Death Knights in End Game

[Gregasaurous]

So i got this DK tank of mine who every now and then manages to get as geared as my main (to my deepest annoyance). Anyway, i was wondering, do we ever do anything other than stack up mastery and then after that put some mastery on top? Now, i understand this is a pretty sound strategy, in most situations where Shield tanks HAVE to have a bit of a health pool as a buffer, we got a nice bloodsheild ftw. But i'm wondering if there's an actual set place where we do preform best. For example, Druids aim for 40% (?) avoidance and then plug away at their stamina or mastery (IDK exact numbers or mechanics, my druid is lvl 25). Shield tanks, obviously have CTC, and then mostly stack stamina. What about DK's? Do we have any specific avoidance numbers we should try to be sitting at? Is there a point where Bloodshield is nice and OP so we might as well just stack stamina? Thoughts? Opinions? Hair-brained theory's? Please and thank you.


Here's my Battle.net, missing enchants and glyphs. I've found that keeping my warriors Tank, DPS and PVP gear in perfect order is a very expensive prospect for the first month or so of the Tier, so my DK is kinda feeling the effects. If you think this is sketchy, you should see his Frost gear.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ngigs/advanced

[swelt]

No glyphs? Srsly? Surely there's someone in your guild that can help you out if money is an issue?

Anyway - this is mostly personal (only slightly informed) opinion, not based on any particular study of theorycraft. I haven't seen a lot of current and credible theorycraft, but I haven't really looked for it. Insert pinch of salt.

Mastery is good, but it's only great if you play well. Where shield tanks get a passive bonus and strive for a cap, you are just making your death strike self healing/shielding process more effective... so if you are good at playing rune tetris, timing your death strikes, turning over your runic power etc, then mastery works well. If you aren't so good at that (particularly in stressful / complex situations) then mastery won't be boosting your survival as much as raw avoidance or even stamina would. Avoidance also has the benefit of increasing your bone shield uptime - since the last patch and with T13 quality gear, very high uptimes on boneshield are possible in many fights.

Mastery is particularly good in this tier of raiding, as there are a bunch of 'tank killer' mechanics with DK mastery reduces, that block does not. (Grr!). A couple of well timed death strikes can make Impale at deathwing or focussed assault from hagara a lot less scary. And Yor'sahj heroic is a fight designed to make blood DKs look pimp.

I'd suggest you:
- Glyph and enchant. No excuses, even if you opt for the slightly cheaper enchants.
- Consider switching rune to swordshattering (some personal preference here)
- Focus more on technique and getting the most out of your abilities/cooldowns (including the minor ones like blood and rune tap) than worrying about stat balance

[Gregasaurous]

No glyphs? Srsly? Surely there's someone in your guild that can help you out if money is an issue?

Yeah, those things, somehow nobody in my guild has given me a straight answer about those. (something about the ink exchanges) So i'm getting to the point where i'm about to go farm 1k herbs, throw them at an inscrip and tell them to stfu and do what needs doing.

But yeah, Bloodsheild is definitely a good tool for cheating tank killers. I've had plenty of fun sitting in front of Hagara like a lazy ass and just placing a double DS at 50% health on a FA.
As to the rune, i was running around with Swordshatter, but i heard that the armor buff was better for some of the raid encounters.