Satorri's Big Build Shop: Blood Tanking!

[Satorri]

AoE fears are nearly non-existent in pve tanking in the current endgame. The only exception is the newly released Faction Champions in ToC (CURSE YOU CAIPHUS THE STERN I WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD TO ADORN MY ARMOR!!).

[Tankkin]

im runnning late for work now sattori!
regardless lol....cheers for the great insight into a way of getting past what is probably the most important part of tanking since our recent nerfs: our survivability
I mostly used my blood spec as threat cannon spec, with the added advantage of a little bit of healing but since i cant get my gm off my back about the sheer amount of damage i am taking as of late i guess speccing for more survivability is going to be my only way out of this dilemma.
One thing does have me kind of confused though, Spell deflection.
in regards to how much damage it saves me from receiving based off parry, i understand that section of your article, more just a question of when exactly are we taking direct spell damage that isnt a dot effect or aoe? and is the number of times that this occurs high enough that this is a talent thats worth the points?
once again great stuff mate keep up the good work, can't wait to read on frost ^_^

[Esch]

AD was recently clarified by Blue postiness as to how it works, and the tooltip wordings are now the same.

If WotN does not work the same, then I'd love the clarification, data would be helpful (albeit hard to come by).

If I recall the post in question, WotN wasn't addressed. AD only affects damage at/below 35%, while WotN triggers when damage exceeds that threshold. The difference is that WotN affects all damage on a hit that crosses the threshold, while AD only reduces the portion of damage below 35%. As a trade off for 'more likely' to trigger, WotN has its ICD.

Small, but vital difference, though amusing that both AD and WotN fail against 115% of total health hits (though AD triggers it's GS effect).

If you look at your example, this means that a 20k hit would do 17k damage and leave your Dk at 8k health. The numbers/setup/affect is accurate if the player being hit is a paladin

[Satorri]

No, I understand what you are saying Esch, but as they changed AD, they made the wording for that match WotN. Do we have any more concrete indications of WotN working differently?

And, Tankin, it does apply to some aoe's just not periodic ones. So, a few examples. It DOES work on Sarth's breath. It DOES work on Razorscale's breath. It DOES work on Steelbreaker's Fusion Punch. It does not work on Steelbreaker's Aura. It DOES work on the tank hits of Frozen Blows, but it does not work on the party wide frost aura during Frozen Blows. It DOES work on Mimi's Plasma Blast. You get the idea. It actually comes up rather a lot.

[toonnamefail]

Sat... nice post mate, almost sold me on Rune Tap/MoB as well but not quite. I would still directly relate both talents with the heal team. Luckily for me I do have an absolutely amazing heal core so I guess those talents are not "ideal" for my sitauation.

One nit pick though, Ravenous Dead gives 1%/2%/3% more str not 10%/20%/30% as you numbers would suggest. A tank have 1.3k str will gain a benefit of 13 str per point not 130.

Also with WotN, i only just picked that talent again and seem to run it on and off every fortnight but I was wondering if anyone possibly had any methods of finding out the how much damage this talent has absorbed for me over X amount of time.

[Esch]

No, I understand what you are saying Esch, but as they changed AD, they made the wording for that match WotN. Do we have any more concrete indications of WotN working differently?

Ardent Defender (Rank 3):
Damage that takes you below 35% health is reduced by 30%. In addition, attacks which would otherwise kill you cause you to be healed by up to 30% of your maximum health (amount healed based on defense). This healing effect cannot occur more often than once every 2 min.

Will of the Necropolis (Rank 3):
Damage that would take you below 35% health or taken while you are at 35% health is reduced by 15%. This effect cannot occur more often than once every 15 sec and cannot be triggered by damage which deals less than 5% of your health.

I fear I'm being a grammar fanatic about wording, in regards to a game with a history of tooltips being inconsistent. I do think there is a fundamental difference between the two, which has been both a point of contention on OP AD in relative tank balance. I'm willing to test it, but the necessary 'near death' experiences necessary to get data certainly makes it challenging.

Then I thought of a way to test it.

Stripped down, got to base 10191 hit points, Blood spec with Vot3W, WotN. For sake of testing, 35% health is ~3567hp, 5% is 510 hp, so I need a damage source of more than 510 I can reliably reuse. Off to Shadowmoon Valley and my 600+/-2 lava bath (I used it to test changes in Frost Presence to quash a rumor FP was bugged). To further limit, I didn't reactivate any aura (lost when I change specs), to prevent Frost Presence monkeying with health or damage mitigation.

INTO THE POOL! (Coordinates 39, 47, an uprising 'volcano') Well, falling first, to shave off a few k and test at the 3567 mark. Yep, pool ticks for the base 600+/-2 damage per second, with 90 points absorbed by WotN showing in the combat log. Now, if I get to 4167 hit points (3567+600), what does WotN do? IF it's the same as AD, very little, if anything, will be absorbed. If WotN triggers, I should see the same 90 reduction (15% off the base 600).

Well, in fairness, I jumped in at ~4100, as latency could hit me with another health tick and push me too close to 4200 and thus I would eat an entire 600 without hitting 35% health. However, in every case, I got the same 90 hitpoints resisted. The condition is purely crossing that 35% threshold to trigger a 15% damage absorption.

As a back-up, I flipped on Frost Present (10331 health), getting 571+/-2 damage a tick. When I triggered WotN, I got 85 absorbs, consistent with the 571 damage and smaller damage packets, since Frost Presence reduced the damage prior to the WotN effect.

Does experiment setup, results and conclusion past muster? /bows down with offering to Satorri

[toonnamefail]

WOW.... so WoTN is in fact practically useless!

[GravityDK]

What do you mean? It's working.
Reduces the hit by 15% as it should, even if he started about 35%, or if he was already below it.

[GravityDK]

The effect of Scent of Blood is a fairly simple one to gauge. Every incoming swing that does not miss, has a 15% chance to give the DK 10 RP on her next 1/2/3 melee swings. As above we’re assuming in the 20 sec window that 8-10 swings come in, which would average to 1.35 procs per period at 10 RP per proc per pt (though there is a small chance that it will proc twice before the swings are spent that can lose some of the effect with higher points invested, but we’ll leave that out of the consideration here as it should be a relatively small effect. 1.35 procs will generate 13.5 RP per point.If we consider from the above situations, having Epidemic without GoDisease or DRM, there were 4 GCD’s that went to waste (if not filled with survival CD’s or Blood Taps), and 15 RP to spare. With Epidemic and DRM, it was 1.5 GCD’s with 10 RP to spare. And with all three buffs, there were 1.5 GCD’s with 10 RP to spare. So the latter two cases are the same, while the first has a little more room for improvement. Scent of Blood, in our 20 sec window, will pick up 13.5 RP per pt, or, in average terms, 1/3 of a DC per pt. That means that for 3 pts you’d be able to add one more DC into those empty GCD’s per cycle, amounting to a 2.58% increase (0.86% per pt) in the first scenario, a 2.39% increase (0.80% per pt) in the second scenario, and a 2.34% increase (0.78% per pt) in the third. This may be more or less valuable to the DK depending on whether or not they chose to buff Death Coil with glyphs or additional talents, but overall it seems like one of the weaker talents for flat damage increase. That said, as is the theme of this section, it will create a very useful bump in total RP generated by the tank which will insure an RS never goes starved (provided smart play of RP), and that there is always resources to use Mind Freeze and IBF while dumping more Death Coils.
.

Satorri the value of 2H spec -vs- Scent of Blood is tricky, I'm wondering if you did any analysis (it doesn't appear in your essay above, I highlighted a few key points), about this question:
* without SoB, do you generate enough RP to always have enough RP for RS when you avoid 60% of the time, and yet also do 1 or 2 DCs in a standard rotation?

My premise is that SoB is not about RP for DCs, but RP for RS.
I haven't done the maths on it, hoping you have.

If I have so much RP from SoB that my only use for it is DCs, then the points in SoB should have been in 2H spec. On the other hand, if I'm RP-starved, and am missing any RS opportunities, I think SoB is better because an RS extra per rotation is going to be more TPS than the 2H spec talent would have given me.

[Mecer]

AoE fears are nearly non-existent in pve tanking in the current endgame. The only exception is the newly released Faction Champions in ToC (CURSE YOU CAIPHUS THE STERN I WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD TO ADORN MY ARMOR!!).

Not to nit-pic but Auyria is another example from Uldar. My point was only that while going 8 points into Frost already, picking up Ruinic Power Mastery (A talent you present for playstyle flexibilty) and Lichborne isnt a streach.

Im not saying "Satorri's spec is wrong! NEVAR LISTEN TO HIM!", because it isnt, its an optimized spec well suited for his needs. The discussion is a long list of talents/abilities available to a Blood Tank. Im willing to bet that there will be atleast 1 fight in Icecrown that will use fear. 3/4 tanking classes have a fear breaker(talented or not), tremor totem, and fear ward, make raids of all sizes able to deal with fears. It makes sense, and although I havent seen the new ony encounter, the old one used to fear as a primary mechanic. Hey Ive gotten more than my fair share of use from Lichborne, other tanks havent. C'est la vie.

M

Edit: For those pointing that Naxx doesnt have a fearing boss, remember it was based on a raid build before the Horde had Fear Ward.

[Mecer]

Satorri the value of 2H spec -vs- Scent of Blood is tricky, I'm wondering if you did any analysis (it doesn't appear in your essay above, I highlighted a few key points), about this question:
* without SoB, do you generate enough RP to always have enough RP for RS when you avoid 60% of the time, and yet also do 1 or 2 DCs in a standard rotation?

My premise is that SoB is not about RP for DCs, but RP for RS.
I haven't done the maths on it, hoping you have.

If I have so much RP from SoB that my only use for it is DCs, then the points in SoB should have been in 2H spec. On the other hand, if I'm RP-starved, and am missing any RS opportunities, I think SoB is better because an RS extra per rotation is going to be more TPS than the 2H spec talent would have given me.

Appologies for the double post, I have comparable gear to Satorri. With actually slightly higher avoidance (dodge trinket vs stam trinket), Throughout Uldar last night (I am not talented for SoB), I did not have any issues with RP for RS or any of my cooldowns. I will say that I did not really have the plethera of RP for DC spam so there was small gaps of in rune-blackout, but those were rare and far between.

Without SoB I just had to manage my RP alittle tighter, using DC only when above 70RP or so to maintain RS.

[Esch]

Edit: For those pointing that Naxx doesnt have a fearing boss, remember it was based on a raid build before the Horde had Fear Ward.

Amusingly, Naxx was designed before Alliance had access to either Tremor, Poison Cleanse or Disease Cleanse Totems. The only two faults between the factions pre-BC was Cleanse (paladins) as shaman couldn't remove Magic debuffs, a very common occurance in raiding, and Salvation which shaman had to use a valuable air totem (plus not be grouped with tanks). The merge in BC simplified planning encounters & overall balance, IMO.

The problem with Lichborne is it's a fight specific or PvP talent. I have a Frost spec and I don't pick up Lichborne, as even if I'm needed to tank Auriaya, Fear Ward/Tremor Totem/Trinket are adequate for normal fight. Unless the possible fight in Icecrown has a high risk of wiping the raid (ala Archimonde in BC with his fires), I don't see myself picking up Lichborne at any point.

[Edgewalker]

Good post, but I think you are undervaluing Necrosis slightly by putting it behind Ravenous Dead. Wowmeteronline sadly reset all of my saved up parses where I tried spec after spec, but it always accounted for a pretty hefty chunk 4.5%~ of 7-8000 TPS. It scales with weapon damage and gear more rapidly than some of the other options as well so will likely see increased popularity in Ulduar. Might want to include 1 point BCB also. While it's rare to get it in a tanking spec, it is the pinnacle talent in a single target threat build.

I also find the advantage of stacked Death Coil damage (Morbidity/Glyph/Sigil/Sudden Doom) to be in burst threat, not long term TPS.
Though there is a slight advantage to both.

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay - Necrosis 5.2%, DC 7.6%. 0 Points Ravenous Dead, 1 point BCB.
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay - Necrosis 5.7, DC 6.5.
http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat...0778844#threat - Mimiron, DC threat goes up with adds and less straight tanking
WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay - Emalon, DC goes up with adds/heart strike+sudden doom

[wazdaa]

Satorri the value of 2H spec -vs- Scent of Blood is tricky, I'm wondering if you did any analysis (it doesn't appear in your essay above, I highlighted a few key points), about this question:
* without SoB, do you generate enough RP to always have enough RP for RS when you avoid 60% of the time, and yet also do 1 or 2 DCs in a standard rotation?

My premise is that SoB is not about RP for DCs, but RP for RS.
I haven't done the maths on it, hoping you have.

If I have so much RP from SoB that my only use for it is DCs, then the points in SoB should have been in 2H spec. On the other hand, if I'm RP-starved, and am missing any RS opportunities, I think SoB is better because an RS extra per rotation is going to be more TPS than the 2H spec talent would have given me.

get a tree with the talent that gives runic power, you'll be swimming in rp without SoB.

i used to run SoB,then asked a druid to spec into it. and i noticed i have slightly less rp, but still more then enough to use each and every RS proc and dc very liberaly and on the odd free gcd i just use my horn

[Edgewalker]

Amusingly, Naxx was designed before Alliance had access to either Tremor, Poison Cleanse or Disease Cleanse Totems. The only two faults between the factions pre-BC was Cleanse (paladins) as shaman couldn't remove Magic debuffs, a very common occurance in raiding, and Salvation which shaman had to use a valuable air totem (plus not be grouped with tanks). The merge in BC simplified planning encounters & overall balance, IMO.

And blessing of kings, judgement of light, judgement of wisdom, the entire blessing system vs the totem system on fights with movement and space...

[Satorri]

Toona, thank you for the math fix, I missed a decimal place in my sheet. It will be edited.

Esch, that's a good first test, the other thing we want to see is to check scale. Provided it works as we're (all) hoping, it should reduce big hits as well. So if you can find an isolated way to take a giant hit, maybe from an elite in Icecrown, and see if the full hit gets reduced that can resolve it once and for all(now? ha).

Grav, I have 0/3 in SoB, and raid buffed I sit a little over 60% avoidance. I never miss an RS for RP starvation. Usually my RP burn is controlled dumps of DC while ensuring I always have the requisite to RS and keep the full DS glyph buff. Scent of Blood is not required, whatsoever, to never miss an RS. I could entertain the possibility if we were talking very high avoidance and a dual wielder who could use every single RS proc (swinging slower than most bosses a fair number of procs get stuck in between the same swing timer).

Mecer, good catch on Auri. I forget that because we use our always-immune warrior to tank her and interrupt the shadows. Maybe I'm missing something though, what do Bears and/or Pallies have for Fear breaking?

Edge, I'm fairly certain you're right, Toona caught a decimal place error in some of my math that will need fixing, the above post will be corrected and relative values will be settled. I expect while it isn't a clear-cut winner anymore it may be worth more than we'd expect. Let's see how it turns out.

[GravityDK]

Thanks for that feedback on SoB. No maths?
heh, but I may well have to redo my spec. I think maybe 1/3 SoB would keep me happy.

[Mecer]

Bears have Beserk, which has a 3min cooldown. So it wouldnt be plausible that we could expect a fight like Nightbane and have to break fear every min or so, however a positional fight where breaking the occasional fear asap (Auri for instance) can be benefical (although not critical) would be.

Edge, Im curious what you drop to go so deep into unholy to pick up BCB. Although in principle the talent is a nice increase in DPS/Threat, being based on weapon speed really points it into the direction of DW builds. But Im just curious what you dropped (when compared to Satorri's build for instance), because the additional 5-6 points could be a substatial boost to single target threat.

M

[Esch]

So if you can find an isolated way to take a giant hit, maybe from an elite in Icecrown, and see if the full hit gets reduced that can resolve it once and for all(now? ha).

I chose the lava as it's controlled & easily reproduced by other players. The problem I see with mobs is RNG avoidance kicks in, and odds are you'll have to die repeatedly to get an adequate sample size to confirm. At least the 35/15/5% marks are easily calculated.

Mecer, good catch on Auri. I forget that because we use our always-immune warrior to tank her and interrupt the shadows. Maybe I'm missing something though, what do Bears and/or Pallies have for Fear breaking?

Paladins can bubble (Protection) & Bears can use 51pt feral talent Beserk. Both have three minute CDs, counting Forebearance, so... yeah. There's also the human racial EMFH. Stick to the warrior if he's around.

But bubble dumps aggro! That's what cancelaura macros are for folks. Makes it a 'simple' double tap on the DP button to clear the debuff and then drop bubble.

[Satorri]

BcB *does* scale to more absolute value with dual wielding (higher total white/RS swing damage so the same % is a larger number) but the buff is roughly equivalent in scale for a 2h.

The trade off is that you will proc less often, but your procs will hit much harder.

You can get 1 pt in BcB without losing B-G in Blood, or Toughness in Frost, but you cannot take Imp IT, and you're stuck to 50 pts only in Blood. Anything more in the talent and you have to trade points from Toughness or B-G.