Unholy Tank spec Discussion

[Rev13]

Hope that the "discussion" doesnt insinuate im trying to make a long official drawn out thread and all, rather I would like to offer my ideas and ask some questions on some proposed builds.

First off, I love this toon. Its loads of fun, the mobs run fleeing in terror if they dont die in 3 hits. Im Unholy. I like the sound of having an Unholy Death Tank, it makes me happy So thats out of the way.

My conundrum is finding a good tank spec for Unholy. Unholy appears to be the best AoE tanking spec, while also offering good tools for tanking high spell damage bosses and high mitigation bosses due to having a greater majority of their dps come from spell damage. That said, here are my ideas and a brief descriptor of why I went what:

17/0/54

My favorite so far. I use Anticipation as a filler for moving down the tree and end up filling it up anways. Being that this builds provides great AoE buffs I'm sure to askew CC and just tank whatever all is in front of me, so why not get as much avoidance as possible? Blood Caked Blade is great and all, but I dont imagine myself relying on my auto attacks as much with an Unholy build, the talent is filled up in case I mess up a rotation and have to wait for runes to come back up. Not a great reason but im stickin with it
I forego filling Desecration and instead fill up Dark Conviction, which brings me to my second build:

14/0/57

with the points swapped around. EDIT TO ADD: This build has slightly better AoE threat and damage, and plays to the strength of the spec well because Plague Strike has a prominent place in my rotation (as it does in all, but....)

This is my problem. I know not which is preferrable, and seek any thoughts on the subject. Could I hybridize and put 3 in DC and 4 in Desecration?

In addition, are there any viable builds that include Necrosis? Its a talent I like very much.

Thanks TS community

Your neighborhood friendly Death Knight Kayoss (<---"Chaos")

[Saturday]

Here's a list of things I notice off the bat. Don't expect any kind of coherence

In my experience so far in playing a DK, you never need to fill more than 3 points in Desecration to keep the buff up in any non-solo situation. Two seems lacklustre and five is overkill.

You don't 'need' Outbreak, it feels like wasted points but I guess if you really want bigger Plague Strikes its nice enough.

You definitley DO need Virulence, I'd pretty much say it's essential in any PVE unholy build. Nothing's worse than something missing.

I think you're over-valuing Dark Conviction. Looking at it from a warrior perspective, we used Cruelty because it's easily within reach. DC on the other hand is quite deep and while its always nice to have extra crit, couldn't the points be better used in something else? Improved Icy Touch, for example, is nice if you don't have a warrior/bear/protadin providing a slow and always good for instances.

[Rev13]

Great ideas. Thank you.

How about this?

Also, how about Ravenous Dead? Is it worth it?

[Rev13]

Bumped for more thoughts

[Wyleai]

At a minimum, all DK tanks should start with this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xZ0xZ0x

What you do after that is up to you.

[Arvandor]

I'd argue at LEAST another 3 points into frost for improved icy touch.

But Wyleai is correct. 5/5/5 or 5/8/5 or possibly even 5/8/8 (for faster D&D cooldown), then after that, it's pick a tree, dive down it, and get your oh shit buttons; bone shield for UH, lichborne and unbreakable armor for frost, and mark of blood and vampiric touch for blood. Congrats, you have a tank spec =)

I've heard Unholy tanks edge out as the best Dk tanks once you start getting enough avoidance to have 100% uptime on bone shield. But it's all hearsay for me at this point, all I'VE done is tank Nexus a few times =P

[Device442]

Not to draw this out any further, but I also have been looking into a Unholy tanking spec.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

what I came up with.

[morkins]

Necrosis: This is a good talent for both tanking and DPS. This works with rune strike. Currently, on a single target, rune strike should be your biggest single DPS source while tanking. If not, you dont have enough avoidance. Because of this you absolutely want dirge and the Icy touch glyph. You will be runic power starved when most of your white swings become rune strikes and anything that gives you more runic power, giving you more runic strikes, is important.

Toughness is a must. While you can keep a very high uptime on bone armour and then follow up with IBF, there will be times where you have neither. At these times your damage will spike and armour will help keep you alive. Its always good to explain this dynamic to healers unfamiliar with DK's.

Also on that, you really need to protect your bone armour uptime. With packs try not to let any get behind you. If you do, you will not be able to parry them and your avoidance drops. They will start taking up your bone armour charges at a faster rate.

Desecration: While on a single target, less than 5/5 is serviceable, on AOE you only really have your initial plague strike to trigger it. After that your runes are tied up in aoe abilities for the next 10 seconds and so guaranteeing it at the beginning of AOE is valuable with 5/5. The side benefit of desecration is that it slows mobs in AOE. This gives you more time to react should 'enthusiatic' AOE pull a mob. This is most likely at the beginning of a pull and again puts extra value on 5/5 desecration to make sure its there.

[Phoenix]

In my experience Blood caked blade and necrosis are talents which are to be avoided if you are not going to use the Duel Wield (trispec) Proc spec. IMO that spec is terrible anyways but thats another discussion. The reasoning behind this is that very little of our damage is in white damage. All our abilities are instant and therefore make up for most of our damage so those are points that can easily be moved around.

Virulence is also almost considered necessary due to spell hit being at 17% while our 2h hit cap as well as special abilities being at 9%. You dont want anything to miss. Missing= wasted time and threat that is lost.

Toughness is another biggee that is just too good to skip. We are talking about a 15% increase in armor. This almost requires point in it for a tanking build.

There are a ton of great things in Unholy...making it almost certain that there will be many different and correct versions of tank builds. For example i have built my tanking build around still having a ghoul available for soloing and mobs that dont cleave, as well as having gargoyle which is one of the best RP dumps available for a single mob(boss).

Also while Desecration is a cool looking spell and does provide a 5% boost in damage I find that you either end up getting AMZ or Desecration. There is certainly room for both but again that means sacrificing talents in other places.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is the spec im looking at. The reason behind this spec is that I will be playing the role of dps until called upon to tank, and even then it will be in an OT position most of the time.

If I were looking at a MT position the build would change to incorporate that, and would thus appear as Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This build incorporates AMZ as well as 5/5 desecration. Even still there are points that are available to move around. For example some people would opt to put points in Vicious strikes over Outbreak. That is fine but the way i justify points in there is due to pest and BB being core in our aoe abilities. Lastly, some would say that 5/5 in desecration is overkill...and i tend to agree for the most part. So taking out one or two points would allow you to place them in imp icy touch or even unholy aura.

Lastly I have noticed that with end game progression and tankingin mind it is getting harder and harder to place such a high value on desecration. Most fights have us moving around so the slowing mechanic is not very usefull and i find myself putting points in it simply for the 5% more damage. One could aregue that the points in desecration would be better served in imp icy touch...the more i think about it the more i am inclined to agree. There is also some serious theorycrafting going on over in EJ's think tank and most would argue that imp icy touch coupled with unholy aura would be points better spent than in desecration. If that is the case the the build would be Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Until more parses and charts are available to confirm which points are better i will be using this as a MT build.

[Synapse]

Necrosis: This is a good talent for both tanking and DPS. This works with rune strike. Currently, on a single target, rune strike should be your biggest single DPS source while tanking. If not, you dont have enough avoidance. Because of this you absolutely want dirge and the Icy touch glyph. You will be runic power starved when most of your white swings become rune strikes and anything that gives you more runic power, giving you more runic strikes, is important.

This is huge. Rune strike on Necrosis is insane. Can I have evidence? Testing it myself is beyond my reach for the next month or so.

[Phoenix]

Again very little of our damage is based on white damage..you are talking about dumping 5 points into a talent for 10% damage as shadow on one strike. Will you see an increase in dps? Perhaps, but that depends on where you pull other talents out to take this. I dont have the link anymore but over at Ej's Think Tank it was discovered that points in necrosis and blood caked blade does increase dps, but the increase was very insignificant.

[Synapse]

Again very little of our damage is based on white damage..you are talking about dumping 5 points into a talent for 10% damage as shadow on one strike. Will you see an increase in dps? Perhaps, but that depends on where you pull other talents out to take this. I dont have the link anymore but over at Ej's Think Tank it was discovered that points in necrosis and blood caked blade does increase dps, but the increase was very insignificant.

As unholy dps white damage accoutns for about a third of my damage, so yes. But tanking I do think having runic strike running on most white swings is..very likely actually. it's a very high damage move(i see 3.5k crits as unholy at level 73) off the gcd, and as such something they can spam if they're tanking. Having necrosis/ cake affect rune strikes inflates their threat gen value a lot for unholy tanks.

[Phoenix]

A third of your damage as white damage? I agree that rune strike is one of the biggest hardest hitting strikes we have and in tanking it will be used to excess, but where are you going to pull the talent points from to get it? What do you give up? Lastly i have a hard time believing that a third of the damage you do as unholy is white damage...maybe when DWing but even then...Im not saying you are wrong..on the contrary maybe it is myself who has not been paying attention to the white damage read-outs. Ill do a few runs and see what I come up with.

[Device442]

are we still bound to the 40% speed attack speed increase after parry?

[Phoenix]

are we still bound to the 40% speed attack speed increase after parry?

Yes. If a bos parries your attack he gains the 40% attack speed.

[morkins]

This is huge. Rune strike on Necrosis is insane. Can I have evidence? Testing it myself is beyond my reach for the next month or so.

Its quite easy to confirm on live. Just grab a mob, let it beat on you, once you get a dodge/parry then autoattack/runestrike....you will see a necrosis report. Its not really 'huge'. If you are tanking a single target then maybe runestrike+white will approach 50% of damage. Thats a big maybe. In that case then necrosis is worth ~1% damage per point depending on how it interacts with spell debuffs. That's the best case. When Im not tanking, white damage is consistantly below 30%. On multiple target tanking/DPS, its even lower. So it's a nice talent but Ive not found the points to go more then 2/5 in it.

Yes. If a bos parries your attack he gains the 40% attack speed.

The last data Ive seen (over at EJ) strongly suggested this wasnt the case anymore. Are you referring to very recent research and if so, could you tell us where to find it please?

On AMZ: Its a nice talent and Id like to have it but I cant justify 5 points in magic suppression at that level to get it. The magic mitigation of bone armour and IBF are enough for me so far. If they weren't, Id be seriously looking at resist gear for that fight. I can see the argument as a 100% raid tank but right now Im in 5 mans/heroics and it's too specialised.

I find the same situation with Reaping. In 5 man runs almost every pull is multitarget so Im finding Im using blood runes and have no real use for death runes. For 100% raid DPS I'll be taking this talent.

[Saturday]

Quoting a blue: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Parry Hasting - Was it removed?

The reduced swing time for a creature's next swing after it successfully parries an attack still exists in the game, and the vast majority of all creatures in WoW use the mechanic. Note that we have the ability to flag specific creatures to not be affected by this mechanic if we so choose for balance purposes. An example of such a creature would be Patchwerk, a very high melee damage dealing raid boss.

[Rev13]

I try to stay away from auto attacks as much as possible in my Unholy spec. I find that if I have to auto attack for any period of time I might be doing something wrong. There should always be a deathcoil to be had, or maybe even pop a blood tap and get a free rune. I do everything I can to keep from auto attacking. (<---thats right, right?) Not that I dont auto attack between attacks when the timer is up, but if I busy myself with specials then it shouldnt matter. This matters even more if im tanking, the thought of threat loss scares the hell out of me:

"Rev why are you auto-attacking"

"waiting for my runes to come back up"

Thats a situation I want to avoid. As such, talents like BCB and Necro I avoid unless im going to be DPSing mainly and OTing as needed.

As far as spec, I'll be 12/3/56 when I hit 80 and I will drop Unholy Aura and fill Toughness after I ding it. Im tired of all the other DKs lol'ing at the slow Unholy DK while they get to my quest items/kills before me

[Synapse]

Quoting a blue: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Parry Hasting - Was it removed?

Thanks, that answers a lot and is relevant to shut up *so* many people who are saying the opposite >.<

[Nerlth]

Click

The UH spec on here gets the job done. You could move a few points here and there but it has all of the basics.