Satorri's Big Build Shop: Blood Tanking!

[Edgewalker]

I personally don't like the ramp up design based on the nature of certain encounters. I will probably eat the 20 rating for heavy physical fights until it is the last possible piece of gear, and even then will not use it for heavy caster fights, extremely slow hitters, etc. I have no problem with tiny incremental upgrades, but I dislike the design on the whole.

[Satorri]

Personally, given the sizable cost of the tier pieces and the other great upgrades (compared to the aforementioned small upgrade of the sigil) I won't be getting it for months either. Ha.

I think it may stack up relatively quickly, definitely for DPS, and maybe a little slower for tanks. Off the top of my head, with Chill of the Thrown I'm sitting around 45% avoidance with raid buffs? Several of the bosses so far have nice quick attacks so without having a log to parse I think I've been getting about 50-60% melee-to-RS turnover, so it would take roughly 20-30 seconds to get the full stack, and a little less to approximate or pass the value you get from the previous sigil on a chance proc.

[Pwnanapuddin]

Well the reason I said I didnt like it was because I bought both of them and gave them a test once I had 30 Frost, they were both quickly sold back before the hour was up. I suggest taking them on a test run if you want and have the emblems. Then just sell it back for a full refund.

[Satorri]

Sadly, as their mechanics ARE so boringly predictable, I feel no real desire to test drive. =)

[Edgewalker]

Yea, it's not that I don't think you would have a full stack most of the time. I just disagree with the philosophy. I also definitely disagree with the 30 Emblems of Frost for 20 dodge rating compared to the other amazing possible gear...

[Eldrad]

I'm putting this on here rather than the all DK builds guide because I'm a blood tank and its from blood tanks point of view I'm interested in.

As blood the one part of tanking I found a real pain was holding aoe threat. 2 mobs are easy to hold, but when you get forced to use blood boil (with diseases up) to hold aoe agro it just doesn’t cut it. I've now however got my 2 piece t10 set bonus and set up a build based on getting the max out of that and making best use of the other talents around it. I'm not 100% happy with the points spending yet, it works well. - How have people been finding this new power to hold aoe threat? And are you making use of it, or just continuing as normal?

In terms of how i get it to work :
t10 2 piece set bonus (20% increased damage)
the glyph (20% increased damage)
the 10% shadow damage increase from frost
the improved cool down from unholy

It has really been a saver when doing aoe threat - And due to talent points already down for Death and Decay, I've made Death Coil a more prominent part of this particular tank build.

[Satorri]

As Blood, for me, it's business as usual. I did some math on the subject here:
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/6...t10-glyph.html

For AoE considerations I've *never* had an issue supporting AoE threat fully with BB. Against a Pally tank they'll usually outpace me for holding things, and a good Bear can give me a run for my money, if only for the rapid availability of Swipe spam, but I don't lose threat to dps unless they explode in my first couple GCDs, and even then I can keep things roped in while I setup.

[Edgewalker]

I also look at it like this... if I'm in a raid setting, competing against paladins and warriors for AoE threat... why not let them hold it? The damage intake compared to a death knight is a trivial. With silences, taunts, and death grips, we are much better suited to position and tank the caster mobs.

[Proletaria]

I also look at it like this... if I'm in a raid setting, competing against paladins and warriors for AoE threat... why not let them hold it? The damage intake compared to a death knight is a trivial. With silences, taunts, and death grips, we are much better suited to position and tank the caster mobs.

Agreed. And I have said this before, but it should be repeated often: we're the least suited to tank a bunch of adds. There is absolutely no point in optomizing your aoe threat in a raid setting with a paladin, warrior, or bear tank at your side.

While I don't think we're the most stellar single-target tanks at this time either, we are a hell of a lot more effective there than on aoe packs.

[Satorri]

I don't know that I agree on either point Prolet.

Just because Shield Block mechanics are really stellar against large groups of trash does not diminish our ability to tank trash.

And honestly, I don't know where this semi-popular notion comes from that we aren't prime boss tanks either.

[Proletaria]

I don't know that I agree on either point Prolet.

Just because Shield Block mechanics are really stellar against large groups of trash does not diminish our ability to tank trash.

And honestly, I don't know where this semi-popular notion comes from that we aren't prime boss tanks either.

Shield Block mehcanics are stellar against large groups.

Why then, would you deliberately try to tank those groups if you don't have to? Morbidity is the only talent in my spec that just screams "oh look this is for aoe." We aren't designed to tank that particular niche very well.

Of course we CAN tank it. Just the same way we can tank anything else that isn't a Nerubian Burrower on the Heroic Anub'arak encounter in TOGC. But, once again, that does not make it a good idea and I would suggest to other DK tanks who regularly fight with their paladin/warrior for thrash threat: just stop. Pick a caster, death-grip it out, neutralize it, and move on. You aren't doing your raid a service by grabbing adds when you take 20% more damage than the block tank. You are just stoking your threat-peen.

As far as why we aren't prime boss tanks. Well, that should be left to it's own thread. Needless to say the highlights are similar to last patch, the only diffirence being: raid bosses tend to hit faster now (worse for us), and we've now got regular situations where the OT tanks things that are not being attacked by melee/awayfromraid (airship, rotface, some deathwhisper). Lack of block and AP debuff obviously just got that much worse. But, those are the head of the laundry list. If we want to pull out World of Logs and really get into the cooldown, blade barrier, rune-cost, EH, stuff this thread would be completely de-railed. So, I invite you to start a new thread if you want to debate this.