Peste

New enchant won't beat SS rune because the wording on the enchant seems to imply that the buff stack will reset on next parry.

This means that it's unlikely it will stack very high and will actually provide less and less benefit as gear levels increase.

Also the 200 rating it adds is on DR.. another reason why it gets worse as gear increases.

 

dreadai

New blade barrier seems to be worded that it affects all incoming damage, not just physical damage - thus it negates (or perhaps was the cause of) the reduction to the magic mitigation in Frost Presence.
Sure it isn't as good overall for mitigation, but it still shows as being a relatively well thought through tweak.

 

Cloudgatherer

It does affect all incoming damage, but it will be slightly weaker even for magic damage.

3.1 Frost presence knocks 10% off, and new Blade Barrier knocks 5% off. However, they are multiplicative, not additive, so...
Current (live today): 85% magic damage taken in frost presence
New: .9 (frost presence) * .95 (blade barrier) = .855 or 85.5% magic damage taken (so a slight magic damage increase of half a percent).

Someone above just did some math to show that it is a clear nerf for physical damage (I'd hope that would be obvious), so the overall combination of Blade Barrier + Frost Presence will be weaker in 3.1 than it is now.

At this point, I do not think Blade Barrier is powerful enough to justify the requirement it currently has to only be a 10 second buff when both blood runes are on CD. I would change it to be a pure passive 5% damage reduction talent, the buff/rune requirements are unnecessary. I recall from early beta when Blade Barrier required ALL your runes to be spent, I find it funny that it has changed so much that I'm suggesting we just call it a flat 5% damage reduction and be done with it.

 

Soulsbane

The new Blade Barrier also still will never be active before the fight begins, so you are still at risk on the pull. Badly timed stun/incapacitate effects can still interrupt its uptime and leave you with a need to burn 2 sub-optimal GCD's to get it back up. At least with the decrease in effectiveness, I won't panic if it drops.

 

Apparition

Deimoz,

Going through your Frost Tanking Spec I thought you missed quite a few things out that I would prefer to take as a Frost based tank come 3.1.

Honestly I am not that sure that Two-Handed Weapon Specialization is that good specially with some of the changes coming in 3.1 there are other talents which we would be better picking up.

Secondly Lichborne is not worth the point now it's a total waste as it only makes you immune to Sleep, Charm, and Fear mechanics and at this stage of the game there is no Boss Encounter or Trash that will actually Sleep or Charm a MT or OT provided they have agro. Also there are not very many bosses that fear and those that do can be countered with Tremor Totems, Fear Wards etc so it's a useless PvE talent and more of a PvP based Talent now.

With the changes to Blessing of Sanc in 3.1 (it only gives Mana now) I would suggest that all Tank Spec's seriously consider picking up 3 points in Scent of Blood for extra Runic power generation whilst tanking it's effectively a mini personal version of Blessing of Sanc

The build I would prefer to consider for 3.1 would be:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...4&version=9658

You could sub the 2 points in Subversion to Two Handed Weapon Specialization for those that prefer it. But I think the DPS from Subversion would be a better boost overall to TPS.

 

Lanlaorn

I sincerely doubt that Scent of Blood is worth putting points into compared to other TPS choices, it's a 13.5% chance per hit (assuming you have a 10% chance to be missed) for 15 runic power over 10 seconds.

While it would proc all the time on trash, on a boss when you actually need the TPS it would have pitiful uptime. It would actually be worse RP generation than a Resto Druid's Replenish ticks. I don't think it's worth 3 talent points unless you've exhausted all your other TPS options, and with Blade Barrier and 2h weapon spec on the same tier I don't see that happening.

 

clairecakes

I don't really understand the Blood specs I'm seeing that skip Will of the Necropolis. Seems absolutely silly to go so deep into Blood and skip a relatively important tank talent. Yes it is nerfed compared to now (a mini-GS was way too overpowered) but in fights like 3D-Sarth (which we all seem to believe is indicative of what is too come) it is still extraordinarily useful for those big hits.

There's also the fact that you're skipping it (and thus mitigation) for TPS, something Blood has never had trouble with and will actually be having an easier time of come 3.1.

I'd argue the new Blood spec would be something like this. Between Morbidity and the new Blood Boil you should have no problem holding aoe aggro and you still have what is arguably the best single target tps.

There's still a few kinks to work out with the above spec. I'm not sold on Scent of Blood over Subversion and there's clearly some testing to be done to figure out exactly how to spec on the unholy side, but I'd certainly hazard to say it's going to do a better job of keeping you alive come Ulduar. Remember when advancing through content health and survival are going to be a bit better then a little oomph to TPS. Seems quite a few of the people in this thread forget that. :/

 

DWeidman

Why would you say that and then go into Blood Gorged (which is now ONLY a TPS talent - you don't even get expertise from it)?

My reasons for skipping WotN at the moment is because I am waiting for the math to be done to see if we are going to see a S3D hit in Uldar - and if WotN will be a saving talent. My current concerns are around holding groups to me - because Pest then BB will take another full CD from our current Pest (which hits decently hard without the extra CD).

Oddly enough - I could very easily see double specc'ing tank specs - one for trash and groups - and one for single target (TPS/EH). The days of working out the best compromised spec to give you all around abilities may be done at the moment - replaced by dual tank specs for the occasion at hand.

@Lanlaorn - it was reported earlier (I believe in this thread) that Scent of Blood was putting out a lot of RP (griefknight maybe?). I am not sold yet either on it - and am waiting to see how it does in my testing. Subversion's usefulness has been lowered a bit - as it is only working on HS now - (Oblit will be dropped as a disease eater on blood specs (now that lichborne is gutted - there is little reason to head 13/14 deep in frost)).

 

Dardrious

One thing I'm curious about, and haven't been able to get onto the PTR to test it:

The new version of the Icebound Fortitude glyph bumps the damage reduction up to at least 30% regardless of defense. Does that negate the unglyphed version's bonus defense scaling or does it just mean that the base percentage is going up and will still scale with your defense? If the latter is the case (which I hope it is), what would the resulting percent be with 540 defense? The wording is a tad too tricky for me to fully understand at 2am. Any insight would be fantastic.

 

firewulf

The wording would indicate that percent reduction will be calculated as normal, but it will min at 30% instead. Someone with 540 defense shouldn't see a difference.

 

Wråck

Hi,

Not a great experience of blood tanking but i use to believe that as blood we were higly dependant of armor debuff like sunder or expose.
Isn't 3.1 BG now a mandatory talent giving a blood tank the possibility of self-assume it's build/tps ?

(And -very- eventually having 10% more dps when topped off but this is very rng)

 

Crax

Actually, it's been pretty definitively proven that 2H Spec easily beats Subversion point for point for all specs except DW (obviously). It's somewhere in the main DPS thread. A search should find it if you need proof.

 

Shadai

A tank at 540 defense sees approximately a 41% reduction in damage using IBF. Since the wording on the glyph indicates 30% regardless, its taking the 20% to 30% and that's it. Now, if the wording was changed to "Increases the damage reduction of your IBF by 10%" then it would be a buff to tanks. Unfortunately this is ultimately a nerf, taking a perfectly good glyph for tanking and turning it into pure PVP fodder, just as they did to Lichborne (talent).

Personally I wish they'd just keep the glyph as is. Free IBF was far easier to plan around when RS'ing like mad so one didn't have to save 20 rp back. Especially now with the incoming BoSanc nerf.

Death Knight Questions? Here are some answers!

 

jimmyolsen

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious but what does Death Rune Mastery actually do for you as a Blood Tank? Now that you WANT Icy touch and Plague Strike in your rotation, wouldn't the rotation (assuming 3/3 morbidity) be something like:


DnD -> IT -> PS -> HS -> DS-> HS -> Repeat? All the Death Rune lets you do is switch your DS to two Heart Strikes every other time; however, considering the TPS output of Death Strike, is that really worthwhile?

 

sanddemon

Is Improved Death Strike really worth the replacement of Obliterate? It was my understanding that the new talent only affected damage and not health-gained, so I'm not seeing it outdoing the TPS coming from Obliterate. If it was a flat 20% across the board (damage and healing), I could maybe see it outdoing OB unglyphed...

 

clairecakes

You death strike on single targets. On aoe groups you want more blood/death runes so you can have more Blood Boil/Heart Strikes. Also, ideally you won't be dropping a DND as part of your standard rotation, just as an opener. The DS rotation would actually look very similar to the current Diseased Blood rotation, but with Death Strikes rather then Obliterates.

Blood Gorged gives you a flat 10% increase in DPS (and thus TPS), it also gives you armor pen which makes you less reliant on warriors and rogues (and a Blood DK is hella reliant on those sunder givers). I can't see giving up that and WotN for a little AOE TPS boost (and I'll admit that Unholy Blight did little for my TPS when I spec'd Unholy tanking briefly).

And I suppose the dual tank specs will work for some, personally I'll be on DPS duty when less then 3 tanks are required so that won't be an option for me. A jack of all trades progression tank spec is what I'll need. Which means a mini GS on a 15 second cooldown with GREAT single target TPS and decent AOE TPS (go go our pally tank!) and a great deal of stam (I think everyone can agree effective health is the numero uno stat for progression tanking).

 

Kashir

With Lichborne nerfed, Obliterate changes from a 3 point investment to a 5 point investment in Frost. There's now quite a few nice talents in early Unholy, to the point where it's even viable to spec down to Unholy Blight.

That's not to say that OB isn't worth it anymore; for maximising single target Blood threat, the best build will still probably be 50/13/8 or something like that. If you want to go into Unholy however, DS should be a viable alternative to OB.

If there's no major changes, I'm keen on trying out 42/8/21. I'm in love with the current Frost tree, but they're changing too much at once and I'm not convinced it's going to work.

 

Apparition

What you are not taking in to account is that with much of the changes coming in 3.1 actually will affect our automatic recovery of Runic Power sure you can take things like Replenish into account but a druid has to have spec'd in to that and many do not. Secondly it's only a 15% chance to proc on Rejuv and druids do not constantly cast Rejuv on a tank they only cast it when it expires or they use up swiftmend and this actually eats the replenish buff from what I have heard. This means that statistically it's worse than Scent of Blood and will have significantly less uptime than u think.

Scent of Blood is proc'd from Dodge, Parry or When you take Direct damage this means that as a tank it will have a very good chance of proc'ing quite often limited by the once every 10 seconds only.

It's also effectively a free extra 15 runic power on proc available every 10 seconds and that could be the difference between being able to use IBF at a critical point in an encounter or not having enough Runic Power to cast it because you have just done a RP Burn for TPS.

It's not really had enough time to proof just how good it will be but my gut feel is with the nerf to Blessing of Sanc many DK's are going to be spec'ing into Scent of Blood for the extra RP generation whilst tanking

 

Foundry

As long as Rune Strike continues to represent about 40% of my threat on a single target fight I will look to utilise any RP generation to offset the cost of being able to RS every swing. Having tested the new Scent, it's nowhere near BoSanc RP generation rate, but Scent is not that bad in the PTR incarnation compared to outright awful in the current Live version.

An RS glyph related to RP generation or efficiency is the next step, but overall this speaks more about the Rune Strike having a problem than RP generation which I think is fine. I never macro'd Heroic Strike into all my tanking skills as a Warrior, I definitely had it lit almost all of the time via key press or mouse wheel (HS was usually #1 damage ability) but the choice was mine to make if I felt rage starved, that is the key issue.

Rune Strike is a no brainer; if you tank, you spend RP on RS above all so you macro it in to everything except one or two skills so you can have something to attack with while holding your RP steady for IBF or alike. That's poor design as Rune Strike itself is there to compensate for us having a real issue if a rotation ability fails and throws out our TPS and cycle. Problem on a problem.

 

urotas

The problem I have with Scent of Blood is that it's mostly effective while tanking multiple mobs, where runic power generation is less useful for aoe threat. Against single targets where you most need that runic power it provides fairly weak runic power generation, especially against slow hitters.

The PTR version is a 15% chance on dodge, parry or hit to generate 5 runic power on your next 3 melee swings with a 10 second internal cooldown. A boss hitting moderately fast at every 2.5 seconds and a 89% chance not to be missed will take 18.7 seconds or so to proc it once. Since it can't proc during the internal cooldown, on average you're getting 15 runic power every 28.7 seconds. This will buy you 40 RP for an extra death coil every 76 seconds, which is pretty horrible for 3 talent points.

 

Apparition

I do agree with the fact that it it should have a much higher proc rate for 3 talent points. Maybe adding an additional 5% per per point to a proc rate of 25% would be better which means 1/4 of the time it's proc'ing unless the internal cooldown is up.

The biggest problem we have is that we do not have an passive way to generate Runic Power yet many of out abilities including our main threat assisting skill (Rune Strike) use RP to function. The other tanks have better passive abilities for generating the core skill mechanic power system than us.

However the tanks that I can see benefiting the most out of these changes are actually Paladins as they have not had any of their Mana Regeneration abilities touched and Blizzard is actually taking about boosting some of it because of the changes to 3.1 Mana Regeneration overall. It can also be noted that Paladins benefit the most from Shadow Priests, Survival Hunters and now Mages being in the raid as they will get a constant stream of Mana.

IMHO they need to make the Replishment Skill not just cover mana but also Rage, RP and Energy.

 

nachrichter

Good lord man. That's an incredible idea. They should go through the effort of rebalancing warriors, druids, rogues and dks in all roles just to give us enough RP to Rune Strike without concern.

Rage and Energy are fine. If perma-DP and BoSanc aren't enough for prot pally mana, they can tweak that directly. RP is fine if you ignore Rune Strike. Rune Strike is the only broken thing in there. It's currently a dumb ability that is stronger than it should be in PvP and not very well setup for PvE.

This thread is like a lich except his phylactery is the mind-numbing idiocy of every imbecile that walks the earth. -Slake
<Sappo> ARE YOU NOT MURGGRUGURGURGMRRMGRU?
<Sappo> ARE YOU NOT MORGRUGURGRMRGURGGRMGURGRMG?

 

Max

Suno, just curious why you recommend DnD glyph rather than SS for unholy. It's always been my experience that the last thing unholy needs is more AE threat. SS glyph results in higher single target threat, no?

 

Zerath

DnD (pre-nerf, at least) woven in to your single target threat rotation for Unholy proved to increase over all TPS than decrease it. It's more difficult to pull off with Frost due to OB/HB but with Unholy it was perfect.

DnD -> IT -> PS -> BS/BB // SS -> [SS -> IT -> PS] -> (repeat from DnD) or // SS -> IT -> PS -> DnD given your latency.

With basic rune cooldowns, I can't figure out how I used to get two SS off and still get in IT + PS then DnD, sorry.

(Note: I'm rather sick, so, I may just be counting incorrectly.)

 

Max

Ok, yeah...I know that used to be the case. Seems kind of hard to pull off in some encounters when lots of movement is required. Still worth it for STT provided your target stays in the AE? How extensively has this been tested since DnD was nerfed?