Frost-DW-Tank something wrong?

[Freeagent]

Hey out there,
I would love if you guys could give me some advice on what I can and should change.

My raidforce is telling me that something isn't proper with my built and it seems to be off,
we're progressing 25m ICC at Doc Putricide, on 10m I was Tanking up to the Blood council and the trash afterwards.

My hit-rating is low yes I'm aware of that but I don't have any threat issues whatsoever,
expertise is at 27.

Some say I take more damage than the other Tanks and that I'm hard to heal.

I use every CD available at any encounter at the given time, even on Trash I use those (UA/AMS).

Blood Barrier is 98% up
IBF , AMS and UA are used at the proper times for the respective encounters.

I got no clue what else I could do.

Link to my Armory profile.

as usual armory shows incorrect values about armor and health see attached screenshot from my ingame panel for that.

Bonten.jpg
Any clue to what I'm supposed to change?

Regards, Freeagent aka Bonten.

[beastiveguy1]

the problem here is that frost is all about avoidance...and seeing as icc bombs ur avoidance it kinda ruins the point of even being frost....if u think about a dk will be hard to heal period seeing as it doesnt have a shield so dodge and parry is left....once ur dodge gets nerfed by 20% ur losein a ton of damage reduction.....just because u pop cds every 5 seconds only mean u will be fine until they drop off....i was a dw frost tank untill i realized with the icc debuff how hard it was to live so i respeced to blood which is a much easier spec to heal in icc with self heals and such.....your fine with everything except i wouldnt have skipped out on SoB but its just very hard to tank affectively in icc as frost

[MrMooky]

the problem here is that frost is all about avoidance...and seeing as icc bombs ur avoidance it kinda ruins the point of even being frost....if u think about a dk will be hard to heal period seeing as it doesnt have a shield so dodge and parry is left....once ur dodge gets nerfed by 20% ur losein a ton of damage reduction.....just because u pop cds every 5 seconds only mean u will be fine until they drop off....i was a dw frost tank untill i realized with the icc debuff how hard it was to live so i respeced to blood which is a much easier spec to heal in icc with self heals and such.....your fine with everything except i wouldnt have skipped out on SoB but its just very hard to tank affectively in icc as frost

Frost is mitigation, unholy is avoidance.

[MrMooky]

Take both points outta chill of the grave and one out of epidemic and get 3/3 scent of blood. Other than that, the spec doesn't appear to be your problem.

[MrMooky]

Also, with glyph of howling blast, glyph of disease is a waste. Howling blast will cover FF and you only need PS on your main focus target.

[MrMooky]

Oh, and that onyxia trinket is garbage, replace it with glyph for a good chunk of extra armor. I'm not a fan of the corpse tongue trinket, but that's your call. Your offhand weapon is also too slow. As a DW Frost DK you want slow/slow. You should have nerubian carapace on both weapons as well.

[Msrobinson]

You shouldn't need 2/2 epidemic. you can go with just frost fever in your rotation and you'll threat will be fine. then you can take those points out and put them into scent of blood which allows for more rune strikes and frost strikes.

also replace your glyph of disease with glyph of icy touch. you shouldn't need extra disease length seeing as you are reapplying every 10 seconds atleast (lower with rime procs) with your glyph of howling blast.

as with your taking too much damage, switching your chest enchant to 275 health will help a bit. also find some epic rings and trinkets that add armor/health, not avoidance, and especially not dodge for icc progression. chill of the grave f***'s you up hard. extra health is more reliable for healers to heal. if you need that avoidance, switch your 2 weapon runes to swordshattering for the 4% parry with no diminishing returns. my 2 cents.

[Chamenas]

I promise to respond to this thread when I get a chance. It's bedtime for me though, and I have a lot of work ahead of me tomorrow. However, the point of my post currently...

I'm currently in my Blood spec with my Blood weapon. I have multiple sets of one-handed weapons for my Frost set, depending on if I feel I need more hit rating, expertise, survival, or pure threat. The pure threat set is the most common one and consists of Frost Giant Cleaverx2. As was mentioned before, you want slow/slow. The only reason to ever have a fast off-hand is because it's a tank weapon and you're using it for survival purposes. It will still be worse for threat, but if your threat is fine, then you can afford that to pick up some survival if you want. However, that's something else entirely. Anyways...

Lulia | US | Icecrown

Take a look at the Frost spec. It's what I'm using currently. There's really only subtle differences in there, and they pertain to threat, not survival, but, if I understand correctly, you're not having any issues with threat anyways?

Any survival issues, currently, seem to be related to gear choices as opposed to talent choices. You've taken the needed survival talents. Remember that armor is only effective against physical damage, which is why stamina is still, generally speaking, more important than armor. There's plenty of non-physical damage in ICC.

[Freeagent]

In ICC I end up at 54k HP same as the Paladins who are Tanking with me those are usually at 55-56k,
Threat ain't an issue at all so far, thats why slow-fast has been my choice.
SoB I didn't spec 'cause I usally have more than enough RP without it.

I'll take a look at some Rings but I don't think I want to miss my Proc of extra armor from the Ashen Verdict Ring,
wich is quite often so far. Glyphs seem to be off a bit indeed have to fix that.

Thanks for the Tips so far, keep it coming helps alot!

- edit -
I exchanged 1 Glyph and added added SoB into the spec, will test it out a couple of days~

[zuke8675309]

Some say I take more damage than the other Tanks and that I'm hard to heal.

Could it be that your healers just have a negative perception of DK tanks, especially DW tanks? Take a look at a combat parse after a raid and compare dmg you took to that of another tank on a fight like Saurfang or Festergut where things should be relatively equal between the two tanks - that should give you some good information to compare.

I'm currently running a 2H frost build on my DK tank with 42.4k unbuffed health and 32.5k unbuffed armor - similar to your stats, but a slightly higher. I can't really find fault in your gear other than I'd replace the Corpse Tongue Coin with a Glyph of Indomitability. Imho the static 1800 extra armor and a dodge mini-cd is more valuable than the armor proc from the Coin - but we're getting into nitpick territory.
With similar gear to yours, I haven't heard healers complaining I was hard to heal. Now maybe it's just that my healers have decided to just suck it up and not bother complaining, I dunno.

[Freeagent]

I've no idea.

I switched into Blood and I'm going to Tank as Blood tonight maybe they change their opinions then,
but back when I was blood (2 months ago I think) I went splash in ICC.

I'll get the +228 Stamina Trinket then, got a couple of badgers to spare I guess.

Thanks again.

[Evassara]

Take both points outta chill of the grave and one out of epidemic and get 3/3 scent of blood. Other than that, the spec doesn't appear to be your problem.

1) Move two points out of Epidemic and move over to Scent of Blood
2) Use single disease rotation with Howling Blast Glyph on AoE Mobs
3) Discard glyph of disease for Glyph of Runestrike (Threat) or Glyph of Unbreakable Armor (Survival)
4) Replace both of your trinkets. Corpse Tongue Coin is very good but only on certain fights. Get the Triumph and/or Frost Emblem trinkets for starters as they are a solid set.
5) Replace your offhand with a slower weapon, on the few bosses that still do have parry haste turned on it will reduce your damage taken and also increase your threat.
6) Replace the Agility & Hit gem on your pants with Hit & Stamina [Vivid Eye of Zul]

Everything else looks pretty good..

[Freeagent]

1) Move two points out of Epidemic and move over to Scent of Blood
2) Use single disease rotation with Howling Blast Glyph on AoE Mobs
3) Discard glyph of disease for Glyph of Runestrike (Threat) or Glyph of Unbreakable Armor (Survival)
4) Replace both of your trinkets. Corpse Tongue Coin is very good but only on certain fights. Get the Triumph and/or Frost Emblem trinkets for starters as they are a solid set.
5) Replace your offhand with a slower weapon, on the few bosses that still do have parry haste turned on it will reduce your damage taken and also increase your threat.
6) Replace the Agility & Hit gem on your pants with Hit & Stamina [Vivid Eye of Zul]

Everything else looks pretty good..

1) done
3) done
4) slightly done, using http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47290 and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47735
5) done
6) done

The Armory shows the updated spec, glyph and items already.

Any other suggestions?

Regards, Freeagent aka Bonten.

[zuke8675309]

Tell your healers to hike up their skirts.

[Chamenas]

The general consensus is that the armor proc on the ring is not as good as some of the static armor or increased stamina on other rings. But that's just what the mathy people say. I don't do the math stuff, and I use the Ashen Verdict ring myself (mostly because I don't have an alternative). As I said, the only major difference I note is your healthpool. Since I'm in Blood spec, mine is obviously inflated somewhat, but I should still have around 3-4k more than you in my Frost spec and I haven't had complaints thus far. Of course, I'm not on some of the content you're on.

Edit: btw, to some extent, you'll need to expect that healers will bitch. When you die, it's nothing they could have done better, you're just "harder to heal", no one wants to attribute blame to themselves.

[Freeagent]

Thanks for all that input.

[Evassara]

1) done
3) done
4) slightly done, using http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47290 and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47735
5) done
6) done

The Armory shows the updated spec, glyph and items already.

Any other suggestions?

Regards, Freeagent aka Bonten.

Yeah those two trinkets are much better choices for most battles, a good tank will switch things up based on fights though. So on a fight like festergut where you know you will be going under 35% on phase 3 the coin trinket makes sense!