[Emi]

Frostflames, i would consider moving 3pts from Morbidity to SoB or at the very least 2/3 to SoB.
As an added tip, pay attention to KM procs and FS immediately. Theres a lot of threat there and try not to find yourself short on RP on one of those procs.

@ whoopin: the cap against lvl83 bosses(aka raid bosses) is 540 def.

[Satorri]

Ok, I can help with some clarification.

540 defense 'skill' (689 defense rating require to get there without rune of SSG) is the point at which you are uncrittable by a level 83/raid boss. You can drop 5 defense skill for each level of the mob (so nothing being higher than 82 in heroics means you only need 535 there). This removes the 5.6% chance a raid boss has to crit you (base on raid mobs is 5% + 0.02% per level, though some mobs get special buffs to increase that, but you won't see them in raids).

Parry haste is a somewhat complicated mechanic that actually works both ways. When a boss parries you (because unless you have very very low Expertise only a boss will) they *can* get part of their next swing reduced. Without getting into too much complication it will reduce their next swing timer by 40% but to a minimum of 20% of the total swing time remaining (it cannot make the next strike come instantly). So this is not desirible against a boss because *if the boss is able to be parry-hasted* (Patchwerk and Ignis are two examples who cannot be) it will increase their swing count, you will take more hits, and logically should expect more damage.

Happily this mechanic works for players as well, though no tank (only person who will parry in a raid when it's not going south quickly) before the DK could REALLY make use of this since normally pallies and warriors use fast weapons (now they don't have to, but it's not common to find one who has Broken Promise and many warriors have told me they don't like what it does to their rage generation). Bears can't parry, but DKs can, and we actually have weapons slow enough where we can actually make use of it. This is a big part of why it is our parry and not our dodge that our class specialties buff.

There's an exhaustive discussion HERE about dual wielding, but without reading through all of it the general concensus is that dual wielding is not the end of the world, and it's not even as noticeably horrible as some people want to make it out to be. You do not need more expertise than you would have with a 2h, but it doesn't hurt and you can benefit well beyond the soft cap. Each point for dual wielding will have greater survival value, i.e. reduce your total parry count, by much more than using a dual wielder. The common current issues with dual wielding have nothing to do with parry haste, simply that we have no mechanics to really benefit from using two 1h's.

[coe]

@whoopin, just few tips from me:

- You NEED 540 def, but it is not a capacity, so you can get more for higher avoidance.
- Stoneskin Gargoyle is a good enchant, you don't have to replace it with Swordshattering.
- You could benefit from weapon upgrade, I think that Titansteel Destroyer would be big upgrade for you.
- You need more hit rating, you have only 3.11% hit. Softcap is 8%. Maybe drop Armsman gloves enchant and take Precision. Take some hit gems. Buy Titansteel Destroyer (54 hit rating).
- Consider dropping your blood tree talents like Veteran, Bloody Strikes, Dark Conv, Death Rune Mast. Take Scourge strike, Crypt Fever, Ebon Plague, and 5 points into Rage if Rivendare. You're missing most important Unholy talents now.

PS. I know that dps/tanking hybrid build is fun and all, but you're not good dps nor tank with those builds. Drop Ghoul talents, it takes 3 points. Drop Unholy Command, you don't need Death Grip that often (I barely use it when tanking). There are also other talents you're missing: Impurity, Dirge, Reaping. Those are very important for Unholy spec which is based on heavy dots damage and on Scourge Strike.

[BotD]

Currently I am dual specced for a frost and a blood tanking spec. However, I am thinking about switching from frost to unholy as frost's balanced abilities don't seem worthwhile when I am dual specced for tanking. Do you think this is worthwhile? I like the frost playstyle, but it has neither the health and healing of blood or the cds of unholy.

Here are my current specs:
Frost: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Blood: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

What I am looking at for unholy:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I would use blood for fights like General and Ignis and unholy for magic burst bosses. However, I do like the AoE of frost and high single target threat. At least, I can't seem to pull as much threat as blood as I do frost.

[whoopin]

I will start by saying thank you guys for the help!
Only to explain why my talents are the way they are.. im speced in to blood for the extra stam boost, the ghuol is there for death pact (can u tell i pug a lot?) deathgrip, well what can I say.... I guess im not that good! as for the other things all my talents have been placed to boost my single target aggro, thats why it looks like im trying to dps / tank but really its a beautiful thing to pull 10k tps on a single target.

I would go with a different enchant but the threat boost im just not good enough to lose atm. I need a spec that allows me to do both single and mob aggro well and while it seems a bad spec u should see me tank with out it.
Oh and i do have the titansteel mace but got sick of lookin at it lol but ur right ill be puting it back on now.

As a final note, I dont get to raid anymore because im not in a guild that does that, so to avoide pug group rage i try to keep my stam up and do w/e i can to boost threat.

[whoopin]

hay could somebody please post a good unholy tank spec glyphs and rotation included? thank you.

[Satorri]

Do a quick search of the board, you'll find plenty.


I'm not a big fan of cookie cutters, it breeds laziness which is a horrible foot to start a tank on.

[sillypuddy]

hey i was wondering what is a good amt of avoidance for anything like up to EoE 25 or maybe even ulduar 10 man?

[Satorri]

For a fully tier 7-level geared DK, you can expect somewhere in the area of 48-58% total avoidance (miss+dodge+parry).

As a simpler metric, your dodge+parry should be about 40% or more (which you can do without socketing, chanting, or otherwise slanting for avoidance in full t7 gear).

[coe]

@whoopin: I would try something like this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Heavy dots, a lot of scourge strikes. Check rotations in first post of this thread. With those glyphs and aoe situations wait until 2 mobs die and then use Corpse Explosion. Use Rune Tap as another cooldown. I can't believe you're doing 10k single target tps with your current spec, but I would have to see it Cheers.

[Frostflames]

Is there a good mod that lets you know when your KM has proced or when you have a free HB?... also what are some good tanking mods to help with aoe tanking and who has aggro?

[Satorri]

(technically, there is a whole separate forum for UI discussions)

Personally, I LOVE Power Auras, it lets you make on-screen glow effects, with timers if you want them, to track any number of cues including buff procs, health levels, debuffs on targets, etc.

Killing Machine's buff is called Killing Machine
Rime's proc is called Freezing Fog (when your next Howling Blast will cost no runes)

For tracking who has aggro, I rely on my unit frames (I use ag_unitframes, but many others use Pitbull, as the two most popular at the moment), they'll show target of target and you can turn on aggro coloring to turn their health bar red when they're being targeted.

[kaotikx]

Hey, just a few questions, can anyone check armoury for my spec and gear etc and help me out?

Im getting say 2.8k sometimes to 3.1k tps atm(unbuffed on just a random elite to see, whether thats accurate or not i dunno :P) and i seem to be struggling to hold aggro alot of the time or at least it will take a while to build up aggro. Is that tps bad for my gear or about right? is the spec bad or ok?

cheers for advice in advance!

heres Armoury

armoury is down and laggy so i hope thats the right link, and hopefully updated, if not il repaste tommorow, cheers.

[Mortiferum]

I was looking at specs, mostly because our pally tank left our guild so I've been trying to think of ways to sort of "take over" that roll. Would Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft work well in everyones opinion? I included the glyphs I think would be good. I figure frost strike would give a good single target boost. Any feedback would be great

[sillypuddy]

IMO you need bladed armour for threat that is your strongest talent for threat.Also, if you're going that deep into frost minus well get Howling Blast. In which case you dont need morbidity because you will be using howling blast more for AoE and not DnD as much. Therefore you shouldn't go up to unholy blight in the unholy tree. I recommend getting just anticipation and maybe 2 pts in epidemic up to you and the rest in frost tree 5 in tundra stalker and 1 in HB.

[coe]

@Morti, interesting build, I'm curious how it works with UB. But I agree with sillypuddy, you took Killing Machine and this buffs greatly Howling Blast and Frost Strike. You also dropped Bladed Armor. Unholy Blight is simply not worth it. Check my frost build, it works great (nice passive dmg reduction and a LOT of threat).

[Mortiferum]

I'm not worried about threat, and howling blast is great for snap aggro, however Killing Machine i meant more for Frost STrike, and also I'm looking more for an idea of passive constant aggro (similar to a Paladins Consecrate) which seeing as there are 5 seconds in which DND is not up, however UB is up at all times. Like I said I'm looking for a build that can take over the role of a pally tank best, and frost is good but other than for snap Aggro Howling Blasts 8 second CD just seems too long

[coe]

Hmm, I can't see your point Passive constant agro you're talking about are your diseases. You have also DnD for opening, but there's no need to use it rotations after that. Your diseases are ticking, you refresh them on all targets and burst threat with HBlasts when KM procs. That's more than enough aoe threat.

Unless you're talking about some specific fight, like Thorin, with constant waves of new mobs. Besides that, I don't see much use of UB in Ulduar so far.

[Mortiferum]

Actually yes, I am pretty much talking specifically about Thorim, however I imagine their will be other fights like this in the future and diseases require you to actually have a blood rune available for pest while UB is just on the whole time

[coe]

Yes, Unholy build is better for Thorin Arena. If I'm thinking right, UB in Frost build is not that strong as in Unholy build. And Frost Fever is much stronger in Frost builds than in Unholy builds So maybe Glyph of HB (it puts Frost Fever on all targets) would do the job for you? Or deep Unholy build as offspec