[lyd]

wow i'm a dumbass. I don't tank as blood so I generally don't give too much thought to the deeper talents in the blood tree and leave most of the affirmative statements to those that do and do it well. can't believe I missed that. thank you.

[Edgewalker]

Honestly, if you want to make an argument for Armsman, defense gems, Glyph of Disease, and dropping 10 man / 25 man enhance shamanless raid functionality for no gain, go ahead. It's clear when an argument isn't going anywhere.

[Satorri]

Imp Blood Pres is a bit mild, and the passive nature makes it a little messy. When I experimented with it in non-hard-hitting raid stuff it was only averaging 20-30% overhealing, but even at 0% overhealing it still was only a minor health gain compared to the Death Strike or Rune Tap's potential, and the lack of ability for strategic burst makes it a little unimpressive compared to the other tools.

[jaydee]

With the new Rune in PTR, good starter tanking weapons would be 2x of the Champion Seal maces from the Argent grounds:

Ironforge Smasher

[lyd]

the most ideal weapons will be slow weapons with expertise:

The World of Warcraft Armory

The World of Warcraft Armory

The World of Warcraft Armory

The World of Warcraft Armory

alot of these have absolute crap for stamina though, compared to tanking weapons, and especially compared to 2-handed weapons. so you'll have to gear accordingly. there will probably still be a place for tanking weapons post 3.3.3.

[loveknife]

Have both of those extra sockets help also. I would go with slow MH and fast OH for a stat stick like for mentioned. Also Rune strike has been buffed in 3.2.2 and we will get the 1-H equivalent Stone stone skin gargoyle. Rune of Nerubian Carapace

Serilas, Blood Blade of Invar One-Arm - Item - World of Warcraft
and
Peacekeeper Blade - Item - World of Warcraft

With this spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

[Feanorr]

Personnally I will go with the 2 highest DPS slow weapons that I can have, so ideally 2x Stormpike Cleaver - Items - Sigrie
Expertise is good to have but it's far behind weapon DPS for threat imo; and I wont care about parry haste, it's negligible imo.

And if I want more survivability I can always switch to 1 or 2 fast tank weapons, when my agro is high enough.

[lyd]

if you have the soft-cap from gear already, then it's certainly not a big deal if your weapons have expertise on them. soft-cap is effective for both threat and for making parry-haste trivial. if you've got it already, swing whatever beatstick you want.

[Aratillion]

Currently I have the ilvl 245 Quel'Serrar and the Peacekeeper with hit/exp epic gem on it, I reach 30 exp with the food and thanks to the ony blood talisman I don't have to worry too much about the def cap, but I have doubts about the runes now that 3.3 will bring the cut in half gargoyle rune (I have swordshattering on both weps). The stamina buff is a plus on it even if its the same as the 2H (2% and 1% on each 1H)

I have also doubts what to stack more dodge or parry because with the change of gear my dodge dropped from 30% + or - to 21% or something like that, parry went up nicely and now both stats are quite even.

The info about the expertise is quite nice because I had fears about the parry haste thing and making my healer go nuts or mad because I was being hit too fast.

So the good value stays at 30 or going up even more is a waste or a plus?

[Insahnity]

Why we are trying to DW before the 1h Stoneskin Gargoyle runeforging is out is what I can't figure out. DW is optimized for DPS at the moment, not tanking.

Having said that, going with 2 slow DPS weapons is probably the way to go, as long as you have no def issues.

[Lulia]

Source: Insahnity Why we are trying to DW before the 1h Stoneskin Gargoyle runeforging is out is what I can't figure out. DW is optimized for DPS at the moment, not tanking. Having said that, going with 2 slow DPS weapons is probably the way to go, as long as you have no def issues.

Do we have to wait for 3.3 for that? Or is there going to be another patch in 3.2?

[Splug]

Adding a new runeforge shouldn't change whether defensive 1h's or offensive 1h's are better at all, unless you needed the defense to reach 540. The only relative change is between 2h vs dw, and at that it's still just adding the option of stoneskin gargoyle in leiu of only having swordshattering.

-Splug

[GravityDK]

Source: Aratillion So the good value stays at 30 or going up even more is a waste or a plus?

Expertise is always a good stat, don't worry about having more than 30 if you end up that way without gemming.

Read this thread for the avoidance value of expertise. For pally but the principle applies equally to DKs, just the % would be slightly different.

Expertise is also a very strong threat stat for Frost.

[lyd]

Source: Insahnity Why we are trying to DW before the 1h Stoneskin Gargoyle runeforging is out is what I can't figure out. DW is optimized for DPS at the moment, not tanking. Having said that, going with 2 slow DPS weapons is probably the way to go, as long as you have no def issues.

Ignoring the copious amounts of theorycraft that's floating around regarding the viability of DW tanking, you can readily observe that there are DW DK's tanking 25-man ToC content on live servers right now. whether or not they are "optimized" for tanking seems irrelevant in light of the fact that they are, in fact, doing it, and are successful, which would suggest without having to engage the theorycraft that DW'ing is not optimized only for dps, with or without the SSG rune.

[Edgewalker]

Source: lyd Ignoring the copious amounts of theorycraft that's floating around regarding the viability of DW tanking, you can readily observe that there are DW DK's tanking 25-man ToC content on live servers right now. whether or not they are "optimized" for tanking seems irrelevant in light of the fact that they are, in fact, doing it, and are successful, which would suggest without having to engage the theorycraft that DW'ing is not optimized only for dps, with or without the SSG rune.

I think it's more of a "why gimp yourself for no reason" question.

[Bashal]

I have a DW spec on my DK as well. I primarily use it for add/heroics tanking, but it isn't bad for raid boss tanking; I just personally prefer blood for that.

* At very low gear levels, it can be hard to make DW tanking work (meeting expertise and def cap requirements). A good "starter" DW tank weapon, imo, is Infantry Assault Blade, an ilvl 200 blue with a 2.6 swing timer, which drops off the first boss in Heroic UK; this makes it very farmable.

* At "medium" gear levels it's not too hard to get def/expertise capped with two tanking weapons.

* At higher gear levels, try to pick up some slow 1h DPS weapons.

With the next patch, with the introduction of a 1h verison of stoneskin gargoyle, all of the above kind of goes out the window; it should be about as easy to start off DW tanking at low gear levels as it is to start out 2h tanking.

The only real problem I see about using two fast weapons is that you chew up a lot of RP for rune strikes, which can be bad if you need to save some RP for a tank cooldown or a mind freeze. If you manually trigger RS, this isn't really an issue, but if you macro RS to other abilities, it can be. An easy fix, though, is to use a slower weapon in your main hand, since RS is bound to your main hand swing timer.

[Bashal]

Source: Edgewalker I think it's more of a "why gimp yourself for no reason" question.

Aside from the fact that it appeals to my (occasional) urge to not follow the herd, it's been fairly obvious that blizz has been working to make DW tanking more "viable" (God, I hate that word) than it has been. People who started messing around with it earlier already have their ducks in a row, so to speak, and it is those people who did that, that others who waited longer will be getting their information from.

There's something to be said for hands-on experience vs. theorycrafting.