PTR 3.3 DK DW talent

[mav1234]

Satorri, do you know how DW Frost stacks up to Blood in terms of threat in 25 man raid situation? I had found that my threat as 2h blood was the highest of all tanking trees when totally buffed a patch or two ago, but I preferred Frost's style. However, I hadn't compared the two since before the RS change. I know you had said in another thread you've built an Unholy build with higher threat than your Blood build - how does DW Frost stack up to the two of 'em?

[lyd]

I have alot of trouble seeing an argument for DW Blood or Unholy on live, especially now that frost has talents that specifically support it. If someone can put a build and gearset together and show some success with it, i'm all ears.

Mav: I'm not in ToC 25 yet, but I know several DW frost tanks that are. My threat in Ony 25 as DW frost is fine. I think your question shouldn't focus on whether or not one produces more threat than the other: the question is whether you can produce enough threat to do your job. if blood can put out 10k threat and Frost only pushes 8k, but the DPS never break 7k threat, then the frost tank is no less better off. there is no real bonus to doing more threat than another spec if the other spec can still hold threat, other than making yourself feel more secure.

[Blasterion]

DW on live is still great threat main problem lies in the deficiency of the tanking rune's defense and stamina

[Satorri]

I can't really say Mav. In truth, the player effect makes all the difference. I can tell you how dual wield Frost my way, my gear, works vs my Blood spec of choice and gear set. It won't necessarily work out the same for you.

I don't know that there's any reason for one to be wildly better than the other at least. You should stick with the one that feels best to you.

The one thing I feel fairly confident in generalizing about is that Blood is probably the simplest spec to be effective with, though Frost isn't far behind it. Blood is definitely the simplest in terms of play, and quite easy to gear for. Dual wield Frost opens more doors for personal choice for gearing particularly, which is what I think makes is a shade trickier to pick up, but potentially, maybe, more versatile for the small scale threat/survival balance. Unholy remains the most complicated to really handle well for game play, and the gearing isn't terribly complicated but it does have a bit more of a multiple path aspect where the better you match your spec to your gear to your glyphs, etc the better it works.

[uaguy3005]

My proposed DW frost spec...any thoughts?

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...&version=10571

[Xequecal]

A couple of clarifications:

Killing Machine is a key ability, period. As a DPS'er it will give you a slight buff to crit chance as a decent portion of your moves listed will already be crits (dps set having crit and all). As a tank it has a markably larger threat value *because* you don't have much crit chance.

I hate to be annoyingly contrary here, but Killing Machine is absolutely terrible. Like you said, the ~20% base Frost Strike crit you have as a tank from talents and debuffs on the boss make it worth only 4 crits per minute. Other factors will reduce it further, however. First, you can't select NOT to use it on your next Icy Touch and save it for FS instead. So if it ever procs and you have to refresh diseases before you can FS, you have to waste it on Icy Touch, because you don't want diseases to fall off. Second, if it ever procs when you have less than 52 RP, you generally have to wait until you have >52 RP before Frost Striking, otherwise you risk losing a Rune Strike. While you're waiting, KM has a chance to re-proc and waste your first proc, thus decreasing its value. Finally, although this one is minor, if you get Rime and KM procs close together you generally have to use the KM on HB to avoid risking wasting Rime procs, which is worth less than using it on FS. These factors combined probably reduce the value to ~3 crits per minute.

Quite frankly, 3 crits per minute for five talent points is absolutely awful. If your Frost Strikes do 2500 damage noncrit, and you somehow manage to make all those KM crits Frost Strikes, then KM is adding 10,875 damage per minute. Assuming it never misses, gets dodged, parried, or partially resisted, it's 263 TPS for five talent points. With the hit cap, 26 expertise and factoring in partial resists it's close to 200 TPS for 5 talent points, which is terrible.

Black Ice is more TPS than this from Frost Strike and Rime/HB procs alone, let alone the bonus it gives to disease damage, and Black Ice is generally considered to be pretty bad. And if you max out Black Ice, you don't have enough points to get KM with a 13/51/7 or 10/51/10 tank spec.

[lyd]

While you're waiting, KM has a chance to re-proc and waste your first proc.

KM has an internal cooldown. this may happen from time to time, but is not frequent enough to devalue the talent.

the benefit that both tanks and dps get from this talent was summed up nicely below by Satorri:

your crit chance went up 10% from that talent. If you're a tank, however, and you only have 10% crit chance, you will only normally expect 1 of those 10 to crit. Killing Machine then has a high chance of using all of the procs. We'll say that 10% crit chance comes up enough to wipe one, you still now get 5 procs, and suddenly your crit chance on those abilities went up an average total of 40%.

Killing machine is a very valuable talent for frost tanks and for frost dps. you have to look at it from both a total throughput perspective and a utility perspective. a 100% aoe crit on all targets from howling blast is incredibly powerful threat tool for aoe. your flat crit percentage will never be able to reproduce anything close to this kind of output in one instance of a spell.

and if you are worried about IT eating up KM procs, then do what I do and use Glyph of Disease + Pestilence to refresh your diseases. if your rotation is tight, you will only have to touch IT and PS once at the beginning of the boss fight. in essence, you're losing a blood strike and replacing a IT+PS with an obliterate, i.e. another chance to proc rime. it also frees up a GCD in your rotation, and if your RP generation is good, this gives you another FS as well.

[Trork]

My proposed DW frost spec...any thoughts?

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...&version=10571

Yeah, I liked it - ,ight even use it - just maybe replace RS glyph with HB glyph?

also, I may still miss Merciless Combat a bit, even though its more a dps thing to have, so IF I had to take Merciless Combat, I would go 3/5 Killing Machine, and 2/2 Merciless Combat, any thoughts?

[Satorri]

My refrain on the topic of Merciless Combat:

It's not a good tanking talent. It has its value if you're trying to push every ounce of raid dps (for hardmodes etc). It offers zero survival value, but it does offer some threat value. The problem is, it only adds threat value in the last 35% of the target's health. Against trash, stuff won't live more than a moment below that health threshold. Against a boss, if you need threat that late in the fight, you have bigger problems that need to be fixed and this talent is not the solution.

I'd much much sooner take 5/5 in Killing Machine before even glancing at Merciless Combat.

[Edgewalker]

Merciless Combat is great for tight DPS timers with adds with significant health pools (Anub hard mode), and I find it to be decent for Northrend Beasts just for the nature of the fight.
It's just way too limited to fights with specific designs.

I think I'd rather have Acclimation for both of the above mentioned bosses though, so it's really more than moot