[Hanadra]

Has 3.1 killed the dw tank or is it like pre 3.1 very gear dependant?

[Fumblecheese]

Honestly, yes it has. After Howling Blast moved places with Hungering Cold to become the new 51 pt talent, it is very impractical to DW tank seriously as your threat compared to a normal 2h tank would be very much lower. Of course, you could try coming out with wierd specs but it just cant pass.

Howver, if any decent 1h tanking weapons drop, consider picking them up in preparation for the next patch where GC dropped hints that DW *may* be buffed and made viable.

[Satorri]

Dual wield tanking has not been noticeably affected by 3.1.

It still works fine, the HB move just crushed the min/max 0/32/39 cookie cutter best dps spec.

That said, dual wielding for tanking or DPS is just unremarkable. There are no mechanics that favor it or work differently with it, all you see is a shift in numbers on your balance sheet, and, of course, different priority of talents in your build.

Dual wielding is no more gear dependent than 2h's, though you may want to make use of certain details. While you don't *need* more hit or expertise, you can make better use of both, and farther, particularly on hit, depending on talents.


One foreseeable catch so far is that I haven't seen any slow tanking weapons in Ulduar which can slightly mute the effect. A strong slow main hand represents less loss of -strike damage and generates fewer parriable swings. Part of the pleasantness of dual wield tanking is that you can get more survival value out of your weapon slots, which I would not undervalue in Ulduar.

[Telix]

Icy Touch damage has also been toned down, which was a big component of Frost DPS.

That said, dual wielding for tanking or DPS is just unremarkable.

Satorri's right. Under current circumstances there aren't any justifiable reasons to dual wield, and no "dual wield" builds that wouldn't perform comparably or better with a two hander.

The blues have stated that dual-wield will return (possibly as part of a dedicated Frost tree, possibly in the next patch), but for now stick with your two hander for DPS or tanking.

[bjoli198]

I tried dualwielding with my 2 onhanders being stoneguard from Ulduar 10 and red sword of courage... my tps went crap, so i picked up argent tournament 2hander instead, worked pretty good until thursday, when i got my hands on Inevitable defeat in naxx 25, so now, i need some hit rating to get my tps up

[Hanadra]

Sigh and I was so looking foward to dw tanking oh well better get lvling and gear then.

[Satorri]

If you want to, you can do it and make it work, don't let anyone mislead you on that. There are many people who are successfully dual wield tanking Ulduar.

When I say it is unremarkable I just mean to say that there is no particular mechanics that work better with dual wielding, so all that changes is your -strikes hit softer and your total melee damage increases (note: that means Necrosis and BcB do more total damage, but they're not active mechanisms and they don't work differently, they provide the same % increase but on a larger portion of your threat).

Blood relies on already having hefty buffed up physical damage to buff melee swings from dual wielding that much more.

Frost relies on using a couple non-weapon based tools in IT and HB that won't suffer from less instant weapon damage, while the other strikes get a little smaller and your melee damage goes up.

Unholy relies on all the non-weapon based damage from diseases, UB, DnD, and BB, and the loss of damage on ScS is plenty made up for with the increase in melee swings.

[lyd]

I still DW tank and i do just fine. I admit that i haven't stepped into ulduar yet but i've tanked through nax 10 and nax 25, and i tanked emalon 25 with no issues.

DW is still viable for tanking. there is no benefit to it over and above 2h tanking, but if you gear correctly for it there is no negative either. i generate more than enough threat to stay ahead of my dps. The howling blast change did not change that in any way. I have 552 def with my sigil proc up, 30k+ hp unbuffed, ~= 45% self-buffed avoidance, and with the ap boost from bladed armor i have no issues with staying ahead of the dps.

[Shinokage]

Sattori is spot on with what he is saying, as I have DW tanked most of 10-man ulduar just fine (Even Freya before they nerfed Ulduar a lil) and can put out respectable threat and at times insane threat.

I love DW tanking and i'm using Broken Promise and a DPS offhand from 10-man Ulduar (Instead of slayer of the lifeless so I can get better threat)

There's no reason to jump into it unless somehow you get some 1-h tanking weapons as I can truly see no true advantages to it outside of proc rates and looking cool. I personally enjoy it more than 2-h tanking and I use a tri-spec (34/16/21) and an unholy spec (13/8/50). The one thing I truly do enjoy however is that I have 54/54 expertise in the tri-spec which SHOULD be expertise capped to my knowledge... and most raids I never get parried. In unholy I get parried once out of 400 swings on average. I would honestly say frost is the best DW build if you do go for it (Minus the internal CD on Killing machine) but I dont like the play style of it myself. I do like seeing 4000 pop-up all around me when HB crits....

In response to no slow tanking weapons from Ulduar: A slow DPS main hand with high expertise or hit and a regular fast tanking off-hand is what im thinking. So long as im @ 540 def i'm good.

Anyways, an excellent post as most people are like "LOLz! ZOMG YUR PARRYHASTID!" without understanding DK tanking.

Just the straight truth.

(Edit: 31k hp in tri, 29.5 in Unholy. 45% avoidance unbuffed.)

[Satorri]

Oooo ooo Shino, you are expertise capped!

Can I ask you a favor? Can you collect a WWS report from your next Ulduar run? You can post it here if you don't mind it being public or just PM me a link. I'm very interested to see how your numbers work out with your specs and gear setups.

[Lectux]

I also wish to hear the information... It is interesting XD

[Inspiri]

I too would love to see this infomation as I currently DW tank. I would love to start gathering some numbers and compair!

[Mofotrey]

I DW just fine as an Unholy DK tank so it works outside of Frost and tri-spec, too; I'm DW mostly because it's an alt that I raid with only when I can and I've never picked up an epic 2hander (And Broken Promise did more DPS AND average damage than my 2H weapon, that's when I decided it'd be stupid not to DW -_-). I usually do about 5-6k threat on average and spike over 12k when I toss DnD down, have Unholy Blight up, and diseases up and my damage is usually between 2k and 2.5k.

Basically they killed DW as a DPS spec because there's simply no spec that can so greatly outdo the 2H specs now as there was before, but tanking it's just fine - the patch didn't change my threat output or damage hardly at all (I actually went up in TPS a decent bit bit but that was due to the scourge strike buff from talents).

[Lectux]

Source: Mofotrey Basically they killed DW as a DPS spec because there's simply no spec that can so greatly outdo the 2H specs now as there was before

Sorry but i completely object to that statement, on elitistjerks.com theres a guy who was dw'ing with a 2h blood spec who pulled off 6k dps...

[Satorri]

I think he means there just isn't a dual wield spec that noticeably outperforms a 2h set up. In other words there is no 0/32/39 spec that does so much better than 2h's that everyone feels like they have to if they want to min/max their setup.