Unholy Tank spec Discussion

[Síra]

Don't get how most of you do your Unholy specs without going for Lichborne, realy.
Unholys whole tanking lies mostly on your bone shield, the more you can keep that active on you the better. Popping Lichborne while having an active Bone shield up effectivly increase the time your bone shield is active and lower the "gap" you have from the time that your current Bone sheild goes of till you can reapplie one.

Ontop of that, getting 25% more avodiance for 15sec is masive! Also worth saying that while under the Lichborne effect, you can heal yourself with DC.

This is my unholy buid, that have worked verry well for MT naxx so far: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Few thought i'v been pondering about tho is for one bladed armor vs. Desecration. What's best for tanking. I'v been doing some small tests but need more looking into it before i can say for sure. Maby anywon else have done some testing and got a good awnser to this question?

About Magic suppression and AmZ, alot of mixed feelings about these talents. Personaly i like them. first of cause i like to know that when i pop my Anti magic shell that i'm completely immune to all magic damage for that duration, gives a nice feeling of safty in this "OH SHIT" CD. The extra 5% lowerd magic damage is also nice and will overall in long fights that consists of magic damage ( witch most does these days ) save some mana for the healers, witch is allways good. After going these 5 points in Magic suppression you naturaly go for AmZ aswell, i'm a fan of the ability, first of for beeing able to "shield" your healer or raid in realy bad situations or as a second ability to lower damage from high magic abilitys hitting you, sutch as breaths and things alike.

[Arhk]

I just wanted to bump this discussion since I'm currently looking into respeccing from Frost to Unholy.

I'm having difficulty figuring out where to put points mid tree and still have enough points for 10 (Parry and Bladed Armor) in Blood and 5 in Frost (Toughness).

Can any Death Knights with Naxx/Heroic tank experience on Live post their Unholy specs?

[Njordus]

I've only tanked Heroics, did my first one within an hour of dinging 80. I simply cannot see why Frost is better than Unholy for tanking.

As of dinging 80 I had 40% avoidance between parry, dodge, and miss. Add in Blade Barrier and that's up to 50%~. Pretty good for Bone shield.

What it comes down to really, is Bone Shield vs. UA. Everything else is negligible or easily gotten by any spec (i.e. Toughness).

UA does nothing for spells, and I don't think the math works out to 40% mitigation for the duration.

Bone Shield has 3 second internal cooldown. With the glyph (you *are* glyphing it, right) it lasts 15 seconds minimum. It really ends up lasting longer than that depending on avoidance. Also, you can pre-cast it at the beginning of the fight and chain 2 at the start, something you can't do with UA.

So with Frost, you have 38 seconds of guarenteed mitigation (how much from UA I'm not positive on). With Unholy, you have 27 seconds of guarenteed mitigation, minimum 40% reduction, with the possibility of up to 100% uptime.

Keep in mind that magic damage is a large part of many bosses. For example, the first Heroic I tanked was UK, and all 3 bosses have magic damage, and we would not have been able to down the final boss without AMS and AMZ (his shout is shadow damage lawls).

As unholy you also provide good buffs (UH aura and Ebon) that cannot be applied by any other class, as opposed to the lolwindfury Frost buff. 6 points to have a shaman buff is a big waste imo.

The AoE threat is better as Unholy, the magic mitigation destroys Frost, and with bone shield you have equal to or better than mitigation than Frost.

My 8/8/55 build : Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

[ttocs]

I've tanked somewhere around 30ish heriocs, and OT'd 10man naxx/sartharion with this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It's got the 3 basics, Lichborne, extra hit for spells, and extra AP for threat. You can take points out of impurity or outbreak for Unholy Aura.

[Device442]

Dual Wield Unholy.. been messing around with this one.

Still I think by going DW as a tank your gonna have a heck of a time balancing your stats, but with itemization the way it is you never know it just might work out, by sticking with DW you force the hit proc's on your diseases faster.. would this reset the timer as all locks know and love about DoT's?

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xZhxczhZcxhhxzkgxa0csuz

[Gorgamesh]

I'm playing around with MoB/UH spec and i must say I enjoy it much. I just tried to get best out of all 3 trees which left me with a lot of "oh snap" buttons to chose from.

I will be droping Outbreak for Virulence for sure next time I respec and perhaps I'll switch desecration for magic supression and AMZ and see how it goes, although I really like to have the peace of mind that when some trigger happy DPS will somehow overaggro me I will have some time to grab the add before it goes out desecrated ground, also DPS buff is really nice for melee.

[Condemned]

For the most part, alot of DK tanks I see are using this:

5/11/55

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Lichborne is retardedly good, fits the 5/5/5+56 rule, having the ghoul pet really won't help you tank, possibly save your life on account of [Death Pact] but thats about it Anti-Magic Zone is very under rated, on boss fights like Sapphiron it's EXTREMELY awesome to have, especially as an OT not tanking anything or the MT, I personally drop it when we hide behind the Iceblocks because blizzards pound us there... enough with the sapph strats >.> but this spec, I've found amazing for all tanking, hope it helps

[Inaara]

This is my Unholy spec:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=041112040506

While lichborne is a good talent I don't see how you can view it as a "must have". It lasts for 15 seconds but it has a 3 minute cooldown. Arguing that it allows you to heal yourself is silly. With so many must have talents in the unholy tree it doesn't seem like a good idea to waste 3 talent points that could be used on something like Wandering Plague.

[Condemned]

Well wandering plague is in there, and i dont see much useful left in unholy, and on bosses like Patchwerk, it's just awesome that he cant even touch you with it up

[gadgetknight]

at 77 I tanked HoL with this tree, excluding the two points in wandering plague and 1 point in bladed armor.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...4&version=9551

it is working out quite well for me

[slamboy234]

This is my hybrid tank/dps build, the only thing i am unsure about is how necessary the magic shield is since I have not hit 80 yet. but here it is, WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Death Knight -> Talent Calculator

[Fonziefabio]

Here's a WWS log for a patchwerk fight I did.

Wow Web Stats

Necrosis was 7% of my damage. I was taking hatefuls that fight, so I wasn't able to get as many rune strikes as I normally do. Either way, you can scroll around to the different fights (I was MTing) and you can see that Necrosis stayed around 7% of my damage. BCB does about half the damage of what Necrosis does, but it only takes three talent points. This is an oxymoron to most people, but I'm single target unholy specced at the moment. If patch 3.1 wasn't coming, I would be making changes to my spec, but it's just not worth it when it's going to get reset in a few weeks. Here's what I would do for 3.1:

Unholy Single Target Spec

Unholy AoE Spec

This is what I prefer. Personally, I can't stand frost. I don't know why, but I hate it. So I stay unholy.

[Kazeyonoma]

Talents and Armories should probably go into the HALP! Armory and Talent Suggestions forum.

Please take a minute to read the rules located in my signature or at the top of every forum.

Moved.

[Chickenfrier]

i really like the the unholy tree for dks and i love to tank ( i have an 80 druid tank/healer) so i decided to look around and see how unholy tanks are doing.

a couple places i went to had some really good points so i made a build:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9767

This build has the basic 5/5/5 that any dk tank should have.

I also know that i am tanking.. i am not a dps. With this in mind i decided to do the 2 1h thing for 1 main reason. Faster attacks = faster threat. yes i don't do as much damage per attack but again i am not dps i dont care as much about damage as i do about threat. If i have fast constant threat it is better than spikey threat from 2h. So i went into frost and i got lichborne and nerves of cold steel.

With that i also maxed out Necrosis. I with have twice as fast auto attacks and they still go no matter what i am doing so its just again faster constant threat. i Did not want blood caked blade because that is Chance on hit where as necrosis is every auto attack no matter what does additional shadow damage (which again is increased by black ice)

You may also notice that i did 3 points in black ice. This was because 6% constant damage on all frost and shadow damage is better than 5% on one move.

My mind set when delving into unholy was i am an aoe tank. So i got the pestilence glyphs and i put points into morbidity and unholy blight.

I also put the 1 point into corpse explosion. Most people dont get this but i look at it this way. It now costs the same amount of RUNIC power(no longer 1 unholy rune) as death coil. So if i am fighting a group of mobs and one guy dies boom corpse explosion and everyone gets hurt + if another guy dies from it he blows up 2 (woot glyphs).

I have 1 point in desecration just so i can have the slow field because it procs on every plague strike now. not just a chance on hit.

This gives me enough talents to get anti magic shell which is good for those magic fights. Remember i am also coming from a druid tank and i have NO magic resist on him so on this guy i wanted as much as i could get without really giving anything 2 important up.

Some people ask why i put points in wandering plague. Hello i am AoE tank. Pestilence is constantly keeping my diseases up on every mob (due to glyph) so that is a fairly high chance that at least 1 of those disease on one of the mobs with blow up and hit everyone else. Woot free threat.

Let me know what you guys think

[coe]

I also know that i am tanking.. i am not a dps. With this in mind i decided to do the 2 1h thing for 1 main reason. Faster attacks = faster threat. yes i don't do as much damage per attack but again i am not dps i dont care as much about damage as i do about threat. If i have fast constant threat it is better than spikey threat from 2h. So i went into frost and i got lichborne and nerves of cold steel.

Never tried dual wielding, but I was tanking as Unholy for a long time. If you have will and time to check something yourself: take slow 2 hander, take Scourge Strike talent and check on dummy your threat in comparison to 2 handers and no scourge strike. The thing is, that weapon speed has nothing to do with spiky threat. Look at your normal AoE situation:

DnD (BFU), IT (BU), PS (B), Pest (), Unholy Blight, BS, Scourge Strike spam...

White attacks are only addition. Our main threat comes out from special attacks that are independent on weapon speed. But Scourge Strike depends on weapon damage, that's why 2hander is better for this ability. Also notice that 5 first GCD you will use for stacking dots, nothing close to spiky threat

Another thing is that in current content and bosses with enrage timers, damage that tank can pull out is also quite important. And Scourge Strike is where most damage comes out for Unholy builds.

Btw, Lichborn has been changed lately, it doesn't give anything now (unless you want to self heal with Death Coils).

edit: I also noticed that you don't have Bladed Armor talent, which is worth 600-700 AP depending on gear. This scales with Impurity talent you have and with Frost Presence. Basically, Bladed Armor is a must-have talent for every DK tank

[fenris1325]

here is a link to my characters current tanking build, The World of Warcraft Armory

I currently tank as OT in both 10 and 25 man Ulduar, and am MT for some 25 naxx runs. I find the decresed cooldown on DnD and DG is great to have, as well as the UB being great for keeping the aggro of several mobs on me.

[Jaeden]

You have spread yourself too thin and in so doing missed out in some talents.

Parry is never a good idea to gem/strive for. You would be better having a trinket that gave you more health.

You are missing out in Necrosis, which not everyone realizes works on your Rune Strikes, unlike Blood Caked Blade.

You are sacrificing 5 Expertise, not Expertise rating, and 10% damage to get your 19% chance to take 45% less damage from a nuke.

I'd take the deflection and crit points out and pick up Necrosis and consider IUP, with the moving we do, the increase helps.

[HootyElune]

Does anyone have an idea of what a good avoidance rating should be.

Currenltly I have ~28% dodge ~18% parry unbuffed & 3% improved miss unbuffed add ~2% to parry & dodge for horn of winter.

is this standard, low, or normal? Also anyone know of an avoidance calculator for a DK?

[chop360]

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#j0xZ0xxZdgGIhckgIV0zozt:mMpMmV

BEST Unholy Tank Spec (swap talents from Necrosis into Virulence depending on your gear).

[TychoTg]

Hi there, just figured out this spec for myself:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Imp. IT seems nice to have to me, and auto-attack buffs like BCB don't seem a real bonus to me as UH tanks hardly auto-attack.
Have not tried my spec yet though, so any comments are more then welcome.

Thanks in advance.

//Berethus