Decent tank spec?

[Midfrost]

Hello everyone, I'm currently using this tank spec while dual wielding.

Venecia, DK, DW Tank

But with the addition of the Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle, I'd like to use Demise or Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver.

However, how should I spec? Is my spec good enough with a few changes?

(The good thing with my build is that I have 30.8k unbuffed hp right now and some nice resistances for spells.)

Grateful for any responses.

[Satorri]

Well, you have a fairly unorthodox spec. If I had to guess, I'd say you are very durable, but you are doing a decent margin below the threat you could be capable of. Single target threat also being much stronger than multi-target threat. I'm ALWAYS an advocate of, "if it works for you and your group, you shouldn't feel like you have to mess with it for other peoples tastes or min/maxing."

If you want to adapt it for using a 2-hander, I'd suggest just swapping the 2 pts from DW spec to Black Ice, if you want to keep Lichborne.

If you want to get more out of the trees, I'd have plenty of suggestions, but I'll only make those if you ask for them. =)

[Midfrost]

Well, I have to be perfectly honest here, I want to be as good as I can be, without loosing to much. That doesn't really make any sense.

But I take pride in being able to have more hp then the usual warrior/paladin tank while still being strong vs spellcasters such as Sapphiron and Malygos.

But you're entirely correct, my single target DPS is sub-par, paladins, warriors and druids flash by me like there's no tomorrow, and on a fight like Patchwerk where I have to stay ahead of the melee DPS for hatefuls, it's getting quite tedious to have to ask the rogues/hunters to misdirect me now and then.

If I'm main-tanking, it's generally not a problem as I've macroed icy touch, plague strike and blood strike to cast rune strike if it's available.
But, there are some fights where I just can't outrun the melee DPS.

And I heard from a person in guild, a healer that I've grouped with somewhat, he said that a 2hand wielding unholy tank was taking less damage then me. And if I'm to be honest, I can't see how, it might just be me being a bit new on the game still.

But as I said in the beginning of this tediously long post, I want to be as best as I can possibly be with my gear and using a 2hander (if it's better threat that is)

My defense is no problem using either 2hander with Gargoyle or two one handers with +2% parry on each. (540 with 1handers and 555 with 2hander.)

So any advice are gratefully and humbly accepted.

Regards, Venecia

[Satorri]

Well, the major pitfall of your spec is that you got too interested in the buffs from every tree. They're all great, but you can't take them all. Because the survival talents populate the first half of most of the trees it seems tempting to dip in all three to try and get the best of all of it. What you'll find quickly is that while you get lots of small buffs that appear to put you ahead on health and survivability, you lose the synergy of a given tree, and when it comes to dps each tree has its own intelligently laced design.

Blood uses crit-based damage buffs and special-specific crit buffs to build a passive damage buff. It uses health regen and heal buffing abilities to counter it's slightly squishier nature with being much more healable. It is fantastic threat on 2-3 targets if you use the tree well, but it's only subsistable threat on large groups (i.e. you can hold off healers and light aoe, but full on aoe nuking will pull threat off the best blood tank unless you're very good at tab-target HS spam).

Frost uses multiplicative Frost damage buffs with moves that are narrowly avoidable frost damage (IT, HB, FS) to shore up its threat. This damage also ignores armor which provides a solid baseline. Oblit, RS, and BS/BB fill in the gaps with consistant physical burn for a pretty solid threat burn. The tree focuses on pure durability for survival with talents to buff resistances to everything (think armor against spells), and Unbreakable Armor (while glyphed can put me to the armor cap!) and IBF have a long uptime if you chain them well. Talents provide nice buffs to make up for your lack of crit chance in tank gear and give you solid boosts to your threat generation overall.

Unholy is the consumate AoE spec. The talents allow you to buff your diseases, DnD, BB, and give you additional powerful aoe hate tools (UB and CE). Of the three specs this can ramp up the slowest (which may be noticeable before you get some epics), but it can hit the highest top end cruising threat I've been able to produce (I've been able to maintain 3-4k threat on an unlimited number of mobs provided they're all within 15 yrds, once I get everything fully stacked). It relies on RS, ScS, and BS to shore up main target threat against big hitters. For survival the tree relies heavily on Bone Shield (highly recommend the glyph) for the static 20% reducton of all damage, and Magic Suppression is a significant buff to your survival in about 90% of the current content. AMZ is a fantastic buff if you use it for yourself or if you use it for raid/party protection, though it's certainly harder to use now if you are a MT, since the duration is 1/3rd what it used to be (/cryinside).

I've seen some interesting hybrid specs work for dps, but to date, the strongest tanks for balancing threat and survival I have seen, have smartly played to a main tree, with supporting talents from the others.

So, the question becomes, which of the above styles sounds most appealing to you? From there you can build a spec around a central idea/goal and see your overall performance improve a step.

[Midfrost]

Well, I got Betrayer of the Humanity tonight, so, right now I'm looking for whichever Main Tank / Spell Tank tree that's best with a 2hander.

So, I need survivability, spell resistance and very good threat generation with a 2hander.

I've played as all three deep specs, and I kinda enjoyed em all, right now I'm just looking for the "best". I hope there is one.

[Satorri]

I'm afraid there is no best. At this point, the best is whichever you take and really make your own. The skill you have with long running experience in a spec will outweigh the various strengths and weaknesses that vary from tree to tree.

If you pick one though, I'm sure there are plenty of folks who will chime in on tricks of the trade, myself included.

[Aurelia]

The whole point of the DK is that each tree is supposed to be equally viable as a tank or as a dps, they're balanced and equal (supposedly), so in the end it just comes down to individual play style.

[Midfrost]

Alright, well, I've changed my talent spec right now, and with the new weapon, well suffice to say, I had to take it easy to not outdps the main tank on Archavon last night.

I start my rotation with DnD (for some reason I think this deals more threat then any attacks, please correct me if I'm wrong.)

So, DnD, IT, PS, BS... wait for runes, BS, ScS, ScS, ScS (2 death runes).

And after that I generally just update IT and PS, keep the blood runes as death runes by using BS when I have to and using ScS as much as possible.

As mana drain I haven't found anything better then death coil right now.

Does it sound and look reasonable? (A link to my armory is in the first post.)

[Satorri]

One thing that a lot of DK's overlook and is a VERY valuable tool to getting more than most folks would expect are in Blood Tap and Empower Rune Blade. Blood Tap is perfect for the space after placing DnD and using your other 3 runes. Blood Tap and BS/IT/PS/Pest/BB or what have you. With a 1 min CD you can use it very frequently.

Empower Rune Weapon is a little more restrictive, with a 3 min CD, but once you get a sense of the rhythm it can be a HUGE boost. If you manage to burn all your runes and have even a couple seconds before they come up, you can pop ERW and get not only a full set of runes to blow, you also get 50 RP. This is major, though I am always tempted to save it for emergencies, you just need to set your threshold, and use it smartly.

Using those two skills well will give you a good edge. If you're planning on using ScS a lot, I'd highly recommend taking the glyph for it. That will help your rotations keeping diseases up more often, and when it does proc I tend to use my Blood Taps to keep Desecration up.

[Kaotaur]

didn't blizzard intend death knights to tank with 2h weapons? and yes, with rune of the stoneskin gargoyle, tanking with 2h weapons would be the better choice.

i know this could be a little off topic but any spec that relied around using a 2h weapon would be the best bet?

[Satorri]

Not better, and not strictly intended. Blizz has designed the game and Rune of SG is the last step in making it fully reasonable, that DK's can tank with a 2-hander or dual wielding. The same is true of dps (they nerfed down the only talent that was REALLY rewarding dual wielding, and buffed it for 2-handers so the two weapon styles are on the same plane).