Death Knight Stam vs others

[umutterol]

Hello guys, i've started to gear my old dk but i have a question and i know there is alot of questions about the subject but i need your advices. so i know as a blood dk i need to stack stam and keep dodge and parry close as posible but with all of this my hp is stands very low i have 25 mastery 20parry and 15 dodge rating but i got 175k hp (without buffs) its kinda annoy me is it really normal to have this kinda low hp.
BTW my ilvl is 383.

[Tengenstein]

175k hp unbuffed is not very low, you just don't have a great deal of gear. You shouldn't really be stacking stam or worrying about how much total HP you have unless you are getting one-shot by the content you're doing. You really want to tailor yourself to the progression encounter your working on, if its mainly magic damage or mass aoe tanking you do want to favour stam, if were talking maily single target tanking and a mostly physical damage fight, you want enough stam to not get one shot and then maximise mastery and avoidance. Usaully this would be done via swapping to trinkets appropriate to the fight.

[Theotherone]

An armory link would help.

You don't really stack stam so much anymore; you want to keep a balance with lean toward Mastery. So blue sokcets should be Pussiant gem (green); Red should be Fine gem, (parry, mastery) and yellow Fractured gem (mastery). I use Stoneskin Gargoyle on weapon, other prefer the Rune of Sword Shattering for the 4% parry. I find I have so much parry on gear that I'd rather have the stam/armor.

You'll find as you gear up, your bubbles from mastery will be insane to the point that if you get a nice chain of Death Strikes you'll make a good Disc priest cry with envy.

The other nice side effect from all the mastery on gear is that it makes Gurthalak, Voice of the Deeps a nice DK tank weapon.

[Tengenstein]

I'm not particularilly up on DK tanking weapons but why does Mastery make Gurtie nice tanking weapon?

[Leucifer]

Pretty much what these guys said.

Go for mastery. Keep up the avoidance. Don't chase stam. As you gear up in raid, stam will climb. Really, there's nothing you can do with stam gems that won't be beat out by a gear improvement. The difference between t12 and t13 gear, just in the stam stat on each piece was over 100 stam if I remember correctly. Gather up some trinks mainly. Use those to adjust per fight.

If you're looking at people, especially druids, who are in t13.... yeah, you're going to feel some envy. Stay the course, Mastery > Dodge > Parry > Stam.

[Theotherone]

I'm not particularilly up on DK tanking weapons but why does Mastery make Gurtie nice tanking weapon?

Because you can get so much mastery on gear, gems and enchants that you don't have to have the Experimental Specimen Slicer as your tanking weapon, you can go for the increased Strength/Stam and damage from Gurthalak. For example I use the RF finder version of Gurthalak, since the normal version of it won't drop for me in our alt runs, and my mastery on gear still gives me 190% absorb. You'll get a lot of people saying that the Slicer is the only viable DK tank weapon, and that's just not true.

[umutterol]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/auchindoun/Nêm/simple

thanks alot guys. yea that druids make me go insane but after all i read the all things you said the things begin to make more sence

edit: i have Veil of Lies too should i use that instead of Resolve of undying?

[Theotherone]

My own opinion is that Reslove of the Undying is crappy for any tank but a bear; unless it's a gimmick fight. Baleroc comes to mind where you want to dodge Decimation Blade. One of our DK tanks uses it when he solo tanks Madness, it gets him up to 40% avoidance, but from the point of view of healing him on my pally, I don't know that it makes a difference. I personally think that the stam trinket is better.

[leethaxor]

Resolve of the undying is a fine D trinket. As dk's normally have very little avoidance its nice to gain some. Its no where near BiS but its very workable for a DK tank. More so then say a warrior or maybe a pally ( and definatly a druid I think... idk druids).

[Theotherone]

It's workable, but I prefer stam/mastery for my trinkets. Right now I'm at 30% avoidance from gear, although I've let my parry/dodge difference get out of wack in my lust for mastery. Stam just feels sturdier these days and with Vamp Blood the extra stam gives a nice cushion, could just be a personal perference, then again I'm just tanking our DS normal alt run these days.