My guild has been attempting Heroic Beasts and Sunday finally downed them. I was not there because I have been replaced during the fight in favor of a druid tank. Normally, I make up our top 3 tanks, but I was replaced by an offspec due to the larger health pool.
Will the added 3% damage reduction be enough to make me viable again, or will I have to look into a different build? I have been using Blood 56/8/7 and popping trinkets/CDs on the taunt. I still tend to get nailed for a big hit when Impale and Melee come together. All buffed I am around 47k.
Will I need to look at a possible Unholy spec for this fight? Does the Impale tick off bones from Bone Shield? What is the best way to avoid a stomp?
In addition to taking 3% less damage, you may have Vamp Blood up more often (due to using it every 1 minute, you would not worry as much about "saving" the cooldown).
Also, if you don't have a Black Heart or higher stamina trinket, you can just chain run Brewfest to get two 170 stamina ones, which will help out a lot.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
Tay: I have just over 50K raid buffed HP, and I go to about 1K when he gets a melee + impale + DoT tick if not outright dead. It's not something you can control and I'd be very surprised if that druid could live through those 3 all coming within 1 sec of each other. It's a limitation of game mechanics and we have to live with it. If you want advice, once his stacking +dmg buff gets to like 2 each tank should be using saves when they are tanking.
Blood is still generally accepted to be the best end-game tanking spec and that isn't going to change this patch unless we see some very high BS uptimes with Unholy. Can't see your tanking gear on armory but 47K raid buffed isn't terrible. Focus on some more stam if you can but otherwise you're fine.
Other news: 3.2.2 live today. Re-posting DK changes for people who missed them:
Pets
* Gnaw: This death knight ghoul ability now has a 1-minute cooldown.
Blood
* Heart Strike: Secondary targets of Heart Strike now take half as much damage.
* Subversion: Now also increases the critical strike chance of Scourge Strike by 3/6/9%.
* Vampiric Blood: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute and duration reduced to 10 seconds.
Frost
* Threat of Thassarian now also causes Rune Strike to use both weapons when dual-wielding.
* Unbreakable Armor: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute and changed back to granting 25% additional armor while active instead of flat damage reduction based on armor. The amount of strength granted has been reduced to 10%.
* Frost Presence: The damage reduction granted by this ability has been increased from 5% to 8%.
Unholy
* Bone Shield: This ability now has 3 charges instead of 4. Cooldown reduced to 1 minute.
* Dirge: This talent no longer grants additional runic power from using Obliterate.
Glyphs
* Glyph of Bone Shield: This glyph now grants 1 additional charge instead of 2.
* Glyph of Scourge Strike: Redesigned. This glyph now causes Scourge Strike to extend the duration of Frost Fever and Blood Plague by 3 seconds each time Scourge Strike is used on a target, up to a maximum of 9 seconds.
* Glyph of Unbreakable Armor: Now increases the armor gained from Unbreakable Armor by 20%.
* Glyph of Vampiric Blood: The glyph now increases the duration of Vampiric Blood by 5 seconds instead of 10.
Items
* Death Knight Tier-9 Tanking 4-Piece Set Bonus: Now decreases the cooldown on Vampiric Blood, Unbreakable Armor, and Bone Shield by 10 seconds instead of 20.
Looking at the Onyxia loot table, it seems that the Reinforced Thunderstrike might be a nice side grade from Worldcarver. That weapon speed negates the increased DPS though.
As far as weapons go, a 2Hander with +hit seems like the way to go. There are significant amounts of expertise on the tanking gear at iLvl 245 and 258, while +hit seems to be lacking. Starting with my current weapon, my upgrade plan is the following: [Hammer of Crushing Whispers] (232) -> [Lothar's Edge] (245) -> [Decimation] (258, not in wowhead yet so click --> MMO-Link).
The lack of +hit tanking items is a bit concerning. As far as BiS set-ups go that attempt to maximize threat stats (exp/hit), the following items are the hit ones (assuming 258 set pieces are out of immediate reach for these items): [Greaves of the Lingering Vortex] 47 hit, 258 alternative is the [Dawnbreaker Greaves] [Dreadscale Armguards] 44 hit, 258 Alternative is the [Armguards of the Shieldmaiden] [Thassarian's Faceguard of Triumph] 53 hit [Thassarian's Pauldrons of Triumph] 43 hit
For a total of 187 Hit rating, optimal being ~263, a 76 rating difference that is made up for by a weapon. This unfortunately means a good tanking set up will include items from ToGC10, notably the boots/wrists/weapon.
Edit: Updated item IDs, items named the same...
Last edited by Cloudgatherer : 09/22/09 at 3:32 PM.
This is probably a better place for my question than the simple questions/answers thread..
Has Acclimation been tested on Anub'arak? Was thinking it might help MT survival with an extra 150 nature resistance, but I have a hunch it works like Nether Protection and won't proc on AOE attacks, but on direct spell attacks.
There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.
Looking at the Onyxia loot table, it seems that the Reinforced Thunderstrike might be a nice side grade from Worldcarver. That weapon speed negates the increased DPS though.
My guild has been attempting Heroic Beasts and Sunday finally downed them. I was not there because I have been replaced during the fight in favor of a druid tank. Normally, I make up our top 3 tanks, but I was replaced by an offspec due to the larger health pool.
Will the added 3% damage reduction be enough to make me viable again, or will I have to look into a different build? I have been using Blood 56/8/7 and popping trinkets/CDs on the taunt. I still tend to get nailed for a big hit when Impale and Melee come together. All buffed I am around 47k.
Will I need to look at a possible Unholy spec for this fight? Does the Impale tick off bones from Bone Shield? What is the best way to avoid a stomp?
I realize this is anecdotal, but our guild has been having the same issue with our DK tanks. From a healers perspective (my main), our DK off-tank (blood, 35k unbuffed health, most gear 226 or better) does fine holding aggro, popping CD's, but with a bad string of hits, he's dead between my 1.4 sec holy lights. this happens regularly in 10/25 ToC and hardmode 10 ulduar fights. i have sacred shield and the flash of light HoT on him almost always with my beacon on the MT. i take healing quite seriously and consider myself a good healer, but i have considerable trouble keeping our DK alive.
I also have an alt DK i tank with, so i have that perspective as well. i have been frost since the 3.2 tank nerfs, (though it seems most tanks here are blood, i chose mitigation over more health). despite reasonable gear and popping my cooldowns, i seem to just get chewed through. the thing is, after the DK tank inevitably dies, i watch our pally or warrior tank solo tank the remaining encounter.
yes, with excellent gear, excellent knowledge of boss fights and spot on healers, a DK tank is definitely viable. but, from my experience, a paladin, warrior, or druid tank performs significantly better when compared to a DK tank of equivalent gear/skill. and from the 3.2.2 buff to DK tanks (and some slight nerfs to paladins), it's clear Blizzard reached a similar conclusion.
Given the changes to UA (ie. only physical damage reduction) and the Blood vs. Frost mitigation changing from 5% vs. 7% now to 8% vs. 10%, i will be switching back to a Blood spec and retesting these encounters.
I am having problems tanking HToC (5 man) and I have no idea why. I'm currently Blood Spec, and I'm taking WAY too much damage. My healer has to focus all heals on me and is having problems keeping me alive. Any ideas?
How many tank swaps are you guys going through and what is the tanking order? Usually for beast, 3 tanks and 2 impale swaps, he should be dead during the 6th tank.
1st tank -> 2nd tank -> 3rd tank -> 1st tank -> 2nd tank -> 3rd tank
If you are having trouble keeping up the DK tank up, put him up earlier in the tank rotation, either first or second.. The first wave, no one should need to use cds to live, you could just pop your trinket cooldowns here.
The second wave of tanking is when you want to blow your cooldowns. The rising anger stack should be about 3-4 for the first tank. Every tank can use their shieldwall + last stand type ability here and if your Dk is tanking first, the anger stack will be lower than if he was later in the rotation. If you need more than vb + ibf, you could save your trinkets for the 2nd wave and indestructible pots. Also you should have some threat leeway that will allow you to time some of your deathstrikes.
Hopefully some of that can help your DK tank. Personally I've never had an issue with gibs while tanking them on my DK, there have even been many times where me and our feral druid 2 tanked him because our warrior tank dced.
So I'm considering a change to Unholy for my tanking, which consists mainly of ToC/ToGC 10, and occasionally ToC/ToGC 25 if one of the main tanks is absent. I do fine with Blood, but I've been Blood for a long time and I wanted to try something else. I'm looking at something like this for an Unholy tank build that uses Death and Decay on cooldown, and has Frigid Dreadplate to help with Bone Shield's uptime.
I am wondering a few things though. How valuable would Reaping be to a build like this? Since I have to use Blood runes regularly anyway, would losing Reaping matter that much? Would Unholy Blight be worth taking even with it and DC being unglyphed, and having lower threat generation due to regularly cycling in Death and Decay (which has the worst RP-per-rune return because it's one of our only two three rune cost abilities). I've already determined that I know I want Epidemic, but I'm debating the possible worth of Glyph of Scourge Strike versus Glyph of Rune Strike. RS is my highest threat ability even considering Death and Decay, but would the increased time on diseases help when trying to integrate DnD as smoothly as possible? Unholy's problem when tanking tends to be threat, and maximizing it in a build that lacks Rage of Rivendare is a major goal.
Currently I'm testing a build that doesn't include Reaping, and opts instead for 2/2 Dirge and 1/1 Unholy Blight instead.
So I'm considering a change to Unholy for my tanking, which consists mainly of ToC/ToGC 10, and occasionally ToC/ToGC 25 if one of the main tanks is absent. I do fine with Blood, but I've been Blood for a long time and I wanted to try something else. I'm looking at something like this for an Unholy tank build that uses Death and Decay on cooldown, and has Frigid Dreadplate to help with Bone Shield's uptime.
I am wondering a few things though. How valuable would Reaping be to a build like this? Since I have to use Blood runes regularly anyway, would losing Reaping matter that much? Would Unholy Blight be worth taking even with it and DC being unglyphed, and having lower threat generation due to regularly cycling in Death and Decay (which has the worst RP-per-rune return because it's one of our only two three rune cost abilities). I've already determined that I know I want Epidemic, but I'm debating the possible worth of Glyph of Scourge Strike versus Glyph of Rune Strike. RS is my highest threat ability even considering Death and Decay, but would the increased time on diseases help when trying to integrate DnD as smoothly as possible? Unholy's problem when tanking tends to be threat, and maximizing it in a build that lacks Rage of Rivendare is a major goal.
Currently I'm testing a build that doesn't include Reaping, and opts instead for 2/2 Dirge and 1/1 Unholy Blight instead.
Hello Gbf. I´ve been looking at your Unholy specc and i found a few issues you propably should change.
At first , In my opinion the 2 points in Killing machine are worthless. Put them into Runic Mastery.And you should maybe leave the Frost tree at all. And just specc the "must have" talent , Toughness. My specc would look something like this.http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat..._880,S3Y,10433
You have mentioned that you´re thinking about the SS glyph. Actually i have been tanking unholy before 3.2 and i think that the RS glyph is much better. As you said , RS is our best aggrostyle and those 10% crit .. is an extremely push.
Procs like crazy off of Emalon (especially if add tanking) and all of Koralon's abilities (including Meteor Fists, I've literally seen it only hit for 200 damage with AMS up) Also procs off of Hodir's Frozen Blows (very easy to tank with the Frozen Blows that actually connect hitting for 2-3k with AMS up at the same time. Also procs off of Chain Lightning, Overload, Lightning Whirl, and Lightning Tendrils on Iron Council (Stormcaller Brundir). Ignis's Flame Jets, Razorscale's breath and fireballs, Freya's Sunbeam and Freya's adds spells (Spirit/Storm/Snap spawns, and Lasher explosions).
Apologies if this has been talked about, I've tried searching.
What percent damage reduction is the new Unbreakable Armor? With and without glyph. The glyph increases the effect from 25% to 30%.
Here are a few quick numbers I took (unbuffed)
26330 (63.35%) - base
32856 (68.32%) - with UA
34161 (69.16%) - with UA (glyphed)
Basically I'm trying to decide if the glyph is worth a slot.
So I'm considering a change to Unholy for my tanking, which consists mainly of ToC/ToGC 10, and occasionally ToC/ToGC 25 if one of the main tanks is absent. I do fine with Blood, but I've been Blood for a long time and I wanted to try something else. I'm looking at something like this for an Unholy tank build that uses Death and Decay on cooldown, and has Frigid Dreadplate to help with Bone Shield's uptime.
I am wondering a few things though...
You can't make a build with BSh and Frigid Dreadplate and still have good ST Threat, which has always been the issue with UH tanking. I've been working with a new spec since the OP has not been updated yet.
I'm using Glyph of D&D, BSh, and RS. So far ST threat has been fine, but then again I only tanked Onyxia 25 yesterday due to the lag issues. My biggest concern with this is that I would like to put 2 or 3 points in scent of blood, since I consider it to be very valuable talent, but I'm not sure were to take them from. I thought of taking them from Imp IT, but I consider Imp IT very valuable too. I do not use reaping because 2 BStr do about as much damage as a SS (see UH dps thread for math/explanation), therefore it isn't worth it for 3 talent points.
A question for anyone who may have maths on their side: (Apologies if this has already been asked and answered)
Is there a point where UA becomes redundant in raids? I'm sitting at 63-64% mitigation from armour. With a priest or shaman healer I'm given to understand that their buffs (Inspiration & Ancesteral healing respectively) would put me close to the cap of 75% physical damage mitigation via armour. At this point is UA even worth popping, or does it all stack (Taking me past 75% effective mitigation)?
A question for anyone who may have maths on their side: (Apologies if this has already been asked and answered)
Is there a point where UA becomes redundant in raids? I'm sitting at 63-64% mitigation from armour. With a priest or shaman healer I'm given to understand that their buffs (Inspiration & Ancesteral healing respectively) would put me close to the cap of 75% physical damage mitigation via armour. At this point is UA even worth popping, or does it all stack (Taking me past 75% effective mitigation)?
Thanks for anyone who can answer this one.
Not since the Priest/Shaman buff was changed to just being a % of melee damage reduction. At least with full 258 gear, you will not bypass the armor cap with glyphed UA
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
A question for anyone who may have maths on their side: (Apologies if this has already been asked and answered)
Is there a point where UA becomes redundant in raids? I'm sitting at 63-64% mitigation from armour. With a priest or shaman healer I'm given to understand that their buffs (Inspiration & Ancesteral healing respectively) would put me close to the cap of 75% physical damage mitigation via armour. At this point is UA even worth popping, or does it all stack (Taking me past 75% effective mitigation)?
Thanks for anyone who can answer this one.
The Priest and Shaman buff were explicitly changed to interact differently with armour. They no longer increase armour value by 10%, instead they mitigate 10% of physical damage (I believe post-armour - algebra makes it moot, before or after). Ancestral Fortitude
So Attack damage * (1 - armour mitigation%) = Normal hit.
Normal hit * (1 - 10%) = normal hit if you have Priest/Shaman buff.
Example:
Incoming 1000 damage attack at 75% reduction = 250 hit.
250 hit with 10% reduced from Priest/Shaman buff = 225.
This means it's still advantageous to increase your armour all the way up to the cap of 75% reduction.
Technically UA is always effective. Even if you hard capped 75% reduction without a click, the +Str becomes Parry (at an ungodly amount of diminishing returns, I'll grant you), so you still get something defensive. And the Str is also threat.
However, I believe most would argue that Blood spec is superior and that Vampiric Blood is the better cooldown. More health (and inbound healing) works for every situation, physical damage or spelldamage. This is open to debate and I don't mean to open a can of worms, merely state a prevalent view.
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
I'm using Glyph of D&D, BSh, and RS. So far ST threat has been fine, but then again I only tanked Onyxia 25 yesterday due to the lag issues. My biggest concern with this is that I would like to put 2 or 3 points in scent of blood, since I consider it to be very valuable talent, but I'm not sure were to take them from. I thought of taking them from Imp IT, but I consider Imp IT very valuable too. I do not use reaping because 2 BStr do about as much damage as a SS (see UH dps thread for math/explanation), therefore it isn't worth it for 3 talent points.
You are thinking along the same lines I am for tanking at the moment. This is what I've been using (remember this is fully tailored to my tanking gear, which is currently a bit light on hit rating.)
I am basically guarenteed to have the full slow effect on a mob I am tanking at all times from our offtank or one of the rets in our raid, and I'm pretty sure if you had a chat with some of your paladins/warriors you could make that happen too My 'live' spec uses reaping, but I've since decided that was a mistake, and settled on this. The only 'iffy' stuff for me is going to be guaging my RP intake and possibly pulling a point or two out of scent to throw into subversion (6% more crit on BS and SS seems pretty helpful, if I'm drowning in RP.)
My Glyph choices were BSh, RS, and IT, but I am also a main tank and am not often responsible for AOE tanking as our OT is a paladin. I've had no real threat problems with my current live spec, and this build should actually be a little bit better by my napkin math.
I'll have a pretty good feel for how well this works by the end of the week and probably start testing out some frost builds as well.
[10:42] <BrTarolg> trying shahraz wearing lvl 60 blues would be like, fucking a hot girl but with aids and the wrong kind of condom on.
I am basically guarenteed to have the full slow effect on a mob I am tanking at all times from our offtank or one of the rets in our raid
Surely you mean Prot paladin. Ret do not have a slow effect - Judgements of the Just is deep in the Prot tree. Far too deep for any reasonable Ret PvE spec.
If you are relying on your Ret for a slow debuff they mis-informed you. However, Vindication is an AP debuff that most Ret bring to the table.
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
Surely you mean Prot paladin. Ret do not have a slow effect - Judgements of the Just is deep in the Prot tree. Far too deep for any reasonable Ret PvE spec.
If you are relying on your Ret for a slow debuff they mis-informed you. However, Vindication is an AP debuff that most Ret bring to the table.
This is what I get for typing a thread while I'm at work, I meant to say Prot Paladin or one of the other DKs in the raid, dunno why I said rets. The basic information remains unchanged however, our raids have the debuff without me applying it.
Edit: I also said warriors later in the post, though I don't think we have any with imp TC. Sorry for the scatterbrained post.
[10:42] <BrTarolg> trying shahraz wearing lvl 60 blues would be like, fucking a hot girl but with aids and the wrong kind of condom on.
Hopefully some of that can help your DK tank. Personally I've never had an issue with gibs while tanking them on my DK, there have even been many times where me and our feral druid 2 tanked him because our warrior tank dced.
GC flat out says ilvl 226 isn't going to cut it and those tanks in there getting gibbed are under geared. Kinda of different from his "skill is greater than gear" position...but so it is written.
My guild had taken a blood tank and a paly tank to ToGC10. The blood tank dropped all the time and the paly stayed up but before complaining about class the paly was 232+ and the blood was 226.
Now I hate to take the "ilvl equals success" position but it does not appear that NB ToGC is meant to be a yogg in blues. I'd love to eat those words!
My point is before jumping on the DKs totally suck bandwagon (that most people seem to be hopping on due to on experiences in ToGC) maybe it is more about the ilvl as GC claims than the class itself.
An inkling tells me though that perhaps this is Blizz way of preventing DKs from pigeon-holing themselves into blood for end raid tanking and consider mitigation over EH. Or more likely it is Blizz's way just to embarass DKs in front of the girly-men BE palys. Take your pick.
09/22/09, 11:40 AM
My 'live' spec uses reaping, but I've since decided that was a mistake, and settled on this. The only 'iffy' stuff for me is going to be guaging my RP intake and possibly pulling a point or two out of scent to throw into subversion (6% more crit on BS and SS seems pretty helpful, if I'm drowning in RP.)
