AOE threat: what is best spe now?

[Feanorr]

Hello,

I am trying to max my aoe threat for some fight and I was wondering what will be the best now with the change in UB.

Unholy: stronger DnD and diseases and wandering plagues
frost: DnD + HB
Blood: DnD + stronger Blood boil

Does unholy keep it's advantage here or not?


Feanorr


PS: the answer 'paladin' is not an option

[dhthomps]

Hello,

I am trying to max my aoe threat for some fight and I was wondering what will be the best now with the change in UB.

Unholy: stronger DnD and diseases and wandering plagues
frost: DnD + HB
Blood: DnD + stronger Blood boil

Does unholy keep it's advantage here or not?


Feanorr


PS: the answer 'paladin' is not an option

No numbers since I've been raiding with just blood, but my estimated guess would be a deathchill + HB + DND + BB rotation with frost. Glyph for HB, DND, and a glyph of your choice.

[GBF]

Frost, by far. Unholy and Blood don't even come close, especially if you glyph for Howling Blast and save Killing Machine procs for it.

[Kensu]

I had the same problem, they took away my unholy blight and I no longer like the unholy tree for anything other than the 13% magic debuff. The unholy tree used to have a nich, but now it just feels like it single target threat is sub par to Blood and the AE threat is sub par to Frost.

I tried out frost for AE tanking and it just seems so clunky. I feel like I am constantly looking for something to press. OB and HB are on the same FU runes and OB procs a free cast of HB. Which lacks synergy in my eyes.

So I gave up on frost tanking and just stuck to Blood AE as it does just fine. Yes, I do have to throw out an occasional taunt or death grip during an AE fight, but overall it does just fine.

[KnThrak]

I am sticking to Unholy, but I am fairly certain Frost is better for AE now. I am tempted to pick up a Frost Spec with Chillblains, Deathchill and Glyph of HB as secondary for AE stuff, as that'd be close to the "ultimate" AE setup.

[Satorri]

The change to Unholy loses you a nice aoe tick, but it's not crippling. The change simply means Unholy has to do a little more work to keep the same aoe threat, and before it was almost comically strong.

Unholy now benefits from spreading UB around, and making heavier use of BB with your serious disease ticks. Corpse Explosion has been terribly limited in value since Ulduar (friggin Mechanicals and Elementals >.<), and now with no trash in Coliseum, but it may still see a return to power come IC. Unholy didn't lose it's aoe abilities, it simply lost the auto-EZ-mode method of it.

Frost is strong, strong as ever, but I still haven't seen it vastly surpass unholy. That said it still has the fun of burst aoe threat, which with many trash packs is all you really need.

I do just fine with Blood, I can hold aoe threat with little problem, it just ramps up more slowly.

In short, whatever spec you play the most, and to the best effect can handle aoe just fine.

[Nez]

^^
I agree with Sattori in that you can do it with any spec. You just might need to tab target and spread some hate around instead of just pound on one target the whole pull. I generally run blood most of the time and fights like Thorium Arena can be challenging but its surely doable.

[Dany]

Depends on the size of the pack imo ^^, for unholy, the more mobs, the better. Frost spec doesn't care. But there's a point where Wandering plague shines.

[KnThrak]

20% meleecrit with a Feral (and we basically always have one ^_^). Wandering Plague becomes frighteningly strong after a certain amount of crit, isn't it?

[Feanorr]

The change to Unholy loses you a nice aoe tick, but it's not crippling. The change simply means Unholy has to do a little more work to keep the same aoe threat, and before it was almost comically strong.

You mean... like a paladin? ^^

Sorry to bring that to the table again but yea I am a bit upset with paladin threat ^^ And I know they are nerfed next patch... finally!

[Satorri]

Paladin AoE threat had nothing on the old Unholy DK.

Back in Naxx25 I used to tear packs off our paladin after he opened up all of his moves and had stuff hitting him in his Consecration.

DnD + UB + Big Diseases (even not having Wandering Plague which I didn't) was huge, plus BB's for good measure before it got buffed in 3.1.

[GravityDK]

ah the good old days of op DKs.

[Satorri]

It was a good time. Though, at the time, I was also squishy as hell when Bone Shield was down. Fortunately it was up about 25-45 sec per min on average, at 40% then 20% damage reduction. Sometimes it fell off...

[Insahnity]

Paladin AoE threat had nothing on the old Unholy DK.

Back in Naxx25 I used to tear packs off our paladin after he opened up all of his moves and had stuff hitting him in his Consecration.

DnD + UB + Big Diseases (even not having Wandering Plague which I didn't) was huge, plus BB's for good measure before it got buffed in 3.1.

Added to that a Glyphed Corpse Explosion, it lead to some disturbingly high AoE DPS numbers.

So, are people speccing out of UB these days? I know it is weak, but to the point where it is now a waste of a point?

[Satorri]

I don't think it's a waste, it's just not the AoE damage it used to be. I expect it'll be rather noticeably higher in single target damage, and so if you spread it around with the extra DC's you'll have (from not keeping the old UB up), you can still get a pretty decent, albeit more focused, effect.

I've been toying with a build using Blood/Unholy to stack it heavily (since it compounds like Deep Wounds with repeat applications), but I haven't had a chance to really test it yet.

[Fathom]

frost: DnD + HB

Am I weird that as a frost tank D&D is almost entirely absent from my AoE threat rotation? I use it almost exclusively on pulls where mobs join the fight at unpredictable intervals as it's my only threat over time ability, other than that I've always found it too much of a pain to work into rotations for kind of meh threat.

To answer the OP's question though, I think Unholy still wins for aoe tanking, primarily because of it's flexibility on picking up multiple mobs. It's much easier to get stuck between runes or cds in blood or frost at just the moment a new mob joins the fight.

[Satorri]

No, I'm with you on that Fathom. I only use DnD strategically to cover encounter dynamics, or at the start of a static pull to blow up AoE threat when it's needed. (DnD, glyphed HB, BB, ERW, BB, BB, HB, OB<pray for Rime proc>)