My Unholy Tanking Spec.

[Novalok]

Im a fresh 80 and im trying my hardest to gear up and someday tank some raids. As of now i am tanking Heroics with my bud (an amazing healer) And all is going decent. I Can usually keep aggro till the T7 and T7.5 dps come and purposly steal aggro but my TPS isnt terrible i dont think.

For Example after i got a decent rotation down i was keeping a steady 3-3.2k TPS on Heroic Violet Hold last night. Here is my Armory

The World of Warcraft Armory

Any Spec/Gear suggestions would be helpful. Thanks


Novalok

[Beathag]

OK, first before I get into this too much, I would like to figure out what your goal as an unholy tank is, as that will affect how you spec a lot. Personally, with Beathag, I spec'ed her to be good at AOE tanking, without doing too much inferior single target threat. I will say that while my spec might not work the best for every role, I think it's pretty solid, as I've made my choices carefully and adjust my tanking accordingly.

You can find Beathag in her assortment of gear here: The World of Warcraft Armory

She has 2 sets of gear though, so if my defense isn't 540-541 at any given moment, it means I'm in some mutation of my tank or DPS gear. I solo using my DPS spec, and tank gear... I find it deals decent damage while still being massively survivable, so if she looks like an odd spec/gear combo, that's why, also her weapon should have SSG on it, but I DPS more than I tank, and I'm lazy.

Anyhow, on to you. I'm not entirely certain what you're going for with this spec, as you've chosen some talents are mostly DPS talents, (though not as high on threat) as well as not buffing things with massive AOE threat, like D&D.

My biggest recommendation to you would be that you really don't need a ghoul as a tank. They don't give you threat, they do their own threat, and that's a three talent point investment into something that doesn't help threat or mitigation at all. The only real use I've heard of for a ghoul as a tank is to use it as an oh-shit button in combo with Death Pact for the 40% heal. Other than that, pretty much useless as a tank, and the normal ghoul works fine for that. (For additional uses see Slackhoid's post)

Also, swap virulence for morbidity - yeah, you lose the hit (that does hurt a bit), BUT you gain a lot with D&D. D&D should be central to your AOE threat rotation.

Unholy command is more of a PvP talent, because if you're pulling correctly you really don't need a reduced cooldown on your Death Grip, it's just not necessary.

BCB, I would say is a DPS talent, as you can't count on threat from it, so I'd take the points out of there as well. (see Slackhoid's post below for additional information).

In frost, I would say to take the points out of Black Ice, and put them into Bladed Armor in Blood. Bladed Armor is almost custom-made for tank single target threat, as we will always have lots of armor, and the armor we have will only go up. That will give you a strong buff to your threat right there.

Reaping I would recommend to you because with the glyph of Scourge strike, we can keep our diseases renewed through the use of our main nuke. It will mess with your rotation, but once you get used to it, it's fantastic. So I'd recommend dropping the glyph of disease, and getting the glyph of scourge strike. Glyph of disease looks nice, but I think the current theory crafting says it's not that great. Certainly not as good as the glyph of scourge strike.

Vicious Strikes is also a nice talent for buffing single target threat. I would recommend that one as well.

One last thing about glyphs - for your last minor glyph, I'd recommend the glyph of pestilence, which extends the range of pestilence by 5 yards, really nice for AOE.

Anyhow, take a look at my tank spec (the left spec, not the right one, which I'm in currently). It's not perfect, but i think with something close to that tanking will be MUCH easier for you! :-)

As for gear, Wyrmrest Accord has some GREAT beginning tanking gear at revered. The chestpiece should last you into several pieces of T7, the boots are good for the defense, and hit (may in some sets be better than the titansteel ones, depending on how you gear). The cloak is great (my last item lvl 187).
Gundrak has nice hands - the horn tipped gauntlets, a great threat ring, and there's block shoulders there that work well because of the gem slot.
Drak'Tharon for the Keystone great-ring.
Ahn'Kehet for the wrists.
Violet Hold for the Bolstered Legplates.
Ajul'Nerub for the Gossamer Trink that drops in there (probably only after you get the other gear though... AN's tough)
Badges for sigil and waist.

Sorry, didn't mean to wall-of-text you, but I figured I would pass along the Unholy tanking research I've done. ;-) Cheers, and have fun!

EDIT: To remove the erroneous information from the post.

[slackhoid]

Dear Beathag. While your post contains a lot of good information there are also a few plainly incorrect statements so before you post things like that check your facts and be 100% sure of what your are saying.

My biggest recommendation to you would be that you really don't need a ghoul as a tank. They don't give you threat, they do their own threat, and that's a three talent point investment into something that doesn't help threat or mitigation at all. The only real use I've heard of for a ghoul as a tank is to use it as an oh-shit button in combo with Death Pact for the 40% heal. Other than that, pretty much useless as a tank, and the normal ghoul works fine for that.

This is almost correct statement. However, a few more things
- fully talented ghoul is much more resilient to AOE dmg, has shorter CD so it is much more likely to be available as oh-shit button than regular one. Also, if ghoul control comes natural to you you can use it control loose adds and/or reduce incoming dmg in AOE tanking by using leap and gnaw

But yes, ghoul is by no means a must or highly recommended for tanking.

Impurity > Necrosis
Necrosis only works on white swings, and as DK's, we should be mostly using our strikes, which are yellow. So it's a mediocre Threat/DPS increase, while Impurity, on the other hand buffs our strikes. Drop points in necrosis last, I'd say as it's not that big of a buff to your threat.

Pretty much everything above is incorrect, sry. Necrosis works on Rune Strike (110% sure, easy to confirm from combat log) which is the main runic dump and main single target TPS source for unholy tank. If you glyph RS you have crit-happy runic dump that causes huge amount of threat and 5/5 necrosis gives you 20% dama boost to all Rune Strike hits and crits. This is very good single target threat ability and scales very well with future gear upgrades like T8/8.5 2-piece bonus.

Also, Impurity works only on spells: DC, UB, DnD, Gargoyle Strike. It does nothing to Scourge Strike, Plague Strike etc. So it buffs your AOE but is less than impressive on single target threat.

BCB, I would say is a DPS talent, as you can't count on threat from it, so I'd take the points out of there as well.

BCB is also risky for tank because BcB dmg can be parried and parry-hasting is bad, you don't want to have hard-hitting Ulduar boss doing that.

[Jaeden]

Gear: Not bad for you level of instancing, just get the defense sigil form badges and you will be defense capped. After that, as you gain defense in gear, replace those defense gems with expertise/stamina and a few stamina for health pool.


Spec:

Do this:

The World of Warcraft Armory

I am considering dropping Ravenous Dead, but not sure what would be a good replacement.

BCB isn't worth the investment due to the amount of melee hits that are turned into rune strikes wheras Necrosis is guaranteed 20% on your melee.

Desecration is ok, but if you are at all mobile it can be rendered ineffective. I'd switch those 5 directly into Impurity for the constant bonus to your abilities.

Take vicious strikes and morbidity. buffing two of your primary dps hits and shortening the cooldown of your aoe is outstanding.

Lose the perma ghoul. I did after I noticed that I wasn't using it all the time due to being in my rotation and paying attention to environmental effects.

I don't use glyph of disease simply because with the increased disease duration, I get a frost and unholy rune cd right as those spells are going to expire. I like the glyph set I have for my tank spec, except I'm probably going to add raise dead so I can death pact a lot more.

[Novalok]

Thanks for all the help thus far, im learning loads. Just an update. I hit 543 Def today ( bought some new gloves ) and Well im def capped. What stats should i start stacking. Just Stam or Im not to sure

Any help will make me <3 you

[Beathag]

Thanks, apparently either I misunderstood the information I thought i read, or I'm really outdated. Guess I'll have to revisit my tanking spec too! Sorry for the mistakes.