Frost Spec

[Temudjin]

This is the spec I'm using as MT:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/deathknight/talents.html?tal=005000000000000000000000000325050 51305301100012051313500352010000000000000000000000 00

Beginner's Theory:

1. All deathtanks should have 5/5/5 - Blade Barrier/Toughness/Anticipation as a base to build upon. Blade Barrier and Anticipation are key to deathknights being "avoidance tanks", not meat shields. And, since we don't get shields, Toughness gives us more of the armor we rely upon.

2. The basic premise of surviving and maintaining threat as a frost tank is damage, special threat producing abilities, and damage mitigation.

3. As I move down the tiers of the frost tree in this spec, several promising talents are skipped. One cannot sadly have them all, and I chose the ones that help me survive or maintain threat more efficiently. Some of these talents, such as Rime and Chill of the Grave certainly have their uses, but we've only got 71 points to spend.

4. Morbidity (unholy tree) is also a good talent to take - Death and Decay is one of a deathknight's best methods for building threat. Being able to use it more often makes simple sense.

Note: Blood tanks and Unholy tanks are also very viable, and their talent trees have many powerful abilities. This post is about frost tanks.

Specific Talents and My Explanation:

Frost Aura + Acclimation - Frost Aura (FA) is not always taken by tanks. If you have a shaman or a paladin in your party/raid, their totems and resistance auras are generally superior to your FA. However, I feel that FA allows shaman and paladins to use other buffs, such as devotion aura.
Acclimation simply provides good mitigation against spells; we've got our armor to save us against physical damage...acclimation helps us against magical damage.

Improved Icy Talons - IIT is another talent that is not always taken by tanks for a similar reason as FA. It is comparable to the abilities of other classes in your party/raid, such as a shaman's windfury totem. I see it as another chance to spend a single talent point to free up your allies in what they can do to help win. Keep in mind though that when your allies die, their auras and totems, etc, will soon disappear, while your FA and IIT are up as long as the tank is standing.



I hope this spec is helpful to someone. If better tanks or theorycrafters than I find fault with it, lemme know.

[Ray]

So what exactly is the question?

Fact: FA does not stack with GotW (paw). If you run with a druid, you get no benefit from this talent. FA is a waste of 2 talent points.

Accimilation: Very situational and I would only ever get use out of it on certain fights. The points would be better spent on threat talents unless your stuck on a fight that would use it.

Your spec is missing key talents of Chill of the Grave and Rime while taking KM. maybe with the changes to it might make it worth it to tanks, but im still out on that. CotG = more RP = more FS or RS. Rime is just an awesome talent too.

[Merko]

Any build (besides PvP) that has a point in Unholy Command is wrong

... there are other things you can do with this build to max/min that is up to you, but any tank that has a glyph or point in any ability that has taunt like characteristics screams "I tank by taunting and don't know how to do my job".

[Ray]

Any build (besides PvP) that has a point in Unholy Command is wrong

... there are other things you can do with this build to max/min that is up to you, but any tank that has a glyph or point in any ability that has taunt like characteristics screams "I tank by taunting and don't know how to do my job".

Thats not what it says to me. Sure, a min/max MT 25 man build you wouldnt need it. But really, I use DG all the time, either to speed pull, pick up pats as they walk by (again to speed up trash), and I use DG for Maly to line up spraks. So I find uses for it all the time.

I would agree to never glyph for the taunt. You have 2 taunts if one resists.

[Merko]

would you spend a talent point to get the ability to DG quicker tho? and he is advertising this as a main tank spec

*but yes i agree i use the skill all the time as well*

[Ray]

In a Frost spec, prolly not. I might dump points there for an unholy spec, but our guild runs a tank core and has no "MT".

So yes, i spec imp DG as an unholy tank for 25 man raiding mostly just for Malygos just cuz I am the only consistent DK.

[Meranos]

Here is my spec:
The World of Warcraft Armory

It has a few key differences from the one above, namely the central guts of the frost tree.

1: Killing Machine
I skipped this because I tank with a 3.6 two-hander. Even with icy talons up, it's slow. At 5 points, this was too much of a cost for a benefit which would only proc 50% of the time on a white-crit (particularly unappealing with my low crit rate in tanking gear). With the change to PPM, it might be worth taking for some, but it's still too many points when I'd rather spend those points on something else.

2: Chill of the Grave
Even though I skipped it, it's worth taking if you're not guaranteed to get Blessing of Sanctuary. We roll with a couple of prot pallies, so BoSanc is a given for me and this talent (while useful for an avoidance dry streak) becomes minimally usefull in my situation.

3: Rime/Merc. Combat
I'm a big fan of Rime. It's a big crit boost to a couple of abilities I use quite often, and gives a chance to proc the other big ability I use often. It's amazing for threat, I recommend trying to squeeze it in. Merc. Combat opened up abilities further down the tree for me and was the best of the available choices. Ymmv.

4: Frost Aura
I held onto it for a long time, and didn't want to give it up. But a druid's mark of the wild provides nearly the same resistances as 2/2 Frost Aura and so I bit the bullet and freed up those points. You won't notice much of a difference unless you don't have a druid for their buff.

5: Acclimation
Unreliable, and with competent healers, unnecessary.

6: Bladed Armor
I felt this was worth a mention: I gain around 650AP in frost presence (pre-patch I have about 25k armor in my tanking gear) which is some great threat and the extra dps helps to push raids faster. I'd rather full-clear Naxx25 in three hours than break it into a couple evenings. Plus, prot pally threat is so obnoxious, I've got to do something to stay competative.

At any rate, I recommed trying out different specs and tweaking as necessary.

[Temudjin]

Thank you Meranos and others for your input. I'm particularly thankful for some of you thoughts about specific talents Meranos. I'll see about switching things around in my spec.