Dash

For Vezax hardmode it's all about making the healers spend as little mana as possible in phase 1. The best tank for that are blood DKs because of the self healing abilities. If you used that spec, then you have put a huge amount of stress on the healing and you should be thankfull that they managed to keep you alive throughout the encounter.

The best spec for vezax (imo) is:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Bloody Strikes: At Vezax I always keep at least 1 blood rune off cooldown so I can pop Rune Tap as soon as I dip a little in health. On top of that I'll also use the blood rune for Vamp Blood, but that's only 2 times in the fight I get to use that one. As a whole though, I won't be using heart strike much at Vezax so Bloody Strikes isn't a very important talent imo. But you could max it out for Necrosis and 1 point of Ravenous Dead I suppose.

Improved Icey Touch: A must if you dont have any1 putting the 20% attack slow on the mob. Assuming you dont have any other tank specced players in the raid you need this talent.

Hysteria: A must have. Not for yourself, but to give it to your best physical dmg player in your raid. It's a HUGE dmg increase for the raid for just 1 talent point.

Improved Blood presence: I like the talent for self healing. Granted it's not a whole lot, but then there's not much else to get at that point in the tree.

Spell Deflection: Don't bother with that for a Vezax-only talent spec. Vezax does zero magic damage to the tank.

DRM, Morbidity & Sudden Doom: Don't bother with these either. You don't want DRM because you want to death strike as much as possible. That makes Sudden Doom a pointless talent and Morbidity too expensive a talent.

I hope this helps you repeat the encounter in a smoother fashion. This method works like a charm for me on Vezax 10m hardmode.

P.S. What the hell is that blood spec in your armory atm? For the life of me I can't figure out your intentions with it hehe.

 

Elimbras

Just read it, my DK is an alt, my main is priest.
You might want to know that the priest "wings" (guardian spirit) do not only prevent the death of the player, but also increases by 40% the healing he receives, as long as the effect is active. This second effect is often enough to ensure that the death insurance is not used, when there is no "one-shot" strike, but only fast hard-hitting hits.

 

Taizu

You took some very questionable talents there.
- 3/3 Ravenous Dead is no way a tanking talent; 3% STR is not worth 3 talent points for tanks. The only build that are justified for taking that is unholy (for ghoul buff) and blood (just so they can go deeper and get necrosis+BCB, plus they have a lot of STR multiplier)
- 2/2 imp Blood Presence... A typical tank doing 3-4k DPS will heal 120-160 HPS. ONE Rejuvenation tick is 2.4k every 3 seconds - that means ONE Rejuvenation heals for 800 HPS. Seriously, 1 SINGLE Rejuv from a SINGLE druid heals for 5 times as much as your 2 talent points. That talent is useless.
- I have a mixed feeling about Mark of Blood. 4% of your HP is really not that significant, considering that you heal 15% of your max HP everytime you DS, and heal 20% of your max HP everytime you Rune Tap.
- Hysteria is nice to buff the DPS, but at this level I would be more concerned about holding threat, and your build is very lacking on that department.

TL;DR, I tweaked your build to fit the job.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Pugnus

It also boosts healing done to you by 10% .... although that's irrelevant to tanking since it's blood presence.

 

Dash

3% strength or 9% critrate on heart strike that I'll rarely use? Both are mediocre threat talents, I suppose it's what you prefer. Like I said, I went for 1 point in Necrosis which is definately a better threat per talent point then Bloody Strikes or Subversion. Since it affects your runestrikes as well.

imp Blood presence. Like I said, its a crap talent, but it heals you nonetheless. For Vezax you want to alleviate the healers as much as possible. So if you can keep your threat high enough then why not?

Vezax is a dps race. Your dps needs to be high enough so that your healers dont go oom before the encounter is done. I'll grant your critisism on Imp BP is warranted if your threat is suffering, but there is no excuse to miss out on Hysteria for 1 measly talent point. A feral kitty can do about 5.5k sustainable dps on vezax easily, most will do 6k. That's about 15k dmg for 1 talent point and you can pop it twice, but you prefer 3% crit on HS you use about once every rotation? And I haven't even taken heroism/bloodlust into account, which should inflate that 30k dmg to even more.

I don't like Mark of Blood much either for a generic tank build. Bosses hit too slow for it to matter much. But again, for vezax it's a bonus. 45k hp buffed is not unusual for a Blood tank, which means the boss heals you for 1800hp every time he hits you.

At Vezax p1 I'd ideally want to get by with shields from pallies/disc priest and omen of clarity procs from the resto druids. Sometimes in 10m vezax hm that's enough to keep me alive for entire p1 and the healers will have spent the minimum amount of mana on me. I understand this won't be enough in 25m, but neither has my threat been an issue there and we dont even do vezax25 on hardmode where the real threatmonkies (locks/boomkins) need to conserve mana for p2. So I opted for max survival build

Your post + mine should give any1 a good idea on what spec will suit his/her guild the best I suppose

 

Taizu

My idea was, by taking DRM, we would have used HS way more often as you have Death Rune available in case you need to Rune Tap.

By not having to save a blood rune for an emergency Rune Tap we should have higher uptime on Blade Barrier (in case HS misses/dodged/parried).

I guess you're right that it all depends on your guild strengths/weaknesses... My guild has some very impatient DPS that always edges past my comfort zone while I am tanking, and my healers didn't have problem keeping the tank up. Gonna spend some quality time on vezax HM tonight and see I guess.

 

Reroller

Heart Strike should be your #2 ability used after Rune Strike, how can you say that you 'rarely use' this ability. If you are rarely using it, you're doing it wrong.

Last combat parse for General 25m HD, while tanking. . .my top damage abilities were:


Ability---------------Damage-------% Dmg----Total Hits----Avg. Hit----Hit Dmg----Crits---Avg Crit---Crit Dmg
#1: Rune Strike-----1059359-------24.6 %------338--------2190.9----740513-----70-----4554.9----318846
#2: Heart Strike-----963075---------22.4 %-----395--------1294.6----511385-----116----3562.2----413218

I'm hoping that formatting comes through. I know that at least when I am tanking General Vezax, I have a far from normal blood tank spec and I want to maximize my own TPS without relying on tricks/MDs as much as possible, in the end allowing casters to not hold back or waste their threat reducing abilities. I haven't had a problem with threat much at all which maybe due to casters not pushing enough or maybe I'm doing ok on threat too. I know our desto lock usually doing 11-13k tps plus though so I like to think my threat is doing alright.

I'm not particularly sure if you're doing 10 or 25 man HD General but either way, I was pretty thrown to see the words. . .heart strike, rarely used and blood tank spec all in one post.

 

concept84

I can't begin to imagine how you can keep threat with a build and strategy for how you dump your blood runes. In 10m we get Vezax to around 5% before the Animus pops, and I have to RT+VB because I can't afford not to HS or do anything else but hit the boss.

Time is also big on this fight, and if you can kill Vezax 15 seconds after the Animus dies that also reduces the healing your healers have to do.

 

• frmorrison

MoM is a very powerful threat/dps talent that also helps with AoE threat (via Blood Boil). You want that maxed if you care about threat, since it affects so many abilities at once. Even assuming a 15% crit rate, that is more damage than necrosis.

Depending on how often you use HS, you may want Sudden Death over Necrosis (also this depends if you have DRM and Morbidity to buff HS/Death Coil).

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

 

Mericet

I'm also a big fan of rune tap, but I'm not convinced that keeping a blood rune ready to use is advisable because you're giving up 5% damage reduction from blade barrier for the duration of the fight in order to do it. You can get around this by macroing blood tap and rune tap together on a different button (probably a good idea anyway) and/or taking death rune mastery for a higher availability of runes, which as others have noted also allows you more options for better threat with heart strike without limiting your death strikes if you don't need the threat.

 

Neb_dk

Im very sorry.
My own failure to post a skilltree and not to check the link.

The correct build was http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...&version=10048

and the killlog WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay.

I dont know why you discused such a shit of build.

Intersting conclusion from WoWMeter, healing can be a good tanking stat.
20 percent of my threat was because of healing.

 

Dash

Totally agree. Like I said, only done Vezax on 10m hardmode and we get him below 5% with 10 to 20s before p2 too and the only thing I get is tricks from a rogue. If you lack the threat, then off course you'll need to compromise your survival for more dps. But I dont and in 10m I end up 3rd on healing done outhealing the disc priest (whose shields dont register ofc). And the healers seem happy with my approach. Perhaps the healing threat I do is partly making up for the fewer heart strikes? As for VB I don't keep a blood rune off CD for that. I got it macro'd with Blood tap as well.

If I do some napkin math: 1 heart strike less in every rotation untill I drop enough hp to use RT. Which doesnt take more then 1 or 2 rotations. Without DRM you can only use heart strike 12 times a minute. Lets use Neb's WMO and assume my HS hits for an average of 2.1k. That's 25.2k dmg per minute, or 420 dps. With my rotation that's 3 fewer HS per minute or 105dps less. I'm terrible at math, so please correct me if I'm completely wrong. But if my napkin math is somewhat accurate I'm sacrificing a mere 100dps for optimal use of Rune Tap. How much more TPS is a 100dps compaired to 2 rune tap heals? I suppose I could use Blood Tap every minute with RT and gain a bit extra dps, but I prefer to keep VB available in case the ranged fucks up on a shadow crash.

@ Mericet: Blade barrier lasts 10 seconds, runes take 10 seconds to refresh. If I see my 2nd blood rune is coming off cooldown, I know I can use my other blood rune for a HS or if needed I pop the Rune Tap which also procs the blade barrier. So the 5% dmg reduction should have a 100% uptime.

 

Zurai

@Neb_DK:

That build still gives up far too much to gain the benefits of Frigid Dreadplate. You lose 45% crit damage on two of your best attacks, Will of the Necropolis, 10% damage, 10% armor penetration, another 4% damage (from 2h spec), and 15% heart strike damage. In return, you gain 3% non-autoattack melee crit, 10% extra damage on diseases and Icy Touch, and 3% chance to be missed. The runic power stuff is worthless -- you should have more than enough RP with 3/3 Scent of Blood. 10% disease damage and <3% overall crit don't nearly make up for all the damage and threat you're giving up, and 3% miss isn't THAT big a deal (especially when compared against the loss of Will of the Necropolis).

 

Exiled79

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression Necrosis was proven to be much stronger than Sudden Doom by Avirex even with Morbidity and Glyph of Dark Death:

 

Neb_dk

Threat was never a matter in this fight. It was about survivalbility.
Every 4,76 seconds they hitted me in the whole fight, so im not quit sure if will of the necropolis is quit usefull.
With about 46k hp buffed in avoidancegear i have to drop below 16 k hp to get use of this skill.
To gain full benefit of WoN i would loose my skillpoints in Epidemic and in Hearthstrike.

I think of frigid dreadplate as a rare skill to increase my avoidance.
Without this skill the lovely general would hit me about 8% more often, which would be 7-8 hits with around 19k damage.

 

Taizu

I don't know about you, but my mages/locks are constantly riding me on threat for vezax (I was frost until recent respec tonight).

Think of WOTN as another 15% EHP. Whenever you get hit to below 35% of your max HP, it got activated. You shouldn't wear avoidance gear for Vezax; he's more than capable of 3 shotting tanks (if all hits go through) in our current progression. Wearing maximum EHP would give your healers breathing room, plus EHP gear and blood synergyze very well.

 

Durzil

53/5/13 this is the build I came up with at the end of the day tho only thing that got moved was the points from sudden doom got moved into necrosis for hopefully better threat gains due to how much I runestrike.

 

Neb_dk

But WOTN is not another 15% EHP when its not used, because when you got rarely hit below 35%.
Your right that EHP gear would give them more breathing room, but have you mentioned the lack of mana in a 7 minute fight?

 

Griefknight

Why do people keep talking about using these disgusting X/5/X specs. When you don't have Improved Icy Touch that is the equivalent of a Warrior not having Improved Thunder Clap or a Druid not having Infected Wounds, its simply not an option. If you're going for more threat then why spec into WotN or Toughness? The reason being is because it would be stupid not to take WotN and Toughness. I like to think the same applies to Improved Icy Touch.

 

Devil Warrior

I'm not sure about your guild, but my guild raids with 2-3 Death Knights on average, and each of those DKs has Imp Icy Touch. No need for me to have it as a tank.

 

Alyse

Any frost DPS DK should have ITT; if you have at least 1 frost DPS DK in a 25 man, then it's not necessary as a tank to pick up the 3 points in ITT unless you're going for the additional damage to IT (which is very small, I think better used in other talents). In 10 mans, you may not have such a debuff and it may be wise to pick up, but it may not be necessary in 25 mans depending on your raid comp.

 

Karede

While it's true that any Frost DK will have this, I think that it's value for you as a tank is still such that it should be a nearly mandatory talent. Think about a fight like IC hardmode. You're tanking Steelbreaker for 3-5 minutes with no DPS on him at all. So even if you have a Frost DK, if you don't have IIT then you spending that entire time without that extra melee reduction, increasing incoming damage and the chances of a wipe. Yogg-Saron and you're tanking Crusher Tentacles. No melee should be on them anyways, so if you don't have IIT, then no debuff.

The small amount of extra threat that you might be able to gain from something like Necrosis instead of IIT isn't worth the risk that not having it represents.

 

Taizu

Nit picking here, but you're not supposed to get hit more than once or twice by the crusher tentacles. You just need to stay outside of melee range and watch the cast bar for diminish power. When it is completed, walk in and whack it (let it hit you) to remove the raid debuffs.

To stay in and tank them the entire time is needlessly taxing your healers mana, especially if you're running with less healers than usual (recommended).

 

Karede

Yeah, you're not going to get hit that often by the crusher tentacles. That doesn't give you a free pass to ignore the need for an attack speed debuff on them so that when you are there being hit, you get hit more often and thus further tax healer mana.

The point remains that you should be able to provide your attack speed debuff rather than relying on DPS for it.

 

Griefknight

What says that this Frost DK is keeping up ITT on the target you're tanking at all times and that he/she won't die? There are also a lot of guilds that don't have or want a Frost DK because they either have a 100% Enhance shaman or they would prefer the DK to be Unholy or Blood. Unholy DKs are the only class who can put the +13% Magic Damage Taken debuff on 10 targets with 2 GCDs if needed but normally 3 GCDs.