[m1a2]

first of all, thanks Tankspot for all the hard work and puttin out so much information here, the movies are swesome, the start out tanking guide was really helpful to me cause i've only 1, 80 and not a lot of xp in the game, everytime i hear rune strike go off, I'm thinking "i love that macro ;d" i've macro'd it to BS, OB, FS, and DS, dropped one of my glyphs for the howling blast glyph like somebody suggested in another thread

i've a couple of questions today, do dk tanks need expertise? we want to dodge and parry so we can use rune strike, expertise sounds like it could be for other tanks, i have 16 expertise atm, should i aim for more or none

second, is Acclimation a tanking talent, to me it sounds like it is but i was told its for pvp

[keeprock]

The generally accepted standard for expertise is 26, which is the soft cap for dps. This prevents a level 83 boss from dodging attacks.



Expertise does two things for a tank:

1. It allows your melee attacks to hit more often, because of the above reason. Successful melee attacks for a Frost DK is roughly the 2nd highest provider of threat, behind Rune Strike.
2. It decreases a boss or mobs chance to parry your attacks. This actually provides some damage mitigation for a tank. In WoW there is a boss mechanic called "parry haste" or aka "parry gibbing." When most bosses parry an attack their swing timer is reduced by roughly 40% and they get to attack you again much faster. Obviously when this happens you get spikes of damage. Depending on what attacks hit you (maybe a boss high damage special attack is one) you may get killed because your healer doesn't expect it and can't keep up.

The actual expertise cap for tanks is 56. But no tank will ever stack to that amount because the rest of your avoidance stats decrease your chance to be parried already significantly. 26 is a good number to shoot for to ensure your doing maximum threat and reducing your chance to be parry hasted to a very low percentage.


And acclimation is generally understood to be useful for very few boss fights and therefore a waste of points.

[m1a2]

thanks rock you really made me realize i have to face mobs/bosses away from the crowd, its funny cause i've had tooltip tell me mobs cant dodge/parry from behind but i never put 2 and 2 together

i dpsed gundrak just now with that in mind, unholy is a beast i love it, specced to unholy today from blood, i figured i gotta know my dk.

i read everything about unholy here, i think kreenian is his name he had a thorough post here about dk dps, everyone should read it, it helped me get my
CsS glyph, understand keeping an eye on my DoT's and my ghoul, he died twice, i gotta work on that

my expertise is still low, i dont want to waste gold geming and enchanting for it til the next patch comes out and i see where i stand

i'm goin to dps for a little bit

[Kurtosis]

Next patch is going to be a couple weeks at the earliest, likely not until September. Might want reconsider waiting regemming/enchanting that long, esp if you're tanking regularly.

[m1a2]

hi all, i'm havin some problems i cant figure out

first of all my dk's name is mangoftw (i was drinking V8 mango splash atm)
she's in jaedenar

i came up with an unholy tanking build its awesome the only thing about it, is runes seem to clogg up more than in frost, maybe because i'm not used to it
good thing about it i have a lot of aoe's, i've Desecration, DnD, and unholy blight for now, it works well

i changed my dps spec from blood to unholy back to blood now that i know a little more about the class, but even though i am hit capped and i have a good amount of crit i cant do more than 1.5k dps, and i want to do 2k so i can dps raids. i figured i need to dps naxx before i tank it, i've succesfully tanked a couple of bosses but some have gone bad cause sometimes its my fault for not knowing the fights, the other times dude no one was doing more than 2k dps

so my my goal is to get my dps to 2k right now

i'd like some input i ll stay on my dps gear, thanks guys

my dps rotation is IT, PS, pestilence, HS, HS, then depending on rune power, i adjust from there