Patch 3.2 - Frost or Blood tank?

[Nordicus]

Greetings!

Having been a lurker on these forums alot of time, I thought it was probably time for me to create a profile and get into the fray. I've followed your discussions on Deathknight tanking since the start of Wotlk with great interest, and seen many good tips in here.

Which brings me to my topic:

So far I've been a frost DK tank. The pure mitigation and burst TPS abilities in frost always suited me well, even though I struggled a bit with overall TPS in the start of Naxxramas. After changing the spec a bit, it soon became what I use today and it has suited me perfectly so far.

However, after seeing all the talk about Blood tanking, I've gotten curious.

So my questions is; In overall performance, which do you think is best? Blood or Frost for the overall maintank? And why?

I've seen multiple threads about both aspects of the Deathknight tank, but so far I haven't seen one that actually compares the two, with concrete pro's and con's.

Let the discussion begin!

[TheYanger]

Frost can be more exciting to play, a bit more erratic and 'response/reflex' oriented for max TPS (Procs), frigid deathplate is a very good talent. UBA is great for threat, ass for mitigation. AE is very very solid with frost unless you get extremely unlucky on procs.

Blood runs a very rigid rotation that is tight on GCDs (Takes getting used to) but once you've got the muscle memory for it the tps is phenomenal, VB is actually a good cooldown for survivability, has more health..Hysteria is a great raid buff and more is always good.

Think that about covers it. I was diehard frost until 3.1, then ran dualspec frost and blood (Using the frost one primarily for a while, with blood more for the fights it suited...slowly shifted more and more to the blood spec. I just find it to be superior in almost any situation. I run DRM-less blood and really the only parts that suck are massive AE threat, which is workable just really irritating [It plays like a pre-LK warrior AE tanking stuff....blood boils seldomly, tabspamming stuff frequently])

[Nordicus]

So from your post, it sounds something along the lines of:

Frost: Mitigation, survivability and AoE tanking
Blood: Single-target TPS, raidbuffage and massive hitpoint pool

Normally i run at around 6k TPS stable with frost. What's you experience with Bloo?

[TheYanger]

We stopped using WWS and have been using SWS instead, so I can't use the parser I used to, but anything that I have basically free reign as far as staying on my target (Vez, Thorim, etc) if I'm not trying to help the healers by saving death strike runes I can run about 7-10k fluctuating on omen. It takes a nasty miss/parry streak to get me down to 5.5-6k.
It is worth noting that as blood you're also very dependent on an outside source of sunder/expose for threat but...really, that's a given in a raid anyway.

[Satorri]

Honestly, I've played them both. I don't think either truly outperforms the other, at the end of the day the one that you enjoy playing more will be the real winner, and mostly only once you've really played it a lot and honed your skills.

Here are the things I like about each:
Blood

• Comfortable, easy-ish rotation using many single-rune abilities. Makes for minimal rune blackouts or feeling like you're waiting for something. This is particularly true with Glyph of Disease.
• *The* most interactive survival mechanic any tank has, if you really play up self-healing smartly. DS, Rune Tap, Mark of Blood, etc.
• Apparently less squishy than frost. You will take more damage, but well-played self-heals will leave your healers feeling as if you get hurt less.

Frost

• Fantastic burst threat. Being able to unload HB at range, and OB close up, with (cheap?) FS's up close makes this easily the heaviest snap threat a DK can offer, and very quickly if you play your glyphs well.
• Highest actual mitigation. The combination of passive elements will result in you taking the least consistent damage of any DK, but you'll also sport the least comforting CDs for handling burst damage (particularly Frozen Blows, Fusion Punches, etc where there's big melee damage accompanying big magic hits)

Most people like Blood because you can get the most benefit out of stacking health all day long, which is what most people swear by for progression raiding. I also have seen that Frost seems to offer more when you're first gearing up, since Blood's mechanics rely more heavily on your health which comes with gear. Frost starts strong, but Blood seems to scale better.

[GBF]

So from your post, it sounds something along the lines of:

Frost: Mitigation, survivability and AoE tanking
Blood: Single-target TPS, raidbuffage and massive hitpoint pool

Normally i run at around 6k TPS stable with frost. What's you experience with Bloo?

Frost: Great AOE and single-target threat, better passive defenses, weakest talented cooldowns, somewhat squishy against big hits

Blood: Weak AOE threat, great single-target threat, higher passive health pool, great talented cooldown, great filler abilities (Mark of Blood, Hysteria), Will of the Necropolis to soften some of the big hits

Like Satorri said, you should really go with what you like better. But you will be more effective as Blood for hard mode encounters.

[Esch]

I run both Blood/Frost as tank builds, and the decision on which to use it entirely on content. Bosses, it's blood, as the innate healing generally keeps healing easier and I'm focused on a single target as a result. I do have a problem with Blood, in that folks are so used to the self healing and EH of 3.1, I find healers aren't as comfortable or familiar with it. I hope this resolves over time while they get a feel for the changes.

Frost is more for trash/AoE situations where damage is more vital. I did pick up Acclimation, however, and I've plan to use Frost where magic AoE damage (Hodir, Council, for examples) is adequate to sustain the buff as an additional form of mitigation. I've also found UA to be useful for both mitigation and threat, by using a Death Rune to keep rotations smooth. My only complaint with Frost is a tendancy to lock out completely (0 RP, no runes) early in pulls before the threat lead is out running DPS.

With the loss of IBF & 3% Stamina in blood, I don't think the EH difference is as large folks believe. Frost can use Death Strike, and picks up 2% mitigation against the stamina loss. For me, the loss in health about 750 hp. Unless something changes in Vot3W or Frost Presence, either can do fine as main tank.

[Maelstrom]

Every time I play Frost on my DK tank, I wish I was blood. Every time I play Blood on my DK tank, I wish I was frost. Each tree has enough flavour and mitigation to be perfectly viable imo o:

[TheYanger]

Ehh...I wouldn't count rune tap or mark of blood as major elements of blood tanking, most don't take them seriously (Sudden Doom and Subversion are fairly weak talents...but so are rune tap and mark of blood, most high end tanks will take the minor threat instead).

[Yuri]

Hmmm how to start this without it seeming like I am whining or complaining. I am not a great writer so please don’t jump on me like a bunch of hungry wolves J. I was a frost tank prior to 3.2 dropping and most of my duties that I was assigned to were OT and crowd control. I did not have a problem with those duties and had lots of fun doing it. After 3.2 dropped I went to blood tanking and have really been enjoying it! The one thing I have seen while we have been farming heroics for the conquest badges is some lost aoe control. One of these is in Utgarde Pinnacle running the gauntlet on Skadi the Ruthless. We tend to like to start the instance let it reset then run all the way down to the end and restart it. When this happens it does require lots of aoe threat to be generated due to the amount of mobs that initially come out, then it turns into a aoe burn down of mobs gathering harpoons and dropping Skadi. I have seen with some ultra high dps mages and warlocks that I got to be very carful so not to loose any mobs and someone gets ate. When running frost that was not a problem so much when I dropped Howling Blast and death and decay on top of them with the amount of damage it would cause. With blood I have had to do some adjustments for sure. This has not been an issue while running raids and dealing with raid bosses, just on some of those where crowd control is an issue. I have studied lots of Satorri’s posts on blood tanking and found that I have lots of fun with it. The thing I have had to remind some of the casters when they complain about maintaining threat is to monitor their threat generated on the initial pull and blast. If I am given a sec. to build some threat before they unleash hell it does help. As far as everything else with blood tanking I love it and this is coming from someone that was die hard frost before the 3.2 patch.