I guess what he was saying is that build is possible if you can rely on someone else to put the TC debuff. You and I wouldn't take it, but it doesn't mean other people don't have that option.

On a side note, going as blood tank for the first time I noticed I am way more GCD restricted than any other tanking build. I am melee hit capped and expertise soft-capped - yet a parried HS can really set back my rotation. I saw a lot of blood tanks with even less hit/exp than me. How do you guys deal with the really tight rotation blood tank has?

No one has the option to not take ITT.

EDIT: Unless you have two Blood tank specs for those single-target fights that the Frost DPS DK won't die and is always on your target? Assuming you are the MT for these fights then Hodir, XT, Ignis, Thorim, Mimiron, and General are the options?

If you are using IT>PS>DS>HS>HS//DS>HS>HS>HS>HS// then yes we are more restricted and a miss, dodge, or parry will make the rotation harder on us. I personally use IT>PS>DS>HS>HS//DS>DS>HS>HS// almost all the time, besides the beginning of most fights, on trash pulls, or a situation like the Freya Trio.

I have a frost tank/dps that has IIT as well as an Unholy dps dk, I have the unholy always just follow me around to make sure my mob always has it, I'm the MA cc brecker ect tank. It is a waist of points in my situation. Not to mention we have a Prot warrior with imp thunder as well. Having a 4th version of it was just a waist when I can use it for threat which is what I need more of at this point wtb weapon drops pst. Also have a feral druid. Needless to say we have plenty of slow since we are melee heavy.

When fighting Yogg without Mimiron's help the Crusher Tentacles cast Diminishing Power much faster. The DPS check (of Yogg+0/1) is tight enough that allowing raid damage to be reduced at all is erroneous. Dancing in out of this channeling provides little to no reduction in damage under this condition.

Additionally, they stealth-nerfed the rate that the tentacles gain Focused Anger stacks, allowing you to tank them safely until they get down to about 60% (even more with IBF, etc). I've actually seen the stack fall off while the tentacle was being focused by ranged, allowing me to resume tanking and boosting raid damage by 25% for another 15-20s. Focused Anger only has a 1s duration, so it's very possible to see and take advantage of this, particularly in 10-man where there are fewer ranged attackers to refresh the buff.

I personally consider IIT highly desirable. The gains of putting the points elsewhere are small enough that picking it up is practically free anyway, unless you're picking up Scourge Strike and Veteran.

It doesn't really change anything for DKs because we're already into very high diminishing returns on Parry thanks to our native 25% strength -> parry rating ability. Warriors and Paladins are likely to prioritize Parry a little higher, though.

I was a bit tunnel visioned in my statement, I personally pick the talent up for any tank spec I use, but there may be some cases where it could be useful to not take it assuming that there will be full uptime for TC/ITT on every mob that does physical damage. I realize this might be very specific and situational, but thinking back to S3D, it may not be far fetched to consider some specific builds for certain fights.

The best example I can come up with would be something like a General Vezax hard mode fight, where every bit of threat and self healing is useful, assuming full uptime on TC, the extra three points could be used in necrosis/sudden doom/<your other threat talent>, or perhaps bloodworms or mark of blood to lessen the strain on your healers. I'm not trying to devalue ITT; it's a debuff that should never be skipped. I'm simply saying that there may be times where it may be wise to spec out of it.

It's definitely possible to score a Yogg+1 kill while dipping in and out to interrupt instead of tanking a Crusher. However, after looking at WoL, it's definitely not desirable. Like Suno says, you're still losing a significant amount of damage to Diminish Power (WoL: Buffs Gained -> Pound sign next to Diminish Power). I imagine that having a 30% uptime on the damage reduction debuff is going to be much too high for any Yogg+0 attempts.

Lower Dodge + Higher Parry (With higher DR) = more spike damage

At least my understanding of it makes that seem like the logical conclusion. They are going to reduce our dodge(Which is not a good thing) and give us more parry which given the high DR makes it more unpredictable.

I think if Blizz would implement some sort of passive buff that decreases our Parry DR this would be a different story. It would make sense for DK's to have parry be the primary stat for our tanking. Although I am sure ,like always, the PVP side would have some negative feedback if this were the case.

Basically, they're nerfing avoidance for every tank. The parry buff only means we'll lose less, but everything stays the same: as it has been pointed out already, our passive parry rating means we'll still have harsh DR when compared to dodge rating.

It's a nice change if you use threat gear, though. Lots of parry rating there that (I hope) won't be almost completely wasted itemization points anymore.

Patch notes:

Items: General

* Agility: The amount of agility required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This change required recalibrating the amount of dodge a player has with 0 agility by a slight amount as well, so all players will see their dodge percentage vary a small amount.
* Dodge Rating: The amount of dodge rating required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply.
* Parry Rating: The amount of parry rating required per percentage of parry has been reduced by 8%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply. Parry still diminishes more quickly than dodge.


I bolded the part that people seem to be missing. I don't know what "vary by a small amount" means. I'd assume at the very least that the dodge from agility alone will be close to what it is now, but I don't know if the dodge rating nerf will further reduce this, or if that has been factored in to the statement of "vary by a small amount."

Assuming that any given player's dodge % pre patch and post patch are roughly the same, then the change to dodge and parry ratings doesn't change things for tanks very much. It would simply mean that we wouldn't puke *quite so much* on items with a lot of parry rating.

They are pretty clearly going after avoidance on all fronts, and I highly doubt dodge % will be the same pre vs post patch. With Agility and dodge rating being more expensive per 1%, I highly doubt the slight reduction in parry rating per 1% will make it up for total avoidance.