SP causes 100% additional threat, so some quick math will tell you. (DPET of your SF) or 2x(DPET of your SP),
whichever is higher. I suspect SF will win out by a decent margin, even with juggling decimation procs between
tagging orbs, though unless you are having problems with keeping aggro it isn't necessarily worth the trouble.

Only while not empowered, of course.

Abstract:

• Look at maximizing survivability and threat, and compare to traditional tank, now that Keleseth doesn't melee
• 3/37/31 spec

Conclusion:

• Before taking other classes talent specs into consideration, lock range tanking needs two fewer Dark Nuclei to achieve the same damage coefficient versus shadow damage.
• Lock tanking assigns the responsibilities of gathering Dark Nuclei and handling Keleseth agro to one player

Damage Reduction

• Destruction
  • Molten Skin: 6% damage reduction
  • Nether Protection: 30% chance/spell to reduce dmg/school 30%
• Demonology
  • Demonic Embrace: +10% Stamina
  • Fel vitality: +3% health and mana
  • Soul Link: 20% of damage taken goes to Pet
  • Fel Synergy: 15% of damage dealt heals Pet
  • Master Demonologist: minus 10% dmg from spells with Fel Hunter
  • Demonic Resilience
    • minus 3% chance to be critically hit
    • minus 15% damage to pet
• Buffs
  • From Others: these do not stack
    • Paladin Shadow Aura: 130 Shadow Resist, 20.3% Ave Dmg Reduc
    • Priests (Prayer of)Shadow Protection: 130 Shadow resist
  • Self
    • Warlock Shadow Ward:
      • 3300 shield lasting 30s,
      • cooldown 30s
      • Block Dark Nuclei proc of Nether Protection while up
    • Demon Armor: generate 26% more health through spells
• Armor:
  • Keleseth Tank Spec and Spell Hit requirement
    • Suppression 3pts: reduce Spell Hit requirement to 368
    • Possibly No Misery: only applies if priest attacks Keleseth
    • IFF: easy one time spell for 3%, reducing need to 289
  • Soulguard Shadow Resist Gear
    • Swap Belt: 54 Shadow Resist
      • Pally/Priest Buff: ~26% Average Damage Reduction (up ~5.7%)
      • No Pally/Preist : ~8.9 Average Damage Reduction (up ~8.9%)
    • Swap Boots: +54 = 108 Shadow Resist
      • Pally/Priest Buff: ~31.2% Ave Dmg Red (up another ~5.2%)
      • No Pally/Preist : ~17.3% Ave Dmg Red (up another ~8.4%)
    • Swap Bracers: +40 = 148 Shadow Resist
      • Pally/Priest Buff: ~35.3% Ave Dmg Red (up another ~4.1%)
      • No Pally/Preist : ~22.4% Ave Dmg Red (up another ~5.1%)
    • Swap Leggings: +72 = 220 Shadow Resist
      • Pally/Priest Buff: ~40.6% Ave Dmg Red (up another ~5.3%)
      • No Pally/Preist : ~30.1% Ave Dmg Red (up another ~7.7%)

Threat

• While collecting Dark Nuclei
  • Dark Nuclei
    • Rank 1 CoA (w/glyph: 28 seconds of agro)
    • CoE is risky as it amplifies raid aoe agro
  • Keleseth
    • Immolate:
      • 1.2 sec cast: only slightly longer than global cool down
      • Glyph of Conflagrate
        • Refresh Immolate when Conflagrate hits
        • ONLY NEED TO CAST IMMOLATE ONCE
      • Use in macro that targets Keleseth
      • Bane: reduce cast time 0.5 seconds
      • Aftermath: increase periodic damage 6%
      • Ruin: +100% crit damage
      • Backlash: +2% crit chance
      • Improved Immolate: +30% damage
      • Devastation: +5% crit chance
    • Conflagrate:
      • INSTANT = CAST ON THE RUN
      • Use in macro that targets Keleseth
      • Aftermath: 5 second Daze
      • Ruin: +100% crit damage
      • Backlash: +3% crit chance
      • Devastation: +5% crit chance
    • Curse of Agony:
      • INSTANT = CAST ON THE RUN
      • Glyph of Curse of Agony
        • increase duration from 24 to 28 seconds
        • 2 more agro tics on Dark Nuclei
    • Corruption: optional for more damage when Keleseth empowered
      • INSTANT = CAST ON THE RUN
      • Use in macro that targets Keleseth
• During Keleseth's empowerment
  • proc Decimate off 1hp prince
  • spam Soul Fire: additional damage generates more TPS than the 100% threat bonus of Searing Pain
  • Conflagrate: instant cast, maintains Immolate

Shadow Damage Resist Results
Lock Tanking Damage Reduction
Tot Coeff

0.9600 Molten Core 6%(Dmg Taken Coefficient=1 - 0.06)

86.4% 0.9000 Master Demonologist w/Fel Hunter pet 10%

51.3% 0.5940 Shadow Resist Gear & Buff 40.6%

41.1% 0.8000 Soul Link w/Glyph 20% dmg taken to pet

41.1% damage taken coefficient at the beginning of the fight

other mechanics once fight is under way

28.7% 0.7000 Nether Protection 30% (Dark Nuclei maintain proc)

18.7% 0.6500 1st Dark Nuclei 35%

12.1% 0.6500 2nd Dark Nuclei 35%

7.9% 0.6500 3rd Dark Nuclei 35%

5.1% 0.6500 4th Dark Nuclei 35%

3.3% 0.6500 5th Dark Nuclei 35%

Now that Keleseth no longer does melee damage, he does not
need to be range tanked.

79.7% 0.7970 Pally w/aura OR tank w/Priest buff 130SR (20.3%)

51.8% 0.6500 1st Dark Nuclei 35%

33.7% 0.6500 2nd Dark Nuclei 35%

21.9% 0.6500 3rd Dark Nuclei 35%

14.2% 0.6500 4th Dark Nuclei 35%

9.2% 0.6500 5th Dark Nuclei 35%

6.0% 0.6500 6th Dark Nuclei 35%

3.9% 0.6500 7th Dark Nuclei 35%

59.4% 0.5940 Tank w/buff and Soulguard corollary gear 40.6%

38.6% 0.6500 1st Dark Nuclei 35%

25.1% 0.6500 2nd Dark Nuclei 35%

16.3% 0.6500 3rd Dark Nuclei 35%

10.6% 0.6500 4th Dark Nuclei 35%

6.9% 0.6500 5th Dark Nuclei 35%

4.5% 0.6500 6th Dark Nuclei 35%

I have a few questions for all you warlock tanks for this fight. We are working on 10m hard mode right now and given the make up of our group (only pet is warlock pet) we have been having trouble keeping the kinetic bombs up.

Our thought now is to switch to me DK tanking Keleseth (unholy spec with permanent ghoul) and having our warlock DPS while keeping his imp on the second kinetic bomb. We were previously having me tank both melee and our feral druid going cat DPS for his fight leaving us with 3 melee DPS and only 2 ranged which were always on kinetic bombs.

Now we can change our group to have me tanking Keleseth and keeping my pet on 1 kinetic bomb, our warlock DPSing and keeping his imp on the other kinetic bomb and now we will have 2 full time melee and 3 full time ranged DPS on the empowered boss (minus warlock's pet). Hopefully it works...

Anyway, to the questions. I cannot down rank spells...

1. Will my Icy Touch or Death Coil kill the DN? Would it be better to not have the IT DoT on it and just use Death Coil?

2. Would taunt/death grip be sufficient to keep the DN on me or would healers pull off?

I am spec-ing unholy purely for this fight so I am not taking the DoT for my Death Coil and I am putting the 2 points into improved unholy presence to increase speed by 15% and also putting the 2 points in frost to increase the range of my Icy Touch.

Any thoughts, comments, concerns would help! Thanks

Taunts will get the nuclei on you if they haven't aggroed anyone yet, but you will not keep them for long. Do some real damage to them. Dots aren't necessary if you can keep the nuclei away from cleaves.

A warlock's imp will despawn if put on a kinetic orb. They tend to try to chase it up into the air and disappear. Felhunters and Felguards won't disappear, they'll just wait on the ground.

Also, putting your ghoul on kinetic orbs is a lot of micromanaging. You're going to want to be focused on generating threat and picking up every Dark Nucleus. My advice is to have both of your ranged handling the orbs... they fall far too fast to rely on your ghoul.

Also, the dark nuclei have 100k health, according to Wowhead. You can safely do some damage to them.

I have seen the Imp fly up in the air a grand total of once, and that was when it first came out. I've never had him despawn, even when he did fly up.

It has happened every single time I've put my imp on an orb. I'm not spouting off inaccuracies here.

Interesting - we'll try the imp at first, if it despawns I'll know to have him switch. Seems like Icy Touch will be fine for the nuclei if they have 100k health.

Does imprisoned shadow or shadow prison effect do the same to us? Just wondering if having the DN will prevent it from stacking or if you still get it as normal.

Thanks guys.

I've done this fight every week in both 10 and 25's for a couple of months now, and never seen my imp despawn. I have him on passive, but I do let him beat on the boss if there are no orbs in my section to keep up - we have a couple of hunter pets as well in 25s. If you see your imp flying up into the air after an orb, that seems like a good thing to report as a bug.

You'll still get it, but it's not really that bad. I had something like 20 stacks on average running around getting orbs when I tanked it.

Also, yeah Icy Touch should be fine. There's so many orbs anything that even if you kill them slightly early, it doesn't matter. Blood Princes is a fight you could probably 15-man on Heroic.

Having finally gotten a chance to tank (and down) this, I'd recommend a few things. First, it's easiest if you pull first and have the tank pull the other two off you. Even with meta/ruin it's easiest to pull with Searing Pain then head to grab the orbs. For a pull or two I had on some PVP gear gemmed for stam, but really the loss in Haste and SP just isn't worth it and it makes it harder to tank him while he's active. I didn't have any problem grabbing the nuclei (using CoA r1) but I would recommend having a heavy healing focus on you early as you yoyo a good amount early. Make sure you have 5-6 on you going into his active phase and put a SS on yourself for extra protection. If you get knocked away from your orbs, run to them to pick them back up and then go to grab more (if he isn't active or if you need more). Otherwise, it's a really fun but hectic fight.

Witch glyph do you use for this point ?
The only "Glyph of Conflagrate" just doesn't consume the Imolate effect on the target...

What is the best pet for this fight, have used the felhunter, voidwalker and the doomguard and it seems we only get the princes when I have the doonguard out, coincidence? Also, does PVP gear help? On my current gear (4pct10), I have 35k health, raid buffed. My guildies think that PVP gear would be better for this fight. I also have this weird hybrid spec that I based off the 4/27 post on this thread, without the points in suppression(0/34/37). Having me pull first, and spamming searing pain on the boss, while running around dotting up the nuclei with Rank 1 CoA seems to work well, but before I had 4/5 nuclei on me, I noticed that my health and my DG's were down to 30%, should I have kept the DG on passive? I have been tanking him at the the far corner, trying to keep him away from the raid, is tanking him in the middle better? Our guild has tried tanking Keleseth using our warrior offtank and our spriest, but it didn't work, so I've been tanking him since. Been reading up on everything I could find on tanking Keleseth on this thread, the forums and the Warlock's Den but there's so much info to sift through it's hard to figure out the best gear/rotation/strat for this fight. Our guild is still progressing thru 10 man ICC, we're stuck on P3 Sindragosa at the moment, hopefully, if we do better on the princes tonight, we'll have the rest of the week to work on Sindragosa.

My 10 man group is rather melee-stacked, so with our only other ranged focusing on kinetic orbs, I hadn't any reliable way of having other people bring me nuclei during the empowered keleseth phase. I tried having my felhunter pick up the nuclei and bring them to me, worked great, not only did it allow me more DPS/Aggro-building time, but during empowered keleseth phases I didn't have to risk any vortex links whilst scavaging for nuclei.
Ideally the only thing you'd have to move for then would be an empowered shockwave on top of you.