Blood DK - Too much mastery?

[Ckealus]

Hi guys,
This is my first proper post on here, and it's been done in a bit of a rush so I hope I'm doing it right

I began tanking on my DK a couple of months ago, and I'm finally in a position to say that I'm "Geared". I usually play a Protection Paladin so it's been quite a change of scene for me.

The question:

Armoury Link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...antes/advanced

How much Mastery is too much? I've invested heavily into the stat as I've heard from various sources that it's our best stat. I have 23.27 Mastery now, which is a sizeable Blood Shield. However I feel extremely squishy compared to my Paladin, who is only slightly better geared.

I realise there have been many calculations, spreadsheets etc that explain the relevance of mastery vs. avoidance, but I'll be the first to admit that the numbers are really going over my head on this one. Should I reduce my Mastery in favour of solid avoidance? Or perhaps increase my distinctly average health pool? Or maybe even increase Hit and Expertise to capitalise on what is a very Death Strike heavy build.

Apologies for the wall of text, and thankyou in advance for any advice you can offer. Anyone with personal experience of gearing a Blood DK would be welcome in the discussion

Trin.

[Michultradk]

At your gear level you have to drop the SS forge and pick up SSG forge, it's going to make lots of difference in your damage intake.

You should be swapping your trinkets for certain fights, not always using the Broken Image trinket, though it's a small thing. Fights like heroic Magmaw where its better to have the double stam trinkets.

You need to pick up your Legs for your 4 piece, but you might be trying to win those in a drop. Otherwise your gear looks good, get the Vial of Stolen Memories (Stam trinket) from the Twin Dragons, has a good drop rate and you might already have it.

[Zee786]

Mastery is, so far, the best stat for dk's but you need to get hit caped the logic behind this is if a paladin misses it doesn't matter to much because it is still mitigated by the extra armour and a chance of a block but if a death knight misses a death strike there is a large amount of damage that goes unmitigated so hit is more important to dk's. This is explained in detain in this post on ej.

http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t110102-...e_tanking_4_x/

Other than that you have good gear and as long as you time your CD's and keep bone shield up you should be fine.
Keep the sword shattering rune unless you are doing heroic raids. T11 4 piece bonus is amazing. Trinkets should be rotated with others.

[Michultradk]

Keep in mind you do still need SOME hit/exp, but it's not necessary to get capped in either. The actual 'cap' is a dynamic number that will change from person to person. Sure, you're going to have strings of dodge/miss/parry as some point if you aren't capped, but I've been sub 2% hit and around 12-18 expertise this entire teir and haven't had it turn into a serious issue at ANY point. For those ppl who argue about interrupts and being hit capped, I don't consider that into this statement because in 25 mans, interrupts are covered by other people than the tank. You can assist with them, but shouldn't be involved in any rotation due to the fact you shouldn't be hit capped or you're gimping your survival.

This is taken directly from the thread you linked, in no way do you need to be hit capped, it's only personal preference at best.

I would offer a suggestion to the OP, since you feel squishy in your current spec and forge, just try SSG for a week and see if it feels better and come back and let us know. I will challenge the current lore that says until you start hardmodes you should keep the SS forge, I think it should be after you cross a certain level of dodge/parry you should swap. All of this depends on if you truly want to utilize your mastery, if you are shooting for pure avoidance then its no question, gem, forge and enchant all avoidance for that matter.

I will however agree that CD usage for DK's is as important as going to a party with pants on, it is vital to our survival and in fact part of our regular rotation. Where as other tanks might use them certain times to make things easier, we use them strictly for survival no matter the situation.

[uglie]

I would definitely get SSG over SS. About 2 weeks ago I tried SS on a second weapon and just felt squishy, so i immediately went back to ssg. SSG seemed to smooth out the dmg spikes that we do take.
As for Hit/exp caps I currently run with 14exp and .76% hit and interrupts do not miss any more by game design.
Also get your BS up to get the 2 extra sockets asafp, you're basically missing 80 of one stat (mastery).

[Ckealus]

Thanks for your feedback guys I'll take all this into account and try out a few changes that you suggested

Cheers again!
Trin

[Zee786]

Keep in mind you do still need SOME hit/exp, but it's not necessary to get capped in either. The actual 'cap' is a dynamic number that will change from person to person. Sure, you're going to have strings of dodge/miss/parry as some point if you aren't capped, but I've been sub 2% hit and around 12-18 expertise this entire teir and haven't had it turn into a serious issue at ANY point. For those ppl who argue about interrupts and being hit capped, I don't consider that into this statement because in 25 mans, interrupts are covered by other people than the tank. You can assist with them, but shouldn't be involved in any rotation due to the fact you shouldn't be hit capped or you're gimping your survival.

This is taken directly from the thread you linked, in no way do you need to be hit capped, it's only personal preference at best.

I would offer a suggestion to the OP, since you feel squishy in your current spec and forge, just try SSG for a week and see if it feels better and come back and let us know. I will challenge the current lore that says until you start hardmodes you should keep the SS forge, I think it should be after you cross a certain level of dodge/parry you should swap. All of this depends on if you truly want to utilize your mastery, if you are shooting for pure avoidance then its no question, gem, forge and enchant all avoidance for that matter.

I will however agree that CD usage for DK's is as important as going to a party with pants on, it is vital to our survival and in fact part of our regular rotation. Where as other tanks might use them certain times to make things easier, we use them strictly for survival no matter the situation.

There has been extensive testing on the subject (so its not lore) of SSG or SS and for normals it was found that SS is better at least until some higher level gear is attained. However I will say that like trinkets it might be best to try switching runes for different bosses.
You argument regarding hit is flawed as if you had read the post you would have found data taken using simulation that states that hit is important not necessarily to the cap but close to it as stated in the recently updated op in the post.

[uglie]

There has been extensive testing on the subject (so its not lore) of SSG or SS and for normals it was found that SS is better at least until some higher level gear is attained. However I will say that like trinkets it might be best to try switching runes for different bosses.
You argument regarding hit is flawed as if you had read the post you would have found data taken using simulation that states that hit is important not necessarily to the cap but close to it as stated in the recently updated op in the post.

For me squishy and taking less dmg are 2 different things. Squishy is referring to taking huge dmg spikes. So while SS might make you take less dmg overall, SSG smoothes out the dmg spikes.

[Michultradk]

There has been extensive testing on the subject (so its not lore) of SSG or SS and for normals it was found that SS is better at least until some higher level gear is attained. However I will say that like trinkets it might be best to try switching runes for different bosses.
You argument regarding hit is flawed as if you had read the post you would have found data taken using simulation that states that hit is important not necessarily to the cap but close to it as stated in the recently updated op in the post.

I have actually read that entire thread, and every comment attached and I still cant find what you are talking about that says we need "hit to cap". The last update was for 4.1 and no real changes were discussed.

What I copied above (in my first comment) and put part of it in bold letter was taken from the thread, from Riggins part down below the OP, says that hit basically does not matter. Again, and quote " I have been running sub 2% hit and 12-18 Exp this entire expansion with no problems, and gemming or enchanting for hit and exp is seriously compromising your survival".

Note he has cleared all content to date.

This is also from that same thread;

"Runeforge: swordshattering rather than gargoyle. In hard-mode progression raiding, Gargoyle could be better, but in levels of effort below than, use swordshattering".

All I'm asking the original OP is, go try it for themselves and see how it works. He only has a couple pieces of ilvl 346 gear and I really think it would make a difference in his damage regardless of the content he's doing, it really did for me so much so that I was utterly surprised I hadn't tried that earlier.

This leads me to believe that after you cross XX amount of dodge/parry, regardless of the content you are doing, you should swap rune forges for the SSG. I think it's important for us to understand that when we were first discussing this we were all in ilvl333-346 gear and the SS really made a big difference in dungeons with a full 4% jump in parry. Now that we have better gear and our respectable numbers of dodge/parry are much higher I think the 4% gain is not as good as the armor bump you get from SSG (when i swapped I got ~1600 armor and 3k HP), along with the health which is a direct bump to blood shield, no matter how small it may seem.

If someone could truly work out the numbers to say what the difference is between going from 12% parry, to 16% parry, vs a 1600 armor and 3k health bump it would really tell the tale. I'm not sure this is possible given all the different scenarios that could and would apply.

All I can say is when I swapped it made a sizable difference in my damage spikes and made my play feel much better.

[Prexie]

There's no way you have too much mastery at this point.

SSG helps your mastery by increasing your health value. Blood shields can't go past 100% of your total health. SS is a great runeforge but since it is avoidance it devalues your mastery slightly.

Death Knight tanking is all about utilizing your cooldowns effectively while utilizing big damage phases (Nefarian's breath, double attack, Flame's Orders, etc.) to stack big shields. Blood barrier up time is huge as well. You can't necessarily compare our mitigation to a block tank because we function more reactively.

[Zee786]

Yes you are correct the statement I was referring to has bred removed however the data that was tacked is still there and shows a death strike miss! I have run numerous simulation using bloodsim and have found numerous occasions where the DS has missed. Now you don't neccessarily need 8% I'm currently at 6% and am doing neffarion HM.
Speaking from experience, having solo tanked the double attack on chimerion, there are fights that if you miss a DS at a specific time can cause a wipe.

As to the quote
"Runeforge: swordshattering rather than gargoyle. In hard-mode progression raiding, Gargoyle could be better, but in levels of effort below than, use swordshattering."
This clearly states that swordshattering is better in normal modes an has been shown using bloodsim I'm the ej post.
I do agree that there is a point where the avoidance is no longer required but this is when the combined avoidance is roughly 20-30% without any reforging or gemming and around 20-25 points of mastery also without gemming reforging. The consensus is that at this point to "stack" stam or mastery. Most stack a mix of both as larger health pools are required for HM's.
Now it is true that the SSG rune would smooth out the damage because of the increased armour but it has been shown that in normal modes you actually take more damage.
So yes experiment especially talk to your tank healer and do a week of each. If you can record you runs so you can look back at it and adjust.