Durzil

I don't see the flat 10% increase while tanking since your going to be bouncing hps all the time.

For the 5 talent points is it really worth the armor pen? I'm asking this because I was considering specing something like this? It seemed a waist of points to pick up blood gorged for what seemed to me to be a minimal amount of tps.

 

ZaoZao

Actually Replenish was renamed to revitalize, and can now procc from Rejuv as well as Wild Growth. I'm not all up to date with the druid class, but I suppose it will be quite nice to spend those 3 points now, since WG is used fairly often (with the new Glyph it hits 6 targets). And there is a Glyph for Druids that prevents Swiftmend to eat hots, and last time I checked this was a mandatory Glyph.

 

Fog

I've been a frost tank all my DK like, tanked all content available (except 3 drakes which I did on my rogue, DK only did 2 drakes so far). I have pretty much the best gear available (a couple of slots can still get minor upgrades). My guild is very trigger happy especially in AOE packs which made me adapt my rotations to suit it as we always aim for very fast clears of content.

So, most of the times I skip Plague Strike all together and set on a more simple rotation such as:

DnD - IT - Pest - Blood Tap - HB to get snap aggro on all mobs. After that I focus on using HB every time it is available and refresh diseases, possibly throwing one Bloodboil here and there if I have an extra blood rune. I tend not to refresh DnD as most packs are killed before it has a chance to tick to it's full extent. I found this to be more efective than using Plague Strike as your first HB will be delayed, which is not good on heavy aoe raids.

Reading up on the info available from the PTR, it seems that Blizzard intends us to start using diseases more thouroughly. The changes to HB applying FF (with glyph) and scaling it to double damage not dependant on diseases seems to travel the other direction though.

I was thinking about the possible AOE rotations for a Frost tank.

A simple rotation will probably be something like:

DnD - HB (all targets diseased with FF, one blood rune left) - BloodBoil - keep chaining HB everytime it pops up, refresh DnD and use Bloodboil for leftover Blood Runes).

In my opinion, they "dumbed down" the spec which is something I don't particulary like. Unless they make Plague Strike be really worth it, I can't see myself using it or Pestilence for that matter in their current form.

Currently, an efficient aoe rotation avoids the second disease as it delays the usage of HB by a lot, however, due to the increase cooldown it may well come to a point where you have to use it because you don't have any other place to spend the runes (have to do the math to see if refreshing DnD does more threat as I expect it to, since it's either one or the other).

However, seeing as Blizzard has stated the intention of having DKs use their diseases more thouroughly, I get the feeling something will still be done. The change of HB to not scale with diseases is awckward because it contradicts the stated intention. Seeing as Blizzard also changed Glyph of Pestilence to refresh diseases also on your current target, it might come to a point where the rotation is a bit more complex, such as this:

1 - DnD - HB - BloodBoil
Both DnD and HB are on cooldown aswell as all the runes

-- Runic Power dump phase (Frost Strike mostly) --

2 PS - Pest (one frost rune left, another one is coming with a unholy rune)

3 - The extra Frost rune can either be used to proc Unbreakable Armor if available (which always tended to be difficult to use due to no frost runes available) or just use Blood Tap and use an Obliterate to consume it with the provided Death Rune).

4 - When the Frost and Unholy runes become available, use HB again as the cooldown will match the refreshing of runes

5 - BloodBoil again

Big problem is, not using Icy touch in the rotation disables the benefits of Rime. Seeing as HB is only truly useful on aoe packs, having rotations that don't use Icy Touch can be a good or bad thing: good because it frees up 3 talent points to spend elsewhere, or bad because HB will always cost runes and Rime was always one my prefered talents). Yes, the free HB can also be used on single target generation every time Rime procs, but the benefits are probably not enough to justify a 3 point investment.

So, my point is: if you use Glyph of Howling blast you end up not having much use for Rime. This is assuming there is no benefit from using Icy Touch on aoe pack rotations which is probably where I'm missing something. You could think of just doing a normal rotation with IT and Pest initially, and just refreshing the disease with HB, but the longer cooldown doesn't make it that all appealing since you can't hope to use more HBs in the mean time.

Am I seeing it wrong? Is there a more efficient rotation for frost tanks in 3.1?

 

Shadai

Are you seeing it wrong? Well, yes and no.

Couple of things. First, HB doesn't affect mobs with FF unless its glyphed. It's the glyph that allows HB to also inflict mobs with FF. Secondly, Rime isn't completely useless... a free HB is still an extra OB. Besides that it still does increase your crit strike chance for IT and OB.

You bring some very good points to the table. I'm concerned about what will happen to Rime since HB was brought up to a 10 sec CD as well.

As far as rotations go we can speculate all we want. Hell, someone on the PTR can test it and figure out the max threat rotation (the new IT>pest>HB>OB). Not a horrible idea, but they are still tinkering with our formulas and one push one way or another could invalidate someones work. We may find out in testing that glyphing HB is not the way to go, thus the use of IT and PS come into play. Or, we may find out that running frost with just FF up is still the way to go, after all, there are some people muttering about diseaseless blood being back again.

That being said, with the information we have so far, I believe your thoughts are in the right place.

Death Knight Questions? Here are some answers!

 

Fog

Good points. I should have clarified in my post that I assumed HG Glyph to be present and I forgot about the crit chance increase from Rime which is too good to pass up, seeing that HB and OB are our biggest threat builders in aoe and single target tanking.

Judging by the rotation I posted, if we use HB as a disease refresher and initial direct attack, we always end up having one frost rune hanging around. I was using it to trigger UA or use Blood Tap for an extra OB, in any case both abilities have cooldowns so, in the end, we can also use it for Icy Touch every now and then which at least gives us a chance of getting a Rime proc and get more bang for the buck in terms of benefit per talent point. In a rotation such as this and having HB on a 10 second cooldown makes it that, if HB costs no runes, you end using OB in the middle more often, which is not that relevant in an AOE pack.

So, I'm really starting to think if the glyph is useful or not:

1 - It allows you to use HB as FF refresher
2 - That saves you a frost rune in each rotation which can only be used for UA, OB (with blood tap) or Icy Touch, which are not really relevant in aoe tanking.

One could think of not using it as an opener and just as a refresher of diseases, but the longer cooldown results in you wanting to use it as soon as possible so you can actually use it more than once. In it's current stand, the 5 second cooldown is very nice with rime procs because you can use it in between rune cooldowns. In it's PTR form, there doesn't seem to be much benefit from Rime if you factor in the Glyph.

Oh well, time will tell.

Another thing that is currently on my mind is our nerf to single target generation. OB has been reduced to 80% weapon damage. The main reason why I specced into frost was that I considered it to be the best all-around tanking build. Marginally lower AOE threat than Unholy, much better ST threat. However, the reduction in OB plus the buff to Scourge Strike might buff Unholy ST threat to Frost levels. If that is the case, and with the huge Lichborne nerf, I currently don't see any advantages in going Frost vs Unholy.

Unholy still has a strength buff, higher magic damage reduction, better aoe threat (at least on paper, though I like the BOOM factor of HB versus Unholy Blight) and Bone Shield looks more atractive than the new UA (could be wrong here). If ST threat becomes on-par with Frost, I guess we'll be seeing less and less Frost tanks around which is a shame.

 

Zarqon

Regarding unholy and single target threat, I don't think it will ever become equal to that of frost, and the reason is this: For DKs, the threat mostly comes from personal dps with a threat multiplier. Unholy however, has a larger portion of it's damage coming from pets, like ghoul and gargoyle, which contribute to total damage done but is not apart of personal dps and thus not threat. I assume now that blizzard balances the three trees from a dps perspective, and this will naturally lead to lower single target threat for unholy.

Caveat: I know that DnD has an extra threat bonus, and that this skill is improved in unholy, but as it is designed for AoE, even if it proves useful for single target as well, I doubt it is enough to make up for the pet parts. Remember, you give up 3 runes worth of other skills to use it, so even if it gives an improvement in ST it's bound to be marginal.

 

Fyrestryke

As far as I know from recent notes they are increasing the Bone Shield CD to 2 minutes. That is a significant nerf to Unholy tanking.

 

Ashur25

All 36pt tanking talents are 2 min cd now (even UA according to GC). Which makes BS probably the best one because it is the only one that really scales with gear

 

Shadai

I know that blizzard wants us to use the diseases, but for frost aoe tanking I don't see the use of PS. Its single target, sure it hits harder but damage from diseases (any) has been negligible at best. The aoe strikes we have don't benefit from using PS in any way unless you're blowing off a OB on the main threat. Unless the damage from BB is leagues better with two diseases over one I'm just not seeing it worth the GCDs you have to blow for the advantage. Pestilence not doing damage anymore is pretty lame and I think it may mess up more then a few rotations. If your gyphing HB to spread FF, then I doubt any frost tank will be using pest in its current PTR form. Blowing two GCDs just to spread BP for minor threat is something I don't see many Frost tanks doing, not when those runes can be used for something far more useful.

In single target I see the use, and it will only modify the current rotation a bit.

Death Knight Questions? Here are some answers!

 

Buanna

Vampiric Blood gives a percentage of total health. Unbreakable Armor is based off your current armor. Those both increase as your gear increases.

Boni and Bonii are not words.
Bonuses is.

 

Cloudgatherer

Whether to use Plague Strike, to me, is an issue of how long the pack will live. The little skitterers in naxx don't live long enough to justify even trying to spread that disease, but my "normal" aoe opener is along the lines of DnD-IT-PS-Pest, which is not that much burst threat, but it is very strong if the pack lives long enough for that damage to add up. This is assuming the current (3.0.9) thinking, as I have DnD talented and glyphed even as a frost tank in order to plow thru Naxx as quickly as possible. In 3.1, Pest will no longer deal damage, but at the end of that first rotation DnD and both diseases are ticking on the mobs. If Ulduar trash is as easy as Naxx trash, then I may consider the HB glyph in order to effectively tank the trash nearly on my own, but my current assumption is that the trash won't be quite the walk in the park the current Naxx trash is.

 

Ashur25

BS scales with several stats while the other 2 only scale with one. VB scales only with health and UA scales only with armor (which goes up very slowly). Both have a fixed time.

BS on the other hand scales with Boss damage (and therefore indirectly with health since bosses damage goes up each tier as health from items goes up each tier) plus it also scales with avoidance (and thus time).

I'm pretty certain BS will be far better in T9 than UA and VB

 

Cloudgatherer

The current ptr Unbreakable Armor isn't even a good tanking talent at this point. Presuming armor values of 30-35K, the damage off per hit will be 1500 - 1750 (1800 - 2100 with new glyph). Assuming a strength of 1000 to 1300, the parry gained from the strength will be ~1.27% to ~1.65% parry. We are talking ~1.5% avoidance gain (maybe, DR applies) and tops of 2K damage off a hit from a boss for 20 seconds every 2 minutes.

Meanwhile, on the DPS/threat side of the house, a 2 minute cooldown that increases strength by 25% (strength around 1200-1500, AP gain of 600-750!) is looking really nice. The effect is more powerful than the 2 minute CD +AP trinkets (see [Loatheb's Shadow]), not to mention the added bonus of scaling with kings (strength * 1.1 * 1.25 for duration of UA).

Overall, the new UA is a disappointing tanking talent, especially when comparing side by side with BS or even VB. On the flip side, if a DPS build is going deep frost, it's a significant burst damage ability, or a tank could use it to burst some threat.

 

Feliska

As a potential Sarth 3D spec, post 3.1 -how does this look?
3/32/36

For straight magic mitigation, I would think this spec could work.
But I am not sure if missing out on Spell Deflection/VotW is worth gaining 23% flat spell mitigation.

 

Warstehgnome

I have to agree that the new UA is an extremely dissapointing MT tanking talent. That said, with the advent of druids getting a shield block, along with us, that means things can be tuned to work with this in mind, everyone is able to block(well at least dks whom are frost).

I would like to see some larger availability of scaling with UA, sure, 1400 sucks, and even 1600 sucks with raid buffs(though it will be nice to use on packs that do not hit for 10k). I would like to see something more along the lines of 2k absorbtion, that would make it at least negotiable as the 15% health from VB is like 4k usually(nevermind the Guardian spirit effect).

UA is more than likely not done and I would be very surprised to see lichborne in its horrible state make it to live.

We are right now tanking on the PTR with fewer cooldowns and longer cooldowns as well. There is more than likely still a few weeks or more on the PTR. We should see at least two more ptr pushes.

Frost is my main spec and I love it, I love the synergy it has with the rune cooldown and Frost Strike. Though, I hope I'm not forced to go blood due to the need for crazy high hp in Ulduar.

Tsarurukai, Tank of <OP> Blackrock
www.op-guild.net
Tankspot Member Wars.

 

Fog

It would be interesting if they added some sort of stamina buff to the frost tree, but as they also removed the Unholy stamina buff I doubt that will happen.

Looking at Ulduar fights, the damage a tank takes seems very high. Blood seems to be taking the route of EH tanking with the plus side of self healing. It wouldn't surprise me if they wanted each talent tree to follow a specific trend (like Self-healing (or EH), Avoidance and Mitigation). I always looked at the trees like this as the 36 pointers are a step in each direction (BS is a mitigation talent, UA was an avoidance one and Vampiric Blood is a self-heal, EH type ability).

The current UA in PRT is a mitigation talent but mostly a threat generation one which kinda contradicts the old trends. In my opinion, the nerf to Lichborne is an exageration. I agree 25% might be too much but they could have done things differently. One option would be to switch it with UA so it was not accessible by other trees and reduce it to maybe 10% making it a strong avoidance talent, but not overpowered especially after the nerf to Blade Barrier. As it is now, I doubt I will even take it in a frost tank build as there are several other ways of avoiding fears and stuns (Fear ward, trinket) and we need all the talent points we can get in order to improve our threat and maximize our tanking potencial.

Even Deathchill seems like a better choice for a tank, especially now that Howling Blast can be effectively used to get snap aggro on a group of mobs (as the damage is not dependant on diseases being applied), and DC + HB is a lot of instant threat.

I agree there was some need for nerfs but I also think they took it too far. I specced Unholy to try it out, went into VH heroic and in one of the boss fights I popped BS just before the pull. In the end, I had 5 charges left, which means I was hit 1 time during the all fight, and I got hit for 5k. Yes, RNG was nice obviously, but this is obviously OP and clearly needed some tweaking.

However, what concerns me the most is the fact that several people are complaining about threat in the PTR. I never had problems with threat in live but there are also several people complaining about that. I never felt my threat is 30% inferior to all other tanking classes like people are mentioning. So far, Dev responses to it are evasive, somewhere in the lines of "a tank must also spec and gear for threat", or some nice pearls like "some tanks spam Runic Strike every time it is available and then wonder where they runic power went", which scares me a bit because Runic Strike is probably our most essential threat booster (I have it macroed to all my main abilities except Frost Strike). This comment can only mean one of two things: either Devs are displaying lack of knowledge of our real tanking mechanics (unlikely I hope) or something was changed under the hood and we don't know about it yet.

 

urotas

I'm currently considering making 2 tanking specs as dual-specs. One would be a blood spec for EH tanking and hard hitting bosses, while the other one would be a frost spec for aoe tanking and greater mitigation. Unbreakable Armor is certainly not a very good boss tanking ability compared to VB and BS, but it is very powerful for tanking a large number of adds.

Frost 13/51/7
- This build gets 4% reduced spelldamage, 3% miss, Unbreakable Armor and Acclimation. I've heard Acclimation is useful for several boss fights in Ulduar, but I may remove those points in favor of 2H-weapon spec and 1/3 Subversion if Blood proves better at tanking those encounters.

Blood 57/5/9
- This build gets Veteran of the Third War, Rune Tap, Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis. I usually have several other people in the raid applying the 20% melee slow, so I would rather use the 3 points in Improved Icy Touch for more threat/mitigation elsewhere now that Lichborne is useless.
- Spell deflection doesn't seem to work for environmental damage or hits from elemental mobs from my brief testing, so I've skipped it for now. It effectively provides 6% reduced spell damage from a very limited set of abilities. If it's useful for many Ulduar bosses, I may consider including it.
- Blood Gorged will be a very good threat ability if the 75% health effect has a fair uptime, and a fairly poor one if it has nearly no uptime. The armor penetration effect itself is worth ~2.5-3.5% threat. In my experience you spend most of the time in a boss fight at full health, spiking up and down occasionally. Even with the BB nerf we'll still have around 60%+ avoidance, so you'll often get miss streaks. If your healers are good at topping you up, Blood Gorged should be an excellent threat ability.'
- I'm wondering if Necrosis would be worth taking over the less effective threat talents in Blood like Subversion and Sudden Doom. The 10th point in Unholy is relatively worthless for threat, but Necrosis is a very good investment point for point.
- Right now Scent of Blood isn't really worth taking, but buffs in a later build may change that.

Threat is a concern for people, because we are losing threat from both Blessing of Sanctuary and less Rune Strikes. With strikes scaling better with diseases, Frost will also likely switch to rotations that generate less runic power. Without Blessing of Sanctuary or a similar ability, you will only rarely have enough runic power to use Death Coil or Frost Strike if you are Rune Striking at every opportunity. Frost Strike is usually 15-20% of my threat as a Frost spec, and without Blessing of Sanctuary I'll likely lose most of those strikes. Since FS is much more important for Frost than Death Coil for Blood, Frost may be hit the hardest with the BoS change.

 

Fog

I believe people underestimate the power of Subversion. If we're talking about threat, getting a 9% crit chance increase on your main threat abilities (especially in Blood tanking), for 3 talent points, doesn't seem like wasted points. I even use it on my Frost Tank build to buff Obliterate (I do however skip Epidemic on Unholy tree as I find my rotations are efficient enough without the added time on diseases).

Which raises another interesting topic for discussion: the value of epidemic was allowing one more OB in a typical frost tanking rotation. It seems that disease duration will be increased in the patch which obviously changes the relative value of epidemic. As anyone done any testing on this? Is it now more or less useful?

 

• frmorrison

I see Scent for Blood get tweaked to give more RP and/or reduce the cooldown on procs if DK tanks end up too low on RP to generate threat. Also, they could assume you all have it since it costs 8 points to get.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Warstehgnome

I am quite dedicated to being a blood tank once 3.1 drops with its(at the moment) increased aoe tps along with the sudden doom change(free death coil no GCD required), I see blood with some ample hit/expertise being just a hands down choice for tanking if not better than at least on par with the other two specs for all aspects of the game.

I am sad to see Frost Strike possibly take a hit from this because I have been frost forever, but blood is shaping up nice.

Tsarurukai, Tank of <OP> Blackrock
www.op-guild.net
Tankspot Member Wars.

 

Fog

Well Blood of the North now increases Frost Strike's damage by 15% and with the nerf of Blade Barrier you can expect to actually spend more runic power on Frost Strike and less on Runic Strike (since there is a 10% reduction in procs). So, I don't believe Frost Strike is dead, much on the contrary.

Blizzard hinted they would further tweak Scent of Blood and because of it's position in the tree, can be the answer to our Runic Power problems after 3.1. I'm used to having Glyph of Frost Strike aswell and I never found I lack the runic power to throw at least one in each rotation (and yes, I have RS macroed to every ability, except FS ofc).

 

Arafela

Considering this part in the rotation, you are kind of depending on both the rune cooldown and the HB cooldown to sync in your rotation. Therefore, would Rime not mess up this rotation? Even if you use the refreshed HB on a rime proc and do an Obliterate right after, in your next line, your rune CD will be off by at least 1 general CD compared to your HB countdown. And it is not as if you have the luxury of a spare rune available to fill this gap. A Rune dump could be an option then, if there is available. Or as backup option use HoW to generate RP if it aint on cooldown. Basically you need a backup available that will fill the time lost between HB coming off cooldown and your Runes coming from cooldown that does not cost more then a General CD so you can go back to synchronizing HB with Rune cooldown.

 

Darian_TruBlade

This isn't exactly correct as VB also scales with your healers' stats. The benefit is harder to measure than the Avoidance scaling of BS, but it is present nonetheless.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

kniteblade

Hello all. I have been following this thread for around a month, and just wanted to say thanks for all the usefull information and time you have all spent. I just made an account here so that I can ask questions that I come up with, and put my toughts down. I am not a theorycrefter, but I do play a lot, and consider myself a good dk.

I wanted to say that I believe that with the 3.1 changes, Blizzard should also change the mechanics of spell deflection talent. I use a unholy build with Veteran of third war for tanking most of the time, because i really like the extra 6%stam and 6%strength. But now that were loosing 10% Parry, I dont see spell deflection talent being worth at all. I only wanted to bring it up so that you can think about it. A solution would be to change it to a chance on hit, like acclimation, or change it somehow; in my opinion the talent is now nearly worthless.

 

Sinlore

Post 3.1 spec? I cant really find any flaws except maybe a few points should be thrown around for more optimization. Suggestions? Does it suck?

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...1&version=9658

45/5/21

Raid Buffs (Abom, Hysteria)
High Single Target Threat (Blood Spec)
High AoE threat (UB,BB,CE,HS)
High Avoidance
Vamp Blood
Good Expertise and Spell hit rating