Comprehensive Guide to Death Knight Tanking

[xulev]

That said, I think today's patch might help 2-handed Frost regain some threat ground with dual wielding as it is much easier to get Imp Icy Talons with a 2-hand spec, and 45% bonus haste on a 2-hander is nothing to shake a stick at.

Been playing with it before the patch, 2 hand frost with improved icy talons does have to sacrafice a little to get there... but not really much at all.

Leaves you with 2 pts to spend between scent of blood, chill of the grave and endless winter.

I sort of like having 2 in each of those tho.. but it's hard to figure out relative values of abilities you can cut down to get them. You could drop 2 hand weapon specialization, but I doubt that is a good move... You can only afford to drop 1 pt from frigid bp, killing machine or blackice in frost.

I'm sort of uncertain if it works out to worth it. If you don't go for improved icy talons you can pick up 2/3 scent of blood, 2 chill of the grave, 2 endless winter, 2 acclimation versus having 2 to spend between them all.

[Homi]

Hi, thanks for the great original posts. In the frost tanking section, the math on dual wielding contains two mistakes. First, attack power, and second, haste.

This part right here should have set off alarm bells. You got two different values for dps for cases (1) and (2) even though you were using weapons of equal ilvl and held the attack power constant.

The mistake was adding AP/14 to your final weapon damage. AP/14 is a dps value, not damage. However, it must be added before haste is taken into account, so we first convert it to damage using AP/14*weapon_speed and then divide by the final haste-modified weapon speed.

It seems you calculated the final weapon speed by multiplying the original speed by (1 - haste). The correct formula is to divide weapon speed by (1 + haste). I've included a link to WoWWiki's page on haste, and this is easily verifiable in game. (The bit about attack power, too, you can see for yourself in game.)

Also, it's safe to assume that Obliterate and every other Death Knight instant strike are normalized attacks, therefore their contribution from attack power will be independent of weapon speed. I can't offer hard evidence for this, but, it's very safe to assume, and it's actually already in WoWWiki's list of normalized attacks, so.... Rune Strike, being a "next melee" attack, is not only not normalized but also gets an extra bonus from attack power.

I hope you find this helpful. Here are the correct values (much rounding involved):

If we take a tank with 5k AP, 0% haste from gear, and the standard 23% melee haste raid buff, then the average hit size and speed for each weapon will be roughly:

Blood Fury = 830 dmg, 1.22 sec
Stormpike Cleaver = 1439 dmg, 2.11 sec
Sharpened Obsidian Edge = 2144 dmg, 2.85 sec

We’ll use three setups, (1) with two fast weapons, (2) with two slow weapons, and (3) with the 2-hander. Remember the off-hand weapon will do only 57.5% damage. The damage per strike will be listed with the two weapons combined where dual wielding:

Melee auto-swings:
(1) 830 + 477 = 1307 (per 1.22 sec = 1072 dps)
(2) 1439 + 827 = 2266 (per 2.11 sec = 1074 dps)
(3) 2144 + 000 = 2144 (per 2.85 sec = 752 dps)

If we take into account the extra 19% miss chance for dual wielding (...), then dual wielding auto-swings are about 15% more dps than 2h auto-swings. This is not due to the talent Nerves of Cold Steel, but rather more to the fact that attack power scales higher when dual wielding.

Rune Strike:
(1) 1995 + 1147 = 3142 dmg = 1835 dmg more than auto-swing
(2) 2908 + 1672 = 4580 dmg = 2314 dmg more than auto-swing
(3) 3966 + 0000 = 3966 dmg = 1822 dmg more than auto-swing

Obliterate (with 0 diseases on the target):
(1) 1389 + 798 = 2187 dmg
(2) 1561 + 898 = 2459 dmg
(3) 2125 + 000 = 2125 dmg

Special attacks such as Rune Strike and Obliterate are not affected by the increased miss chance for dual wielding.

Hey Pim, question when you guys did your fancy mathematics did you include 4% from Two-Handed Weapon Specialization? Just wanted to clarify since you appear to be taking Nerves of Cold Steel into account and it wouldn't be a fair comparison otherwise.

[xulev]

Not sure if this was mentioned.. but on live the frost haste buff stacks with itself. ie you don't need windfury totem to achieve 45% haste.

[Rude]

Not sure if this was mentioned.. but on live the frost haste buff stacks with itself. ie you don't need windfury totem to achieve 45% haste.

They're two separate buffs. Icy Talons is a 20% melee haste self-buff. Improved Icy Talons is a raid-wide 20% melee haste buff exclusive with Windfury totem.

---

Not in the PTR patch notes, but appearing in the live ones, Obliterate no longer does two rolls for Rime when dual wielding. And it's been pretty noticeable.

I'm not raiding with an enhancement shaman any longer, so I decided to pick up Imp. Icy Talons. Right now, it's costing me a point in Glacier Rot, and I've dropped Killing Machine entirely. But with the increase in haste, I'm thinking that it might be of higher value than Black Ice is, since the only shadow damage it's going to buff is blood plague and d'n'd. And that would probably push me back toward a one-disease setup, which would be fine if not for Rime proccing less often. Which means having to use runes for HB more frequently, which means less Obliterates, which means less Rime procs...

Current build

So, I'm wondering if shuffling points around like so and putting some more emphasis on crit Frost Strikes and Howling Blasts wouldn't work out better. But then my next question becomes "Glyph of Disease or not?" I could roll Frost Fever along on Rime procs until I lose it, and then do an IT/PS, gaining the bonus threat on Icy Touch. And that frees up a glyph slot for Rune Strike or Frost Strike.

TL;DR - I don't know what the crap I'm doing any more

[KnThrak]

Anyone can confirm whether Necrosis is fixed to proc off Rune Strike again (and all other suck talents like BCB, Bloodworms)?
That was what drove me away from my Unholy spec since it was impossible to keep aggro without that.

[Alastrionia]

with the new patch and the improvements to icy touch and icy talons, I started tinkering with a slightly different spec for dual wield frost tanking, and would like your thoughts on how viable/effective this would be.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#j0xbZ...fuzAo0t:dakm0M

instead of bladed armor, I took endless winter for the 4% str boost, which is also a boost to parry (further modifed by HoW and BoK or MotW)
and 4 pts in talons gives me 16% haste which with 1h slow weapons comes down to roughly 2.08 attack speed
giving the feel of having tanking weapons, but hitting harder and rune strikes gouging them more often.

whadda guys think?

[Veranox]

@ Banterloft Nope ... have not done that yet haha since I've just been running heroix as of late I've been lax with doing the macros I need too. I am hoping that with the changes to IT in the next patch will help a little as well. Also been forcing myself out of bad habits from DPSing as unholy such as spamming DC whenever I've got the runic power for it haha.

~Veranox.

[Satorri]

Not in the PTR patch notes, but appearing in the live ones, Obliterate no longer does two rolls for Rime when dual wielding. And it's been pretty noticeable.

I did notice that. Relatively light on Rime procs.

On Glyph of Disease, I think it is worth keeping around for AoE pull disease maintenance, but you could probably do nearly as well with glyph of HB. Overall though the threat of IT is a little too good so there is no reason not to refresh early, and it's very easy to not use Glyphs for disease management now.

Alastoria, the build looks fine but with one major problem: Icy Talons, Scent of Blood, and even Epidemic will not give you more threat than Bladed Armor. Seriously not one to trim points off of, it's too delicious and scales fantastically, especially once you start getting bonus armor gear.



Overall, Icy Touch needs a touch up. As much as I love the massive threat, it's messing with how the styles are work and threatening to trump things a little too much. Let me illustrate:

I am a Blood tank primarily, avg ilvl around 258.4. Standard Blood operation uses DS to convert FU pairs to Death runes and as a heal for health maintenance, and HS is the primary spam for Blood and Death runes, though DS can sometimes trump it for threat and survival when the heal can be mostly effective. In the past I used Glyph of Disease to great effect to never use IT/PS twice in a fight, and it was easy, reliable, and sustainable.

For those not familiar with my terminology CAA = Crit-adjusted average, for the average per hit dmg including critical hits.

Dmg/threat values (pulled from last night's ICC25 raid, on Marrowgar as I was flipping specs some, with fairly complete raid buffs), note that the sample size is small so I am only using the average damage, not the crit rate from the log, I'll use the actual crit rate from buffs/stats:
PS (19.3% crit) = 1,358 avg dmg = 1,620 CAA dmg = 3,359 CAA threat
IT (13.0% crit) = 1,194 avg dmg = 1,349 CAA dmg = 19,583 CAA threat
HS (28.3% crit) = 2,626 avg dmg = 3,704 CAA dmg = 7,679 CAA threat

DS = (25.3% crit) = 3,254 avg dmg (8,955 heal) = 4,448 CAA dmg = 9,223 CAA dmg threat

• 0% overheal = 9223 t(dmg) + 9284 t(heal) = 18,507 total threat
• 25% overheal = 9223 t(dmg) + 6963 t(heal) = 16,186 total threat
• 50% overheal = 9223 t(dmg) + 4642 t(heal) = 13,865 total threat
• 75% overheal = 9223 t(dmg) + 2321 t(heal) = 11,544 total threat

So, if you have two Death runes the alternatives could be:
2 x HS = 15,358 threat
1 x DS = ~12,000 threat given avg overheal %
-or-
2 x IT = 39,166 threat

That's not good. It's one thing if it is a slight gain in threat at the expense of tree mechanics where you might not want to use IT instead to make sure you're playing your spec well, but well more than doubling the threat? That's not good, or healthy.

I can ignored the new function and play the way I used to, but it feels unpleasant that if I were to neglect the entire construction of the class and spec I could do quite a bit more threat I would do better threat with minimal losses.

I'll be constructing a post for the official forums on that topic.

Now posted: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...66995109&sid=1

[Veranox]

The way I am viewing the change to IT is first off as nice starting buffer to threat, then secondly using it as an oh snap someone is getting a little to close to ripping aggro then I would like button to further the distance again. I may be wrong ... but that's the way I see myself using it. Since I am UH atm I see this as a nice buffer to my single target threat means I can reglyph to using SS instead of GoD and change my rotation a little bit to IT instead of PT to reset diseases on the target. I may be wrong but just the way I see myself using it ^^.

~Veranox
"be the change you wish to see in the world" Gandhi

[Satorri]

I guess there is a trick to how you do use it and how it *can* be used. I tried to just go about my business last night, but I found it disturbing that if I abused IT, and as Blood which will generally have the weakest IT of the 3 trees, I could blow past the other tank's threat without RS. It was obscene that I could pull threat at will without taunting. Useful, but possibly damaging to game balance.

[Veranox]

Truth! I would have to agree with that ^^, I guess its going to be one of those things that were all going to have to 'feel' out no? ^^ As I stated I myself will be using it as a 'buffer' to single target and if it becomes a problem in a two tank situation well then ... just have to figure that one out haha.

~Veranox.

[xulev]

Satorri,

For frost what do reckon is the weakest ability you can pare down to make room for other talents?

Obviously for DW there is just not gonna be close to enough points, but for 2 hand you have enough to get a few extra abilities.

From what I see the options are 2 hand specialization, killing machine, black ice (with killing machine and black ice being 5 pters and probably best bet) to drop points in to be able to get some combination of scent of blood, Chill of the grave and endless winter (acclimation as well).

For reference sake I can tell you with only 1 pt in chill of the grave (0 in SoB) you will hit dead spots in runic power.

[Satorri]

Generally speaking I don't prioritize RP, even for Frost for the sake of FS. I make sure to reserve RP for RS, and I glyph FS so I can use it more often with the same RP generation.

That said, I suppose you could drop points from the talents you mentioned if that is important to you. They are both talents that are not all-in-all-out talents (like BotN in my book). If you are doing 2-handers it is easy to have a couple points for SoB and a couple points for CotG if you really want. And bear in mind that while Endless Winter is attractive for having +Str, 2% Str per point is not a *huge* deal, and may easily fall below KM or Black Ice, particularly at lower gear levels. Off the top of my head:

A very well-geared tank would have ~1800 Str raid buffed, so 2% Str would be 36 more Str, 72 more AP. Not bad at all, but not a huge deal. You'd have to break down your logs a bit to see how Black Ice and KM would drop your threat, and ask yourself if you're really getting a better deal with more RP (which should really only mean more FS, but maybe an appreciable amount).

[Rude]

On the abusing Icy Touch thing, I want to make a joke and say they set it up that way to counter the huge warlock threat. 5k dps and yet he could pull threat with Vigilance on him.

That aside, it does seem pretty stupid for blood to, in effect, forsake their tree's damage ability. But it got me thinking... DRM isn't something that I'd normally take in a frost build, but it could certainly make for a killer ranged setup for something like Blood Princes. But considering the Glyph of Icy Touch change and the rampant bitching by developers because "holy crap, Death Knights are using ranged abilities!!" I'd see it as pretty likely to get toned down. Either way, it might make for a neat change of pace for a frost setup. Though I'd be concerned with its actual damage output. But since I've been using one disease pretty much the entire time, I really don't know what kind of damage it does. My biggest problem would be with my hit rating.

The thing about Frost Strike, and why I never had it glyphed, was that I was always getting so much runic power that it was hard to use it all with the number of GCDs I have. Two points in Scent of Blood, and a resto druid.. it was just too much. I still generally had too much with one point. At the moment, I don't have any in that or Chill of the Grave.

I don't know, it all feels like it's become some horrible balancing act, moreseo than before. You move one point and it affects the value of an ability, which affects the value of a talent, which would give you points to spend somewhere else.

[xulev]

Well from experience with 2 hand frost tanking... it helps to have the extra runic power. Killing machine proc frost strikes can hit very hard... 7k+

Oddly with the changes, from a threat perspective, allowing your killing machine procs to be "wasted" on icy touches might not be a bad thing anymore; so that further complicates figuring it.. because looking for the extra rp when using km procs on icy touch *could* be much better.. obviously you don't need rp for icy touch.

Offspec I'm dw frost dps... and before changes I noticed that I would find cooldown limited periods where I would go over 130 rp and not have enough cooldowns to use everything, especially with rime procs.

Yes I just love the dk frost tree.

DW frost dps with ridiculous hit feels like a rogue. I have way too much hit... 544. But it's fun to dps as and I pull 6-7k with random icc10/25 dps plate Ive had sitting in bags gemmed and enchanted. Haven't had time to try the new changes.. I suspect my white hits will be crazy with all that haste... and beef up necrosis and bcb dmg. I only have that much hit because I don't have a single good dps trinket past pyrite infuser and the 245 triumph badges one. But it seems to work pretty well.

[Rude]

So, I pushed some buttons between the wowhead profiler and simcraft... Yes, I know it's a DPS modeling app causing numbers to be skewed re: Frost Strike / Rune Strike. But I don't have the time, money, or a raid group that would die a lot on purpose to let me test the 7 or 8 minor variants I put through simcraft. Here's what came out on top.

Glyph of Icy Touch came out above Glyph of Disease by a minor amount. So that means it might have a bit of utility for the aoe spamfests in ICC, but Rune Strike or Frost Strike either one should do better on bosses. The 2H build was over 200 dps lower than using a DPS MH / Tank OH. You can shuffle points around and pick up 3/3 acclimation as DW and still be ahead of 2H.

Armory
Ramaladni's Blade of Culling is what I used as the 2H weapon in the sim since I have one. And since I see it drop nearly every week.

Things I'd be more interesting in testing for real would be related to runic power for RS/FS and see if it pulls out more than Killing Machine. Or if you're ever going to clip a Rune Strike using a DPS mainhand with that much haste now.

Edit: Death Rune Mastery over Epidemic and a point in Subversion = hilarity. Single disease setup, costs you about 19% of your damage, doubles your threat. Which I guess would be a great build if you wanted to hold onto Deathwhisper while your other tank went out for a beer.

[Junk]

So, I have been running a DW Frost DK-Tank since way before the last patch, and I have always enjoyed the spec. Now, I really love it, for obvious reasons. I specced for Improved Icy Talons for both the new boost and the benefits of giving the buff to the raid. This has eaten up some 6 points, as you know. The question relates to what to sacrifice and where. The build I wind up with is 5/58/5 with 3 points extra,but no bladed armor. Without having to have any one having to pour over the spec, what do you think is a better talent to have 3/5 Bladed armor or 2/2 Endless Winter? Or should i shave points from Killing Machine to get some combo of both, Can i live without KM completely?
They each have their benefits, Threat gen. with the Bladed armor, and Strength/parry boost with free interrupts from Endless winter.

[xulev]

As for abusing icy touch thing... yah. Guilty. Threat is a bit much now, by a bit much I had a warrior tank tell me he was gonna put vigilance on me. ;p

I saw omen spiking into the 20k range with icy touch crits. In the off chance I saw anyone relatively close in threat one thru my rotation and icy touch X4 ended that.

A bit much? Looks like it.

If they keep it as it is, from a strictly threat perspective... "wasting" Killing machine procs on icy touch isn't a waste at all.

Obviously this is from a 2 hand frost tanking perspective with relatively hard hitting icy touches, compared to other specs. (I was intentionally using KM on icy touch to boot)

It wasn't lol level threat, but from what I saw in icc25 it was pretty unlikely most other tanks have a possibility of picking up threat unless I white hit, which being some undergeared tanks I've seen still does fair threat with the haste. I found it difficult with some to maintain frost fever and just white hit during transitions. But, as frost I've had to always use shadowmeld or stop specials with subpar tanks.

Biggest change "threatwise", other than the huge spikes from icy touch (especially icy touch crits) was that sans rune strike I could catch and pass other tanks.

[Nekhar]

I am toying around with IIT as well. I ended up going 12/54/5 for the time being.

SPEC

I couldn't decide where I really wanted to shave the few points I needed so I went with 3/5 in both Black Ice and Killing Machine. I haven't had a chance to raid with it yet, just daily heroics, so I'm not sure if its ideal.

[Denekawa]

It's funny, but I don't see these insane threat increases people keep QQing about. Maybe it's because I just look at percentages in OMEN and where people are in terms of threat compared to the tank (me). DPS can still push their threat as they always have, Paladins can still hold threat and rip threat as they always have. About the only time it seems to be an issue is when rapid tank swaps are critical, but ToT and MD have caused havoc on those in the past, so I'm not really seeing this massive threat change.

When the patch went live, I ran out to test it out. Sure on initial pull, IT was awesome because it allowed me to get my diseases up and rolling before some trigger happy DPS could pull it off of me. But once you drop into your rotation, I don't see how spamming IT does that much for you. I had a Hunter sitting at 79% threat popping everything he had. I spammed IT twice to see if that number changed any. Not really. If anything his threat went up maybe a %. So if IT is really owning the place, that would mean, without it, the Hunter would have pulled off of me.

I run as DW on trash and sometimes in 5 mans, but Blood for everything else. My biggest issue with threat was always at the pull and on AoE. My OT is a Paladin so AoE threat was always his. On bosses, if he got threat he would keep it in most cases because he could spam a threat rotation and I would be threat starved because the target wasn't hitting me. If I had the target, I could keep it because I wasn't hindered by not being able to use RS. I don't see IT ripping threat off of an equally geared tank, even if you aren't the focus of the target. The forums suggest merely casting IT generates ridiculously OP threat. Either I am running around with balanced tanks and everyone else is not or there are two completely different pictures going on here.

Which would mean a nerf was guaranteed to be inbound because there is an imbalance across gear levels?