DK tanking changes in PTR build

[lyd]

some interesting changes here:

Blood

• Heart Strike now has its total damage increased by 10% for each of your diseases on the target to the primary target, and half that to the secondary target.
• Vampiric Blood now lasts 10 sec. (Down from 20 sec.)
• Subversion now also affects Scourge Strike.

Frost

• Frost Presence now reduces damage taken by 8%. (Up from 5%)
• Threat of Thassarian now also affects Rune Strike.
• Unbreakable Armor now increases your armor by 25% and increasing your Strength by 10% for 20 sec.

Unholy

• Bone Shield cooldown has been lowered from 2 min to 1 min.
• Dirge no longer affects Obliterate.

Tier 9

• Item - Death Knight T9 Tank 4P Bonus - Decreases the cooldown on your Unbreakable Armor, Vampiric Blood, and Bone Shield abilities by 10 sec. (Down from 20 sec)

Glyphs

• Glyph of Scourge Strike - Your Scourge Strike increases the duration of your Blood Plague and Frost Fever on the target by 3 sec, up to a maximum of 9 additional seconds. (Old - Your Scourge Strike has a 25% chance to cause Blood Plague and Frost Fever.)
• Glyph of Unbreakable Armor - Increases the armor granted by Unbreakable Armor by 20%. (Old - Increases the amount of damage absorbed by Unbreakable Armor by 20%.)
• Glyph of Vampiric Blood - Increases the duration of your Vampiric Blood by 5 sec. (Down from 10 sec)

looks like they are coming off the survival nerfs a little, although blood's primary survival cooldown duration got reduced, it's now available every minute. DW frost tanks are also getting a huge threat buff with the application of ToT to rune strike, unholy's main survival cooldown got a buff, and glyphing Unbreakable Armor might make it a powerful cooldown.

interesting changes indeed.

[Edgewalker]

The cooldowns of the core tree abilities are lowered to a minute as well. It's an overall buff to every tanking tree.

[dhthomps]

The cooldowns of the core tree abilities are lowered to a minute as well. It's an overall buff to every tanking tree.

If VB is going to become a 1 minute cooldown ... mmmmm.

But with bone shield going back to 1 minute I'm strongly considering UH for the best EH build. Might try gemming all dodge/stam gems and see how long BS lasts. (plus my guild needs Ebon Plague)

[lyd]

The cooldowns of the core tree abilities are lowered to a minute as well. It's an overall buff to every tanking tree.

that's true, and I didn't factor that in when considering the VB duration reduction. there's no effective loss in uptime, and the ability is more likely to be up for big spikes like fusion punch or meteor fists. editing my original obs to reflect this fact.

[after4ffect]

that was a quick buff

[ExistentialSoundandFury]

Fair warning, I suspect that the Glyph of UA will work multiplicatively with UA,

So instead of 45% armor increase we're talking about a 30% Armor increase instead.

[mandible]

Where does it mention that VB and UA are down to 1 minute cooldown? I only saw Bone Shield getting that love?

[DKTankaholic]

Fair warning, I suspect that the Glyph of UA will work multiplicatively with UA,

So instead of 45% armor increase we're talking about a 30% Armor increase instead.

yeah from the way i'm reading it as well, i'm inclined to agree with you that the glyph gives extra armor to the armor only UA provides. But thats still a nice increase over the current glyph.

[Theotherone]

This can't be right; where's the nerf? We always get nerfed. No reduction to armor bonuses, or reduction to stamina bonuses or increasing cooldowns to 3 minutes or maybe increasing damage taken if we're holding up to a boss to well? There has to be some mistake.

[Küren]

Where does it mention that VB and UA are down to 1 minute cooldown? I only saw Bone Shield getting that love?

I just checked the PTR. Vampiric Blood and Unbreakable Armor do have 1 minute cooldowns even though I could not find it in the PTR notes. The tree-specific cooldowns require one rune still to activate.

Vampiric Blood lasts 10 seconds and the glyph adds 5 more seconds.

Unbreakable Armor lasts 20 seconds.

Icebound Fortitude is still on the 2 minute cooldown and lasts 12 seconds before any talents, so no change from Live. It still requires 20 runic power.

[Kensu]

Threat of Thassarian now also affects Rune Strike.

Hmmm, I was already looking at switching over to duel wielding but was worried about the threat due to Rune strike. They are making it very tempting to go after those extra stats. Age of the duel wielding tank inc~

[Küren]

Fair warning, I suspect that the Glyph of UA will work multiplicatively with UA,

So instead of 45% armor increase we're talking about a 30% Armor increase instead.

I checked PTR and UA with the glyph is indeed only a 30% armor increase.

[Esch]

Boneshield napkin math.

6 charges, 1 min CD.

Assuming a dehasted mob, 2.5 second swing speed (2.5 purely to make math simple, instead of 2.4). Per minute, 24 swings by a boss.

Boneshield, ideally, will be eaten on 6 individual hits, and refreshed just before the 25th hit.

This leaves 18 hits to 'soak' or better, avoid. Thus, 18/24 hits = 75% avoidance to get 100% uptime. With tier 9 4pc, 50 second CD - 20 hits, 6 mitigated on Boneshield, 14/20= 70% avoidance.

Given I'm running nearly 60% unbuffed avoidance without trinkets or 'serious' focus on avoidance, I think it's reasonable to expect DKs hitting 100% uptime on Boneshield, especially at start of pulls with precast BS buffs.

Part of me is excited by the possibilities, but I'm leery of seeing such a significant swing in mitigation, even for unholy, as we get our 'block' mechanic, but it's limited to a single spec.

[GravityDK]

Maths and answers on UBA glyph here.

[Boeten]

I looked at that calculation and I think the conclusion is inaccurate.

Look closely on his armor numbers with MotW, Devo, and Kings. The UA does not actually increase his armor by 25% (unglyphed) and 30% (glyphed). It's doing less, 23 and 27.5% respectively.

I suspect UA is multiplying the armor granted from piece of gears but not buffs (I suspect it's multiplying the armor from Agility but I'm not too sure) - which is the same like any other armor multiplication effect we see in game.

edit: I went further and check the differences....
Had his everything of full buffed armor of 27858 got multiplied by UA, he should have (rounded down) 563 extra armor.
2/2 Imp. MotW has 750x(1.4) = 1050 armor, devo (untalented) is 1205 armor.
1050 + 1205 = 2255, 25% of it (rounded down) is 563 armor.
I think from here we can conclusively say UA only multiplies armor from gear and agility.

So the conclusion that we should draw is not that the glyph's value is inversely proportional to gear, but the glyph's value is inversely proportional to buffs. But even with his full buffs the glyph still represents a 2.2% reduced physical damage taken, so I'd still use the glyph without 2nd thought.

[GravityDK]

Agreed in that the buffs/trinkets are not multiplied.
Also agree with your conclusion that buffs need to be ignored when considering the value of the glyph. Thanks.

[lyd]

@gravityDK: keep an eye on your DW stickie at deathknight.info. if the PTR changes go live, make sure you change the OP to reflect that ToT now effects Runestrike.

oh, and thanks for the shout-out. I didn't realize that something i'd written here had been linked. lol.

[Küren]

Boeten, thanks for input.

I realize in reading your post that I wasn't clear on what I found yesterday. If you look at the character panel, the armor value in white is what is being increased by the appropriate amount. The green armor value is from the buffs and it wasn't not increased.

The ramification of that is that armor from amulets, rings, and trinkets are increased by UA. You're right that agility is also factored in to it. I probably shouldn't have said buffs don't matter because the armor from agility is increased. The buffs do contribute a small increase in armor because of that.

One other point that I should have included is that my damage reduction numbers are from the character panel. That is against a level 80 attacker. The damage reduction against a level 83 will be slightly less.

I'm not sure it is correct to say that the value of UA and the glyph don't vary with gear and buffs. The more armor you start with the less damage reduction you get because there is a diminishing return on armor. If a buff increases agility then it doesn't factor into that too. The difference the buffs make isn't going to be significant though, unlike the difference that better gear will make.

I'm not sure I'm sold on the glyph personally. The slight increase in damage reduction is not continual since it is a cooldown and it competes with some good existing glyphs.

[Splug]

I do not believe I will have time to set up and update a PTR client for this patch. Has anyone looked into exactly how the change to ToT-Rune Strikes interacts with the swing timer? Does it reset the offhand's swing, does it fire on the mainhand's swing timer, does the offhand hit use instant-attack or ONA AP normalization? An ONA-based dual-handed attack is to my knowledge unprescedented, so there's a wide range of interpretations for the mechanics... with wildly varying effectiveness and results.

-Splug

[GravityDK]

@gravityDK: keep an eye on your DW stickie at deathknight.info.

oh, and thanks for the shout-out. I didn't realize that something i'd written here had been linked. lol.

Lyd, aye I will update that sticky. Your maths was pretty solid mate, so yes it gets a mention!

Also I've done and updated a google xls calculator which, using Kurens figure on dk.info, shows UA gives 32.65% total damage reduction and 31.81% if glyphed.

I compared this to the net reduction bone shield + armour gives you (ie. unholy tank), and they're surprisingly close albeit BS is ahead by 1.7% or so. Therefore, this truly is a solid buff to UA.