Taizu

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?

 

Mericet

You'll get more used to it and over time it'll naturally loosen up. Practice it on the training dummies - working on your rotation is pretty much the 1 thing they're truly useful for. I also use 2 points in epidemic in my blood tank spec (and not in my blood dps spec) since there aren't that many great alternatives and that's generally enough to many sure that the last ability in my rotation still has diseases up when it goes out. Not sure how standard this build is, but it works pretty well. If you're using DRM, the key to the blood rotation is quickly setting it up so that the death runes you plan to use on heart strikes always activate after your blood runes, otherwise (as you've probably discovered) you can often end up splitting your death runes apart, which is annoying.

 

Griefknight

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.

 

Durzil

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.

 

Suno

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.

 

• frmorrison

With this change in 3.2:
* 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.

What does this mean with regard to when is it better to use Parry over Dodge (in 3.2)?

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

 

Zurai

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.

 

Alyse

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.

 

Toppazz

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.

 

Okuno

Repost removed

 

Okuno

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.

 

Zelretch

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.

 

Womba

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.

 

Okuno

That bolded information seems to only be in reference for Agiility contribution to dodge. So your weapons with agility are going to contribute less to your dodge.

Dodge rating is also been changed, but this is separate from agility based benefits.

Basically making some weapons less effective for tanking, agility now helps with armor but will not be as helpful in dodge contributions.

So weapons with Agility are worth slightly less now.

Or at least that is what I took from it......

 

Cloudgatherer

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.

 

Goldengiff

With the huge increase in stats on T9 compared to T8, it's likely that avoidance would have gotten out of hand, like it did transitioning from BT to SWP. In my relatively bad gear, I hit 57% avoidance before DR when raid buffed. That could easily jump up to 65% in T9 before the nerfs. IMO it's important to keep in mind that encounters will be tuned to the same stats they expect us to have, not the ones we were expecting to have.

Relevant discussion would be around whether it will be worth it to gem/gear for parry more now rather than dodge. My char sheet dodge is about 5% above my parry, but IDK if all of that is affected by DR. What are the baselines for each? 5% plus any percent based buffs from talents or runeforging?

 

Karede

I can't foresee any situation in which gemming for parry will be viable. Parry is already more heavily affected by DR than dodge is, and the fact that we have forceful deflection makes it an even more wasteful stat for us on gear. They are not changing the point at which parry begins to hit DR (unless I missed that being posted somewhere) so if anything the changes to parry will hurt us the more in avoidance, because all it does is push the parry we have on our tier gear to begin with further into diminishing returns more quickly.

 

Okuno

Well if Parry is going to be equal with dodge in terms of cost I see more benefit in stacking it a little higher. I only say this because built in we have an advantage of adding strength to gain threat and parry.

Before the patch parry was too expensive and its DR made it less attractive. Now I do not know what the magic number is for a "advisable cap" where the DR makes it unrealistic to stack parry but I remember it being in the 30%ish range(From memory sorry if I am WAY off)

Getting that number would be helpful but having the stats for the next tier gear would help even further. As you stated Blizz has an idea of where they want to take the classes, they usually itemize gear in accordance to that vision.


____Added Late____

Rune of SS is not subject to DR so 34%ish with that rune.(last I checked)

My point was more geared towards the fact that our parry might be that high with gear, not gemming for parry(Still bad).

 

Gort

I'm recopying to the PTR to get a better sense of Live::PTR, but from my first--ungemmed, unenchanted, etc-copy, TOTAL avoidance remained roughly constant, but dodge dropped, parry went up. I'd suspect that for us, the loss, if any, will be small. (1% or less) I suspect that some loss is also intended, as we know they consider tank avoidance to be "an issue".


TLDR: Yeah, the parry boost almost did cover it from what I saw, but I'm gonna check.


Edit: Yep, to confirm, I checked my most recent copy charpane against my current, and the pre-diminishing changes just about cancel each other out. It's probably slightly more of a loss than the ~.1% or so that I'm seeing on the paper doll given the DR curve on parry, but it's close enough that this feels like they're not trying to hit us (and other plate tanks) with it in specific, more reining in avoidance in general, plus aiming it heavily at druids.

 

Rahlar

Pretty sure that's targeting characters which aren't stacking agi. Meaning that since they had to recalibrate the amount of dodge with 0 agi, priests might have slightly more dodge chance than they do currentyl, or something along those lines. I'm pretty sure it's not saying "If you've been stacking agi you probably won't notice a change, even though the conversion rate has been reduced by 15%."

 

Chrisfarly

For the past few weeks I have been experimenting with a new variation to blood tanking. I've come to the conclusion after studying my wws reports that 4 pts in necrosis > sudden doom + subversion. Necrosis continues to produce 5.5-6% of my total damage on boss encounters consistently.

It's only possible to get necrosis if you forego imrproved icy touch, which in the raids I run we generally always have a prot paladin or warrior to keep the 20% slow up via judgements/Imp thunderclap. Something to keep in mind if anyone is interested in trying out something new.

 

◊ Kaubel

Cleaning up this thread sure was fun!

Fucking DKs.

 

Taizu

Here's a basic blood DK tank build.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

People have different opinions on 3/3 Subversion, Runetap+3/3 Imp Runetap, 2/2 Abom Might, and Hysteria. I like taking them for their utilities. IMO Imp Icy Touch should be fit into all tanking build unless you can be sure the boss will get debuffed full time... e.g. Steelbreaker tank. Or... XT if we don't have any feral DPS or Frost DK.

From that basic blood tank build there are 2 options:
DRM
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Basically lets you convert your FU runes used in Death Strike into Heart Strike.
Rotation: IT PS DS HS HS // DS HSx4
IT+PS, 2 DS, 6 HS per rotation (10 GCD rune)

Morbidity
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Gets you 15 sec DnD to make AoE tanking easier, plus it buffs your DC by 15%.
Rotation: IT PS DS HS HS // DSx2 HSx2
IT+PS, 3 DS, 4 HS per rotation (9 GCD rune)

Numbers from IC HM last Wednesday (might be inflated a bit due to overwhelming power, not by much).
average HS: 2348, crits for 5962
average DS: 3302, crits for 6400 - this is with DS glyph, subtract 25% if you're not using it (2642 hit/5120 crit)
average DC: 1958, crits for 2720 without morbidity/dark death
average IT: 1242
average PS: 1400

1 HS = 0.71 DS with DS glyph, 1 HS = 0.89 DS without DS glyph
So no contest... if we want to maximize TPS, going DRM route will definitely give us more. DRM rotation is a lot tighter though. A typical 18 second rotation on average only has 12 GCD... so 10 GCD rune rotation has little room for errors/lag. Ideally most of your RP will go towards RS, and you only DC when all your runes are on CD.

Doing a calc to compare [Glyph of Death Strike] to [Glyph of Disease].

Since the DRM path only DS twice per 20 secs, your threat gain is 'only' 50% of your DS damage. What if we drop [Glyph of Death Strike] in favor of [Glyph of Disease].

Your rotation will now become a priority system.
1) Apply IT+PS
2) Use DS to convert FU runes into 2 Blood Runes (since 2 * 0.89 >>>> 1)
3) Use Pestilence when diseases are at < 2 secs remaining
4) Spam Heart Strikes and Rune Strike
5) DC only when all your runes are down (unlikely with our current gear i.e. need expertise hard capped)

It will look like this:
IT PS DS HS HS // DS HSx4 ==> on first pull (10 GCD rune)
Pest HS DS DS // HSx6 ==> rest of the fight (10 GCD rune)

Calculate the damage difference if we make a switch to [Glyph of Disease].
- Losing IT+PS = 2642
- Gaining HS = 2348

Losing like 200 dmg per rotation, which is ~10 DPS. If we consider disease clipping it might actually increase the DPS, and consequently the TPS. It will also make AoE tanking much easier, no longer do we need to reapply diseases when we can just refresh it with pestilence everytime it's almost off. I am gonna go replace my DS glyph with Disease glyph.

Holy balls walls of text.


oh and,

lmao.

 

SkagasmAddict

You neglected to attempt to model DS's fairly unpredictable/variable healing threat. In most situations, it's not going to change the numbers drastically (especially on a fight with 3+ adds), but it's noteworthy when you're making a comparison with numbers this specific.

For this particular swap (and numbers):
- Losing Half a DS = 1320

So you're losing slightly over 1600 dmg per rotation. I too am tempted by the convenience of the glyph, but its definitely not going to increase your single target TPS.

Also, you can usually tab around to refresh diseases on AoE pulls. Glyph of Disease might save you a couple Blood runes/GCDs over a prolonged period of AoE, but it's less than 1 of each per 20 secs.

 

Goldengiff

You're actually trading an IT, PS and HS for a DS (or 2 HS depending on Death Runes) and a GCD. The effect of a tighter rotation is harder to calculate, and something that back on my old haunt (rogue boards) would usually need to be decided by spreadsheets.