Satorri's Big Build Shop: Blood Tanking!

[Mecer]

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.

The first point is sound assuming that you are completely hit capped and expertise capped (which given is easier to do using a 2hander vs dualwielding), but now we start getting into the debate as to whether DW scales better than 2handed (and probally something for a different thread).

I was curious, to see the logic behind the tradeoff.

An aside wrt imp Blood Presence: we had Freya bug on us last night and had all 6 of the elementals up at the same time, Imp Blood Presence + Blood Boil produced an impressive amount of healing and allowed me to tank the adds+freya when my warrior OT died.

[Edgewalker]

The tradeoff simply isn't worth it at this time for BCB, in my real tanking spec I would rather have Mark of Blood or Rune-Tap vs a single point, which amounts to a paltry .7-1.1% of threat in every parse I have done. 3 points is worthwhile, but impossible to get without dropping Toughness, which is a laughable decision until they implement a tankable fully spell damage boss of difficulty.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - That is the maximum single target threat spec I use that still retains the "core" tanking survival talents -

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is what I use for 5 mans, 10 mans, anything else with trivial incoming damage.

I in no way advocate the second build for progression with any current encounter however... it's a single minded TPS/DPS spec built to roll content rapidly.


Edit - I didn't actually answer your question. I don't drop anything, I traded a Mark of Blood point for it. I always have Necrosis as I find it to be an excellent talent. In my build right now I think I am playing around with Corpse Explosion for heroic dailies.

[dhthomps]

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.

Your need (or lack thereof) of SoB is player-based, not math based (the TPS from those extra death coils is arguably non-competitive with other talents). As Satorri mentioned he keeps a certain amount of runic power to ALWAYS be able to rune strike, IBF, AMS when needed. Personally I keep 1 or 2 points in SoB for insurance purposes, my awareness of my RP needs work. What I takeaway from Suno's post is - Rune Tap and MoB scale with player skill, SoB scales inversely with player skill. If I spent some quality time working on keeping a base amount of RP I could happily move those points from SoB to Morbidity or Sudden Doom.

[dhthomps]

The tradeoff simply isn't worth it at this time for BCB, in my real tanking spec I would rather have Mark of Blood or Rune-Tap vs a single point, which amounts to a paltry .7-1.1% of threat in every parse I have done. 3 points is worthwhile, but impossible to get without dropping Toughness, which is a laughable decision until they implement a tankable fully spell damage boss of difficulty.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - That is the maximum single target threat spec I use that still retains the "core" tanking survival talents -

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is what I use for 5 mans, 10 mans, anything else with trivial incoming damage.

I in no way advocate the second build for progression with any current encounter however... it's a single minded TPS/DPS spec built to roll content rapidly.


Edit - I didn't actually answer your question. I don't drop anything, I traded a Mark of Blood point for it. I always have Necrosis as I find it to be an excellent talent. In my build right now I think I am playing around with Corpse Explosion for heroic dailies.

There was a short burst of discussion at the EJ thread about dropping Imp. IT for more points in necrosis (not dissimilar to your second spec) and I believe the conclusion was - even if you have someone responsible for keeping the debuff up, they might not always be alive. Now if you're in a 25-man raid and you have 4 people responsible for keeping the debuff up you might be able to scrape by and add the extra dps to your build. (I understand your second build is NOT for progression, but I wanted to touch on one of the reasons you may not ever want to drop IIT).

[Satorri]

In terms of white damage, dual wielding does scale more favorably than a 2-h with gear since at equal values of hit/exp you get more white damage from dual wielding equivalent level weapons, and dual wielding benefits more from hit and exp farther than 2-h's do.

But that would be a total digression from the point of this thread. =)

[Satorri]

dhthomps, do you have a rune/RP tracking addon? I *love* my RuneWatch, it has my disease durations, rune CDs, and RP level in a nice compact indicator right in the middle of my screen. Very easy to see, yet not obstructive.

[dhthomps]

dhthomps, do you have a rune/RP tracking addon? I *love* my RuneWatch, it has my disease durations, rune CDs, and RP level in a nice compact indicator right in the middle of my screen. Very easy to see, yet not obstructive.

Yeah I use runevolution to make sure I don't use death runes on DS (fail, unless < 70% health or so). I think I'll change the color of my RP to bright pink or something ridiculous until I force myself to be more aware of it.

[GravityDK]

Your need (or lack thereof) of SoB is player-based, not math based (the TPS from those extra death coils is arguably non-competitive with other talents). ... - Rune Tap and MoB scale with player skill, SoB scales inversely with player skill.

Fair summary. I am thinking 1/3 SoB for insurance purposes too .

[Satorri]

You could also pick up Digits. Handy mod, you can use it to make some giant numbers of whatever color you like to keep your RP total visible.

[Mecer]

For the purpose of regulating RP I get by pretty nicely with a combination of my HUD and DIrunes/diseases, just took practice and training my eye.

[Edgewalker]

There was a short burst of discussion at the EJ thread about dropping Imp. IT for more points in necrosis (not dissimilar to your second spec) and I believe the conclusion was - even if you have someone responsible for keeping the debuff up, they might not always be alive. Now if you're in a 25-man raid and you have 4 people responsible for keeping the debuff up you might be able to scrape by and add the extra dps to your build. (I understand your second build is NOT for progression, but I wanted to touch on one of the reasons you may not ever want to drop IIT).

Well in terms of raw progression you wouldn't want to drop it for more reasons than that... even in 25 man raids there are several scenarios where you may be the only tank on the mob. Freya, Steelbreaker, Hard Mode Vezax (Animus Up), Yogg-Saron... it's hard to justify Necrosis in a lot of ways. Thank god for dual spec!
Look at us, not disagreeing. What has the world come to

[Mecer]

Look at us, not disagreeing. What has the world come to

Haha, the disadvantage of 3 tanking trees is that it provides alot of different avenues to pursue depending on how you divide your talents between your secondary trees. Discussion is good, pointless bickering...not so much.

Satorri's provided an excellent discussing springboard presenting the Blood tree in an analytical perspective. Some of us have brought up alternative specs/ideas/points from our experience. I for one love it! Im typically the only DK tank in my guild (the others DPS) that does any theorycrafting, having others to bounce ideas and read opinions is great!

Either way, yes thank the 'blue' god for dual specs.

M

Edit: I completely read over the 'not', but my statement still holds just more random.....

[Satorri]

Dual specs....


Can't imagine life without them, being an altoholic and a not for playing every frickin class and spec, dual specs is truly a (blue) godsend.

[wazdaa]

The tradeoff simply isn't worth it at this time for BCB, in my real tanking spec I would rather have Mark of Blood or Rune-Tap vs a single point, which amounts to a paltry .7-1.1% of threat in every parse I have done. 3 points is worthwhile, but impossible to get without dropping Toughness, which is a laughable decision until they implement a tankable fully spell damage boss of difficulty.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - That is the maximum single target threat spec I use that still retains the "core" tanking survival talents -

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is what I use for 5 mans, 10 mans, anything else with trivial incoming damage.

I in no way advocate the second build for progression with any current encounter however... it's a single minded TPS/DPS spec built to roll content rapidly.


Edit - I didn't actually answer your question. I don't drop anything, I traded a Mark of Blood point for it. I always have Necrosis as I find it to be an excellent talent. In my build right now I think I am playing around with Corpse Explosion for heroic dailies.

on the BCB subject, don't forget they can be parried and therefor induce parry haste. so i'm not sure why any tank would want to take it when there are other talents that give around the same threat increase but don't leave you open to a parry gib.

[Edgewalker]

on the BCB subject, don't forget they can be parried and therefor induce parry haste. so i'm not sure why any tank would want to take it when there are other talents that give around the same threat increase but don't leave you open to a parry gib.

Very very rarely do they happen from something a tank actually does, and even more rare would be a parry death that resulted from a BCB proc.

[wazdaa]

Very very rarely do they happen from something a tank actually does, and even more rare would be a parry death that resulted from a BCB proc.

putting yourself open for very rare occasions is still stupid especially since there is no need to go that extreme with tps. if you do you or your dps have bigger issues.

[dhthomps]

putting yourself open for very rare occasions is still stupid especially since there is no need to go that extreme with tps. if you do you or your dps have bigger issues.

It is a trade, and the decision should be made on a case-by-case basis.

With DW tanking you are opening yourself to (very small amounts of) parry hasting in exchange for presumably better dps and better avoidance.

With BCB you are exchanging small amounts of parry hasting for a mediocre increase in TPS. There are talents with similar threat per point with no drawback.

[Edgewalker]

Let me rephrase. It's such a small chance of happening, especially with the amount of expertise overload in ToC, that it might as well not exist at all.
You can make other arguments against it, but bringing parry haste into the discussion is really not worthwhile.

As a side note, I'm not sure where the myth of better TPS through dual wielding came from. It simply isn't true at the current moment in time with current itemization, especially not if aiming for an avoidance set.

[Satorri]

putting yourself open for very rare occasions is still stupid especially since there is no need to go that extreme with tps. if you do you or your dps have bigger issues.

The apparent "best" way to do things is not the only way to do it, nor is it "stupid" to do things differently. If you're riding the edge some things can pull you over, like say if you're just learning hard modes and are barely or under-geared for it.

Most of the time there is PLENTY of room for personal choices and being less than the "best" at whatever particular angle you are looking at the situation from...

This "min/max is the only way" attitude is detrimental to game player psychology, I think. People start thinking, "if I want to play this game at the highest levels, I have to play it this way." Diminishes or stamps out fun for some people, and others use it as an excuse to be jerks. Poison.

[mistersix]

Satorri, what sort of rotation are you using for the spec you're running with? Maybe I missed it...?