Blood Tanking & Ebon Plaguebringer Bug

[Tavraq]

So, here's the situation: My 10 man has a DK who's very, very set on being Unholy. I was planning on being an unholy OT, but with the Ebon Plaguebringer bug, I'm not too sure if that's a good idea. Being that I'm the more flexible one and this is a new raid, I'm wondering how decent Blood is for tanking. I know its not the bee's knees for AoE, but for single target it should be decent TPS, my main concern is mitigation.

Now, also to preface, I really dislike frost for tanking. DPS, its fun, but... in all honesty, I hate having all the short cooldowns instead of the raw mitigation. Blood's not amazingly better in that sense, but its a simpler rotation to begin with, so... I'm looking towards there. Has anyone had some experience tanking with blood? More specifically, a few questions...

Might of the Necropolis does not look like its a good talent. If you're under 35%, odds are you're going to die... at least in my experience (prot warrior pre TBC). Am I wrong?

Vampiric Blood--is that 50% more healing on you? Or just your personal spells?

Does Death Strike actually help if put in the rotation on a regular basis, or would I be hurting my threat a large amount if I used it for more than 'crap, dropping low.'

Is Blood Gorged worth tanking? I'm iffy about it, especially owing to the fact that you can easily fall under 75% often as a tank.

Is the Ebon Plaguebringer bug really detrimental enough I should be worried? Or can I just be unholy and not worry that much? I'm concerned it would destroy my threat gen, especially on AoE situations.

Blood-wise, I was looking at a build similar to this:Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
I'm still learning DK, so forgive some odd talent choices. I figured that the extra crit would be better than the extra AP from bladed armor for TPS, and that the group utility of Abom's Might would be better suited for a tank than the crit-dependant Bloody Vengeance wouldn't be up enough to take. Instead of Blood Gorged, I could also take Virulence and Outbreak, to ease the hit requirements as well as boost AoE capacity.

And again, if I'm overreacting to the Ebon Plaguebringer bug (only one EP up on a target at a time), please, let me know

[Urrick]

Vampiric Blood--is that 50% more healing on you? Or just your personal spells?

All healing done to you, via your self or others. It really is underrated I think.

When I've used Blood to tank I don't take Nec but I do take Blood Gorged. BG is worth it for the expertise at least.

As far as Death strike I'm not sure if it hurts your threat but I don't think you get any benefit from it's heal. I tend to drop them on occasion just to help out the healer.

As far as spec I'd lean more towards this.

Like you though I'm not sure about the Ebon bug. Have thought about going unholy but we already have one and this bug is keeping me from that. We have 2 blood dks and an unholy, I'm frost which I like but also fits in with the guild.

[Tavraq]

All healing done to you, via your self or others. It really is underrated I think.

When I've used Blood to tank I don't take Nec but I do take Blood Gorged. BG is worth it for the expertise at least.

As far as Death strike I'm not sure if it hurts your threat but I don't think you get any benefit from it's heal. I tend to drop them on occasion just to help out the healer.

As far as spec I'd lean more towards this.

Like you though I'm not sure about the Ebon bug. Have thought about going unholy but we already have one and this bug is keeping me from that. We have 2 blood dks and an unholy, I'm frost which I like but also fits in with the guild.

Is there a reason you skipped over subversion? I'd think the extra crit would be more beneficial to TPS than Bloody Vengeance, but I could be wrong. Most of my tank knowledge is Vanilla/early TBC. I also was aiming for Annihilation/Lichborne for an extra 'oshit' button as well as oblit not being a pita to use.

Vampiric Blood looks... downright amazing if it functions as you say. That's probably the best emergency button I've seen on DKs outside of IBF.

I figure with VB and Lichborne maybe the mitigation wouldn't be an issue. And the expertise is worth it with Blood Gorged, but I'm not sure... you do get expertise via Veteran of the Third War, and expertise doesn't help any of your spells. I mean, its not a bad thing, but I'd think depending on the frequency of AoE tanking, it might not be as good as Outbreak. But then again, Blood boil is kinda meh, it might be better to tab target and heart strike after a pestilence.

[Urrick]

Your right, subversion would be good. Could drop outbreak and one in improved Rune tap. I'm thinking Outbreak would be very helpful for AE pulls where you will get a lot of your threat from pest and bb spam. I could be wrong as I haven't tanked in blood since beta though.

[Lore]

Is having only one Ebon Plague up at a time really a bug?

I mean, it sucks for your DPS/threat, but it seems in line with every other non-stacking debuff in the game.

[Tavraq]

I'd be surprised if they kept it so only one DK could benefit from a third disease in a raid. I'm not expecting the magic debuff to stack, just that at some point they'll look into the mechanics of only one DK getting the third disease credit. Its not really an easy fix--if they gave all DKs benefit of the third disease, it would be overly beneficial, I'd imagine. They might have to balance DK's DPS/TPS around having an unholy DK, which doesn't seem what Blizzard is aiming for. But making it so you can only have one unholy DK per raid also doesn't seem like what they're aiming for. For all I know, its utterly intended, but I'd be surprised and disappointed if it is.

If it is intended, is the importance of the the issue being overblown?

[Urrick]

Seems to make it so you would only want one unholy DK in any situation as a second one would just cause confusion. They could just have it that your skills that work based on EP work no matter if its yours or not.

[Tavraq]

But then non-unholy DKs could have their DPS boosted significantly. IE, a full blood DK gaining the benefit of a third disease, which could skew the DPS results. I'd say it looks like a mechanics/coding problem that's not easily solved--how to have the ebon plaguebringer magic debuff happen multiple times without stacking, but having the third disease for multiple players.

[Urrick]

Yeah I agree, I only ment if you have the talent Ebon Plague then you get the benefit of it being on a mob if you put it there or not.

[Tavraq]

Mechanically, that seems like it would be very hard to put in-game. And I don't know of any other debuff like that, so it would have to be a lot of new code for a fairly niche (but ANNOYING) problem. So I figure it'll get fixed in... a year? Two? >_>;

I mean, if there is another debuff that works like how you're mentioning, it'd be easier. Some framework would be there. But I can't think of one. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than I knows.

[Krenian]

Blood tanking is what I like to call the threat tank. Great single target TPS but that's about it. Unfortunately, it really really falls lackluster when it comes to tanking multiple mobs as most of it's attacks are directly affected with single target strikes. Not much in the blood tree really focuses on AoE. In fact, I can't think of one talent that does so...

So if your goal is really to AoE tank, blood is not the greatest tree to do so. It's plausible to do so, don't get me wrong. I've had to aoe tank the adds on Gluth as blood..is it the best? Not really, I could of done better as Unholy and Frost.

However I haven't heard of this Ebon Plaguebringer bug. Even with the bug however, I would sorely be pressed to go against AoE tanking as Unholy. It simply has a lot of the tools to do very well. Frost may not be the most fun spec either but it still beats Blood by a fair share when it comes to aoe tanking.

Consider this:

Unholy uses UB, and has abilities that increase damage of Pestilence and Blood Boil.

Frost has HB, which is a great Aoe Talent and has mitigation talents that allows for multiple mobs.

Blood has...well..D&D can be used but Unholy powers D&D. That's about all you have as an AoE option. Your Pestilence and BB are hitting far weaker than if you were Unholy, and it's just not a good option.

[Tavraq]

Considering its been years since I did Naxx, and I only did a portion of it, how much AoE tanking is there for an offtank? If there's a lot, it might be worth it to just bite the bullet and go unholy, Ebon Plaguebringer issues or not.

The problem with Ebon Plaguebringer is that its only applied once per mob. Which means that only one unholy DK per raid gets three diseases at a time.

[Urrick]

The more I think of it I can see Blood start to shine if AE pulling goes out of style or changes in difficultly.

[Krenian]

Really you only need one Unholy spec'ed DK in the raid anyway. Having more than one is a little rough on the DPS and lowering potential DPS output.

From what I know in Naxx and i've cleared most of it by now, there isn't really much that tanks can't handle. It really depends.

I'm doing Naxx 25 tonight and if there are the same type of mobs as they were in Naxx 10 man, then I'm sure that 3-4 main tanks will do just fine. so long as two of them are warriors they can easily take care of the adds that need to be taken care of. If a DK is among it, it wouldn't hurt having an Unholy spec only because of the 13% extra magic damage.

[Tavraq]

Its a tad more difficult, but you could do a mouseover macro for heart strike and work on AoE that way. Hit it oldschool prot warrior style :3

[Krenian]

Oh dear gods, even thinking about that would make me scream in frustration. I'll take the easy road and go Unholy or frost lol

[Tavraq]

Oh dear gods, even thinking about that would make me scream in frustration. I'll take the easy road and go Unholy or frost lol

I dunno. I'll talk to my raid. We're casual enough they might not mind two unholy DKs, or a blood tank. We'll see.

Oh, and from what I've seen (admittedly not much) the only thing that would hurt a raid in terms of two unholy DKs is the Ebon Plaguebringer bug. Unholy DPS is just as good as blood.

Though I'm wondering if it may just be easier to give the unholy DK the tank position and relegate myself to DPS.

[Tavraq]

actually, just a thought, but a fairly easy way around the whole ebon plaguebringer problem is to make crypt fever count as a disease. That way, if there's more than one unholy DK, you could just have one not take EP, and then it would be a nonissue.

[Krenian]

It's weird. It could be that I had to do fights where my rotation really really was rough but I found a roughly 300 dps drop on bosses when I was Unholy. Maybe i'm just better at Blood DPS. o.O

[Urrick]

Have you tried Frost DPS yet Tony?