Dual Wielding DKs: Demystifying the Myth.

[Aldragoriad]

While I don't necessarily agree with AMiB's tone, he does have a good point, what is the BENEFIT of DW tanking, other than looking cool? If one can't be iterated DW tanking will always fall to something that may be fun to goof around with, but will never actually be a serious endevour. Thats not to say it has to be a huge benefit, as its already been decently postulated/proven that the disadvantages are fairly minescule in the scheme of things. But they are still disadvantages, and without a counterbalance, its going to be one of those things you smile to yourself at, like dps who refuse to downgrade AC for a better piece of gear for some apparently obscure RPish reason.

I've followed this thread with interest because I would love to DW tank on my DK when I get it to 80, just because I think it would be fun, but without an actual benefit to it, it'll be something I play with, not take serious.

[arthoer]

Always had threat problems at malygos and patchwerk. Now that i am dual wielding, i dont. So next to looking cool, i also get some love from 25 people. That should give you enough reason to dual wield? :P

Untill now, the boss encounters are to easy, i could prolly tank naked get tea and still survive, since healers never get oom anyway.

I think the REAL benefit or suckyness of dual wielding will come when there is some hard content and more gear to choose from, like in the Sunwell content patch.

[nips]

Jumping straight into the war zone....

Arthoer: i did 5k threat easily on patch with a 2 hander. Patch makes your threat go nuts so he's not what you should compare your threat with. And you have to remeber that how much you are buffed and hhow many missdirects you get has alot to say on threat. I dont doubth you find dw generating more threat then a 2-h build although the difference can come from alot of places.

Amib: I think you are missing the point of this thread just like i did a while ago. The tread is not about calculating small percentages and min/maxing to the extreme. The tread is supposed to show people that dw as frost is okish and not a huge mistake that it was doomed to be at first. That said i do aggre with your points although they might be better suited in a different thread. Personaly i'm right there with you, I would wear a fishing pole aswell if there was only a minor advatage in using it. Even if there is just a small theoretical advatage in doing stuff a sertain way i would always do it that way and so far i dont see the advantage in dw that would make me stop using my 2-hander.

Tony/satorri: I think alot of people are inclined to missread what the point of this thread is (just like i did). So having the numbers on the fist page might misslead people to think dw is better then a 2hander when its more a frost vs a unholy issue. I'm not saying they should be remowed or anything, but most posts in this thread somes under the "a wall of thext" category so people are bound to miss some of the info in here. Maybe a summarise or something would be in order?

[arthoer]

yep you are right nips.

true reason why i dual wield is because:

it looks cool
hitting a lot is fun
i finally get my def cap
i can use expertise gems instead of defense gems
threat and dps is almost the same, maybe more with the upcomming patch, we will see..
iand finally: i am one of those lucky guys who can loot all that experise tanking gear and one handers. So i am able to keep my gear scaled with the dps in the raid. If i wouldnt be able to do that, i wouldnt even bother dual wielding

[GravityDK]

We need to identify, clearly, what advantages, if any, dual-wielding has. At the moment, the only identified advantage is the increased amount of def rating on traditional 1h tanking weapons, making hitting 540 a tad easier pre-3.0.8.

Some possible reasons/benefits:

(a) it looks really cool
(b) you might get lucky with a 1Her slow epic drop before a 2Her, and then go and craft the Destroyer to be its mate
(c) some people just like to be different however want that to not come with enormous risk, which we now see is possible with DW.

Always had threat problems at malygos and patchwerk. Now that i am dual wielding, i dont. So next to looking cool, i also get some love from 25 people. ...
...
I think the REAL benefit or suckyness of dual wielding will come when there is some hard content and more gear to choose from, like in the Sunwell content patch.

Two things (1) I'd be interested to know your spec/gear and comment on how you get more TPS from DW, because I'd heard many times people have threat problems while DW tanking (2) I think Sunwell was the last of the serious min/max hardcore extreme raids WoW will see, that from here in we'll have content that is still difficult but more accessible [eg. no stacking shaman and leatherworkers].

[arthoer]

see my armory:

The World of Warcraft Armory


my rotations on single bosses are the usual:

icy -> plague -> howling -> bloodstrike -> bloodstrike -> howling

and runestrikes in between.


be sure to take killing machine, and play with the crit talents. From my experience dualwielding is a bit based on critting..

and be sure to raid and have good gear. Kind of stupid to go dual wield tanking in heroics with blue gear..

[Satorri]

Actually, it's a non-factor to dual wield in heroics provided you have even 80 blue level tanking gear's worth of expertise. If you have 18-20 expertise you won't get parried in a heroic.

And dual wielding isn't crit based, Killing Machine is, but if you can buff your crit chance in a reasonable fashion, that's about the only way Killing Machine can be very valuable as a tank, and maybe even useful.

Big thing is, if it works for you and your raid, then there's no reason to second guess it. Old adage, if it ain't broke...

[lyd]

after having geared up a bit, i am continuing to have great success with a DW build. i roll with 20 expertise right now and nobody has complained so far. and with no +def tanking 2h weapons in the game currently, it would be very difficult to hit the def cap were i not DW'ing.

as far as advantages of DW go, how about the new titanguard stamina enchant for 3.08? will rolling with 2 of those give a max health advantage to DW? even with 2% stamina from the new 2h rune that's not even close to matching +1500 hp at current stamina averages. something to think about in the future...


in regards to the killing machine question, a raid setting will put you somewhere in the vicinity of 15-20% crit as a tank, with talents included, so i wouldn't worry about procs.

[AriesFrost]

Here's my theory. A dual-wielding Death Knight can be more effective to MT for holding single target threat somewhat like a warrior tank with super duper special abilities to form AOE threat. Now...here's where the conflict starts. A Frost tank can be extremely nice single threat tanks. Like myself, tanking in frost is amazing for Patchwerk where you can just go crazy on threat. I believe that I can out threat a warrior tank by far on threat. as long as you spec into epidemic in the unholy tree (2nd tier). The spamming of OB and HB consecutively WHILE using DnD can stack amazing TPS. Soooooo....Frost tanking can also provide much stamina and dodge/def rating/parry as dual-wielding. It also provides an opportunity to stack stamina gems rather than socketing defense gems. It's just mind-blowing how bad DK's are made out to be and then the knights in shining armor who actually know what theyr talking about come in. Just because you're def capped doesnt mean you can tank. You should figure out a rotation. All the non-tanks out there should reconsider skipping over that death knight just because they have a bad name for being a death knight when they could be on of the best tanks you could have ever met in your life! Reconsider that Druid meat shield and look into some mitigation tanks! Frost Tanks FTW!

[RubenMarques]

Well first of all, Hi to all TankSpot community since this is my first post in here.

Now about this thread. Some of you guys are missing the major point on it... If you do want to look cool rather then theorycraft there isn't any purpose for reading this, just equip whatever you want and that's it.

Now if you're doing any kind of real raiding you better have the "best of the best" gear, spec, rotation, etc...

I just spent my last 2 hours of work reading every post in here and the theorycraft is pretty good. Which made me believe that without gimping much you can in fact have two 1h equipped while tanking and without taking that much damage from the boss parries.

Now to answer some people in this thread about the: "Give us some reasons why the DW is good rather then just giving the cons"

Well, it isn't because of the itemization to be honest, its because of the DPS (TPS).

Right now i'm with 30k hp, 21.5% dodge, 21.5% parry and 26k armor unbuffed (can't remember the numbers exactly, and wow armory has too many images making it hard for me to check it without everyone at this company seeing i'm not working :P). Now i was playing with 50/5/16 and using DS in my rotation.

Well i can garantee from a point of view from a MT that cleared every 10/25 man content that mitigation isn't a problem for a DK. If you play it right with the cooldowns, and ofc, you have a good gear you'll end up taking less damage then a warrior/druid (don't know about pally since we never used any as MT) at the end of any raid (under the asme circunstances). About the spiky dmg you can compensate for it having lots of HP (during raids i can reach 38k/39k buffed). And using Death Strike and other healing abilities you'll have around 900 HPS, which is pretty good and i do see DS as a mitigation ability since you're healing yourself every 10 secs +/-.

Until now i wasn't having any problem at all while tanking, but, with everyone at my guild getting equipped i'm starting to be afraid of my TPS. During normal bosses where I don't have to move a lot, i can generate enough TPS to compensate for the insane dmg of my guild (where the top 3 persons are around 4.5k dps / 5k) but during bosses where you have to move a bit i gotta start spamming the Ventrilo for Feign Deaths and for Invisibility or Blessing of Salvation to the top dps. Of course during encounters where you have to move a lot i'm 100% frelled (for example, Malygos 25 man).

So i'm in a "quest" right now to generate way more aggro. (Now back to the real thread subject. I just gave this small background story so you guys know the reason why TPS is so important). With the current change of HB (removal of the cooldown) i can see it being the top dmg ability for a DK tanker (plus with the bonus of being aoe ofc) and yes... I'm talking about HB dealing more dmg single target then a OB with around 3500 AP.

Which made me think about it and think of a way to put HB dealing more dmg... Ofc, the answer is pretty clear: Killing Machine.

(Before reading more, i have to say that all the theory craft i'll post in here i made it at home, so i may not be giving the exact numbers, but they wont be running far away from the truth)

I tested at the Target Dummy (the level 83 boss) 2 minutes of auto-attacks with a 2 hander and with DW. I came up with the numbers:
- 41 Auto attacks from the 2h
- 167 Auto attacks from the 2x 1h

If i take out the dodged/parried from both i'll have:
- 39 Auto attacks from the 2h
- 142 Auto attacks from the 2x 1h

Right now i'm with 10% critical, and counting with more 5% crit from raid buff, we'll conclude that during 2 minutes of fighting you'll deal around 22 criticals with 2x 1h.

Using the Killing Machine 50% free crit, it will mean that you'll have 11 free criticals with HB (and more depending on your critical chance with spells, plus gear, etc..).

Now during 2 minutes of fighting you'll be able to do around 22 HB, using the rotation:
- IT-> PS-> BS-> BS-> HB -> FS -> HB -> HB -> BS -> BS -> FS.

From that 22 HB you'll have 10 of them doing criticals. Meaning 50% critical strike chance from the Killing Machine.

Now if you do add the normal 10% crit from gear, plus 5% from raid buff and 5% from talents you'll end up with 70% (more or less) crit with the HB. Making it doing insane damage during a boss encounter. Plus do not forget that HB can't be parried or dodged its a magical effect and its range, meaning that during bosses where you have to run around or you're X time away from the boss (like Malygos when you're in the air) you can continue generating a bunch of aggro.

NOW! Like i said this numbers aren't 100% correct, probably not even 90%. But i would really like a Math crazy guy to read my post and try to make something similiar but wayyyy more exact.

And before anyone in here repplies that Aggro isn't a problem for a DK i'll have to agree with you until you reach the point where you have 16 insane dpsers and there isn't enough Blessing of Salvations for everybody, and you have to be moving a bit with the boss :P

P.S. Before you guys ask, the auto-attacks DPS from 2x 1h is bigger then 1x 2h if you have good weapons. Plus you'll be doing more Rune Strikes that you normally do, so.. Using 2x 1h will only make you loose DPS to the PS and to the BS.

[Arthaslol]

Hello! I apologize but for dw slow/fast and fast/fast was mentioned on page one. However, I wasn't really able to interpret it and I'm not really sure which one is better... Could anyone please clarify what the common consensus on which speed pair is better?

[Eonan]

I have MT'd several mobs in heroic Naxx using a 10/31/30 spec and I have yet to run into issues with threat or mitigation. A lot of people have been saying that you have to "severely" gimp your mitigation stats in order to pick up the stats needed to DW tank. I disagree with this, there are however several pieces of gear that I consider key to DW tanking. Boots from Thaddius, T7.5 Helm (or helm from Gothik), Shoulders from Anub, gloves from Heroic Gundrak to name a few.

My Parry sits at 20.54 unbuffed and dodge at 22.54 unbuffed currently. I will admit that DW tanking isn't really viable until you can attain a few key pieces of gear, and also that (10/31/30) you are forced to rely on crits which means that the spec will perform best in a 25 man raid or group where +crit buffs are available.

[Satorri]

after having geared up a bit, i am continuing to have great success with a DW build. i roll with 20 expertise right now and nobody has complained so far. and with no +def tanking 2h weapons in the game currently, it would be very difficult to hit the def cap were i not DW'ing.

Glad to hear it. =) Feel free to share some WWS, I'm dying to see some of the numbers of someone who's doing it well.

as far as advantages of DW go, how about the new titanguard stamina enchant for 3.08? will rolling with 2 of those give a max health advantage to DW? even with 2% stamina from the new 2h rune that's not even close to matching +1500 hp at current stamina averages. something to think about in the future...

150 stam will be more than that for health depending on your talents (heck even without a single +stam% talent Frost Presence will push it to 1650), but I'm not sure if I'd rather that to 4% parry chance.

[Satorri]

Hello! I apologize but for dw slow/fast and fast/fast was mentioned on page one. However, I wasn't really able to interpret it and I'm not really sure which one is better... Could anyone please clarify what the common consensus on which speed pair is better?

There are dps specs that people are liking fast/fast better for their procs, etc. I'd NEVER tank with fast/fast. At most slow/fast, and some people are going to slow/slow to reduce their parry liability, though I don't know that that is really necessary (as in I don't think it'll be enough of an improvement to reduced parriable swings to counter balance the loss of threat mechanics like extra KM procs).

[nips]

I have MT'd several mobs in heroic Naxx using a 10/31/30 spec and I have yet to run into issues with threat or mitigation. A lot of people have been saying that you have to "severely" gimp your mitigation stats in order to pick up the stats needed to DW tank. I disagree with this, there are however several pieces of gear that I consider key to DW tanking. Boots from Thaddius, T7.5 Helm (or helm from Gothik), Shoulders from Anub, gloves from Heroic Gundrak to name a few.

My Parry sits at 20.54 unbuffed and dodge at 22.54 unbuffed currently. I will admit that DW tanking isn't really viable until you can attain a few key pieces of gear, and also that (10/31/30) you are forced to rely on crits which means that the spec will perform best in a 25 man raid or group where +crit buffs are available.

Your build dont have bone armor or unbreakable armor which means you will take alot more damage 1/3 of every fight. Atm you can tank naxx with pretty much any spec, but that dont make it a good one. As for DW threat i have not seen it give alot more, but i could be wrong as i dont have any real numbers on it. Would be nice if it did though, dk's need more threat.

[arthoer]

I switched from brokenpromise/lifeless too apocalypse twohander... did some gems swapping... hell two handed tanking is really good :P it actually surprised me.

I think you might want to close this topic for now untill the patch releases, cause its going to change everything. Next to that i think it really doesnt matter wat you do at this act in the game.. Better wait for new; more challenging content... Now you can prolly even tank naxx 25 or sarth + mini bosses without any talents haha :P

[A Man In Black]

I think you might want to close this topic for now untill the patch releases, cause its going to change everything.

Nothing relevant changes. HB's (lack of) cooldown has been assumed throughout, and KM's PPM nerf isn't terribly relevant due to fairly low crit anyway.

[Knighterrant81]

I have a buddy who DW tanks. He does it because of itemization, he doesn't like being limited in his options for reaching the defense cap. He tanks all the heroics and all of Naxx 10 while dual wielding. He never complains about being squishy (he's busy complaining about defense itemization). He doesn't stack expertise. I never hear his healers complain at all.

Oh, and he does it as Unholy.

He plans to continue DW tanking after the patch and the new rune.

Just putting this out there. I just tell him he's OP and move on to next topic.

[Eonan]

Nothing relevant changes. HB's (lack of) cooldown has been assumed throughout, and KM's PPM nerf isn't terribly relevant due to fairly low crit anyway.

I wouldn't call the KM change a nerf for DW tanks at all, as it stands right now I am damn lucky if I get 10 PPM on KM while DW tanking. Not to mention that since its been changed to a PPM mechanic we can go slow/slow without worrying about gimping our KM procs.

[Satorri]

Correct me if I'm not remembering right, but KM procs no longer rely on crit, correct?

Essentially it is now far more worthwhile as a tank since you don't need dps stats to get the effect.

And the patch has plenty of relevance to DK tanking, since we're seeing a LOT of survival changes, with the baseline increase and the special move reduction. There are a pile of glyph changes. The up shot of this is that after the patch there can and will be a lot of swing room on things we wouldn't generally consider right now, particularly as far as not trying to load up on survival talents...

I've been messing around with stuff on the ptr and it's just plain more fun. I'm doing just fine tanking now and this is about to make me sturdier?? Bring on the patch!