Suno's Fireside Chat - DK Endgame Tanking - Page 87

Griefknight · 06/30/09, 10:47 PM

Originally Posted by Suno

Blood Strengths

Single-Target Threat - Great boss threat (see weaknesses)
Effective Health - capable of the highest effective health of any deep-tree build
Nice Raid Buffs - Abom's Might, Hysteria

Wouldn't it be worth mentioning Bloods ability to self heal through DS and Rune Tap and is there any reason WotN isn't being mentioned?

Originally Posted by Suno

Blood Weaknesses

Dependency on debuffs for threat - Sunder/Expose armor. Less of an issue on 25-man raids than 5/10-man

Lets just assume this really is a Endgame tanking thread, can we considered Bloods dependency on Sunder/Expose armor a weakness in the spec when every endgame guild should be sure they supply that buff? Yes not having it is bad but not having Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, or any of the other raids buffs for that matter is just as bad. I'm not saying it shouldn't be noted but just that it shouldn't be a weakness.

Originally Posted by Suno

Frost Strengths

Damage reduction - Frigid Deathplate, UA, GoG, yum.

You may want to consider adding Improved Frost Presence to the Damage reduction list.

Originally Posted by Suno

Unholy Strengths

Damage reduction - Bone Shield and Anti-Magic Zone.

You may want to consider adding Magic Suppression to the Damage reduction list.

Bone Shield is in the damage reduction list but its a cooldown just like VB, IBF, UA, AMS, AMZ, MoB, RT, WotN, and AotD. Wouldn't it be better to take it out and then make a list of the CDs, which spec provides which, and how useful each CD is or maybe how useless it is?

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It looks like the S7 weapon may have a shot at being the BiS weapon for stamina just like the current S6 weapon is.
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...7_10048_37.jpg
I highly doubt anyone would actually consider using it over a iLvL 258 weapon though, especially if there is Voldrethar 2.0 in the Coliseum raid.

Taizu · 07/01/09, 2:44 AM

Originally Posted by Griefknight

Lets just assume this really is a Endgame tanking thread, can we considered Bloods dependency on Sunder/Expose armor a weakness in the spec when every endgame guild should be sure they supply that buff? Yes not having it is bad but not having Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, or any of the other raids buffs for that matter is just as bad. I'm not saying it shouldn't be noted but just that it shouldn't be a weakness.

He was saying that, Blood is much more self reliant on raid buffs/debuffs than Frost/unholy.
Being frost, not having a warrior to sunder/rogue to expose is not gonna hurt me as much as it would if I were blood.

On a sidenote, how would blood perform in ulduar 10 hard mode without sunder? My guild has no active warrior now. Given that blood is much more superior for Vezax HM, can I tank as blood without sunders? Would it severely gimp my TPS as opposed to frost?

Griefknight · 07/01/09, 3:32 AM

Originally Posted by Taizu

On a sidenote, how would blood perform in ulduar 10 hard mode without sunder? My guild has no active warrior now. Given that blood is much more superior for Vezax HM, can I tank as blood without sunders? Would it severely gimp my TPS as opposed to frost?

I was able to tank 10man Ulduar as Blood with no Warrior for about a month. I really can't say a lot about 10man Ulduar because I haven't done it in about a month but when I did do it weekly I was able to keep threat on all the bosses just fine without a warrior and when we did get a warrior I don't think he kept sunder up much unless I begged him to do it. I only had that warrior for maybe one week as well

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pindle · 07/01/09, 7:17 AM

Originally Posted by Taizu

He was saying that, Blood is much more self reliant on raid buffs/debuffs than Frost/unholy.
Being frost, not having a warrior to sunder/rogue to expose is not gonna hurt me as much as it would if I were blood.

On a sidenote, how would blood perform in ulduar 10 hard mode without sunder? My guild has no active warrior now. Given that blood is much more superior for Vezax HM, can I tank as blood without sunders? Would it severely gimp my TPS as opposed to frost?

I recently respecced from Frost to Blood for exactly Vezax hard mode. We had no tank applying sunders, but think we did have imp FF up (quite sure even). My TPS actually went up a little bit compared to frost so that should be nothing to worry about, unless you're already having severe problems keeping ahead of the magic dps.

Teyrocar · 07/01/09, 9:22 AM

Considering the recent Mimiron nerfs I don't view Mim 10 hard mode as a very good gauge of end-game tank superiority. We just did it with a Prot Paladin with no 3rd cooldown.

Karede · 07/01/09, 10:08 AM

Originally Posted by Griefknight

Lets just assume this really is a Endgame tanking thread, can we considered Bloods dependency on Sunder/Expose armor a weakness in the spec when every endgame guild should be sure they supply that buff? Yes not having it is bad but not having Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, or any of the other raids buffs for that matter is just as bad. I'm not saying it shouldn't be noted but just that it shouldn't be a weakness.

I think it is still a weakness, even if you can assume that you will have the debuff put up by someone in raid. 10-mans will often not have a sunder/expose (arms warrior and rarely a rogue to be had in my 10-mans) and regardless of whether you are getting it from someone else, it is a weakness of the spec that it can't provide it for itself. Because as Blood you rely so heavily on physical damage for aggro, if you don't have that it makes aggro management more challenging. It won't usually be an issue, but on some fights where you have top DPS blasting out 5-7K on a 10-man, not having that will hurt. A lot. And because it only highly effects this spec of DK tanking (I wouldn't be nearly as concerned with that as Frost or Unholy because of a much higher % of magic damage) it is a weakness of this spec in particular.

concept84 · 07/01/09, 11:10 AM

Originally Posted by Taizu

He was saying that, Blood is much more self reliant on raid buffs/debuffs than Frost/unholy.
Being frost, not having a warrior to sunder/rogue to expose is not gonna hurt me as much as it would if I were blood.

On a sidenote, how would blood perform in ulduar 10 hard mode without sunder? My guild has no active warrior now. Given that blood is much more superior for Vezax HM, can I tank as blood without sunders? Would it severely gimp my TPS as opposed to frost?

I tank 10m hard modes and on almost every fight even without a sunder I have better TPS than Frost, although not by much, but definitely enough to allow my dps to go balls out and not worry about pulling aggro.

10m hard modes are rough to gauge anything on though. For example last night I was dpsing XT hard mode and our tank DC'd halfway through and I was able to pick it up and tank it as Blood DPS spec with just frost presence for the kill.

Overall though my guild has noticed Blood to have superior or equal TPS to Frost with or without the sunder and better adapted to most of the fights in Ulduar over the other two builds.

Griefknight · 07/01/09, 4:12 PM

Originally Posted by Teyrocar

Considering the recent Mimiron nerfs I don't view Mim 10 hard mode as a very good gauge of end-game tank superiority. We just did it with a Prot Paladin with no 3rd cooldown.

We can't really hand pick a few hard modes and as far as I'm concerned all the hard modes are considered endgame until new content and new hard modes are released. I'm not saying 10man Firefighter isn't a joke for a competent group of 10 players with a bit of 25man gear but its still endgame.

@People: You don't really need sunder for 10man because your DPS will also be missing buffs and thus they will do less damage and generate less threat.

Karede · 07/01/09, 4:45 PM

Originally Posted by Griefknight

@People: You don't really need sunder for 10man because your DPS will also be missing buffs and thus they will do less damage and generate less threat.

Not necessarily the case. A normal 10-man group for me is as follows: Me and a druid tank/kitty dps, Holy Paladin, Holy/Disc. Priest, Warlock (1 or 2), Mage (1 or 2), Moonkin, Elemental Shaman, Hunter, Ret paladin or Arms warrior. My guild has a lot of casters in it and are very rarely melee heavy, especially on 10-man. It's not at all uncommon for the only melee to be me and the OT druid. Those casters are getting every buff they really need. All they would really be missing is possibly a second pally buff if we don't bring in the ret.

Now, this may not be the standard group for most, but I assure you, in a situation like that, not having sunders HURTS. Even when it's the arms warrior there it hurts because it would destroy his DPS to provide them.

This is generally only a problem on fights where the DPS gets massive buffs that the tank doesn't (Vezax or Hodir) but it can be a problem.

teiglin · 07/01/09, 6:37 PM

Originally Posted by Karede

Now, this may not be the standard group for most, but I assure you, in a situation like that, not having sunders HURTS. Even when it's the arms warrior there it hurts because it would destroy his DPS to provide them.

Honestly, your arms warrior should be sundering even if there is no other melee. It costs 5 GCDs at the start of the fight, costing maybe 25k damage (less if you allow a slow-ish ramp-up weaving in rend/OP), and subsequently gives a ~8.6% increase to all physical damage taken at the cost of another ~4k damage every 25 seconds, conservatively. In a fairly short (say, Hodir at 3min), your raid only needs to be doing 3400 sunder-relevant dps for it to be better, and I'm sure your warrior is doing that himself. In a _very_ short fight (Mimiron p1 at, say, 70s), you'd need about 5500 sunder-relevant dps, which I bet you plus your arms warrior provide together. Your feral, hunter, and retadin are also benefiting from the sunders. Sundering is to his advantage as well as the raid's. It is a pain in the ass as an arms warrior--I know from experience--but it is well worth it in any situation that could be considered "sustained" dps.

One other nice note about blood threat--you get a pretty hefty boost from self-healing on death strike and (if you have it) rune tap, to the point that I will always try to time my death strikes right after a boss swing. Obviously at some point you're going to be losing TPS by waiting, but I might push back on a DS when I have good alternative GCD uses if I'm topped off and not expecting a swing right away.

Chainpullz · 07/02/09, 10:28 AM

When you time a death strike and it heals you then you have to figure in the extra heal threat you get for not being topped off at the time. Not sure if that makes up for the time you have to wait but as blood that should be around 7.5k heal threat. Assuming that its doesn't split to nearby adds that is possibly enough threat to justify timing your strikes.

Alyse · 07/02/09, 1:41 PM

Originally Posted by Chainpullz

When you time a death strike and it heals you then you have to figure in the extra heal threat you get for not being topped off at the time. Not sure if that makes up for the time you have to wait but as blood that should be around 7.5k heal threat. Assuming that its doesn't split to nearby adds that is possibly enough threat to justify timing your strikes.

Healing aggro is only 50% of effective healing done, a 15k DS may be pushing it unless you have VB up. The point is still valid, but consider that you are holding back rune cycling and RP generation by waiting a DS for a melee swing that may end up being dodge/parried.

DaveA50 · 07/02/09, 7:49 PM

Originally Posted by Alyse

Healing aggro is only 50% of effective healing done, a 15k DS may be pushing it unless you have VB up. The point is still valid, but consider that you are holding back rune cycling and RP generation by waiting a DS for a melee swing that may end up being dodge/parried.

Wouldn't the threat get multiplied due to frost presence?

Gort · 07/02/09, 10:46 PM

Originally Posted by DaveA50

Wouldn't the threat get multiplied due to frost presence?

As far as I'm aware, yes. A death strike has proven quite effective in accidentally sticking fresh adds to me in various encounters.

Myrx · 07/03/09, 3:39 AM

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

Here's a threat break down on me for Algalon using all of my U/F runes on Death Strike regardless of if they're Death Runes or not. As you can see the healing component of Death Strike only accounted for 0.9% of my total threat compared to the 7.3% that the actual Death Strike damage did. Take that for what you will, but Death Strike healing is really not that much threat. I always have better threat when I use my Death Runes on Heart Strikes.