Frost-2h-Tank: Feel something is wrong...

[Valquirie]

Greetings!

I have started feeling, off late, as if I am getting worse as a tank, despite getting better gear! I get out-threat-ed at times too, and it should never happen if i am to be a good tank.

I, usually, use two macros - one for single-target, the other for multiple targets - to help give me a "framework" to build my rotation around. I don't have a "set rotation" that I follow "to the dot". I use RS whenever it is available, FS whenever I have the RP, and other abilities as I deem fit, which, I admit, might not (always) be the right - or best - way to do it.

My Armory (0130et; 8 Oct 2009):
Gear: The World of Warcraft Armory
Talents and Glyphs: The World of Warcraft Armory
I logged out in my tanking set - I have only one - but was in Blood Presence and under the effect of a Flask of Stoneblood when I logged out.

The Rotations of the aforementioned "Macros" (I might be a bit off; don't remember them clearly ):
Single target: IT -> PS -> BS -> BS -> Ob
Multiple targets: (I usually start with D&D, but not as part of the "macro") -> IT -> PS -> BB -> HB (Note: It might be ... -> HB -> BB)

I apologize for the lack of [certain] information, but it is quite late, and I am not 100.00% sure of some information. I will update the post ASAP.

Any and all help is appreciated. I almost never post on forums, and have never posted here before; I do however frequently visit TankSpot and other sites which I believe I might learn from.

Thank you, very much!

[Fathom]

It would be helpful to know if you're having aggro problems on single target tanking, or multi-target tanking, as those tend to have different issues.

However, here's some basic points that will help with both.

Glyphs:
Get rid of IBF immediately. There was a period where due to bugs it was helpful to have the glyph, however, they've since been fixed and Glyph of IBF is specifically built to bring non-tanks IBF damage reduction up near a tanks damage reduction (it effectively puts a lower bound on how little reduction IBF provides), if you have enough defense to bring your IBF's damage reduction above 30% (which is pretty much assured if you're def capped) then you are receiving no additional benefit from the glyph.
Get rid of UA. This isn't as mandatory as replacing IBF, but it's still not a great return for a major glyph slot.
Get Glyph of Frost Strike, and Glyph of Obliterate. They make your second and third best sources of single target threat cheaper and stronger respectively.
Consider swapping HB for IT. HB is a nice utility glyph, but you can achieve almost the same results by spending a little more effort managing rune cd's and pestilence, IT currently provides more RP which = more FS/RS, and after 3.3 will simply provide more threat everywhere (after 3.3 IT will probably be a higher priority to get than Obliterate)

Spec:
Fill out Bladed Armor, it's pound for pound one of the best tanking threat talents in any classes' tree.
Get Glacier Rot and Rime. They're two of the core Frost dps/threat talents. They make everything you're good at better, and provide free HB procs.
Get 5/5 Blade Barrier. It won't improve your threat but it's flat, always up damage mitigation. There's no excuse not to have it in a tanking build.
The previous four talents are pretty much mandatory, Chill of the Grave isn't quite so required, but it's a good threat return for the points if you are having threat or RP generation issues.

Places to get the points to fill those talents out:
Icy Reach. Utterly pointless in non-pvp builds. No one kites you in pve, and 90% of the time you're staring a boss-crotch anyway.
Deathchill. A lot of people like it for 'snap aggro', but honestly if you're tanking properly and your dps isn't utterly pants on head retarded it's usefulness is pretty limited.
Morbidity. Half the talent is wasted since you don't use Death Coil, and the other half is lackluster because Frost tanks don't use D&D all that often.
Butchery. The RP gen on this talent just doesn't compare to Chill of the Grave or Scent of Blood, ditch it.
Subversion. Again, a lot of this talent is going to waste (the threat reduction). The extra crit is nice, but you get better threat per point by investing elsewhere.
Lichborne. Not much fears/charms/sleeps you in pve, and when they do it's better to invest in a pocket shaman for tremor than rely on a 2m cd. Useless since they took the avoidance boost off it.
Acclimation. Again, I like the talent, but it just doesn't provide enough avoidance for the investment. It's fine to throw some excess points in, but don't fill it out while you're missing some of the above key talents.

[dj4aces]

I, too, am finding that I have a problem holding aggro. It's strange, though, because before Patch 3.2.2a, I didn't have this problem. Nonetheless, I am posting here in search of assistance.

First, the basics: Gear and Spec, at the WoW Armory.

Second, my rotations are as follows:

Single: IT, PS, BS, BS, OB
Multi: DnD, IT, PS, Pest

Notes:

1. Whenever available, I hit RS.
2. FS is my runic power dump. I don't use DC for anything.
3. Upon reading the post above this one, I've decided to go back and tweak my spec a little. That will get done when I return from work.

This problem with my threat has taken both me and my guild by surprise, and I'm worried that I'm doing something wrong.

[Valquirie]

Thank you SO very much! I respeced exactly according to your suggestions, and feel as if it is getting better...though I hope it's not simply a sort of placebo effect. HeHe

And yes, I feel multiple targets are harder to handle than single targets...

At times, though, my rotation seems off; obviously the macros can't do more than simply give me a "framework" to build on, but I might be getting too dependent on them - though I hope I am not.

[Dimness]

Val, your aoe tanking rotation is a little off from mine. I suggest the following.
AOE Tanking Rotation #1: DnD, IT, PS, Pest, Blood Tap, BB
AOE Tanking Rotation #2: DnD, Howling Blast, BB

The 2nd one I mainly use if you decide to have Howling Blast glyphed.

Oh, and use the following macro on everything (cept may be Frost Strike)

/cast !Rune Strike
/cast (insert DK ability)

I have Rune Strike on macro with everything save Frost Strike.

[Fledern]

I'm going to go on a completely different angle here. I started tanking out as frost but switched to blood sometime ago. I've also put together a dual wield tank gear for frost tanking.

Even though i totally hated the blood build at first, i find blood tanking far superior. It has nowhere the fun of frost but feels more of a tank build than frost. Survival options are much nicer & numerous, skillset is less attention demanding so you can spare the time to mind your surroundings.

The major problem with frost 2h tanking i had was the fight between using your runic power for RS or FS. I found RP generation so low as frost that i would consistantly run out of RP just spamming RS with not much left for FS. And that makes frost a lot less fun imo. While dual wielding though, your KM procs will go up the wazoo and you can safely spam FS or RS and still do lots of aggro. Dual Wield tanking seemed to solve all of that though. Currently i keep my frost spec as a dps build and put on my dw tank gear while tanking 5-mans. It feels a lot nicer than blood or 2h frost ever did. As it's not an optimized tank spec (and because i still believe blood is a far superior raid tanking spec) i've never taken it to raids so there might be quite a few things i'm missing but i strongly suggest you test out dw tanking. Gear will be a bit hard to come by, especially getting defcapped and hitcapped but well worth the try imo.

[Kurtosis]

Adding to Fathom's advice, I've been frost tanking a long time and love it. I use a 15/51/5 build.

To elaborate on Bladed Armor, DK tanks have around 25k armor, plus or minus. At 25k armor, BA gives you almost 700 AP, which is a huge portion of your total AP (usually in 2000-4000 range). AP buffs every single threat ability we have - autoattack, special strikes, spells, and even diseases. Like Fathom said, point for point it's one of the single best threat talents available to DK tanks.

Again, Deathchill is so-so. I use it to spike damage to on AoE pulls (w/ Glyphed HB):

#showtooltip
/use [nomod] Deathchill
/use [nomod] Blood Fury
/use [mod:ctrl] some ability;[mod:alt] some ability;[mod:shift] Howling Blast;[nomod] Howling Blast

Initial AoE pull rotation: DnD -> shift+HB -> BB -> RP dump (FS)
Subsequent AoE pull roations: nomod HB -> BB -> BB -> Oblit -> FS

The initial rotation casts HB without Deathchill, so it may or may not crit, but it definitely puts diseases up. Subsequent rotations cast HB w/ Deatchill when it's up, guaranteeing not only a crit HB, but a crit HB buffed by diseases (see Glacier Rot + Tundra Stalker).

That puts up so much AoE aggro that nobody pulls off me, and makes difficult AoE pulls mucn easier to control. Of course that's only available every 3 minutes, which usually equates to every 3rd or 4th pull when chain-pulling, hence it being so-so. W/ 5/5 Killing Machine you get alot of HB crits anyway.

[Valquirie]

Thank you, very much, everyone for all the responses and help!
I have changed some talents and glyphs - as per your suggestions, and things feel a lot better. :-) Thanks!
=> Current Spec/Glyphs

[jaydee]

Some suggestions as well:

1. Glyph of Rune Strike is also good for threat, as it brings up the crit chance of your most used and highest threat strike
2. Having talents in epidemic also boosts your threat because you spend less runes reapplying your diseases and get to spend them on Obliterates or Howling Blasts.
3. Two-Hand weapon mastery is a flat out 4% damage increase that I think is well worth the talent points.

[Furnost]

I am having a little of the same problems with holding aggro.

I lose aggro on AoE pretty much everytime i run anything, not right away but people can and will eventually pull off of me, i am frost 2 hand and the rotation i use is DnD, IT, PS, PEST, BB, DnD, Deathchill, HB, BB, BB RS and FS for RP dumps as needed no matter what i seem to do all i end up doing is using DC and DG to get people back from this character and that. I have tried using group focus and making a kill order on every mob when i run it i just cant seem to hold aggro.

On single target i dont lose it, but i do come dangerously close i on average am doing 1200 dps whenever im running ULD 10 tho i notice different pally tanks all doing around 2k dps, is my lack of dps my problem?

Be Imba! - the online Character Auditor for World of Warcraft

this is my imba and i realize im missing an enchant on my back but i am having troubles deciding what to put on it cause im already def capped and also i am working on my lower gems to get switched in but if someone could take a look and let me know what they think i would GREATLY appreciate it, i

[Valquirie]

I remember starting this thread a long time back... :P

Furnost, sorry if you have felt ignored. A bit of information: I - a short while back - respeced Blood (Tank) and Unholy (DpS). For tanking 1 or 2 targets, I am fine, but with more than 2 targets, it gets harder - with more targets. For example, the groups in Violet Hold can be tough for me at times, so I switch targets regularly while using Heart Strike. Since I start with Diseases+Pestilence+Blood Boil, I know that they will all take extra damage from HS. :-) Onyxian Whelps are a nightmare, not least of all because of the freezing AoE lag...and I am not referring to the temperature. ;-) However, they usually go down without much hassle.

I am sure your gear has been upgraded, but either way, for Frost...I don't know what to say. I know I tried my best, and there were instances of me losing threat, but in Blood, I am pretty much set if I am careful.

I also noticed now, that you are dual-wielding: I had a terrible time holding aggro as d/w-Frost, despite my great affinity for it. :-( It was so bad that while being MT on Patchwerk-10, I lost threat to the Hateful tank, and fell to second...but then kept switching between 1st and 2nd with the OT, because I was pretty weird back then. I'd strongly recommend spec'ing out of it.

That's all I have for now. :-) Good Luck!

[nosferaten]

I have just started tanking, my gear is quite good i think. 232-245 items. chapped in the head and ass ofc. i have used blood spec so far, but due to my lack of experience i keep loosing focus on my surroundings causing raid to vipe, and a bunch of guildys to /facepalm me.

Some of my mates say i should respec to frost, but i hesetate, due to the agro issues i then fear will come due to all the good geared locks, mages etc.

In ur oppinion, will the change to frost benefit me at all, and do anybody have a nice frost spec link for me in that case?

Might add, that i mainly tank in hard modes, working on toc25hc atm as third tank, so aoe tanking isent that important to me at this point.

[Valquirie]

As far as I know, the current level of "progression content" has no need for AoE tanking. The closest one comes to such a situation happens twice: Lord Jarraxus (un-tank-able adds), and Faction Champions (Good Luck!). But as the parentheses mention, there is no way one can tank those.

Frost was my favorite spec - still is to an extent - especially dual-wielding. Frost - either d/w or 2h - never worked out too well for me. Granted my gear got better too around the time I respec'd blood, but the improvement was not by leaps and bounds, didn't affect the outcome of "tests of effectiveness" for any spec.

If one wipes due to lack of awareness, no spec can help them. And the only "weakness" of Blood tanking is irrelevant in Trial of the Grand Crusader 25, since a Death Knight should ideally not tank the Nerubian Borrowers and there are no other instances of "AoE tanking" (ref: aforementioned cases).

Between Blood and Frost now - Unholy isn't as strong with single-target tanking - I have, personally, had better results...or so it seems to me. :-)

My Blood Spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
A Frost Spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (Glpyhs: Obliterate, Frost Strike and then either Rune Strike, Unbreakable Armor or Dark Command)

I have always believed that all three specs are equally viable for any kind of tanking, but off late I have tried to look deeper into them, not least of all because I kind of failed at tanking - and I was Frost. You could very well, if you feel like it, try out both specs and go for the one you like better. :-)


P.S: To be edited as deemed necessary... :-)

[dj4aces]

I had long forgotten about this thread until I received a notification stating I'm subscribed to it and there haveve been replies recently.

The threat problem I had been encountering around the time of my previous post has gone away in a major way, seemingly by itself, as I've changed nothing with my rotation and only tweaked my spec a little. Now, the guild's main tank and myself typically compete to see who can hold aggro better and try to pull off of each other.

Tanking is fun, but it's a lot more fun now that everything is working as intended.