Briefly.Originally Posted by Swam
Sounds a lot like you're raiding normal modes in full 359 and maybe some 372's. Naturally it seems super easy.Well its happened... Im bored with the dk and tanking in general. Its just gotten too easy. I dont know if its the game or I have just gotten that good but most of the time I am raiding I am watching tv... and im focused on the tv. I still somehow rank on both the dps and healing charts on one of the wow charting sites. I get annoyed as hell because when I an in a tank swap fights and the warrior tank in my group taunts the boss off of me I have to stop attacking in order not to pull aggro back. I self heal roughly 40-60% of my damage taken as well. So either i am playing really above par which I doubt or dks are a bit op right now. Nerf needed maybe. I hate to say that but when I can pull 9-14k dps as the tank depending on how much I pay attention and can survive for several minutes without heals for raid bosses if I manage my cooldowns, there is something wrong. I have tanked the council of the 4 winds with no dedicated healer before. Its kind of a joke.
Briefly.
SQUEAK.
--(The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)
Which rune is the best for my DK? Or should i enchant my weapon with Windwalker ( 600 dodge on hit and 15% move speed)?
here is my armory http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../zeener/simple
You should go with the Gargoyle forge, and like the above poster says I think you'll see your dmg intake flatten out somewhat.
So out of these 19 pages on this thread and the 302 pages in the HALP! forum, I haven't been able to find solid advice on how to pull a trash pack as a DK in a cata heroic and minimize my spike dmg taken.
Example:
2 melee and 2 casters pull in Heroic Deadmines. I have the rogue sap one of the casters and I'll Death Grip the other caster to my DnD that was put down prior to the pull which pulls the two melee as well. I then use this particular rotation: Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, Blood Boil, Heart Strike and/or Rune Tap to give me my Blade Barrier, then Death Strike to pop up my Blood Shield considering the most damage I take is probably going to be before my Blade Barrier is up as well as it gives me a little buffer while I'm gaining a little more threat with Rune Strike and more Heart Strikes. If the dps pull the mobs before I get my first Blood Boil off, I see that with my Threat Plates and I'll use it at that time instead, however this doesn't usually happen because my DnD does fine holding the trash for those 1-2 GCD's needed.
The problem with this is:
The healer says that I take a lot of spike damage. I am trying to minimize that.
I was healing a DK tank while on my pally the other night that took little to absolutely no spike damage. That was the easiest tank that I have ever healed before and she wasn't using any CC. Also, she wasn't raid geared, only heroic blues and rep epics. I only wish that I remembered the name of that dk so that I can look her up. I want to be like her. I want to smooth out the damage enough to make my healers want to heal me more than any other tank.
I am currently gearing up so, at the moment, I only have 11% dodge and 12% parry while using the stoneskin gargoyle runeforge. I am gemming for a mix of stamina and avoidance (parry/sta for reds, dodge/sta for yellows, generally solid sta in blues for the moment) and reforging for both mastery and avoidance.
So, my questions are... is there a different opening priority system that will reduce my spike damage taken or will mine suffice when my gear gets better? Would different stat priorities decrease those spikes or, at least, minimize how often they occur? I do try to keep Bone Shield up before every pull (which is something that I honestly need to work on) but are there other things that I can do for each and every pull to achieve the goal that I am looking to achieve?
PS I know this would probably be better suited in the HALP! forum, however I don't want this to just be about me. Since I could not locate this information anywhere else and I'm sure I'm not the only tank trying out a DK and loving it, I wanted the answers to these questions to be shown to others who read this guide as a starter.
Last edited by Crittable; 05-23-2011 at 01:11 PM.
What seems to work for me is DnD>outbreak>heartstrike(to get some innitial aggro)>pestilence and then tabtargetting deathstrikes & runestrikes. If I feel I don't need the heal/shield that much I'll replace a DS with 2 heartstrikes for some extra damage. Have your boneshield up before the pull and use vamp blood freely.
I find I take significantly less damage when:
A) Blood Barrier is up.
B) Full diseases on anything trying to hurt me (2 basic and the talented one)
C) Bone shield helps. Pre-casting before pulls lets it come off CD mid-fight for an added help.
D) Maybe its me, but I am cooldown happy... In rough going I'm chaining&stacking them and so on.
E) Bad guys casting spells... no. Mind Freeze and Strangulate (Strangulate a caster at range and it comes right to you).
Further to the above, if you pop Vamp Blood on the pull, your healer's first (usually smaller) heals will help keep you nicely topped up without them having to dig deep into their mana pool and you can focus on grabbing threat. With really strong or overgeared healers this usually isn't necessary.
In caster heavy pulls, pop AMS right at the start, and in support of point E above, get your group to do interrupts! Most people undervalue a simple interrupt or silence. If the add can't cast/use his ability, it's not going to hurt you is it?
Also, avoidance is very effective against trash packs in dungeons; their hit tends to be low enough for DRW (assuming you have the RP for it) or an on-use avoidance trinket to smooth out your damage in-take quite a bit. This is even more effective coupled with Bone Shield; the first 4 hits that actually make it through your avoidance, get absorbed by the shield. By that time your healer is in their groove, you have RP for DRW (if you haven't used it yet) or Lichborne, you still have your big CDs, and it's cake.
Finally, WHEN you deathstrike is key; you can spam it, and that works, but it leads to odd little hops in your health pool. If you practice timing it to your damage intake, you can make it work much more 'evenly'. You don't want to leave it too long, though; the Bloodshield tracker add-on is very helpful in this area. Also make sure you get at least 1 deathstrike in really early to provide you with a small buffer, and don't forget to keep throwing the odd one or two into your rotation, even when building threat.
From there, it's just practice, practice, practice. I highly recommend pugging for this; it's painful sometimes, but you get so many different types of healers that way, and you have to learn to deal with almost any situation, which teaches you more about how to tank than any amount of discussion.
Last edited by cuttingblack; 07-29-2011 at 07:50 AM.
Gargoyle won't flatten out damage spikes (and neither will Swordshattering); if you take 10k damage, 9k damage, 11k damage, then 20k, that's a spike, and having those numbers become (hypothetically) 9k, 8.1k, 9.9k and 18k due to reduced physical damage intake won't diminish the spike in any significant manner. The spike will be a smaller % of your health both because the actual damage was reduced and because your health pool is larger, but you will still see a marked difference between the "low" damage points and the "high" damage points, ergo a "spike".
Gargoyle is great if your health-pool is low, and you really struggle to take big melee hits, due to lower gear. It gives that little more time to deal with dangerous situations with your cooldowns, and your healers feel more comfortable with the extra head-room, especially since some of the bigger "OMG!" heals are based on % of overall health, rather than a flat number.
Swordshattering is better when you want to take less hits, and becomes more valuable as you tank larger and larger groups of enemies, especially since it's a flat rate increase and stacks with DRW nicely. At lower gear levels, the 4% flat rate is pretty weak, though, since the overall benefit of stacking avoidance (as a DK) is low to start with. The disarm reduction is a nice plus, but not very useful in most dungeons.
SS is also the better enchant at higher gear levels, imo; the % armour boost from Gargoyle is not that big, since our base armour value is pretty low, and health pools become less important as you progress. You begin to favour gems and enchants for mastery above stamina in every way, and the flat rate increase of parry from SS on top of your already high parry rating from gear adds more value than the small armour increase already mentioned. Also disarm against big bosses in raids starts to become important, even if most of them don't do disarms. For that one boss that does, you really don't want to be denied your deathstrikes for too long.
Last edited by cuttingblack; 07-29-2011 at 10:53 AM. Reason: grammar and clarity
good post
This question is regarding the T12 2 piece bonus: "Your melee attacks cause Burning Blood on your target, which deals 800 fire damage every 2 sec for 6 sec and causes your abilities to behave as if you had 2 diseases present on the target"
Q: Does anybody know if the bonus only applies to the additional damage you get from having 2 diseases up for abilities like HS and BB and not to the debuffs applied by the diseases that Burning Blood represents? Or in other words, do I still have to reapply Frost Fever (via Icy Touch) and Scarlet Fever (via Plague Strike) if I have the 2pc bonus and Burning Blood is up (meaning that Burning Blood is applying the 20% attack speed debuff and the 10% physical damage debuff)?
Last edited by Crashe; 08-23-2011 at 08:27 PM. Reason: Fixed link from 2pc dps to 2pc tank
The 2pc does not apply the debuffs. It's quite specific in terms of the wording, and only pure damage is applied, so abilities like Blood-caked Blade will apply their additional damage, which is ordinarliy based on how many diseases you have up, as if you ALWAYS have both diseases up, for as long as your 2pc buff is active. There are a few other abilities which work in this way, but not meany, and really, you should always have both of your diseases up on all targets you are tanking.
[Going off at a slight tangent] The only possible exception could be if you are a tanking a boss in 25-man and someone else (another tank, most likely, or possibly a frost DK for Frost Fever) is applying the debuffs. If you're a DK tank in a 10-man raid-group, then you are almost certainly going to be *that* guy for at least 1 of your diseases, so you might as well be applying both - that said, it ultimately depends on your raid comp, obviously.
In summary, our 2pc sucks. You only go for the set pieces if you want 4pc, and 4pc is well worth getting, make no mistake, but until you have 4 pieces, I would suggest using other gear than set-gear IF and only IF it is better itemised in terms of defense stats, i.e. Mastery, Dodge and Parry, in that order of preference (Mastery > Dodge > Parry).
Also, I highly recommend reading this post. It's the most concise account of what really makes a good DK tank that I've yet to come across, with some useful boss tips for Firelands:
Riggnaros on DK End-game Raid tanking
The original posts seem quite out of date. They're talking about pre 4.1 or even pre 4.0.6 mechanics. For example, DK demo shout analogue is no longer applied by blood boil, but by blood plague. Will these posts be updated with current knowledge and mechanics? Because this is one of the few remaining blood DK guides i can find, apart from the one on Elitist Jerks.
retired tank, holy power killed it for me.
I don't think Satorri is around much anymore so someone else may have to take the torch for this. I'm dpsing so my blood tanking is nonexistent.
Which reminds me. Imma have to write a guide soon for it.
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Hello!!!! Good post!!!!!!!
Correct; he hung up his hat some time ago; just under a year ago now, I think.
If anyone will be taking his work and moving it into the future of WoW, you'll most likely find them on pwnwear.com; this is to Blood DKs the "go to" site for all basic and advanced information. EJ elaborates on some of the more involved conversations, and discusses the finer points of some aspects of build vs. others, but this all feeds back into pwnwear anyway. I found it incredibly useful as a resource while I was active, although I've been out of WoW for a couple of months now.
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