Frost DK tanking threat issues

I've been wanting to tank as Frost to get some change from my current Blood focused spec, but when I tried I had issues with AoE, I even had the talent Rime to improve my Howling Blast usage, but I was still having issues.

I used two tanking weapons with relatively quick attack speed (around 1.60 I believe on both), I've got Rune Strike macroed into all of my abilities so it's used everytime possible. I had around 160 or so hit rating and 12 expertise (not sure of the rating) when I tried.

I want to know what I'm doing wrong, keep in mind that AoE is what I've got problems with, not as much single target.

This is the Frost spec I was originally using: Wowhead - Frost spec
This is my armory: Armory - Zarnia - Scarshield Legion

(Note that my gear has improved a bit since, especially on the hit rating department)

Just wondering if you have train to max rank for all the spell :)

Your expertise is kind of low for fast weapon.

HB glyph should be able tol make aoe tanking easier for you.

On a side note, you might want to get primary profession to boost your hp.

While waiting for a response last night I decided to try making a frost spec of my own, much more focused on threat. I also got two slow weapons (2.60). My spec can be found on my armory which is in my original post, I'd like it if someone had input on how I can make it better, for example a way to reduce runic power starve (I wanted to have Scent of Blood but I couldnt figure out a way to get it without drastically reducing my AP through Bladed Armor)

Any ideas?

There is a cookie cutter frost spec on elitist jerks. Yours isn't TOO far off from it, but it is enough that it will make a difference.
http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t40739-d...ed_12_01_10_a/ yay link!

Getting the two slower weapons should help with your single target threat a lot.
PUT TANK CHANTS ON YOUR WEAPONS THOUGH.

you need to work on your gems a bit, and your chants. that's sort of independant of the threat issue though.
You might want to eat expertise food or expertise potions for a while too.
you need boots for tanking too.

It's probably mostly how you're opening.
Get your diseases up and DND and howling blast in some order.

Or use glyph of howling blast and just howling blast and blood boil and then lay down a dnd.

after that just switch targets as needed and howling blast and blood boil as you feel is needed.

Personal experience, Get Glyph of Howling Blast and forget about AOE threat issues.

Oh yeah use nerubian crapace as your runeforge on both weapons.

I have also threat problems, but with single targets.

I have tanked ICC10s, and the problem is always the same. My threat generation is lagging massive behind other tanks like palladins, warriors or druids.

I usually go with single diseases on a priority bases. All my casts are macro'd with rune strike. The rune strike cast is always appended to the strike(cast), e.g. /cast obliterate -> /cast rune strike. I have gone as fare as even appending the rune strike to HB, BS, BB and FS so I do not miss any rune strike proc.

In single target fights my Obliterate is often doing more damage then the Rune Strikes, when checking with recount. Lately I have done some ICC25 rep farming. When tanking the real big skeletons guys, activated by the traps, I had situations, where Obliterate was doing the most damage, followed by Meele, and as distant third the Rune Strike. There have been around 70 Obliterate strinkes, hundereds of meele and about 10 rune strikes.

The other tank was a palladin, and he generated about twice as much threat per second as I did (according to my omen meter). I wonder why my Rune Strike procs are so low. Is there anything I can do to get more Rune Strike procs. There was more then enough Rune Power, since I casted only a few Frost Strikes.

I tried the following macro sequence, but it didn't work for me:
/cast Rune Strike
/cast <any other strike or ability>

The above macro stops at /cast Rune Strike until there is enough Runic Power to cast a Rune Strike ... well, at the beginning of a fight the Runic Power is often at zero, so all macro'd functions are stuck until there is enough Rune Power. For this reason I've moved the /cast Rune Strike behind the main cast.

I wonder, when does a Rune Strike get executed? Is it "bound" to any other cast?

Other problem is the taunt. If I'm about 100 threat per second behind the other tank, then my taunt (Dark Command) is not bringing me up to his threat level ... tank switching is getting awkward, especially in fights like ICC DBS, where every hit is adding another mark. HB is not an option for DBS, since it can aggro the blood beasts, what I certainly don't want.

I'm well above 8% hit, expertise is very low, gear score around 2900.

^ you don't single disease single target bosses.

rune strike is on next attack.

Well Rune Strike requires that you dodge or parry an incoming attack, it's not an on-use ability so it is subject to RNG. If your RS's are low in number, it could be that your avoidance is too low or you aren't actually the focus of the target hitting you. This can be a real issue with Paladin tank as they tend to AoE tank all the time. To be quite honest, Rune Strike is often not my primary damage dealer because of how it works. Sometimes it is when the RNG gods are on my side, but generally with the state of tanking these days, it's going to be Heart Strike or Melee (I'm blood spec).

Remember you lost 20% of your avoidance the moment you passed through the instance door. Unlike other tanking classes, it impacts your primary threat generator a lot. It's why I don't stack stamina above all else... I like to keep my avoidance at atleast 45% while inside ICC.

Also, don't ignore expertise, this is actually more important than hit unless you spam spells all the time.

@diodon: I think your issue about Rune Strike not casting is that if you dont include a exclamation point (!) before the Rune Strike part in your macro, it inactivates when you click it again. Most of my macros look like this;

#showtooltip Obliterate
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Obliterate
/cast !Rune Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

The last line is to remove error messages I get when trinkets are attempting to be used when they're on CD, or when I spam it without enough Runes.

Also, are you really tanking ICC25 with 2900 GearScore?

Also, thanks for all the replies, I tried again with a spec from the EJ site, and now I dont have any problems with threat anymore.
Much appreciated. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Meagree

Also, are you really tanking ICC25 with 2900 GearScore?

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Guessing he means the number from wow-heroes here, as in gear score and not GearScore?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PatrikL

Guessing he means the number from wow-heroes here, as in gear score and not GearScore?

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Oh yeah, that makes alot more sense, haha.

Your talenting is way off. Why on Earth do you have glyphed IBF? And I bet most of your threat problem comes from your low-end gear, I mean, you're far from defense capped. On the other hand, you have a few DPS items equipped. But hmm.. Low expertise does give you tricky times too.

Thanks for your input.

Some more information about my toon
Miss: 12.34% ... Dodge: 28.17% ... Parry: 22.56% ... Total Avoidance about 63% --> with the 20% debuff I should have 43% Avoidance
Health: 38196 unbuffed ... Armor: 29257

I use Sigil of HangedMan, since it is best for threat generation. I tried Sigil of Insolence and Sigil of Bone Gryphone, although the results are not as good as with the HangedMan. I guess it has to do with the fact, that both Sigils are triggered by Rune Strike and Rune Strike again depends on RNG. In other words: a low rune strike proc rate renders these two Sigils worthless.

In regard to two diseases instead of a single disease I'm in doubt. Can one more disease make up 30% more threat? I would be surprised! My DpS spec is Unholy. I'm used to roll 3 diseases. In AoE situations with 3 and more mobs I'm doing killer damage, it could be better in single target situations.

In my experience diseases are adding up, when I can hit several targets over and over again with BB and HB or DnD, BB and SS. With one target only the diseases still tick, but meele and the main FU are primary damage contributors then. The contribution of a disease in the single target situation is in the 10% range ... so if I do 2k damage single target/single disease, I could do 2.2k with two diseases. That's a marginal improvement, but it's not helping me to catch up with the pally or the warrior doing +3.5k single target damage.

Again, I have seen me doing +6k damage, but this was in AoE situations, tanking a whole group.

I forgot: My expertise is at 4 pt out of 26. I do see some dodge of my meele hits, but nothing dramatic. Where should the expertise rating be?

DPS does not equal THREAT.

secondly. against single targets whether you are using a 2 hander or 2 one handers your main attack is obliterate. It hits harder with 2 diseases than one. It hits harder enough with 2 diseases to say that BOSS TANKING you need two diseases on the boss.

While you are somewhat on the ball with rune strike in the sense that the lower your avoidance is the lower your chance to use rune strike is at, you still have it up more than enough to keep those sigils on almost constant uptime. Bone gryphon isnt worth it because of the ramp up time and it's just not that big of an upgrade for the cost. Hanged Man is a dps sigil, and frankly not worth it either, so i have no idea why you're using it.

Threat is a function of the Damage produced times a multiplier.

Having said that, it's obvious that Hanged Man is bringing me way more then either of the other two sigils. You do the math and proof me wrong. Also "it hits harder enough" is no statement, it's an opinion. At the moment I don't know what direction to go. Unholy is way better for AoE tanking. Blood seams to be better for single target. Frost looks like being in the middle, great for doing heroics.

To make an assessment, where I stand and what potential I have, it would be nice to know how much a second disease brings. If I follow Satoris thread, then it's between 10% and 20% additional damage. Since threat is damage times a factor I roughly assume it increases by the same amount.

My concern is, that I am still too fare below the threat per second compared to the other classes, even with two diseases.

I wouldn't mind to switch the glyph of Rune Strike with the glyph of disease, since it is real easy to keep the diseases refreshed with pestilence, also from a certain range. I do that as Unholy DpS constantly. For me it's more the decision to go blood and accept the lower AoE threat or stick with frost by using two diseases on the boss.

I really hate to respec again the talents into blood tank, but I guess it's easiest to try it out, instead of comparing numbers.

I do agree with you, it takes two diseases to produce max. threat, even in heroics. A top geared DpS is pulling the boss away from a Frost Tank with only one disease on the boss.

10% extra damage on an ability you use almost constantly.

I really hate writing it like this and just want to say priority because i hate "rotation" but to illustrate my point, IT PS BS BS OB OB OB OB OB froststrike SOMEWHERE in there if you have more than 60 runic power, and runestrike is bound to things so you dont have to be redundant and click it every time AND delay your activating it because you notice it a little later instead of immediately. and then you do it AGAIN. That 10% to your oblits adds up fast.

I understand that the sigil is a threat increase compared to the other two, but my point is that you shouldn't be having enough threat issues as frost to warrant even considering that sigil.

My point with threat is, different classes and different spells use different modifiers for threat. Saying that a paladin doing 3k dps is doing x threat doesn't mean that a dk doing 3k is doing the same amount of threat. One is a pally, the other is a dk. And even within that different ABILITIES all by themselves produce more threat, and it's not just the ones that are happily labelled "this ability produces a high amount of threat".

As for your expertise that I just noticed. I eat expertise food to get to 24 and I'm fine.

Do you have an armory or something you can post? As well as what you usually...do, in a fight? I'm, boggling at why you're having the problems you're having.