How much damage is HB doing right now? I'm curious how effective kiting a frost DK will be next patch when they can just unload 20% harder hitting HBs left and right.
It wasn't that noticable to me and I didnt ever have any frost runes to use the damn thing becuase i needed all of them to keep CoI up on the target to even get a chance to hit them. The 25k oblit crits were cool but its really frustrating. If you're getting kited in Unholy at least your ghoul and Death coils are still putting some numbers up on them, theyre not just /loling you while plinking you down while you waddle towards them.
MistaCreepy on
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Well, in 4.1 you're going to have 4 "frost" runes to work with all the time, which should afford a lot of chances for HB spam. With the CoI root on DR, it doesn't seem like you'd want to use it more than once every 15 seconds anyway.
Even so Im just so used to my ghoul keeping them honest, espeically when he goes all incredible hulk. Frost has its place in arenas (Melee Cleave teams) but I play shadowcleave in 3's and DK/Resto shammy in 2's and both of these teams demand I be Unholy... I just hope they stop nerfing the damage because its getting really hard to score a kill on a healer even when I land my interrupts and silences.
MistaCreepy on
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I really don't see any more unholy nerfs coming any time soon, since the spec is pretty middle of the road now in PvE, and it's certainly not dominating in PvP.
Anyway, I thought we were talking about BG viability given your initial post. I wouldn't ever want to roll with frost in arenas except for a really gimmicky team.
I really don't see any more unholy nerfs coming any time soon, since the spec is pretty middle of the road now in PvE, and it's certainly not dominating in PvP.
Anyway, I thought we were talking about BG viability given your initial post. I wouldn't ever want to roll with frost in arenas except for a really gimmicky team.
I would only run Frost in a melee cleave comp with a war and whatever healer you can get your hands on. In every other comp UH is king. You can play anything you want in BGs but frost was miserable for me. I havent been kited that bad since Arms warrior vs. Frost mage in TBC.
MistaCreepy on
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I saw a five-boxer this weekend with a holy paladin and four frost DKs. That's gotta be pretty tough to control in arena. On the other hand, 4.1 is going to buff that up pretty nicely. Being able to Strangulate a healer and then spam quad-high damage HBs on someone will probably be pretty good for gibbing teams at the non-competitive level.
As Blood in dungeons, I find myself 'holding' one blood rune off CD so that I never have one 'fully depleted.' My logic is that this forces Rune Strike to refresh a U/F/D rune, leading to more death strikes, leading to more healing+shielding.
Make sense or am I doing something horribly wrong?
As Blood in dungeons, I find myself 'holding' one blood rune off CD so that I never have one 'fully depleted.' My logic is that this forces Rune Strike to refresh a U/F/D rune, leading to more death strikes, leading to more healing+shielding.
Make sense or am I doing something horribly wrong?
Makes sense, but if you have nothing else to do with your GCD and you don't have the RP to try and refresh anything it's worth going ahead and using the rune.
That is exactly what you should be doing. You want to use a Blood rune right before the other one finishes refreshing to get Blade Barrier up, but otherwise leave one rune full all the time. In practice you sometimes have to use both to get the shield back up sometimes because you missed attacks or had to move, and sometimes you want to use it early because you know you'll fill GCD's with other attacks before using Rune Strike again, but in general you want to do what you described.
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
It's also always worth putting them both on cd immediately before a blood tap regardless of the time left on the other rune.
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KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
Heya guys.
I've been looking around on the armory at a lot of other DK tanks and seeing what their gear is like and how it's reforged etc. I haven't reforged any of my gear, as you will see, but my stats seem to be on par with a few of the DKs I decided to look at. They obviously had more hps and a better ilvl than me, but I just want to get an idea of where I stand.
I know my hit is a little bit lacking but I'm not too worried about it for now, I haven't run into any bad miss streaks that have caused me major problems. I'm mainly wondering if I should bother to reforge anything or am I sitting pretty for now?
Kaylean is my DK... have a look and see if, constructively please, there are any changes I could make for the better. I'm going to be heading into raids as guilds MT soon so I'd like to get an idea of where I could improve before we start wiping :P
edit: Also don't bother pointing out that my frost spec and glyphs don't match up, I know they don't :P , I just dps so rarely it keeps slipping my mind to fix it up.
As far as I can tell it looks good, although you are missing quite a few enchants.
Armor on Cloak
Stamina on Chest
You can get hit on your Bracers.
Mastery on Gloves
And missing a belt buckle!
If you are going into a 10 man I would recommend picking up Endless Winter. Being able to have a free off the GCD Interrupt that costs 0 RP is really amazing, and a MUST HAVE in a 10 man raiding environment.
I am assuming you didn't take Abom Strength as someone in your group already has the 10% AP. Good call.
I would take the 1 point out of Bladed Armor and 1 point out of Endemic and max out Endless Winter.
You have a little more dodge rating than parry, but that's good because after Horn of Winter and Kings, they'll be getting close to equal (strength adds to parry rating, but agility just adds directly to dodge).
However, in addition to the missing enchants mentioned, your gems are all over the place. Pick avoidance or mastery and stack it (I suggest mastery, but either is fine), don't make an attempt to balance both. Also, don't gem or enchant for hit or expertise (I suggest reforging out of all of it whenever you can). You do not need hit or expertise to be successful in raids, and while it may feel annoying to miss, you will survive better on average if you put those rating points into avoidance or mastery. Also don't gem stamina. You don't need to worry about hit points for a long time if ever.
Here's me... http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/uther/broodax/advanced (ignore my weapon enchant, I've been fooling around in arena and heroics). I have higher iLevel gear now, but I've been following the same strategy successfully the whole time (and so has almost every well progressed tank I've seen) - stack Mastery (or avoidance) through gemming and reforging, reforge out of threat stats, enchant whatever the best thing for the slot is (so even though I'm focusing on Mastery, Dodge is the best bracer enchant).
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KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
Thanks guys, I'll try and fix some stuff up tonight when I get home.
Yeah I was trying to keep Dodge / Parry close together, but also go for mastery. I may have been trying to do too much. Also, I may have been putting in whatever gem was best to get socket bonus too, I hate seeing an unused bonus, lol.
ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
For tanking, if the bonus is to dodge/parry/mastery/stam it is worth getting.
So blue slots should be whatever/stam green or purple gems, whereas yellow and red slots can be taken up by dodge or mastery and parry gems respectively. If stacking mastery it's worth using parry/stam for reds also, especially as inferno rubies tend to be much more expensive than demonseyes
For tanking, if the bonus is to dodge/parry/mastery/stam it is worth getting.
So blue slots should be whatever/stam green or purple gems, whereas yellow and red slots can be taken up by dodge or mastery and parry gems respectively. If stacking mastery it's worth using parry/stam for reds also, especially as inferno rubies tend to be much more expensive than demonseyes
Correct, always get the socket bonus. Even though we say it's better to stack one thing, that ratings have to be equal, and that stamina isn't important, these are all matters of tiny tiny differences in effectiveness, so you should never throw away free points. There is a parry/mastery orange gem that you'd want in that slot, not the stam one.
So, for Mastery, I do: Yellow -> Mastery, Red -> Parry/Mastery, Blue -> Stam/Mastery. For Avoidance I do: Yellow -> Dodge, Red -> Parry, Blue -> Dodge/Stam
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
For tanking, if the bonus is to dodge/parry/mastery/stam it is worth getting.
So blue slots should be whatever/stam green or purple gems, whereas yellow and red slots can be taken up by dodge or mastery and parry gems respectively. If stacking mastery it's worth using parry/stam for reds also, especially as inferno rubies tend to be much more expensive than demonseyes
Correct, always get the socket bonus. Even though we say it's better to stack one thing, that ratings have to be equal, and that stamina isn't important, these are all matters of tiny tiny differences in effectiveness, so you should never throw away free points. There is a parry/mastery orange gem that you'd want in that slot, not the stam one.
So, for Mastery, I do: Yellow -> Mastery, Red -> Parry/Mastery, Blue -> Stam/Mastery. For Avoidance I do: Yellow -> Dodge, Red -> Parry, Blue -> Dodge/Stam
Oh right.
Our guild's JC doesn't have that pattern so I always forget about it.
I haven't really kept up on the math, but as I understand it for gear of the same iLevel and thus identical amounts of primary stats Agi is supposedly providing more damage mitigation than Str.
Ah, I see. I guess that makes sense with the parry runeforge that you'd want to balance it out with dodge, which is provided by agility. counterintuitive, but interesting.
It actually doesn't have anything to do with the parry runeforge. The parry you get from that is a straight +4% that is tacked on after the diminishing returns from Parry Rating.
The reason any sort of gear/sim tools are going to recommend an agi polearm vs. a strength weapon is that they are prioritizing survival stats and giving very little weight, if any, to threat stats. Unless you've got some really fucked up gear situation that I'm not sure is reasonably possible, agi always converts to dodge % at a higher rate than strength converts to parry rating->parry %. Thus, the higher dodge gained from agi is being considered superior to the lesser parry gained from strength, even though the strength (and usually slower weapon speed of strength weapons) gives you more threat.
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
It actually doesn't have anything to do with the parry runeforge. The parry you get from that is a straight +4% that is tacked on after the diminishing returns from Parry Rating.
The reason any sort of gear/sim tools are going to recommend an agi polearm vs. a strength weapon is that they are prioritizing survival stats and giving very little weight, if any, to threat stats. Unless you've got some really fucked up gear situation that I'm not sure is reasonably possible, agi always converts to dodge % at a higher rate than strength converts to parry rating->parry %. Thus, the higher dodge gained from agi is being considered superior to the lesser parry gained from strength, even though the strength (and usually slower weapon speed of strength weapons) gives you more threat.
pre-raid you will not miss the threat.
In a raid situation where you have very well geared DPS, though, you might get threat-capped as your weapon is your single largest threat multiplier, especially in situations where big snap-aggro is required (like an off-the bat bloodlust)
The real point, and the thing that tends to make the agi debate a non-issue for death knights is that the current crop of agi polearms have secondary stats which are low on the priority list for tanking dks.
They've always got crit or haste, but the str twohanders often have just expertise, hit and mastery.
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
The real point, and the thing that tends to make the agi debate a non-issue for death knights is that the current crop of agi polearms have secondary stats which are low on the priority list for tanking dks.
They've always got crit or haste, but the str twohanders often have just expertise, hit and mastery.
This isn't particularly true at the 346 ilvl. Mastery is the only stat found on two handers which actually improves survivability, and only two strength weapons have it at that ilvl, and the other stat they have is... haste (incidentally making them very good for unholy. Sword of the Bottomless Pit and Wild Hammer, in that order, are BiS at that ilvl assuming you can make hit cap otherwise)
Seliza's spear has the best survivability stats for both DK and bear tanks pre-raid.
Personally I just used both Seliza's Spear and Foe Reaper. There's nothing wrong with having two weapons to switch between.
It actually doesn't have anything to do with the parry runeforge. The parry you get from that is a straight +4% that is tacked on after the diminishing returns from Parry Rating.
The reason any sort of gear/sim tools are going to recommend an agi polearm vs. a strength weapon is that they are prioritizing survival stats and giving very little weight, if any, to threat stats. Unless you've got some really fucked up gear situation that I'm not sure is reasonably possible, agi always converts to dodge % at a higher rate than strength converts to parry rating->parry %. Thus, the higher dodge gained from agi is being considered superior to the lesser parry gained from strength, even though the strength (and usually slower weapon speed of strength weapons) gives you more threat.
pre-raid you will not miss the threat.
In a raid situation where you have very well geared DPS, though, you might get threat-capped as your weapon is your single largest threat multiplier, especially in situations where big snap-aggro is required (like an off-the bat bloodlust)
I'm not arguing any of that, just explaining to the earlier poster why he's seeing what he's seeing with Mr. Robot (or whatever gear optimizer).
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
It actually doesn't have anything to do with the parry runeforge. The parry you get from that is a straight +4% that is tacked on after the diminishing returns from Parry Rating.
The reason any sort of gear/sim tools are going to recommend an agi polearm vs. a strength weapon is that they are prioritizing survival stats and giving very little weight, if any, to threat stats. Unless you've got some really fucked up gear situation that I'm not sure is reasonably possible, agi always converts to dodge % at a higher rate than strength converts to parry rating->parry %. Thus, the higher dodge gained from agi is being considered superior to the lesser parry gained from strength, even though the strength (and usually slower weapon speed of strength weapons) gives you more threat.
pre-raid you will not miss the threat.
In a raid situation where you have very well geared DPS, though, you might get threat-capped as your weapon is your single largest threat multiplier, especially in situations where big snap-aggro is required (like an off-the bat bloodlust)
I'm not arguing any of that, just explaining to the earlier poster why he's seeing what he's seeing with Mr. Robot (or whatever gear optimizer).
Oh I know, I was just adding to what you were saying and explaining why threat stats are valued so low.
Thank you all for the discussion. The dk is my 3rd alt and I do use mr. robot for my alts because keeping all the mathiness straight for one class is enough.
So I tried PVPing as Unholy the other day. Within an hour I was back to the Frost. It didn't feel like I was doing enough (any) damage. Is there a certain gear level needed?
KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
edited April 2011
Has anyone done the jump from DK tank to Warrior tank? Is it worth it?
I'm considering jumping ship.. it could be due to the fact that grass is greener on warrior side, but it also seems they make things easier on healers by being less spikey..
I take less or the same damage than our exactly geared warrior tank. And DK tanks get the chicks.
What's the other tank in your raid? The only thing that would make me switch is if the other tank was another DK or a bear, just to get a tank more suited to being hit in the face, er... shield.
I havent made the jump to Warrior tanking, but I regularly main tank alongside a warrior or a paladin (3 of us rotate the duties depending on fight) for raids. I havent had complaints from our healers, or I did, until they got used to me taking more damage, but also healing some of that right back after a DS. Part of tanking as DK is having your healers understand that your damage is more spikey but not too panic.
And sometimes our self-healing and defensive cooldowns are awesome for healers. CHimaeron seems to be an easier fight to tank for DK's since DS and Runetap brings us about the 10k mark, making you 1 less person to heal post Massacre.
And AMS, use it for everything you can think it'll work for. Like Nef's electrocute, again 1 less person to heal up, or On Twighlight Ascendant Council for Ignacious' flamethrower thing. With a 45s cooldown and such a big reduction in non-physical damage, its one of my favorites.
I kite the parasites, but I do it in frost spec with chillblains while in blood presence for threat. Did you have questions in it?
Edit: I read your post, so me kiting in frost spec is irrelevant to your question.
Never tried kiting without chillblains, so biggest question would be if they ever catch you unslowed they're not too fast to begin with. Only slow blood dk's have close to any access to is desecration, but that needs a melee hit.
Posts
Anyway, I thought we were talking about BG viability given your initial post. I wouldn't ever want to roll with frost in arenas except for a really gimmicky team.
I would only run Frost in a melee cleave comp with a war and whatever healer you can get your hands on. In every other comp UH is king. You can play anything you want in BGs but frost was miserable for me. I havent been kited that bad since Arms warrior vs. Frost mage in TBC.
Tips :P?
Don't go up against a frost mage?
Make sense or am I doing something horribly wrong?
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Makes sense, but if you have nothing else to do with your GCD and you don't have the RP to try and refresh anything it's worth going ahead and using the rune.
I've been looking around on the armory at a lot of other DK tanks and seeing what their gear is like and how it's reforged etc. I haven't reforged any of my gear, as you will see, but my stats seem to be on par with a few of the DKs I decided to look at. They obviously had more hps and a better ilvl than me, but I just want to get an idea of where I stand.
I know my hit is a little bit lacking but I'm not too worried about it for now, I haven't run into any bad miss streaks that have caused me major problems. I'm mainly wondering if I should bother to reforge anything or am I sitting pretty for now?
Kaylean is my DK... have a look and see if, constructively please, there are any changes I could make for the better. I'm going to be heading into raids as guilds MT soon so I'd like to get an idea of where I could improve before we start wiping :P
edit: Also don't bother pointing out that my frost spec and glyphs don't match up, I know they don't :P , I just dps so rarely it keeps slipping my mind to fix it up.
Armor on Cloak
Stamina on Chest
You can get hit on your Bracers.
Mastery on Gloves
And missing a belt buckle!
If you are going into a 10 man I would recommend picking up Endless Winter. Being able to have a free off the GCD Interrupt that costs 0 RP is really amazing, and a MUST HAVE in a 10 man raiding environment.
I am assuming you didn't take Abom Strength as someone in your group already has the 10% AP. Good call.
I would take the 1 point out of Bladed Armor and 1 point out of Endemic and max out Endless Winter.
However, in addition to the missing enchants mentioned, your gems are all over the place. Pick avoidance or mastery and stack it (I suggest mastery, but either is fine), don't make an attempt to balance both. Also, don't gem or enchant for hit or expertise (I suggest reforging out of all of it whenever you can). You do not need hit or expertise to be successful in raids, and while it may feel annoying to miss, you will survive better on average if you put those rating points into avoidance or mastery. Also don't gem stamina. You don't need to worry about hit points for a long time if ever.
Here's me... http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/uther/broodax/advanced (ignore my weapon enchant, I've been fooling around in arena and heroics). I have higher iLevel gear now, but I've been following the same strategy successfully the whole time (and so has almost every well progressed tank I've seen) - stack Mastery (or avoidance) through gemming and reforging, reforge out of threat stats, enchant whatever the best thing for the slot is (so even though I'm focusing on Mastery, Dodge is the best bracer enchant).
Yeah I was trying to keep Dodge / Parry close together, but also go for mastery. I may have been trying to do too much. Also, I may have been putting in whatever gem was best to get socket bonus too, I hate seeing an unused bonus, lol.
So blue slots should be whatever/stam green or purple gems, whereas yellow and red slots can be taken up by dodge or mastery and parry gems respectively. If stacking mastery it's worth using parry/stam for reds also, especially as inferno rubies tend to be much more expensive than demonseyes
Correct, always get the socket bonus. Even though we say it's better to stack one thing, that ratings have to be equal, and that stamina isn't important, these are all matters of tiny tiny differences in effectiveness, so you should never throw away free points. There is a parry/mastery orange gem that you'd want in that slot, not the stam one.
So, for Mastery, I do: Yellow -> Mastery, Red -> Parry/Mastery, Blue -> Stam/Mastery. For Avoidance I do: Yellow -> Dodge, Red -> Parry, Blue -> Dodge/Stam
Oh right.
Our guild's JC doesn't have that pattern so I always forget about it.
The reason any sort of gear/sim tools are going to recommend an agi polearm vs. a strength weapon is that they are prioritizing survival stats and giving very little weight, if any, to threat stats. Unless you've got some really fucked up gear situation that I'm not sure is reasonably possible, agi always converts to dodge % at a higher rate than strength converts to parry rating->parry %. Thus, the higher dodge gained from agi is being considered superior to the lesser parry gained from strength, even though the strength (and usually slower weapon speed of strength weapons) gives you more threat.
pre-raid you will not miss the threat.
In a raid situation where you have very well geared DPS, though, you might get threat-capped as your weapon is your single largest threat multiplier, especially in situations where big snap-aggro is required (like an off-the bat bloodlust)
They've always got crit or haste, but the str twohanders often have just expertise, hit and mastery.
This isn't particularly true at the 346 ilvl. Mastery is the only stat found on two handers which actually improves survivability, and only two strength weapons have it at that ilvl, and the other stat they have is... haste (incidentally making them very good for unholy. Sword of the Bottomless Pit and Wild Hammer, in that order, are BiS at that ilvl assuming you can make hit cap otherwise)
Seliza's spear has the best survivability stats for both DK and bear tanks pre-raid.
Personally I just used both Seliza's Spear and Foe Reaper. There's nothing wrong with having two weapons to switch between.
Oh I know, I was just adding to what you were saying and explaining why threat stats are valued so low.
I'm considering jumping ship.. it could be due to the fact that grass is greener on warrior side, but it also seems they make things easier on healers by being less spikey..
What's the other tank in your raid? The only thing that would make me switch is if the other tank was another DK or a bear, just to get a tank more suited to being hit in the face, er... shield.
And sometimes our self-healing and defensive cooldowns are awesome for healers. CHimaeron seems to be an easier fight to tank for DK's since DS and Runetap brings us about the 10k mark, making you 1 less person to heal post Massacre.
And AMS, use it for everything you can think it'll work for. Like Nef's electrocute, again 1 less person to heal up, or On Twighlight Ascendant Council for Ignacious' flamethrower thing. With a 45s cooldown and such a big reduction in non-physical damage, its one of my favorites.
Has anyone here kited the parasites on heroic magmaw as a blood spec?
Edit: I read your post, so me kiting in frost spec is irrelevant to your question.
Never tried kiting without chillblains, so biggest question would be if they ever catch you unslowed they're not too fast to begin with. Only slow blood dk's have close to any access to is desecration, but that needs a melee hit.