3.2 DK Tank problems

[Miagorme]

Hi, I'd like to say I'm a pretty knowledgeable DK tank, I read up on everything and have looked at every possible source of information I could. The changes didn't look too devastating, but I decided to try out dual wielding frost. I have 41 expertise and have been parried three times by a boss in a 6 minute fight.

My problem is I got completely gibbed in the 25 man normal Trial of the Crusade by the first boss. He hits with impale and his normal hit, and I'm pretty much dead. I figured the boss was just really hard, so I didn't think too much of it. We went to 25 uld afterwards, and Razorscale took me to 1k health with one shot. It wasn't a crit. I'm really uncertain with what's going on, as I have roughly 8% more avoidance at the cost of 2k health, and I just got The Black Heart for the armor procs. Even with bad luck, there's no way I should be getting gibbed and utterly wrecked so easily.

I've got all new gems, and I've got my rotation down, and I use my cooldowns at appropriate times. I'm really not sure why I'm getting gibbed, as even if Blood is superior at the moment, the difference shouldn't be THAT vast. Could somebody please help me understand what's going on? Did they raise the uncrittable level or something? Does the difference in specs (blood's self-heals taking a lot of pressure off of the healers) make Frost much harder to heal? I could really use some help. (Armory isn't updated at the moment. Look in post for stats.)

The World of Warcraft Armory

Thank you.

edit: I don't really care if I have to go respec back to 2h blood, I just wanted to see if other DK tanks were having the same magnitude of trouble I am having. Not trying to complain or anything, just trying to see if I'm doing something really wrong or if the dw frost/2h blood difference is just that big. =)

Note: Gear I logged out in is what I frost tank in. Spec is DPS, since I did a test DW Frost DPS since I was pretty sure I wasn't keeping the DW Frost Tank spec I had.

Note2: Sorry for not posting in the other threads, I didn't want to derail and I have slightly (majorly, in most of the case) different questions and reasons for posting.

[Gumurak]

The main thing that i see is that your spec does not have anticipation. Your dodge rating is really really low. Therefore you are eating an insane amount of damage.

it might be a personal preference, but the folks at elitestjerks have already shown that dual weilding a tank spec and not being at the parry expertise cap (i.e 53) will get your teeth kicked in pretty quick. But at this point youd have to rearrange gear to get yourself to the 283 hit cap.

The only real thing I can see is the lack of anticipation at a first glance. i'll have to wait until I am done raiding to inch through your spec. But I'm sure the rest of it is fine.

Edit--- Took another quick look while we had downtime. Toughness and Frigid Dreadplate are also off your spec. I'd re-evaluate these talents. I'd also drop improved icy talons. Unless you don't run with a shaman, then I might consider it.

this is the armory for a friend of mine. He's not as nicely geared but its the spec I would recommend.

The World of Warcraft Armory


I should also fully read your post to realize that is your dps dual weild spec. But still, use the above mentioned tanking spec and you should be fine. Anything else outside of that spec I'm not sure about. but if you are 540 defense and still getting gibbed with the gear and 540 defense. Then I would start looking at your healers.

[Miagorme]

My healers were probably very used to healing me as blood, where I supported them a lot. I'm trying 2h Blood tonight and I'll see how it goes. Maybe dual wield tanking just isn't ready yet.

[crazymuncy]

Im having the same problem. 1st boss in 25 man Trail of the Crusade eat me for dinner even with me using cooldowns. after we downed him we went to 25 man uld and razor hit me for 30k twice in about 3 seconds. i was using the same spec with better gear then the week before and ive tanked him for months now. anyone yet figure this out yet?

[Prestonite]

Same problem, I had to respec my build a little to compensate for the re-arranged talents. I tried my best and picking the best available options.
Threat & Aggro are not the problem. I feel like I am cut down like knife through butter. Fully buffed in Raids I have 38K health (food+flask).

Either my armor rating sucks now or the patched has nerfed me a lot and I have yet to adjust. Any tips would be appreciated.

Frost Build:
The World of Warcraft Armory

[Gumurak]

Prestonite, I'm not sure what to tell you because I can't tell if you are dps or tank with your current armory. If it is your current armory your defense is way too low.

Here is the cookie cutter build........

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...0&version=9757

Rotations....

Single Target Rotation - IT-BS-OB-(Blood Tap if no Death Rune)OB RPDUMP = RS/FS
Alt-Single Target Rotation - HB-BS-BS-OB OB-OB-OB RPDUMP = RS/FS (assumes HB Glyph)
Multi Target Rotation - DnD-IT-PS-Pest then TAB-HB/Pest/BloodBoil RPDUMP = RS/FS

540 defense and 26 expertise are really suggested for these builds for obvious reasons. Obviously you don't want to dual weild tank with these builds. Unless you are running the total expertise cap. Resilence has been deemed inefficent for these builds. Also with the current state of dk tanking, going over 540 rather than riding it has much better benefits than previously exepected. Also I would gem for stam other than completeing meta.

Information pulled between here and elitistjerks.

[Miagorme]

I did much better as 2h Blood. I know pretty much all there is to know about most specs excluding unholy, but that didn't help me understand why I got completely gibbed. The other tank was a Paladin. When the boss hit 4 stacks, I had to taunt more times than he did. He'd taunt first, and his ardent defender probably went off. Two minutes definitely passed before he had to taunt again, so I'm pretty sure that's what made it seem like I was incredibly inferior.

Same thing happened today except I didn't die (only died once when our main healer had an interrupting add on him, but that doesn't count ) and it was very noticeable that we took the same amount of damage. New chest shows how the run went.

[Gumurak]

Well it's a very interesting question to say the least. I unfortunantly can't provide one for you. I've gone over every inch of your gear. Nothing is out of place except for minor differences in your spec.

Lack of toughness lowered your armor values. Somehow i doubt this caused a tremendous difference in you getting gibbed. Unless of course it put your armor much lower than expected. Anything under 21k would have caused a considerable difference. But I don't think it would have been that hard of a gibbing.

The fact that you didn't have Improved Frost presence may be another. But then agian the cookie cutter build that I supplied is off on the current talents and tooltips. And thats given if the spec you mentioned was your actual tanking spec. Which you clearly stated was not. So i hope you find an answer to this, as i would be interested in finding the answer myself.

[renzime]

it might be worth noting that if you are only just crit immune 540-545 you will take the occasional insain hit, i dont know whats changed for it to do this, but i was pretty much being eaten alive in crusader / razor xt hodir and vezax till i swapped a few peices of gear around for more defense and avoidance.

how ever i have to say xt is far more fun than it was even if it is bugged being rushed by 20+ bomb bots and 60+ scrapbots is some thing to behold in deed.

[Domiy]

Noticed quite the same thing as you on the Trial of the Crusade, but we did 10 man. Before the patch i was a better survival tank then our pally, but this boss just seems to totally smack me down and our palla had no problems tanking 4/5 stacks at all o0 We went Ulduar 10 afterwards.. well no problems there at all ( although i cant see my received hits quite clear since my parrot is not functioning >.<)

[Prestonite]

I'm pretty sure I logged out with tank spec and gear this time if anyone wants to look.

[imdeck]

(First time poster, long time reader)

I'm having the same problems as the OP. I've been one of our guild's MT/OTs for a few months now without much problems. I tanked pretty much everything with no real problems.

Last night, we went to 25 Uld and XT crushed me. Yes, I lost about 6k hp and 3k AC -- wrong thread for QQing.

Anyways, I dug into the grimreaper of XT killing me:

10 melee attacks made against me:
-8 of them had IBF up
-6 of them had Vamp Blood up
-5 of them had Furnace Stone-use effect up
-4 of them had The Black Heart proc up

of that, I only avoided 2 of the 10 (all my grim would show accurately), and the average hit on me was 23-25k WITH all those CDs up.

Needless to say, I'll be dpsing now, I suppose as our warrior/pally can do better than that.

I'm logged out in dps gear, but I'm in 4 piece conq, 2h exp capped (blood tank), and almost hit capped. Warrior never took a hit larger than 23k with or without CDs popped.

Alas, I lament.

[Prestonite]

I guess I could try the cookie cutter build, but am curious to what changed so much that my gear feels "broke". I feel as if I am no longer a viable tank option.

[imdeck]

I guess I could try the cookie cutter build, but am curious to what changed so much that my gear feels "broke". I feel as if I am no longer a viable tank option.

This is the way I feel also. I stepped down from tanking until I figure out what I'm doing wrong.

[Miagorme]

2h Blood is still viable. My problem was with DW Frost, I have been doing much better with 2h Blood, just a little under where I was in 3.1. Most of it's about psychology, so in short, just stop thinking you're a trash tank. You'll get hit, and you'll get hit for ~1k more than you used to. Get used to it. It's not so bad, it just means DK tanks will need more gear/skill/strategy than in 3.1. Looking at the gear available in 3.2, if those nerfs hadn't came, we'd of sat at ~50k unbuffed, ~32k armor unbuffed, and ~29% dodge, 27% parry.

[Gumurak]

Well I've looked at your gear agian. And I'm not sure if thats your tanking like you said before or not. Because it's showing you at 440 defense. Which is 100 under the cap. It might be beneficial at this point for you to equip your gear and your frost tanking build and take a screenshot and post it. As it's getting hard to evaluate. i also suggest getting the new black heart trinket. 5-6% reduction in damage is nothing to sneeze at.

[Missgunst]

(First time poster, long time reader)

I'm having the same problems as the OP. I've been one of our guild's MT/OTs for a few months now without much problems. I tanked pretty much everything with no real problems.

Last night, we went to 25 Uld and XT crushed me. Yes, I lost about 6k hp and 3k AC -- wrong thread for QQing.

Anyways, I dug into the grimreaper of XT killing me:

10 melee attacks made against me:
-8 of them had IBF up
-6 of them had Vamp Blood up
-5 of them had Furnace Stone-use effect up
-4 of them had The Black Heart proc up

of that, I only avoided 2 of the 10 (all my grim would show accurately), and the average hit on me was 23-25k WITH all those CDs up.

Needless to say, I'll be dpsing now, I suppose as our warrior/pally can do better than that.

I'm logged out in dps gear, but I'm in 4 piece conq, 2h exp capped (blood tank), and almost hit capped. Warrior never took a hit larger than 23k with or without CDs popped.

Alas, I lament.

I got a question about your gear, because I don't see how you can get to "almost hit capped", being expertise caped, and wearing 4 piece conq. I mean you have to have some disadvantages on that gear, and that would explain why you get hit so hard (and so often).


I tanked everything up until now and I also have to say, that the nerf hit us really hard.
My problem is that I can't see when me or my healers will get in trouble. Before the patch you could tell, I mean you got experience and stuff, but now it's all different. One of the main problems is, that the healers have to change their playstyle when they heal you. On the one hand you don't have IBF on the 60 second CD anymore, so you will automatically get a lot more damage. But the other thing is, they can't rely on you having any CD now. I usally tanked through the Surge on Vezax, just using IBF when he casted it. Now I have to tell my healers when to get me a cooldown, because IBF may not be rdy.
The thing is I nearly got best in slot gear (missing Thorim ring is all I think) and I get raped by Ulduar bosses atm. I lost nearly 2-3k Life, although I got all new epic gems *sigh*

I'm not quite sure how to handle this, I still favorite blood on the most bosses, since VB and DS really help my healers. My other specc is frost since wether blood nor unholy can tank AE anymore (Trash / Thorim).
What I really changed is that I now always take a indistructable potion right before the pull so that I have the buff and can reapply it infight. I only did those for the Hardmodes, now I really have to do that for every boss.

[Prestonite]

i also suggest getting the new black heart trinket. 5-6% reduction in damage is nothing to sneeze at.

What vendor is that from?

Ok logged out again in frost \ tank gear and it updated.

[Missgunst]

I think it dropps out of the new 5man instance, but dunno if heroic or normal mode is needed.

[Miagorme]

Well I've looked at your gear agian. And I'm not sure if thats your tanking like you said before or not. Because it's showing you at 440 defense. Which is 100 under the cap. It might be beneficial at this point for you to equip your gear and your frost tanking build and take a screenshot and post it. As it's getting hard to evaluate. i also suggest getting the new black heart trinket. 5-6% reduction in damage is nothing to sneeze at.

I change my gear very often, from DPS, DW DPS, tank, DW tank, pvp, frost PVP, etc. -- what I'm in now is my tank set, though:

The World of Warcraft Armory

It's a pretty good guess that if I was at 440 defense, I wasn't in my tank gear, heh, or maybe you were talking to Prestonite. It wasn't very clear.