If a 50k breath comes it, it trys to take off 37500 dmg. But in order to eat that full amount you need 13750 ap which is never gonna happen. Figure 4k ap which is the avg for a geared dk tank buffed. The shield will eat 18000 dmg leaving 32000 dmg to go. Figure in 5% magic mitigation from talents and 4% from weapon enchant if you can use it an stay crit immune, would leave you taking 29120 damage without bone shield up. If you add a priest shield to this, you can even take the breath with it if you have 40k hp raid buffed, but it will be really close and leave your healers sweating.

10000+2*AP is the maximum amount of damage the anti-magic zone can absorb. It will absorb 75% of any magic damage up to that maximum. Maybe this will make it a little clearer:

If
you are hit with a 10k breath with a 20k AMZ active -> Take 2.5k damage, you are left with AMZ that can absorb 12500 damage
you are hit with a 20k breath with a 20k AMZ active -> Take 5k damage, you are left with AMZ that can absorb 5k damage
you are hit with a 30k breath with a 20k AMZ active -> Take 10k damage, you are left with no AMZ.
you are hit with a 50k breath with a 20k AMZ active -> Take 30k damage, you are left with no AMZ

Are you factoring in the Magic dmg reduction from Frost Presence as well?

It's 75% until the max is reached.

So in your example - S3D - it is going to be the damage max instead of the %.

(better examples above)

Just a quick question about AMZ soaking. I don't remember seeing this on this forum, search function nether.

- is soaking is made after or before resist?
- is soaking is made after or before frost presence ?

Maybe someone has already heard about this ?

No, it isn't. They're both very much RNG. Spell deflection might not proc all night. Lichborne may not cause a single miss. The only time an ability like this is NOT RNG based is if it's a 100% or 0% chance. I wonder if you meant it's more likely than spell deflection, due to it being additive. I don't get that either, as it's pretty clearly 30% vs. 25% (no DR influence for either).

Regarding IIT/Lich, you're right and I modified the OP to include it. It's likely that my experience with a frost-DPS DK is unique, or that many players can't reliably rely on another for the max attack speed reduction.

It's after resist, and after priest shields. I'm assuming but unsure that it's after FrPr too. Quite often I pop AMZ, take 0 damage (spell deflection/resist/AMZ), and the shield survives.

Are you forgetting AMS? Tanking 3D i can survive 4 breaths with 1st being AMZ+BS, IBF, AMS, BS+priest wings.

How often do you die due to missing healing?

I'm being healed by a Disc priest who manages to keep me at 100% before breaths+giving me a shield if I call for it on Vent because I only have BS or AMZ active and I always managed to survive the breaths if I had a cd active.

and if I recall correctly the highest hit I've taken yesterday was a 45k Breath which was absorbed by my AMS.

If I had a AMZ active for around 19-20k (I macro it with Blood Fury for that bit of extra AP) I would've taken around 25k damage (even less with the priest shield which I almost always have up.)

BS is a bit more RNG based since I would still take something around 33k damage which alone would kill me. But with priest shield (around 7-8k absorb) I stand with around 7k HP + BS still up.

So yes: BS and AMZ ARE viable Cooldowns IF you have a reliable priest to shield you when necessary.

If AMZ is used with Weapon enchant and talents + frost presence and bone shield the tank will live even if they are a few thousand hp down.

Having tanked 3d as blood, I don't feel that the spec is deficient in any meaningful way. WotN is, for all intents and purposes, a permanent 15% reduction to all breaths taken. That is only 5% less than BS, and does not suffer from the same limitations. Beyond that, Vampiric Blood with a Priest shield can easily buy two breaths before Vesperon lands.

The other idea I wanted to put forward was an easy way to gain the 4% magic mitigation from runeforges without the risk of being low on defense. Dual Wield. The low threat that DW generates with a build not designed to support it is a non-issue on 3d, because for the vast majority of the fight you will not have dps on Sarth. Once the 3rd drake dies, you can switch back to your 2h and start pumping out threat if your dps are anywhere near you.

Myself, I use [Slayer of the Lifeless] and [Red Sword of Courage], both with the Spellbreaking runeforge. The defense on the weapons themselves makes it unnecessary to use a defense trinket to stay uncrittable, and the stamina on the two weapons totals 115, which is only a 5sta drop from [Inevitable Defeat]. The loss of the 2% sta from Gargoyle is certainly a detriment, but the 4% reduction to breaths more than outweighs that in my opinion.

Not really an option if you are JC in my opinion.

Because in that case you gain around 1200 Hp (+ around 600 HP through the rune itself) through each trinket slot. And since the Gargoyle rune allows you to wear both of them + Gem/enchant for max HP you would loose around the same HP that you would gain by using the 4% Spellreduction (45000*0.04=1800 DMG) rune. (and I didn't even take into consideration the additional parry hastings by using DW)

Do you mean Spellbreaking? I'd certainly never use Swordshattering over Stoneskin Gargoyle on this fight simply for the HP advantage and itemization freedom it allows you, even if the majority of the overall damage is melee. It just doesn't provide a significant enough advantage unless you're coming back to do Sarth in Ulduar gear or some useless future scenario like that.

The whole point in DW is that you gain enough def on the weapons themselves that you can gem/trinket for pure stam. With my gear, I'm uncrittable with everything gemmed for stam even dw'ing. In my current gear, I have 2269sta unbuffed. 2% of that is 45sta, or 491hp. Assuming a 50k breath, 4% of that is 2k. I'll take 2k off breaths over 491hp. Yes, it will be slightly more sta after buffs, but honestly once Shadron is dead you can switch to 2h and have the extra hp for the melee, but having an extra 4% when it counts is worth it in my opinion.

As to parry-hasting, it's been shown that even DW DK's have fewer parryable attacks than warriors or paladins. Rune Strike prevents most main-hand parries, and IT, Pest, BB, etc are not parryable. I'm not trying to say that DW is in any way superior to 2h tanking at the moment, but for this specific fight I think it is something to consider.

I meant sword shattering, but only because I don't take nearly as much magic damage as I used to. I used to cut it close with BS+PWS and I could survive it, but I don't use that little anymore. I use AMZ+BS, IBF or AMS. If those are down, I'll call for a priest/pally CD.

This effectively reduces the "spikiness" of the encounter, except when he starts hitting like a rogue after drake 3 goes down. I keep my dodge trinket for that, ideally coupled with BS or IBF until the 5th healer returns from the portal.

As you mention, bleeding edge is best met with a bigger health pool, undoubtedly. This fight's preference towards a big health pool fades however if you throw a "big" cooldown at each breath. Overall, I take less damage in the fight now and I'm easier to heal.


-edit- I still use Gargoyle for 10-man sarth, where I don't have a large collection of external cooldowns.

On a side note, has anyone found a way to determine when WotN is proc'ing? It doesn't seem to work like Spell Deflection, so WWS doesn't track it as a buff, and I can't find any way to tell if it is even working.

Side note on runed weapons; just swap them in combat.

Specifically for Sarth I reforge my Betrayer to Spellshattering as it has the higher stam value for the spell damage part of the fight, and move Gargolye/Swordshattering on to my Jawbone. As soon as Shadron dies I swap weapons as melee damage is ramping up from two stacks on Sarth with a third stack incoming as soon as Vesperon goes down.

Small point but I see alot of posts talking about runes as if we have to use one for the whole fight. Sigils and Weapons can be swapped in combat. Runeforges are free, and every tank should be carrying back up weapons anyway. Post kill I Death Gate out, and reforge.

Don't forget AotD, I use it to mitigate a breath too.

The image of Sarth spinning in circles breathing isn't a fun thought.

Good thing he doesn't do that. Please see the Raid Tested used for Army of the Dead thread.

Intriguing. Will definitely have to remember that one.

I've been following the discussion with Notebook and Ghaash in this thread, and I am curious about something.

First of all, I've become interested in the threat aspect of tanking and trying to top the charts, I had my first chance of really doing this last night in our naxx run. I placed on every encounter (except 2) with decent TPS I suppose. My question though is, how much added TPS do you think a prot pally really brings with Blessing of Sanctuary? It seems like I would be able to dish out a lot more TPS with it, but does anyone know about how much added threat it could bring?

I don't use the icy touch glyph and am always max runic with bsanc so I think it makes a big difference in threat. I spam my rune strike (its bound to every single ability) and do a lot of frost strikes and still no runic issues.
Where in 10 man naxx I don't ever have a prot paly and am runic starved all the time.