3.2 DK Specs

[Tankkin]

Fight duration also comes into play but i think the data was more for disproving the "ZOMG parry haste is the worst part of DW" fallicy. Myth busted.
As much as Toth is a great addition to the frost tree, i am interested in seeing back to back base avoidance and survivability stat comparison between dw frost and 2h. considering the point i saw someone made earlier about 6 extra talent points (minimum 3 for toth + gl getting ur hit high enough without speccing into the other dw talent) and issues with maintaining crit cap without ssg. there are a lot of variables involved and alot of rng that can swing one way or another during an encounter, so base stats would probably be a more reliable glimpse at the difference between the two.
If i were to bet one way or the other, i'd bet it on 2h'er.
not because of ssg or "parry haste" mythology more down to the fact that the extra hit and talent points required are pulling from other areas of our tree or stats that could be used for extra survivability.

[Satorri]

Dwayne, your final comment is about as well-informed as it is helpful.

The data is not misleading, simply your assumption that it is solely because he switched from a 2-hander to a pair of weapons.

The switch was a switch of spec and gear to suit the different styles. And the sole, and non-disputable indication, is that he took less damage while dual wielding. That doesn't mean it is always the case, but it was the case here. Plain and simple.

You want to filter out the fact that he took softer hits? Edit the data set so it supports your assumption that dual wielding should represent more damage taken? THAT would be misleading, and bad science.

[Splug]

Actually, the spec and equipment were identical with the exception of replacing the weapons and corresponding weapon enchants. I was even able to mimic the expertise totals on each weapon set, meaning no additional item value was invested to expertise stack as a hidden method of mitigating parries.

In my post on the frost dw thread, I stated what I expected was the cause for the damage change: bone shield had better uptime. I hadn't recast it on cooldown on the 2h run. As such, I recommended using the number of incoming hits per time rather than the size of said hits.

In the DW raid, the tank is taking 24.7% softer hits. Which totally explains the great discrepancy. If you factor the softer hits out, It actually points to the tank taking more dmg (about 2% more).

The dw parse took fewer hits-per-time. Assuming the damage was normalized to an equal value of damage-per-hit, how are you noticing a 2% increase in damage-per-time? Somewhere along the line, that doesn't seem right.

-Splug

[lyd]

In the DW raid, the tank is taking 24.7% softer hits. Which totally explains the great discrepancy. If you factor the softer hits out, It actually points to the tank taking more dmg (about 2% more).

I really don't understand your logic here, or why you are factoring out the softer hits. here is what i see in this statement:

"if you factor out the evidence that proves your point, then there's no evidence to prove your point!"

well, yeah.

what possible justification could there be for factoring out the softer hits? and what caused them in the first place? you give the below explanation:

The likely reason for this improvement is because of buffs or debuffs being applied in one raid, and not in the other (Demo shout etc).

first, let me be fair: correlation is not causation. that's the first thing you learn when analyzing statistical models. so it is certainly unfair for me to simply state that DW accounted for the entire reduction without considering all the other factors. But after looking at the list of buffs/debuffs in each parse, it is just as ridiculous to assume that missing buffs/debuffs accounted for 23.3% less damage as it may be to suggest that DW'ing accounted for 23.3% reduction in damage. particularly in a 25-man raid post-3.0 with the homogenization of class-specific raid buffs/debuffs.

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay

If you can show which buffs/debuffs are missing in the 2h parse that would account for the 24.7% reduction on the softer hits in the DW parse, I will give you 1 million internets. the biggest difference in both parses is significantly more up-time on Bone Armor in the 2nd parse rather than in the first. 15% versus 41% up-time. also note that the biggest hit he took on the 2h parse, his hit range was between 8.8k-27k, and he mitigated 11%, or 236,691 white damage. on the DW parse, his hit range was between 4.6-23k, and he mitigated 21%, or 366,494. there is a ~2-minute discrepancy in Bone Armor up-time. it is the only significant buff discrepancy that i can see in the breakdown that would affect his mitigation. So on the one-hand, your observation regarding a buff discrepancy accounting for the difference may have truth to it. But there is no conceivable way that buffs alone accounted for 23.3% less throughput damage. keep in mind that your argument assumes more through-put damage as DW (2% in your analysis), so in reality, this is closer to 25.3%. there's no way that a ~2-minute discrepancy in Bone armor accounted for 25.3% less throughput damage, especially when only 40% of the boss's melee hits actually landed on the tank. that would require somewhere in the neighborhood of 90-95% additional mitigation of damage received during those 2 minutes. bone armor is a 20% reduction. so in the absence of any other significant buff disparities, your theory doesn't pass muster.

Doing napkin math, 2 fast weapons (1.5's) (20%hasted) will lead to a boss parry every 8 secs. For a 2H 3.5 (20% hasted) speed weap this is every 33 secs. (Assuming 8.5% parry rate - 15%-6.5% = 8.5%)

that's why this is napkin math. napkin math has its time and place (i.e. for proof of concept, etc), but you're leaving out just about every relevant factor that would impact these numbers aside from the naked swing speed and parry rating of the boss:

-rune strike replaces MH swings. every MH swing replaced by RS is unparryable. faster swing speeds also lead to higher RS replacement rates because you waste less procs while waiting on your swing timer, which slightly tunes down parry haste vulnerability from just the raw swing-speed conversion.

-a certain percentage of parries will occur inside the "dead zone" of a boss's swing timer, where if the haste gained from a parry would reduce the speed of their current swing to less than 20% of their remaining swing time. Parries which occur in this dead-zone have exactly 0% effect on the boss' next swing.

-of attacks which benefit from haste, more than half will be avoided completely, based on typical returns from a well-geared DK's avoidance levels. in the DW parse, the tank avoided 60% of all melee hits. from a purely theorycraft standpoint, based on this data, you can expect that roughly 6 out of every 10 melee hastes will be completely avoided.

-this data would change with a frost build, which has greater melee-based avoidance than unholy.

-I DW tank currently with Slow/Fast, and i've quite literally *never* died to parry-haste mechanic. parry-gibs went out the door with crushing blows. If a tank dies due to parry-haste, it is the healers fault, not the tank's. a 2h tank is in theory just as vulnerable to a parry-haste death as a DW tank is. If a healer can't keep their tank up through a DW-caused parry-hasted attack, then they won't be able to do so through a 2h-caused parry-haste either. any additional vulnerabilities caused by parry-haste are overtaken by increased mitigation in a DW build, which comes at the cost of threat, as was originally stated.


Now, the point of referencing that data was to prove that parry-haste is a phantom menace. even if we assumed that missing buffs/debuffs accounted for 100% of the mitigation disparity, i.e. a 23.3% reduction in damage taken between one raid and the other, that still leaves DW on parity with 2h for throughput damage. and unless you can show that missing buffs/debuffs between each raid accounted for greater than a 23.3% reduction in incoming damage, and thereby showing a positive increase in through-put damage due SOLELY to parry-hastes caused by DW'ing, there's simply no way that DW'ing increased his vulnerability in any meaningful way above and beyond his 2h parse, or in a way that isn't completely overtaken by the avoidance/mitigation gains from a DW build/gear-set.


in short: no, you do not need to out-gear an instance to DW tank successfully.

[DwayneDibley]

Satorri : I respect the things you have written in the past, but I disagree with you here. I do think the data as presented is misleading. Suggesting that you take 400k less dmg over the course of a fight just because you change from 2H to DW is totally wrong - as I go on to say it is due to other factors.

The approx 2% more dmg figure was calculated as follows:
1,394,429 (DW damage in) * (19794/14918) = 1850202 (adjusted damage)
1850202 / 1817137 = 1.0182 = 1.8% damage increase.
Its worth noting that this 1.8% figure shouldbe taken with a pinch of salt, with such a small sample though. But the calculation was done in an attempt to factor out a clear discrepancy between the 2 sets of data,


Ok, now for napkin math...
Rune strike : you get one every dodge/parry. Boss swing speed is 2secs, which will be de-hasted by 20% - hence 2.4secs. Most tanks will have 50% dodge+parry, so roughly every 4.8 secs you'll get the opportunity to do a rune strike. For a 2H tank this will be every other strike on average (even when hasted 20%).
For 2 fast weapons (the psychotic case), you have 2x1.5 speed weapons swinging at 1.2 secs per swing each. With this, you'll get 8 weapon swings (4 from each weapon, before the rune strike, then 1 rune and 1 normal)

So. for 2H, you'll get 1 parryable swing every 5.6secs, on average.
(3.5x2x0.8)
For DW, you'll get 9 parryable swings every 6secs, on average (9 normal swings and 1 rune strike)

In addition to this, you'll get say a yellow attack from your normal rotation every 2.5 secs (on average).
This gives:
2H: 3.24 swings every 5.6secs
DW: 11.4 swings every 6secs


I don't think i really need to go any further than this... over 3 times as many parryable swings can't possibly be a good thing. Even after you consider your increased avoidance and the (somewhat beneficial) fact that you'll miss more white attacks when DW, there is a huge potential difference.

Lets take an example, of a likely fatal situation. 2 parried swings in a row.

For 2H, from my figures above, you get 3.24 parryable swing every 5.6 secs. The chance for a boss to parry is 15% - 6.5% (soft cap) = 8.5%.
So, on average, you'll get a parried swing every (5.6secs/3.24) / 0.085 = 20 seconds. This aint nice, but its acceptable. You'll get 2 in a row, on average every 400 seconds - once every 6.66mins.

For DW, you get 11.4 parryable swings every 6 seconds. But to be kind, i'll say 10.4 (to factor in increased white miss). With this you'll get (6/10.4) / 0.085 = 6.787 seconds. You'll get 2 in a row every 46 seconds.

Ok, we havent yet factored in tank avoidance. Lets say you have a 40% chance to be hit. For 2H, if we do 400 seconds / (0.4 * 0.4) = a double parry which both strikes hitting the tank every 2500 seconds = 41.6mins
For DW : 46 / (0.4*0.4) = a double parry which both strikes hitting the tank every 287 seconds (4.8 mins).

For a single non-avoided parry the figures are 2H: 20/0.4 = every 50 seconds, versus DW: 6.787/0.4 = every 17 seconds.


In conclusion, both specs are viable. But DW means that you have a *SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED* chance to be parried. Sure your healers may be up to the job, but why burden them? Why wipe uneccessarily, even once per raid night?
Viable and recommended are not the same thing. Tanking in pvp gear is viable, tanking without a helmet or chestpiece on is viable. I wouldn't recommend either.

If you want to DW go ahead and do so. But don't brush aside the fact that there are certain drawbacks from your decision. If you do want to do it, i'd suggest stacking expertise, and getting the slowest weapons you can get your hands on, to reduce the parry chance.

[DwayneDibley]

If you want to be all obsessive/compulsive about parry, you ideally wouldn't want to spec frost at all. This is because its runic dump is a strike, and can hence be parried, whereas deathcoil cannot.
Avoiding BCB in your spec is also advisable, as that extra parryable strike aint gonna help either!

A parry hastes a weapon strike by 24% on average, hence with a boss swing speed of 2.4 secs:
For 2H, a parry every 50 secs = 20 normal swings + 1 hasted = 1.1% increase in boss melee dps due to parry (21/20.76)
for DW, a parry every 17 seconds = 7 normal swings + 1 hasted = 3.1% increase in boss melee dps (8/7.76)

Of course the problem with parry isnt just the increase in damage, its the spikes it causes.

[DwayneDibley]

In reply to Iyd, the only real discrepancy which should be observed in switching between 2H and DW is avoidance. The 2 weapons don't come with any extra mitigation such as high armour. So the value of the hits should be similar, but perhaps slightly less frequent with DW.

Even if in one circumstance bone shield is up for 100% of the time and 0% in the other, that alone would never account for a >20% reduction in damage - as its effect is only 20% anyway - even if it were to never drop off.

What is likely, and what I state, is that the raid makeup has changed. Perhaps the tank is buffed differently, the boss is debuffed differently, or the tank is healed by a class who provides damage absorbtion (such as priest shields etc.) or one which critical heal hits grant bonus armor etc.

The 2 logs have similar durations, similar tank avoidance, but huge discrepancies in tank damage taken.
DW should only adjust the tank avoidance by a few percent. Bone shield will make a difference, but it clearly isn't just that either, as the effect could never be greater than 20% difference, even if it were up 100% of the time (and its up only 26% more time than the original log, which should account for (0.26*20) = 5.2% discrepancy)

[Splug]

The approx 2% more dmg figure was calculated as follows:
1,394,429 (DW damage in) * (19794/14918) = 1850202 (adjusted damage)
1850202 / 1817137 = 1.0182 = 1.8% damage increase.
Its worth noting that this 1.8% figure shouldbe taken with a pinch of salt, with such a small sample though. But the calculation was done in an attempt to factor out a clear discrepancy between the 2 sets of data,

The dual wield fight time was also about 40 seconds longer, so your numbers show a 1.8% total incoming damage increase during an encounter that was 7.7% longer. That looks more like the numbers I came up with for damage-per-time.

Most of what's being said here (on both sides) is fairly redundant, and a few pieces are being left out. You guys should probably go back to the dual wield frost thread where this was initially discussed and resume the analysis there.

-Splug

[GravityDK]

Most of what's being said here (on both sides) is fairly redundant, and a few pieces are being left out. You guys should probably go back to the dual wield frost thread where this was initially discussed and resume the analysis there.

Agreed. Bone Shield was up for longer, and there were 3x more parries in DW than 2H, which the other thread hasn't quite finished digesting.

[lyd]

to make this somewhat more relevant to the original post, here is a link to the DW tanking build discussions on E-J:

DW Tanking Builds - Elitist Jerks

[Goros]

I'm going to derail this 2 weapon thread that isn't a 2 weapon thread and put it back on topic...

Ok, here are my 2 specs I currently run with, both tank specs, the first one is my offtanking/aoe tank/heroic tank everyday type tanking spec.

Tank Spec 1

The second is my magic mitigation tanking spec where I took acclimation, ignored some AOE stuff, and I actually carry an extra helm with the 2% magic damage mitigation/32 stam meta and a 2h weapon with the rune of spellshattering on it. I know I put myself in a niche, but the extra mitigation is very nice, and the items don't take up much room in my bags.

Tank Spec 2

Threat generated is comparable on both.

As for the usefulness of deathchill, in my experience extra snap threat for a screwup huntard or a fail pug is never to be discounted.
I generate enough RP with each spec that I never miss a runestrike and at times have enough to dump either in a HB or a FS as the opportunity arises, and with my rotation I never find myself relying on white damage alone to carry me through more than a second to a second and a half of time.
I use Icy Reach in my AOE spec for the same reason I took the pestilence glyph, because a little extra range to pull aggro and maintain threat on that build is never a bad thing.

Let me know thoughts & suggestions, but these are what i've tanked with and what works for me and my rotation, so while I will weigh advice, I probably won't change unless the case is VERY persuasive.

[lyd]

Goros, I would suggest taking your points out of Icy talons. you should get rid of it for the following reasons:


-DPS frost dk's and shamans of any stripe can provide the haste buff, effectively making these 4 talent points moot when the overlap occurs.

-even in the event that there is no haste buff present in your group, 16% personal haste affects you're white hits only, which accounts for less than half of your damage output. the 9% crit to OB and BS from subversion is much better.

the typical frost rotation looks something like this:

IT PS BS BS OB - FS Dump
OB OB OB - FS Dump

with Rime-proc'd HB's thrown in when applicable.

my suggestion would be to take those 3 talent points and put them into Subversion. you're adding 9% crit to 6/8 of the RP-generating weapon strikes in your rotation. DK's also benefit from a 200% natural crit multiplier, so crit is very friendly to our dps. Subversion will increase your single-target dps and threat more than 3 or 4 points in icy talons. and it will make you that much better in situations where the buff is provided by another party or raid member. you can toss the extra point into vicious strikes for 3% crit and 15% additional crit damage to your plague strikes.

so to compare:

4 points: 16% haste
4 points: 9% crit to OB and BS, 3% crit and 15% additional crit damage to PS

if this isn't convincing, then simply try it out and see if your dps/tps increases. I predict it will. If it doesn't, then you've lost nothing and proved the resilience of your talent choice.

[Satorri]

Heh, people love to advise Frost tanks not to take Imp Icy Talons, and I always follow it with the necessary revision:

If you have a shaman dropping Windfury Totem or a Frost Dps DK with the Imp Icy Talons, drop it fast and get more value from those 6 pts elsewhere. If you are the only one who *can* provide the buff, it is well worth it to your group, though it is not the best personal value.

Also, Goros, terribly curious why you skipped Annihilation. You filled out with Icy Talons and Icy Reach, but why not Annihilation?

[Goros]

I have annihilation in my single target mitigation spec, but I found myself using HB over oblit in my aoe spec because of #1 the fact that it's an AOE, and #2 the fact that it seems to outdamage oblit on regular strikes and procs 90% of the time. In my mind, adding a talent that keeps your diseases from breaking when you use oblit, but never use oblit, are wasted - despite the 3% extra crit.

I use icy talons because runestrikes are driven off white hits, and there's nothing I hate more than waiting for a runestrike to land. Faster whites = faster runestrikes = more threat, at least in my mind. If I'm wrong, or if it doesn't stack as well as I think it does I'm willing to consider a change, but in my experience I notice a tangible difference in runestrikes landing faster with it as opposed to without it. I know it's not ideal, but it seems to help.

I might change it up and try it for giggles, as I want to make my build the most useful and effective I can.

[lyd]

satorri, quick nit-pick: he doesn't have imp. icy talons, so the haste buff only affects him in both of his specs. if he spec'd into IMP. icy talons, your observation would of course, be correct.

Goros, your theory has merit. But I don't think the proposed buff RS haste would counter-balance the additional threat generated by 9% crit on 2 of your bread and butter strikes, and 3% crit/15% crit damage on another one of your bread and butter strikes. If you get the opportunity, you should try both specs and run a threat meter to see if your theory works on the ground. i'm sure everyone here would find that information useful as well

[Satorri]

The haste is good, but the point is that it does not stack with Windfury/Imp Icy Talons (and if your group doesn't have the buff, the extra point gets you more haste in addition to helping the entire melee section and other tanks).

Annihilation on the other hand, you're missing something terribly important: Rime! Even if your HB hits more often, it has an 8 sec CD. If you use Oblit every time you can't hit HB (which is often enough), you proc more HB's, and free at that, which allows you to use still more OB's to proc more HBs. It's a self-promoting loop. The last thing you want is to strip the diseases (specifically FF with Tundra Stalker) and lose the full damage buff for your HB. This is especially the case for anyone who decides to dual wield since it apparently double dips on opportunity to proc Rime!

The 3% crit actually directly becomes 3% increase in average damage done with all your melee strikes. 3% more damage on OB, FS, and BS is not a shabby value either.

(also, using a decent weapon and a double disease rotation, OB will pass HB damage with a consistent gear level on single targets, even more if you glyph it)

[lyd]

agreed. Rime makes the triple OB rotation very rewarding imo.

[Goros]

I didn't realize there is a correlation between rime and OB (I have rime now on both builds and IMO is a must have for any frost tank build [or dps for that matter]). I spam my IT when it comes up because I use the sigil for extra defense and it never hurts to keep it up (and I'm sure that eats part of the availabilty of oblit's you are talking about) but I have been looking at that runestrike/dodge sigil on the badge vendor with lust...

I know it makes sense logically, but I'll have to put it into my AoE spec as well and see what kind of numbers I get as opposed to the way it sits now. I was just looking at the points as a waste when I've always had better luck with HB.

I'll switch them up (both what you are suggesting and what lyd says and post some results after i play with each over the weekend. Changing up my rotations and priority list shouldn't be too hard since i'm a button mashing mouse turner anyway.

Thanks, I'll let you know what I find!

[Fathom]

Heh, people love to advise Frost tanks not to take Imp Icy Talons, and I always follow it with the necessary revision:

If you have a shaman dropping Windfury Totem or a Frost Dps DK with the Imp Icy Talons, drop it fast and get more value from those 6 pts elsewhere. If you are the only one who *can* provide the buff, it is well worth it to your group, though it is not the best personal value.

As a big fan of Imp Icy Talons (and a former enhance sham/totem twist bot), I'd submit that it should actually be:

"If you have an enhance shaman dropping Windfury Totem or a Frost Dps DK with the Imp Icy Talons"

Imp Icy Talons is better and will overwrite regular windfury, and the extra 4% (while not gamebreaking) is definitely non-trivial for melee dps.

[Goros]

One issue with the subversion/vicious strikes changes...

It takes a point out of the frost tree that needs to be there in order to continue down the tree. It also eliminates my acclimation, which is part of the niche I was shoving myself into for the single target/boss tanking spec.

If I add annhiliation to the aoe spec, i have to remove morbidity which allows me to keep a D&D on the ground at all times if needed.

Thoughts/suggestions? Still need to maintain 51 points in frost, but I don't want to take useless talents that don't do anything for the build like lichborne, icy reach, chillblains, runic power mastery, etc.