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

[Theotherone]

That is indeed a very nice Hunter and a very nice Boomkin. I'd do it if I were asked, but no one had thought of it.

[Airowird]

Most of our Hunters go MM (you really can't ask MM not to serpent imo) and our Boomkin is too busy boosting his DPS to not glyph it except for anub
Wish I had your guild members, although I must say that most of our tanks go all out on EH, so IS/SS is less of a relative damage reduction as it would for an avoidance tank.

[Satorri]

If you have a *team* then sometimes personal sacrifices benefit the team as a whole more.

It is not always the case, sometimes raid dps is more important.

It does, however, require:
A.) Players to care more about the success of the team than their own placement on the meters.
B.) Leaders who are keeping track and know when to ask for the buffing sacrifice.

It is harder on the MM hunters, to be sure with Chimera Shot.

[Cambras]

Satorri, thanks for all of the DK guides and information you have shared with the TS community.

Having played 2 lvl 80 warrior tanks and 2 level 80 pally tanks, I thought I should try out a DK.

With the ease of acquiring Triumph badges these days it did not take long to build a decent Tier 9 set for dps and a tanking set as well.

For a long time I have been thinking more and more of an Avoidance based build, so this thread piques my interest to say the least.

So after getting a decentish tank set, I procedded to try out some tests and see where I was at so far.

I have a couple of questions tho now, would this build benefit more from 2 fast defense oriented weapons or the more general DW Frost slow/slow dps weapons for threat building.

I could see faster weapons maybe being better to rapidly build your RP for more Rune Strikes, tho I really havent had any time to test that theory.

Secondly, would you mind posting a sample of your Rawr gear you used for your personal tests? I'm not asking for a cookie cutter path to follow, merely a baseline to start with and tweak from there on my own based on my personal playstyle.

At any rate, I am curious to see how this pans out overall, as I have always been an advocate of avoidance. Keep up the good work and again, thanks for sharing your information and ideas with the rest of us.

[Edgewalker]

More fights are about maximizing DPS and less about tank avoidance these days, but there are a few situations the 2% miss would come in handy. I'd still rather my hunters use their normal rotation in most scenarios though.

[Satorri]

*3%

Less damage taken is nice. Flat out. If the fight is a hammer-the-tank-into-the-ground fight, I like having a more resilient tank. Flat out. None of it is necessary, by design, but it sure can be nice.

And I would disagree about maxing out dps being the design. Before Festergut's enrage timer it's been a while since we've had a real dps trial. That said, it's an ever-present part of the balance. If you have crack dps you can shorten the window and ease the healing/tanking burden by reducing opportunity to get hurt.

Cambras, first the easy one. Most of the gear is t9.5, which I have (and as I replace it I can regem for fun). The pieces between the tier include my old cloak, boots, wrists, belt, etc from ToC25. Largely, it's just my retired gear, not carefully chosen for avoidance, only the gemming and chanting are tailored. For trinkets I pulled Ick's Thumb and the Onyxian Blood Talisman out of my cache of tanking goodies. I used 2 slow dps weapons for two particular thinkings:

1.) While they don't have strict survival stats they do have agility so they do still contribute to avoidance. However, two slow weapons will make those frequent RSs sting like a beast.
2.) Dual wielding anything should mean you very rarely waste SoB stacks, they don't need to be fast. I also happen to have a nice pair of slow one-hands that could be adopted to the task

The big thing to be aware of on this is that trying this at lower gear levels *may* be rocky, I'm not sure. It also comes with a big asterisk. In general you should take noticeably less damage overall than health stacking counterparts, however when you take a hit it will be pretty significant on your health total and healers may not respond to that favorably. That all depends on the healers and the content. Some may actually appreciate that your health drops farther when they can see it not drop as often.

Untested waters. That's half the fun for me. =)

[Cambras]

Yeah I agree with the untested waters myself, after having played WoW since the original beta, leveling numerous characters to 80, I more enjoy trying unconventional things and seeing what I can make work.

I think I may have to shelf this project for a little bit longer yet tho as I have too many weak spots in my current gear, low on hit, expertise, etc. (Wish I could take gear from my pally or warrior tanks lol)

However, in the interest of experimentation I'll gem and enchant along your principles here and see what happens in a 232 average ilvl gearset.

I think it will truly come down to proper ability use and cooldown management, like all good tanks.

If things go real bad I'll make my healers happy and swap over to the pally tank where we can easy mode everything

[Satorri]

Ah yes. I wish I could hand-me down to my alts. My main progression tank always has a healthy stock of extra tank gear, but at least with things the way it is now it's really easy to catch alts up to avg 226-232 level gear without stepping foot in a raid or needing lots of friends available to chain heroics.

[Edgewalker]

Putricide 25 is a DPS check, Festergut is a DPS check, Saurfang is DPS centered and has very minimal tank damage. Rotface sub 30% is a DPS zerg basically. Same with 3/5 ToGC encounters. Just a saying.

[Splug]

3% avoidance is deceptively strong. If you figure ~55% avoidance with chill of the throne, you're actually dropping incoming damage by about 6% relative to where it was before, as well as causing significant drop-off in the probability to be hit 3+ times sequentially. By contrast, how much raid damage would having one glyph swapped on one moonkin cause? Assuming insect swarm is 30% of a moonkin's total damage and that they have a 10% share on the total damage (both of which should be gross overestimates), then removing the glyph would drop its damage by 24% would cost the raid (.24*.3*.1) = 0.72% of the total RDPS. That's also assuming that the moonkin has absolutely no damage-bearing alternative to the insect swarm glyph.

So you do risk a small window where a <1% wipe would have occurred, in exchange for a significant increase on the tank's avoidance (and reduction in the probability of hit chains). I certainly can understand that while the damage tuning is right on the wire, that ~.72% of the RDPS may be worthwhile, but in general I think it's a fairly efficient transformation from RDPS into tank survivability - moreso than dropping a damage dealer in favor of adding an extra healer.

It's going to come down to playing to meet what your raid can put out, though. If damage is really the problem to the extreme that everything must be optimized to kill, then there's one more point at which it can be done. Furthermore, it's something that can be tweaked from boss to boss. Glyphs cost almost nothing to make, and only take a few seconds out of combat to apply...

-Splug

[Eravian]

I'm starting to assemble a tanking set for my Frost dk now, so I find this interesting as well... as I piece together emblem gear I may try this out with 232 level loot as well, as Cambras was talking about, and see how it charts over. Would be fun to try, at least, and would be a definite gearing change from my warrior. Depending on how fast my set comes together, I'll give it a whirl.

[GravityDK]

Glyphs cost almost nothing to make, and only take a few seconds out of combat to apply...

To make this explicit, since I think that's what Splug means: a stock of them can/should be carried for this purpose; changing during the raid night itself.

[Satorri]

I was thrilled when they took away the locational requirement on glyph use.

Though I also don't often make much use of hot swapping. =)

[GravityDK]

I don't either as Frost tank, but might if I was blood (for D&D).

[Goros]

What enchants on the swords?

Razorize and Cinderglacier, or something from the normal enchanting selection?

[Satorri]

On my experimental set? Swordbreaking on both to maximize avoidance.

For a slightly more balanced result in high level gear I like Nerubian Carapace. This spec *really* doesn't need help from the more threat-oriented runes.

Speaking of which, from extended testing the spec/setup feels rather solid on the threat front. More to the point single target threat is fairly obscene for the gear level. The AoE threat was no stronger or weaker than typical Frost AoE, but my single target was nearly untouchable when the RS start rolling.

I still haven't taken it into a raid yet as I've been playing with it on my mini-DK alt.

[Goros]

Don't you get more bang for your buck stacking defense as opposed to stacking dodge or parry?

[TomHuxley]

This looks pretty cool and once again makes me feel like it would be fun to level my DK the rest of the way...although I confess from a purely aesthetic POV it seems silly to dual wield little one-handers against bosses (but then there's no accounting for taste, so feel free to ignore mine).

That said...I think I must misunderstand part of your comparison vis a vis the DW frost spec and what I take are actual logs from ICC? The reason I ask is I was wondering if you were taking the whole Chill of the Throne aspect into consideration when you were comparing across specs the chance of taking multiple hits in a row (i.e., was your blood spec under CotT while your avoidance-laden DK wasn't)?

You're a better theorycrafter than I, so I presume it's my misunderstanding, but I wanted to make sure And thanks for the good read.

[Astrid]

it depends on what your rating are at, but when it comes to the 2% enchants, theyre outside of DRs so they trump the defense on avoidance

[Edgewalker]

3% avoidance is deceptively strong. If you figure ~55% avoidance with chill of the throne, you're actually dropping incoming damage by about 6% relative to where it was before, as well as causing significant drop-off in the probability to be hit 3+ times sequentially.

My point was simply that for most encounters it simply doesn't matter. For the newer wings it is helpful, but for most it just flat doesn't.
Flat out.