Satorri's Sandbox: Dual Frost *Don't hit me!*

[Popokolara]

Hello everyone.

I am a long term blood tank.I wanted to be frost but understood that game mechanics during 3.2 favored blood dramatically.Now i can fulfill my desire, however i am sceptical.

Armory is broken atm so i will post my guild site.Toon's name is Apistia Female Nelf
http://eu.wowarmory.com/guild-info.x...gamaggan&n=Nal Ra

For runeforing i am using the nerubian carapace.I am interested in your avoidance theory but the dramatic drop in HP scares me.I am shy of gemming avoidance with the toll DR is having atm.Is it really worth it?The investment on hit+exeprtise sounds promising to me.Should i bother going for hit beyong my yellow cap-Afaik for DW white hits count for a lot.

Isnt 40k relatively low for bosses like marrogwar?

As for trinkets i always use 1 for stamina(Satrina 245 atm) and 1 "utility" as i call it(Currently glyph of indom)What is you opinion on unidetifiable organ?Combined with the avoidance theory it might actually be pretty poor.

What do you think about the Armor enhanced items?
Sacrificing avoidance and along threat from RS, but the stacking with UB is pretty interesting.

What version of rawr are you using?I always ger results different from live server-and i havent figured out how to make it count my professions passive bonus.

How exactly yo calculate avoidance?is it multiplicative like dmg mitigation?I have a macro but it does not include Frigid Breast.


I really like frost tanking as playstyle, however i am scared after losing my (partial) control over my survival.

[Satorri]

Ok, lots of different directions. Relevant to this topic:

The bonus armor gear is a lot of fun, but not in line with this skewed semi-1-dimensional experiment. =) Trading avoidance for everything else is the opposite of what I'm going for. If you want to balance things, those pieces have fantastic EH values, so one or two could off-set more avoidance-centric gear and give you a more rounded set.

Bear in mind, this is a fun exercise, *not* a way I'm advocating as being the "way to play." I want to test something that is generally dismissed as a bad idea, and taking it to a real extreme to see what happens.

I used the most recent version of Rawr at the time this was posted. I don't use Rawr for predictive modeling, only to do the grunt work on arithmetic to add up all the stats, add buffs and talents, and give final numbers, rather than having to recalculate it all by hand.

40k health is not low for Marrowgar, per se. The measure of health *required* for a boss has a lot to do with your expected burst size. Marrowgar hits for several rapid-fire small hits. If you're taking hits big enough to threaten you in a couple swings, you won't easily survive it even if you have 60k health as it is *really* severe on the healers. Avoidance is applicable on all of Marrowgar's tank damage except for Coldflames which you should be stepping out of anyway. So, in theory, avoidance could be very powerful on Marrowgar.

Avoidance is not multiplicative (or multiplicative remainders like mitigation), it is additive. WoW uses a "Attack Table" or "Hit Table" that is taken up by all the various possible basic outcomes of an attack: miss, dodge, parry, glancing blow (only players against npc targets 3+ levels higher), crushing blows (only done by npc attackers 4+ levels above the player they're attacking), blocks, and hits.

So, your total avoidance is miss + dodge + parry. Miss is not represented on your character sheet, but if you have around 540 def skill you can expect an actual functional miss value of about 6%, 9% with Frigid Dreadplate.

More on that here: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f63/3...bat-table.html

The major reason I am Blood primarily, is because I love the play style which includes a heavy, active roll in my survival. 90% of survival for most tank class/specs is in preparation and 10% is using your defensive abilities at the right time. As Blood it *can* be more like 25-35% active abilities.

You should stick with what feels best to you though, and if you like the Frost style, it may be in your best interests to find a way to make it work, to feel comfortable tanking with it.

[Nekhar]

You should stick with what feels best to you though, and if you like the Frost style, it may be in your best interests to find a way to make it work, to feel comfortable tanking with it.

I would like to highlight this as it can't be said better. I was 2H Frost for a long time because I liked the play-style. When Blood became the new standard I tried it but it just never felt right. I was stubborn and did 2H Frost for longer than I should have before I finally had to make the choice of going DW Frost or doing Blood/Unholy 2H. In the end I went DW and love it.

[Goros]

I've been a frost tank since the beginning, even when Unholy was the "only way to tank as a DK" and you would get booted from groups for being anything but.

I actually have a spec I run with close to my old spec from earlier this year for my OT set with some focus on fast snap AOE aggro.

I stole Satorri's DW spec and am playing with it now to find my "happy place". So far, so good. I'm diggin it.

Satorri, what glyphs are you using on this uber toy?

[Martie]

I have to disagree strongly with calling a 1.35% chance of something happening virtually nonexistant.
I'd actually say that something that can happen 1.35% of the time on being struck is something that you can see happen once every boss fight on average, and I wouldn't see it as excessive if it happened four or five times per boss fight.

[Satorri]

(what are you talking about Martie?)

Goros, Glyph of RS is obviously non-negotiable, with dodge+parry through the roof you RS so often it actually demands heavy focus on RP generation, so buffing the crit chance and (indirectly through that) damage is a great thing.

I also use OB and FS. OB is just solid support since you're picking weapons to optimize that RS you'll have optimal weapons for OB. FS allows you to use FS at a lesser burden. It's actually kind of rough to get as many FS out of this build even with generous RP tools, so discounting the cost goes a long way.

[Rude]

I have to disagree strongly with calling a 1.35% chance of something happening virtually nonexistant.

Early in my tanking career, I was running Kara, walked in to Maiden, and immediately took three crushing blows in a row. So that was a raid wipe in what.. 12 seconds? From basically a freak accident. But even as someone who has been hit by a meteor, I wouldn't worry about 1.35%.

I had vaguely wondered if there would be any benefit to using a fast MH with slow OH for the RS spam. Basic math looks like there wouldn't be. Just all the detriments for your other strikes.

I do have a question though. Did you forego Glyph of Howling Blast as a function of runic power generation, or because you're a better tank than some of us lazy bastards?

[Cabar]

I had vaguely wondered if there would be any benefit to using a fast MH with slow OH for the RS spam. Basic math looks like there wouldn't be. Just all the detriments for your other strikes.

Faster weapons will effect runic power regeneration, RS use frequency and KM proc frequency right? I think most people can't see any of those overcoming the base 150% damage of the slower weapons. I doubt the math involved in actually figuring this out is basic though.

I do have a question though. Did you forego Glyph of Howling Blast as a function of runic power generation, or because you're a better tank than some of us lazy bastards?

Any build built around rune strike is single target centric, so not sure why you'd bother with the howling blast glyph. I still have HB glyphed, but the DK doesn't raid tank very much. If he did that'd be the first thing I changed. As long as I'm doing 5mans mainly however, HB is the proper glyph for me to have. And no I'm not lazy, just impatient.

[Popokolara]

I am aware that in all DW specs auto swing is a significant part of total dmg.So after capping special attacks miss chance, should one go for more hit?
The icc weapons on 10 man have similar stats but for one.Its either haste, hit or arp.Which one is better for threat?
Sattori i remember you making a post about blood and amount of talent points worth to put in SoB.Have you done similar research to decide on 2/3 SoB and 2/2 Chill of the grave?

Forgive me for this blasphemous question but, with the amount of misdirects currently in the game i often feel my threat doesnt have to be the best and i will still keep the boss on me.Thus i feel the scandalous temptation to use fast tanking weapons.

[Rude]

Faster weapons will effect runic power regeneration, RS use frequency and KM proc frequency right? I think most people can't see any of those overcoming the base 150% damage of the slower weapons. I doubt the math involved in actually figuring this out is basic though.

Take a length of time, ask, "How much damage would I do if I could I convert every swing to a rune strike?" Realize the numbers are about the same, and then ask, "How often will I avoid something twice under what will probably be a 2.08s swing timer?" Which is most likely only going to come up with multiple mobs.

So, yeah, not too complicated when only considering Rune Strike throughput

[Emi]

I've also found myself starving for RP when going DW and when you have an interrupt job, such as on Jaraxxus, things can get bad.

One thing ive tried to is to resist the reflex of hitting FS for every RPD. Since RS is macro'd i prefer to keep hitting the next ability on my rotation rather than burn RP on a FS.

This is the spec ive beeing going with : http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#j0EbZ...0c0fuzAo0g:adw . You can change that UA Glyph for HB for example to give you a more general purpose orientation(ST and AoE) for raids and heroics. As you can see, and due to the low FS use approach, i've only put 3 pts in KM which is actually what i need to go up in the tree.

Mind you, i dont rule out FS entirely, i just make sure im pretty much full on RP or near it but i prefer to burn a KM proc with Rime via HB if not.

[Satorri]

I am aware that in all DW specs auto swing is a significant part of total dmg.So after capping special attacks miss chance, should one go for more hit?

Melee/auto-swings will be a very high total damage contribution for every DK tank. I don't think it is advisable to stack hit over the soft cap to not miss special attacks, *however* as opposed to a 2-hander, you do get more value if you do happen to go over without added effort (i.e. high hit from gear). If nothing else you can continue to get increased threat from auto-swings and HB/IT uses, but that will be a smaller gain per increment of hit rating, it just might not be your best choice.

The icc weapons on 10 man have similar stats but for one.Its either haste, hit or arp.Which one is better for threat?

As Frost, ArP will buff OB, RS, melee swings, BS, and the odd PS. It will not buff HB, IT, FS, or diseases. Hit is hit, and we like it as always, and see the above for clarification on how far. Haste is not fantastic for DKs. It will give you increased melee damage, and it will give you slightly more windows to fire off RS efficiently. Not generally something you want to aim for, but it's not the end of the world if you get it.

In general you are fortunate if you get to choose between stats, but there are no stats on a weapon that will trump the raw DPS for threat value, at all.

Sattori i remember you making a post about blood and amount of talent points worth to put in SoB.Have you done similar research to decide on 2/3 SoB and 2/2 Chill of the grave?

I did, and you can find it in the Frost section of the guide I wrote (linked in my signature). Generally speaking, for a dual wield DK SoB will have a very efficient use (as opposed to 2-handers where you can start to lose stacks fairly regularly). CotG may give less total value in the situations most favoring SoB, but it is utterly reliable, so I opted to go with a half and half split instead of topping out SoB. It also supports my off-target threat better.

I did make an interesting discovery about SoB. If you have unused stacks and you proc the ability again (rare, but I've seen a few times now) you can stack the procs. It never stacks above 3 but it does actually improve the value of not maxing out the talent. In the end I doubt that would overshadow taking 3/3 if you reasonably believed you could make use of every proc'd stack, but it is valuable to note anyway.

Forgive me for this blasphemous question but, with the amount of misdirects currently in the game i often feel my threat doesnt have to be the best and i will still keep the boss on me.Thus i feel the scandalous temptation to use fast tanking weapons.

Not a blasphemous question. Our concern is always the balance between threat and survival. First we have to hit a reasonable minimum on both. In the current tanking world, if you're wearing all epic tanking gear you're already at a pretty reasonable minimum for 90+% of the encounters regardless of whether your gems/trinkets skew towards threat or survival (though composite values like Expertise, Agility, and avoidance for DKs will raise your baseline for both).

Combine our native stats with raid buffs from MD/TotT for threat (along with the passive buffs to crit, haste, and armor ignore), and the passive buffs to mitigation, avoidance, and health, and we have a good scenario already.

Most of the player choices at this point are really a personal option. Unless you find yourself particularly squishy in certain fights, or find your dps are riding your tail on threat too often, you can land just about wherever you want in the balance. If you want to forgo threat in favor of bumping your survival, go for it. You'll figure out quickly if it is actually a problem, and otherwise your healers might thank you for making their job marginally easier. =)

[immerc]

Does anybody happen to know how much damage an ICC-geared disc priest's shield will absorb? While an avoidance tank setup might be terrible for paladin healers, if a shield can be expected to absorb a sizeable chunk of the damage, this might work well with disc priests and shamans. It would allow you to always be shielded, since by the time you take a hit, weakened soul would have faded, and earth shield would insta-heal a big chunk of any damage that gets through.

[Satorri]

Good point Immerc, that could really increase the benefits of PW:S, hmm.

From glances at not-full-absorbs from the bubbles of my Disc friend I'd put it somewhere around 8.5-9.5k absorbed for a bubble.

[Molecule]

I used a build/gearset similar to this for avoidance fights and heroic tanking. It was nice finally finding a use for that heroic Eitrigg's Oath I picked up.

As far as avoidance not being useful in ICC, I would disagree with that to some extent. Granted, so far the places where it's useful are not exactly challenging content for high end guilds, but for less progression oriented guilds, alt runs, and pugs it still is an important consideration.

- It's nice on the airship since fewer successful attacks means fewer stacks of battle fury. I'm not sure exactly how it compares to EH though; I honestly haven't done the math here.

- There's really no reason to gear for anything other than avoidance on Saurfang, at least in 25 man (in 10 man I suppose a lot of raids can kill him before the first mark, at which point you can really gear howeveryou want). He doesn't hit hard enough for spike damage to be an issue, and unless your raid can kill him before the first Mark of the Fallen Champion every hit you avoid decreases the amount of DPS your raid needs for a successful kill. Bonus points here since doing Saurfang as blood absolutely sucks.

- Rotface doesn't have a mechanic that makes avoidance particularly useful, but since he basically is incapable of spiking the tank and raid healing on that fight can be pretty intense, in my estimation your best bet on Rotface is to go for total damage reduction rather than just mitigation. On the other hand, in this particular case that probably makes blood in avoidance gear your best bet on this fight since you have Death Strike.

- Obviously it's difficult to say since the final version of the encounter hasn't been released yet, but since Valithria Dreamwalker is an add-tanking fight it doesn't seem unreasonable that an avoidance oriented build with as many chances to Rune Strike as possible will be the best way to go for that.