Death Knight AOE Spec, MT Spec and Rotations

[Merko]

he's saying he was 60% avoidance unbuffed in t7 gear... you know if this is truth.. or BS?

[Satorri]

Well, I'm a big proponent of doing it your own way. As we've already discussed there are many nuances that you can juggle and still get fine results.

That being said, there's a lot of his spec I'd be critical of. Corpse Explosion is pretty well out of place, I assume he means it for more AOE threat, but at the expense of Dancing Rune Weapon? I wouldn't make that choice. I would sooner get Bladed Armor and Will of the Necropolis (I've been testing, it has a lot of synergy with the Blood tanking nuances), than Viscious Strikes, Death Rune Mastery, and Epidemic.

The build has some synergies, I can see what he's going for, so I wouldn't peg him as a poor or short-sighted DK, though I would expect his tanking spec wouldn't be so strong.

As for the avoidance, that doesn't sound too far off, though I think he rounded up 5-10% for t7 gear. I wasn't in full t7 but I did have a good 25% parry and 20% or so dodge with my tanking runes and all. Maybe he was counting with keeping Blade Barrier up.

[Urrick]

Yeah Blood tanking isn't as cut and dry as the other trees.

Sat you had good experience with Will of Nec? Just looking at the talent I wasn't impressed with it, but maybe I'll give it a shot down the line.

Starting to think I'm going to level unholy till Northrend at least, then switch to blood.

[Satorri]

Well, the strength of Blood is its self healing and high healability. Will of the Necropolis gives you a nice margin of a safety net, not unlike Argent Defender for Prot Pallies (though not a flat value it gets better with your gear).

You could probably leave it off when you're first starting off tanking and not notice as big a difference, but once you get better epic gear at 80 you'll see some serious safety net action at the bottom. What I meant about synergy is that when you find a situation where your health drops suddenly or heals are not available or slow to come, it buys you some time with a bit better mitigation.

It's not my spec of choice, but I do find blood intriguing.

[Aryeh]

• Tundra Stalker doesn't affect Icy Touch anymore.
• Acclimation now has a 20% chance to boost magic resistance. (Down from 30%)

kinda sux

[Merko]

I'm going to give this guy a shot but i flat out told him...stacking stam is nice but if there is a threat issue or healers are going oom and he doesn't fix the problem he'll quickly find his way to the door...

Thanks for your guy's input, I didn't have a chance to put the time in on the blood tree i would have liked to.

[Merko]

one question before i go making final changes to my blood spec and write up... does dancing rune weapon give the user threat if it does it would probably worth picking up for 1 point. However if it does not (recount does list its damage done as a pet) it probably would be a point spent somewhere else.

I never got around to testing this... and i really wish i did...

[Urrick]

Everything I've read is that it doesn't add threat.

[Aryeh]

yeh doesn't add thread.
spend this point somewher else

[Satorri]

Hmm, news to me, never noticed it not building threat. Pity, it does great damage.

[Armstrong]

Well, the strength of Blood is its self healing and high healability. Will of the Necropolis gives you a nice margin of a safety net, not unlike Argent Defender for Prot Pallies (though not a flat value it gets better with your gear).

A 30% armor increase corresponds to ~10% damage reduction with starter level 80 tank gear and only applies to physical damage. Not really anywhere near Ardent Defender, and unlikely that it will get much closer via gear upgrades.

Sadly it may also be a while before the talent gets some attention from Blizzard since Blood is the least viable tree for end-game tanking to begin with and fewer people are likely to even bother with it.



Edit: Just did some math and it seems that Will of the Necropolis would have to increase armor by ~70% in order to provide the same effect as Ardent Defender. Even then it would still only only affect physical damage, although the AMS cooldown reduction helps with magic damage in a roundabout way.

[Urrick]

For the last month, month and a half, they haven't made many changes to any of the DK trees. I'm guessing they are waiting for the feedback from the masses.

I'm thinking blood will be the spec I go at 80 so it will be interesting to see if anything changes.

[Lich]

I myself have been doing a lot of research to determine what might be a decent build for tanking. I enjoy the Unholy tree a lot and plan on making it my main spec. My build has changed a bit after reading through your forum posts but I would love your input on this build here...

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This build essentially is used to stack parry rating through strength, and stacking stamina. The other build I was thinking of is...

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
fixed..

Obviously it's going to be hard to see how this works before anyone is 80, but any thoughts would be helpful. I was wanting to make an aoe tank with a high parry/dodge. I am concerned that it may not be as good as stacking armor.

If it helps any, I plan on using a 2 hander for tanking.

[Merko]

Both builds are the same so if you can go back and relink your second build I will put my 2 cents in on it.

As of the 23/0/48 build...

First problem is as a Death Knight we are like druids in the fact that don't have any pure mitigation such as a shield block value that cuts X number off the attack when blocked. So for mitigation we rely only on our armor. I would recommend picking up 5/5 toughness since it is one of the few abilities that supports DK mitigation.

Also like a warrior's Imp Thunderclap being a staple talent for any raid tank 3/3 Imp Icy Touch reduces a bosses attack speed by an additional 6%... that is an additional 6% time during a boss fight that you are not being hit by his melee swing.
(2.5s attack speed hitting for 10k over 7 Minute Fight is 1,680,000 damage ... damage reduced if swing time is reduced 6% is 100800)

Now for abilities you picked up -

3/3 Subversion for an Unholy Build is not a good use of talent points since as an Unholy DK your staple on DPS will be your Scourge Strike

2/2 Unholy Command is a fun ability but is only really useful for pvp and controlling runners, both uses have there place, but not in a raid tanks arsenal

Put your 2 points from Butchery(Blood) into Dirge(Unholy) this will generate 300%+ more Runic Power for you

2/2 Night of the Living Dead has some benefits but not really too important for a tank since your pet does not increase your threat

1/1 Master of Ghouls is basically the same boat as above, as fun as it is to have your ghoul with you... doesn't help your threat


I like that you designed your build around getting the extra stam/str/exp for your build, but with the trees set up the way they are blood(stam,str) frost (mitigation) unholy (aoe) I would be very cautious when trying to mix and mash your builds together because other than the pretty much manditory 5/8/5 in the bottom of the trees each tree has talents that showcase all the other talents in that particular tree.

Things such as by not filling out the last 2 points in rage of rivendare you are missing out on 4% damage + 2 expertise, while dark conviction only gives you 2% to crit for those 2 points.

Those other 3 points in dark conviction (3% crit) can be used for 3/3 Ebon Plaguebringer (3% crit, +13% magic damage debuff)

[Merko]

As far as going for a high dodge/parry build I would let that come naturally with gear/progression, having talked with a few DKs that had gotten geared pretty well in the beta a lot of the gear you will recieve will push Deathknights in the direction of being avoidance tanks (pretty dangerous ground IMO when dealing with a random number generator). Since we will not benefit nor have gear with stats budgeted for SBV. Unfortunately for DKs and Bear tanks... with diminishing returns being place on dodge and parry when T8/T9 content comes out we are going to have to hope that Blizzard accounted for this in there item budgets. (ie higher armor and stam on tier sets and such)

[Lich]

Oh right, I forgot to redo my unholy/blood tree like I did the unholy/frost. The whole point of going down Blood is mostly to get Veteran of the Third War for the increased Str and Sta. This is only possible by taking the 3 points into Rage of Rivendare and the only way to get max expertise through talents unless I go full blood. 5 ranks of RoR and 1 rank of VTW only give 6 expertise and 10% damage increase, while having 3 ranks in RoR and 3 ranks in VTW give a total of 9 more expertise and 6% more AP from Str. I'm just not sure if the 4% increased damage gives more damage than another 6% AP from Str.

I'm not sure if I read it wrong, but Subversion doesn't add any damage or crit bonus to Scourge Strike. It only works for BS, HS, and OB. Mostly it was just a dump stat, with a minor increase in dps for when I use BS and OB.

I have removed Virulence, Unholy Command, Master of Ghouls, and Night of the Dead. I have taken up Necrosis and Blood-caked Blade. Here is a new build with some of the changes you suggested. It's still missing the Imp IT and Toughness talents but I'm not sure what to get rid of so that I can still keep the higher str and sta from VTW. I may be able to take out of the unholy tree for those, but they would probably decrease the tps a bit.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Either way it's looking like for a starting tank build right at 80 this..

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

would be preferred.

[Lich]

For either build I could take out of Necrosis and put into Ebon Plaguebringer.

[Merko]

made a quick fix... meant to put

"3/3 Subversion for an Unholy Build is not a good use of talent points since as an Unholy DK your staple on DPS will be your Scourge Strike"

[Merko]

Since with DK tanking there is no "set builds" those build are both looking much better (although i still kinda have a thing for those 8 points in frost for mitigation) but the other skills will be a matter of gear selection, skill rotations, situational preference.

*** As you have in your build I will eventually put points from my unholy build from magic suppresion and anti-magic zone to pick up blade barrier once certain raid encounters have been learned (as it may be a good tool for learning raid strategies) and threat starts becoming more of an issue.***

something like (swapping one point to make 5/5 bladed armor or 3/3 blood caked blade (haven't ran the numbers) would be an option to change) -

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

[Lich]

The more I look at those talents I want to take them as well. I'm just not sure if I should take it once I hit 80 or wait until I have enough parry to switch to it. Either way I wish I had 8 more points to spend