Dual Wield Blood DK

[Satorri]

Be warned though, after the rise of DW Unholy and Blizzard subsequently dropping the hammer on that spec (by nerfing Sudden Doom to only proc off main hand hits) it seems possibly that if DW Blood ever takes off that they'll do the same for Blood Parasites. But then again DW Unholy was *the top* spec for dps so that might have been another reason for the nerf.

Possible, but they might leave it be, since it is a tank, unless it is actually disproportionately strong on survival and/or threat. At the moment I don't think it is actually better on either by any significant margin, and may trade one for the other in some small degree.

my opinion, will dual wield blood be viable in a raid setting... no
in heroics for fun? yes

Don't write it off as "not viable" for raids. I have a friend who is using without incident in current progression raiding, starting on hard modes. He has had no trouble with it at all, and in some cases has actually done better damage that other parses for the same fight, wielding a 2-hander. That is highly anecdotal, however, as he notes that there is a HUGE fight-to-fight variability just for the natural variation of fights.

Testing shows that using a two handed weapon is better in every aspect. Yes, you can use two one-handed weapons and still complete a heroic. That doesn't mean that you should do it.

This is misleading. Have you tested playing dual wield in its own fashion and measured it insufficient? If so share. Otherwise I assume you are regurgitating what you've been told which was predominantly information spawned by people who looked at simple math (like I did) and said that there is no way it can do better.

That's only true if you take a simple concept of playing out a 2-hand Blood through a fight, then substitute the dual wield damage for 2-hand damage. This is *not* actually reflective of how dual wielding with a tailored spec and priority system would work.

[PatrikL]

The most conservative of purely math-based estimates would still only have you lose 15-20% of your threat if you changed little beyond your weapons. Using other tools you can tilt that even more.

While I know we have no problems with threat in the long run I would be worried about 15-20% in say the first minute of a fight, wouldnt you?

[Theotherone]

Other than it looking cool, what's the great benefit of dual wielding? According to wowhead, there appears to be one pure one handed tank weapon http://www.wowhead.com/item=59347; so, say you're lucky enough to equip two of these, you gained some avoidance. But are they better then something like http://www.wowhead.com/item=59492?

If it's a cool graphic that one is after then dual wield is fine, but beyond that I see no benefit that would make me say "ooh, I have to find a way to do that."

Also, with the buff to Heat Strike and Death Strike in the new patch, it seems to make no sense to not use a two hander to get the full benefit of the increased damage. The Heart Strike buff seems pretty substantial; 175% weapon damage plus 15% pre disease, up from 120% weapon damage and 10% per disease.

[damoklese]

Id like to heartliy agree witht he above sentiments,its jsut silly to do a dual wield tank.
That being said i have a dual wield tank that works just fine and im rather fond of the exclusivity.
Not fidning any major problems with survivability or dps output (frequently top dps in team, i realise this might jsut mean its only gettign posted when im in a poor team tho ;p)
As for agg the only slight issues is if dps are trigger happy with adds and hammer them before i can get diseases spread and a couple of attacks out, but i imagine its much the same if using a 2hander, as we dont have a high dmg multiple target ranged attack to open with

[Selene]

By design, blood death knights are meant to use two-handed weapons. Testing shows that using a two handed weapon is better in every aspect. Yes, you can use two one-handed weapons and still complete a heroic. That doesn't mean that you should do it.

I don't know if it's people being simply fascinated with dual whielding - Drizzt does, so do I! - or people eying something shiny that drops and then arguing why they should have the drop. Yet, for all the people that cannot be bothered to actually read a thread, something like this boils down to 'the tankspot guys say it's worth keeping an eye on - so I'm rolling on this. suck it up warrior/paladin tank! HAHA.'

One of the reasons I liked DW Tanking was because a lot of the 1H weapon are very nice looking, especially with Cata, most of the 2H weapons are just UGLY (or stupid looking) imo, while there are several very nice 1H weapons. The only 2H weapon I have found so far that I like the look of is the 2H Sword from Conquest points.
I overall the talents/spec just don't support DW Tanking as optimal anymore.

[Nehama]

Nightdemon, blood dks like hit and expertise more then we, warrior/pally do. Unless something has been changed in 4,0,6 , their death strike won't heal/absorb if it misses or been dodged/parried.

Therefor, thsoe stats are much more appealing to them.

[Illidra]

BEWARE THE NECROMANCERS !!!!!!

so i can caps

[Serval]

Simply put,until someone takes the time to actually do the math and testing,there's no point in point in saying it can or cannot be done!

[Netheras]

No, at the moment we know it is a threat loss. That much has been worked out. What we think might be true is that there might be some net survivability - until we can get some more evidence of that, there isn't a whole lot supporting DW at all, other than the theory. We can say it should not be done, especially by players new to DK tanking, which is pretty much the gist of it.

Let's drop this thread for now.

[bpheater]

You will kill your threat if you go dual wield. All of your blood abilities are basically based off main hand weapon damage. The only time DW is good is if you are frost dps.

[leethaxor]

I'm going to try to put this rest I hope.
IF we compare a 2.6 one had weapon with a 3.6 speed 2h lets say

Blood Worms
You have 2 2.6 speed weapons meaning you make a melee swing every 1.3 second (approx.) with a 10% chance to proc blood parasites you will spawn a new on once every ~13 seconds as blood.
This is compared to 2h were you will see one once ever ~36 seconds.
Verdict: So you could potentially see a almost a 2x increase to healing from blood worms. Which isn't that bad.

Death Strike
150.0%--Base
285.0%--90% Improved Death Strike
(ignoring glyph) Assuming 20k AP, and Assuming I taught myself normalization correct
For one hand DS: 4270 to 4992 Damage
For two hand DS: 6509 to 7407 Damage
Result: 2hand DS hits for ~150% more.

But the issue at hand is Death Strike's healing isn't tied to its weapon damage. I could rerun the numbers for each attack, but I have a feeling the numbers would be close to the same for most attacks.

Stats
2x Mace of Acrid Death
292 str
438 stam
194 parry
194 mastery

1x Akirus the Worm-Breaker
341 str
512 stam
228 exp
228 mastery

Verdit: 2h give more stats by 117% stam, str, 1st secondary 2nd secondary.

TLDR: The only real buff is to blood worms. So don't. Why, see below.

Looking at my guilds logs. Blood worms heal for about a good 2.5 million on average (averaging the last month of raids 4 raids per week, 4 hours per raid). The buff to blood worms will bring them about inline with our prot paladins self healing. Who sits at around 5 million healed on an average night.

[Toushiro]

You will kill your threat if you go dual wield. All of your blood abilities are basically based off main hand weapon damage. The only time DW is good is if you are frost dps.

yay necro post.

[Darksend]

I'm going to try to put this rest I hope.

this thread was put to rest ... 2 months ago.

[leethaxor]

this thread was put to rest ... 2 months ago.

I didn't revive the vampire I just wanted to stake him.

[damoklese]

technically there might be a threat loss, but i still havent changed from dw, and have no intention to do so myself.on very rare occasions, there are threat issues, thing slike a mostly HC raid geared warrior, specially when you pull th emob and he leaps in and stuns him out of range, or the DK on dps who uses DG and DC as part of their rototation,are a few examples and in fact tody i had a 4 second or so loss of agg, when a mage with mirror image and most of their procs runnign hit a 147k crit while i was kiting the boss away from aoes.is that really so bad?
having actually lived with DW tankign i can say its a very different ball game, and it may be less efficient according to the numbers, but i am still nto finding it problematical.Threat and defense are both sufficient to work unless in an extreme situtation(dungeon hc gear versus raid hc gear sort of thign)i mean it cant be bad when you can survive HC stonecore with a healer sporting a gear set and one 85 req hc dropostly of lvl80 req items.As another example, its really jsut a walk thru to solo minis bosses, like gub in the zul instances, if what i can do with an allegedly inferior set up , then i must wonder jsut how overpowered 2handed set up is, yet strangely it still doesnt tempt me

[Tengenstein]

But Mirror images suppresses the mages threat.... srsly while it's up they gain minus 90 million threat.

[Krenian]

And that's enough of this topic. Thread closed. This has been discussed and isn't worth rehashing anything.