD) > DS > HB (KM/Rime procs only)

With Rune Strike bound to each of those skills...With this rotation, I have yet to see a DPS pull off of me while helping the healers out a decent amount getting 3-4k heals each DS...

Your rotation is a little... odd to say the least.

If you're using both HB and PS (requiring mismatching runes), I can only assume you're modifying the old single-target rotation (IT OB BS OB) to (PS HB BS DS).

// Edit: And if you're not using this rotation strictly, then you're going to be ending up with mismatching rune cooldowns, which is even worse

1) Multiple applications of PS is a poor use of an UR for any DK, let alone Frost.
2) DS is extremely weak compared to OB for Frost. The only time you should consider DS is if threat is a complete non-issue.
3) Your RP generation in a PS and DS heavy rotation is going to be very low compared to an OB heavy rotation. That doesn't really matter for Blood, but Frost can always convert excess RP into threat via FS.

// Edit2: Wait, also, you claim you're using Rime procs? It only procs from OB and IT. I think one of us is very confused here.

Claiming that you have no threat issues, without providing context of your raid DPS and the encounters you're doing, is all but meaningless.

On starters: I found that starting with HB, assuming a HB glyph too, is a very bad idea. On multiple targets it won't be as effective as a starter DnD and on single targets it won't as fast to continue rotation as the classic IT rotation. It generally goes: multiple targets: DnD -> HB -> BB -> BT -> BB -> HB, on single targets: classic rotation similar or identical to DPS. Difference is, a DnD can be thrown when available or also as Starter.

I dont have issues with hit/exp both are at soft cap and somewhat above on both. I am new to blood tanking and the spec is more of an experiment. I tank in frost spec usually. Thank you for understating it, but my blood spec is VERY off. I just wanted to see what it can do.

However since I started using it I must admit that I really like blood tanking and my only concern was AOE threat. That is why I was so excited about the big numbers on BB and was wondering if BB spam would "out agro" the DND at the pull.

The third point in Scent and the Mark of blood are "fillers". I dont like spell deflection because I generally use Stone Gargoyle and my parry is at 20% buffed. I dont like the DRM because to me blood rotation feels a little unnatural using the HS spam.

This is the spec I will be going forward with. The rune tap glyph is being replaced with rune strike.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Question - since I am about 25 rating over hit soft cap, what is the best hand enchant at this point? Armsman or Crusher?

Heavy Borean Armor Kit

A large portion of my threat came from Frost Strike pre-3.2.
Is it worth looking at a double disease, obiliterate specc in 3.2 (using SoA) ?

Completely forgot leatherworking. Many thanks!!!

I have been a blood tank from day 1, but am looking at frost to reduce high damage spikes. This is my alt, so his gear isn't BiS, but suitable for most raid fights.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Glyph of HB obviously seems the best option in any fights with a significant number of adds (freya, throrim arena, etc), but for straight tank n spank fights, which of the following offer the best TPS:

1) howling blast glyph (single disease) HB-BS-BS-OB OB-OB-OB RPDUMP = RS/FS
2) howling blast glyph (double disease) HB-PS-BS-BS-OB-OB-OB RPDUMP = RS/FS
3) no HB glyph (replaced with glyph of rune strike) and either a single or double disease rotation

The first post shows both single target rotations using a single disease rotation. does the GCD saved by not applying blood plague outweigh the dps loss of 1 disease obliterate? that is the consensus from the Frost DPS thread, but does that translate to tanking?

Secondly, armor pen was essential as a blood dk, moving to Frost, does armor pen go from essential to "nice to have" stat? And do i want to stack hit to the melee cap (8%) or to the spell cap (i.e. do i loose dps/tps from stacking that much hit)?

It gives up 2% threat and little parry for 180HP. It requires a tank with very deep confidence in threat generation or low DPS in the party.

Likely the person asking doesn't have to worry about threat in his party. Also most tanks (except the top 100) possibly don't have to worry about threat, since if you really need it you have taunt and Death grip (good for Hodir).

It is more than 180, since there are lots of stamina modifiers (around 210 health).