Since the latest change to it :Originally Posted by Capitalism
" ... this ability can now also be triggered by damage which deals less than 5% of your health ".
At 35% health, this will almost always have a 100% uptime + the removal of the cooldown, there isn't a single boss past even naxxramas that hits you for less than 5% of your health. It would be great surviving boss' with a soft enrage that builds up over time.
I still wouldn't consider dropping one of the main tanking talents for it.
Capitalism is dead on. If you aren't picking up WoTN, why are you getting Blade Barrier? Why get Icy Touch? Why get Toughness? There is no argument against it... it works on damage that will kill you. Not dying is the point of tanking. It works on ALL damage types, unlike the holy grail talents of tanking Toughness and Anticipation.
It just boggles my mind that anyone attempts to argue against picking it up.
That post was nonsensical... what were you trying to say? The 5% change was to make it valuable in heroics and for on trash, it wasn't a boss change. The cooldown reduction made it MORE valuable for burst damage bosses. Soft enrage has nothing to do with anything.
The "main tanking" talents are less effective than WoTN when it comes to preventing tank death.
And before someone starts talking about damage taken over time...
DAMAGE TAKEN OVER TIME DOES NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT matter. Ever. Ever. For any reason. Ever.
I'm not sure if this is the right section to be posting this but since it pertains to DK tanking I thought I'd give it a shot. Does the Dark Command taunt work like the paladin taunt used to? Like can i target a person to get that mob off of them or do i have to target the mob itself? I ask because I'm new to DK tanking and during AoE pulls when I lose aggro on one it is difficult for me to taunt back. So do I need to have that macro that used to be needed on the paladin taunt or is it cool to use while targeted player?
If this is not possible (not sure, Bartender does the following automatically), use this macro:
/cast [harm] [@targettarget,harm] [@focus,exists,nodead,harm] Dark Command
This first tries to taunt your target, if it is an enemy. If it isn't, it'll try to taunt your target's target, assuming that's an enemy. If it isn't either, then it'll try to taunt your focus target, assuming it's alive, you got a focus target, and it's an enemy.
SQUEAK.
-- (The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)
*Edit* I should absolutely preface this by saying if you're doing HM content, then yes, WotN saves lives.
Making comparisons of WotN and other tanking talents isn't entirely fair. The 5% dr from Blade Barrier effects every hit you take. Constantly, and without any degree of provocation from bosses. Anticipation is again, a solid 5% avoidance all the time.
Heck, even Vamp. Blood serves as a wonderful preemptive CD for instances of high incoming damage, and even serves to boost threat marginally (bigger DS heals, etc).
You'd be better of comparing it to Ardent Defender. My co-tank through ICC has been a pally. I can probably count on one hand the number of times we saw Ardent Defender proc on something that wasn't a wipe anyways.
I should state I'm not arguing if it's good or not. WotN is good, and if you're Blood you should take it. I think that's about as involved as the conversation should ever get.
Last edited by Lilithium; 03-30-2010 at 04:51 AM.
Both statements are false. Here's why.
If you never drop below 35%, WotN does absolutely nothing. The value scales up the more you drop below that level of health. Blade Barrier, Toughness, Anticipation, Imp IT, and every other damage reduction ability will always be effective. You always dodge, regardless, you always reduce physical hits by armor, you always benefit from slower incoming swings.
The value of WotN is an insurance policy. If you don't drop low you got zero value out of it, but you feel better knowing you have the safety net. If you *do* drop low it justifies your insurance policy, and it might save your life. The others are 100% active. Vamp Blood scales with the use of the player. If you use it well, it is a huge value, if you don't use it, or use it at poor times, it is weaker.
The (Old) Book on Death Knight Tanking
The New Testament on Death Knight Tanking
-----------------------------------------
The funny thing is, if you take away the other static, 100% applicable tanking talents you can actually improve the value of WotN by insuring you will go into that danger zone more frequently.
The (Old) Book on Death Knight Tanking
The New Testament on Death Knight Tanking
-----------------------------------------
Sattori,
So you would wreck your own car to get insurance money XD
I would definitely like to have a back up damage reduction that activates at low health, so would every tank. Off to the trainer
Have you ever seen a paladin leave out Ardent Defender out of his spec ?. Probably not
Last edited by Mend; 03-30-2010 at 07:03 AM. Reason: Spelling
If you never go below 35% hp you are not tanking content that merits being involved in this discussion anyway because it can be completed just as easily if you were a DPS spec.
Well, by that argument, if you have enough threat, might as well drop Vot3W. That 3% stamina doesn't really matter if you're not dipping dangerously low. (Though I suppose you'll probably argue that it's worth it for the tiny amount of extra healing out of Death Strike or Rune Tap, which is ludicrous.)
The fact that it procs in the lower third of your health doesn't mean it's not free EH that has a lower bound of 6.2% and an upper bound of 15%. Does it reduce healing needed on trivial content? No, but then again, your healers are probably spam overhealing anyway, so who cares about about minor damage reduction when you're not dipping below 50%?
What would you even use those points on anyway?
The first half is almost entirely true.
The thing is, if you are trying to decide what talents to take, and you want to figure out a relative value for WotN, you want to figure out just how much you're actually getting meaningful use out of it. Personally, I'm holding on to WotN because I want the safety net. I don't think you're an idiot to not take it, though. I'm not trying to convince people to take it, or not, and I'm certainly not insulting people who don't do what I think is best. As is consistent with the theme of my guide, I'd sooner give my readers an accurate understanding of how things work, and let them decide how they want to prepare their talents.
The (Old) Book on Death Knight Tanking
The New Testament on Death Knight Tanking
-----------------------------------------
The problem is Satorri, 99% of the clueless DKs that go through your guide will skip right to the cookie cutter specs and use the one you have without WotN. On the other hand, you have Rune Tap in there, which is absolutely useless if you're not dipping low and don't need an emergency heal. Why that is an essential part of the cookie cutter and not WotN is beyond me.
He does have a point here Satorri. I'd say WotN v3.3.3 justifies a small update to your guide.
The threshold for Rune Tap is a whole hell of a lot higher. It heals for 20% of your health so if you drop below 80% you can get 100% effective healing.
And it is something I accept that there are many people who aren't interested in learning to fish they just want fish. What I have a much harder time with is the people who just don't care.
There is lots of stuff that is not make-or-break, that is the crucial difference between BC and now that both makes it more fun and accessible, *and* makes a lot of your choices real choices instead of necessities you either take or fail. The catch is that it does not make anything meaningless, it just makes it flexible.
You are given the tools to survive and threat beyond any reasonably required threshold. You can leave off half your tools and still succeed, even in hard modes. The better the player the larger that talent margin becomes. If that weren't true the game would not be fun, it would be the same as the Crushing Blow problem, *hit hit dead* is not fun when there is no way to survive and it is just random dumb luck that you got crushed for enough to die in a single hit.
There are multiple levels:
1.) What is required = we get it without much effort, we can have half-waste specs and sub-prime gear setup and still succeed, ergo not required
2.) What is helpful = there is a world of things we can do to make the difference between a sufficient attempt and a well-played attempt
3.) What is meaningless = there are many things that have no impact, but the relegation of somethings is pure hyperbole. Tanks can generate piles of threat and TotT and MD can make that very very easy. That does *not* mean that tank threat is unimportant, it just means the requirements are so little that you don't have to do much of anything.
I am generally most interested in #2. Much of your choices won't kill you, or be the sole cause of your success. We make choices to suit the balance we want, and the people who actually care about what they are doing make those choices to play the game well.
You can ignore everything and stack the most stamina you possibly can in every way. Pure stamina in every socket, the highest stam on-equip trinkets you can find, and get 65k health. Now, you can pretty much ignore intelligent threat/survival balance in your spec and just get every survival talent you can reach, and abuse IT (don't even have to do anything special, just cast IT/IT/PS/PS/BS/BS), use MD and TotT frequently, and you'll never worry about threat. At the same time your healers can just spam heals on you without concern for overhealing or need. Just spam spam spam.
And then you win.
If you think you're playing the game well because you got through the encounter then you and I don't see eye to eye. And many people *do* think that that is playing well.
The (Old) Book on Death Knight Tanking
The New Testament on Death Knight Tanking
-----------------------------------------
I did update my guide, Emi. I didn't add WotN to the skeleton spec because it is not a part of the skeleton (meaning you want to go deeper so you have to spend points somewhere so why not here), it is an added value.
If people think it is worthy of more mention, that's fine, I don't think it is a must for talents for everyone.
The (Old) Book on Death Knight Tanking
The New Testament on Death Knight Tanking
-----------------------------------------
And at that point, you still have 80% of your health to burn through before your healer needs to land another heal which isn't even a concern anyway because you've already said you're probably not going below 50%, so what was the point? (I'd also be amused by how often after you just filled your health to full, your pally healer hits you with a fat Holy Light crit.)
So, if I'm following you correctly, the reasons for Rune Tap being included and not WotN is because it's higher in the tree and it helps build towards this e-peen ideal of "playing well" instead of sufficient. I'll have to disagree. I find a 4 point investment for a 30 second 20% heal to be a far worse value proposition than a 3 point talent that extends your EH by at least 6.2% that's on all the time.
WotN is not on all the time. That is also not a fair average of extension to your health if you don't account for how much damage you actually take that the talent can affect.
That is something I'd love to see if someone had the time/know-how with addons for data collection. How much damage is actually taken that is subject to the effects of WotN. It would be highly variable, but we're all just sort of hand-waving about what we expect to happen without supporting data.
The (Old) Book on Death Knight Tanking
The New Testament on Death Knight Tanking
-----------------------------------------
Wrong. Those talents have one overall goal in mind... keeping you alive. If you aren't hitting 35% the damage intake is low enough that healers will never have a problem achieving that goal. Heals aren't canceled, so we can assume a steady heal intake regardless of what's happening elsewhere. If you are never hitting 35%, you are always getting a large quantity of heals, and 2/3 of the core talents don't even work on magical damage intake... why bother with 10 point tanking talents and skip the 3/3 WoTN tanking talents?
It's a terrible argument, but it's the one people that argue against WoTN are making. Why take VoTN? You can do enough threat with Icy Touch and the Stamina is probably wasted. Why take VB? You never dip low, you definitely don't need 15% extra health ever.
Rune Tap is worse the harder the content you are tanking hits, and WoTN is better the harder the content you are tanking hits.
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks