Tanking Rune/Enchant question

Hey all, first time posting on this forum, though I've been lurking for some time :o

My question is sort of two-fold. I am a Death Knight in a deep Frost build. I'm somewhat trying to figure out what rune to use on my Destroyer. I currently use the rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle, and with the rest of my gear, it puts me at 554 defense. I am using a mix of craftables, tempered saronite, and the deadly PVP ring for stamina.

One thing I noticed is that if I swap my rune out for the Swordshattering rune, I am at 529 defense, but I also have 37 resil from the ring, which (If I am doing my math right) should put me exactly at the uncrit cap. The net difference seems to be that I lose a bit of HP, and that I gain about 2% avoidance. For reference, I am at 26.2k with swordshattering, and 26.65k with Gargoyle.

The thing I am worried about, though, is when 3.2 comes out, Us DKs are going to lose a bit more HP. The 2% stam from Gargoyle would help this a bit, but I would lose that avoidance. Which would you think would be more important? I'm leaning torwards the stam, but figured some input would be good.

The other question kind of runs in with this one. I currently have Tempered Saronite Shoulders with Lesser Pinnacle on them. I am thinking about switching this out for the Gladiator inscription from the BG vendors because of the extra 30 stam. I would also gain resilience, but as I am already capped either way, this will not help me for PVE. I will also lose a bit of avoidance. What would you do for that?

Thanks for the help in advance, I really appreciate it. :)

Edit: Pretty sure this should have gone in gear, and I thought I clicked that forum, but apparently not. Sorry if I put this in the wrong place.

At this point, avoidance is important, but you'll want to work on that health first. There's not too much that you would be doing at your gear level where you'll need to emphasize avoidance. I would stick with SSG.

Plus, SSG buffs your IBF a little bit more, when you need it.

Your gear's pretty decent depending on the content you're chewing through, but I was looking at your talents with a kinda o.O expression. The first thing that caught my eye was the haste buff to you, but not the rest of the group by going into Icy Talons. Corpse explosion's cool (and useful for threat, damage, and vengeance after a few wipes lol) but imo, you'd be better off putting that point into Improved Icy Talons. Also, though I'm guilty of it myself, there's a lack of Bladed Armor. That's a whole lot of TPS we're losing to the lack of that talent. In my case it's because my guild doesn't even have a shammy, so I'd like to be more useful than just "Hey Hades, go get smashed on while we backstab stuff." Now they can do it faster! :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hades

Your gear's pretty decent depending on the content you're chewing through, but I was looking at your talents with a kinda o.O expression. The first thing that caught my eye was the haste buff to you, but not the rest of the group by going into Icy Talons. Corpse explosion's cool (and useful for threat, damage, and vengeance after a few wipes lol) but imo, you'd be better off putting that point into Improved Icy Talons. Also, though I'm guilty of it myself, there's a lack of Bladed Armor. That's a whole lot of TPS we're losing to the lack of that talent. In my case it's because my guild doesn't even have a shammy, so I'd like to be more useful than just "Hey Hades, go get smashed on while we backstab stuff." Now they can do it faster! :)

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Yeah, my talents are a bit funky right now. I have to agree 100% on the bladed armor - after doing the math, I would gain about 685 AP with 5 points in it. I am definitely going to go with that.

I am also thinking that taking the points out of annihilation and putting those towards bladed armor would likely be the best thing I could do for this. I initially did this because I was going to use an IT/PS rotation and wanted to keep diseases up, but have since switched to a frost fever-only spec that should be very nice for AOE tanking. Because of the HB glyph applying the fever often, I don't have epidemic, and by this same train of thought, having OB eat my IT on the main target doesn't really matter, does it?

So, based on that, I would take out corpse explosion and have Imp. talons, and have 3/5 bladed armor. Does anyone else see a talent I might want to consider pulling points from to improve to 5 points in bladed armor? or do you think 3/5 would be sufficient?

That sort of depends on whether or not you feel that you are having a problem holding aggro. If you haven't had trouble with it, 3/5 will be sufficient, but if you are having issues holding aggro, that last bit of AP may be just enough to get you by. Honestly though, I was a Frost Knight for a long time and only ever had 3/5 Bladed Armor and made it through Naxx25 with 0 issues. I also am a huge fan of Corpse Explosion, compound macro'd along with Rune Strike to a mouse key which is then spammed incessantly during all fights....its like free aggro, especially if you have a glyph and get a good chain explosion :)

I ended up taking some points from blood of the north to top off bladed armor. The AP should more than make up for the % of damage lost on FS and BS, and those death runes would in almost all certainty end up as blood boils anyway.

Other changes -

went 2/2 in 2h Spec., taking the points from Morbidity. Reasoning was that if I even use DnD, its once during a fight.

took both points out of Imp. Runic Mastery, putting one into Imp. Icy Talons, and the other into Acclimation.

The World of Warcraft Armory

All in all I do feel my spec is a lot better now. In my current tanking gear, tested to 1 million damage against the level 80 dummies in Archerus, I can crank out 2200 DPS with a rotation that only needs 3 buttons (possible 4th for blood tap every now and then for an extra BB). So, I doubt threat is going to be much of a problem at this point.

Now, I feel I need to work on my glyphs. I am running the HB glyph right now, and I know that one is a definite stay.

My other glyphs:

Glyph of Obliterate - I am really thinking about changing this out for the Rune Strike glyph. The thing I am looking to find out about it is if the 10% extra crit is just that, and extra 10% chance overall, or if its 10% of my crit rating. My crit is very low (5.51% atm, though KM makes it feel like 30% lol), so if it is based off my actual rating, I am thinking OB would provide a bigger damage increase

Glyph of IBF - Another one I am confused about. If I have 540 defense, I would assume I'm getting the 30% reduction already. Is this glyph useless? or is it starting that base at 30% and my defense increasing from there? I am thinking about replacing this with the UA glyph.

Glyph of Pestilence - Not even running pestilence in my rotation anymore. Gonna likely replace this with Horn Of Winter.

Glyph of Corpse Explosion - As above, I don't even use this spell anymore. I'm thinking Blood Tap might be beneficial here.



Anyone have any thoughts on those? They would be greatly appreciated.

Hey Beasterz, as a Frost tank myself, I like that you chose frost. Aside from that there are lots of "decent" frost builds for tanking. But for getting the best threat and taking the least amount of damage you will want to use

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Your glyphs should be IT, Oblit and HB/RuneStrike. HB and RS are interchangeable as both will be benificial but for different settings. HB obviously for the aoe threat capability and RS for the single target. Minor glyphs should be pestilence, horn, and blood tap. Blood tap + UA after using ur 2 deathrunes is nice as it will only throw ur rotation off by a half second. Glyphing IBF is not useful for PvE anymore, it has been hotfixed in 3.1.2 i believe it was. It is a PvP glyph only now.

Acclimation is not rly needed as your raid comp should be able to give you the resists required for each fight.

Looks like your heading in the right direction tho, gl with it all!

-Flip

Since you are in such random gear (pvp stuff) your numbers are a little weird for now. If you intend to raid you will quickly find that your tps, avoidance and EH change as you move to actual tanking gear. For example the tempered saronite gear with resilience and attack power/crit might allow you to keep the critcap now, but will hopefully be replaced by an actual tanking piece with (hopefully) more stam, more (any) D, and some form of avoidance. You will be giving up the AP and potentially higher strength of the pvp gear. This means you will want talents like bladed armor to help gain dps (dps correlating highly to tps) from stats you already stack (in this case armor)

Def glyph for HB, its so nice, and it allows us to spread the imp FF to multiple mobs without using a blood rune for pest.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Silveronfire

Since you are in such random gear (pvp stuff) your numbers are a little weird for now. If you intend to raid you will quickly find that your tps, avoidance and EH change as you move to actual tanking gear. For example the tempered saronite gear with resilience and attack power/crit might allow you to keep the critcap now, but will hopefully be replaced by an actual tanking piece with (hopefully) more stam, more (any) D, and some form of avoidance. You will be giving up the AP and potentially higher strength of the pvp gear. This means you will want talents like bladed armor to help gain dps (dps correlating highly to tps) from stats you already stack (in this case armor)

Def glyph for HB, its so nice, and it allows us to spread the imp FF to multiple mobs without using a blood rune for pest.

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I think you have Tempered mixed up with Savage. The tempered pieces are a tanking set, with defense rating and str/stam :) Currently I have 552 defense with SSG, and 27024 HP in Frost Presence before other buffs.



That said, I won't have many of those left after today.

@ Flipski:

I'm not running IT in my rotation, nor am I running two diseases, So I'm not sure IT and pest glyphs would be a big part of my build. I simply rely on HB putting up my FF, with BS taking over for BB on single targets, as well as more FS hits mixed in with RS.

One of my main reasons for not running IT in the spec is that, if I cast HB on a mob group from range, not only have I generated threat on all of them, but its going to give those runes time to come back up for me. This potentially lets me get in two OBs, which gives me two chances at a rime proc, while still keeping aggro on all the mobs with a couple of BB and the FF ticks rather easily.

As for Acclimation, I just kind of had a point left over. As I'm mainly pugging and helping some friends get to 80 so we can start raiding together, I don't have a raid comp yet, but I would tend to think that I would have a pally or shaman that could give me what I need, so that point is likely to go elsewhere.

Not at all trying to be combative here, just kinda throwing up what I do. Here's what seems to be my favorite rotation:

(DC macroed)HB -> OB -> BB -> BB -> (Blood Tap) BB -> OB

HB -> OB -> BB -> BB -> FS (repeat)

For single target, I replace BB with BS for the slightly higher damage. One thing I've found with this rotation is I almost always have KM up on that second HB, so smashing the mobs with a DC'd opener is great for that initial threat.

OF course, if anyone thinks I need to alter the rotation a bit, I will try it out, which is why I've posted it. :)

Ah ok, did not know you were using the HB-OB rotation. That's all cool, I am actually using that on my dps spec and is a little more dps than the IT gun and standard rotation. Seems like you got the rotation under wraps. :)

-Flip

You are right, I was refering to savage gear. The theory is still true if you look beyond that =)...pvp gear will artificially move certain numbers up or down, you might find a tps decrease moving into proper tanking gear which is more mitigation/avoidance heavy.

I agree 100% with your trash rotation.

Something I've been playing with: MT rotation for a single target (boss)

IT>PS>OB>BS>BS
HB (yay proc?)>OB(x1 or 2 depending on proc)>BS>BS

I have found that not only does this yield greater burst threat initially on the boss than relying on HB (non crit 4k threat for 2 runes) the extra damage bonus provided by using PS to both BS and OB is very nice. (this will be even better in 3.2 with the changes to BS disease scaling)

Going with PS at least for the initial rune dump seems like a win for me. I do not usually reset Blood Plague , I use it solely for the extra burst threat up front (two stikes, two opportunities to crit, etc). I eventually settle down into a HB-OB-BS rotation deeper into the fight once I have a solid threat lead.

Your rotation sounds fine...pretty sure its what most frost tanks use.