[Guide] Active Mitigation Hipsters - 5.4 DK Tanking

[Deleted]

There is no raid damage from Static Wound if you are not being meleed, regardless of whether you are standing in the pools or not. There's literally no reason not to. If you need to taunt while you still have stacks you will deal a little extra raid damage as Static Wound deals a third of the damage you take to the raid and pools increase your nature damage taken by 100%.

The confusion seems to arise because of the vague description of Conduction but it actually only affects specific abilities: Focused Lightning, Lightning Fissure and Ionization. I suppose Static Burst, the mechanic which applies Static Wound, doesn't help as that deals raid damage but again that raid damage isn't affected by the tanks standing in pools.

Not that it's a difficult fight in any way but your raid leader is a numpty if they never want you standing in pools, I regularly do 300k+ DPS with ease just by abusing AMS and IBF/DG to break throw stuns and sitting in pools 100% of the time. If the extra damage taken when taunting with stacks is really an issue you can just opt to stand in pools only when you are either not being meleed or you have no stacks of Static Wound.

[Soularpower]

Well, yea, I know there's no damage to the raid if I'm not being attacked. I can see why they (my RLs) might think a tank shouldn't stand in the pool "ever", I just wasn't in the mood to push back on it.

The issue isn't that they think I shouldn't stand in the pool when I have static debuff, it's that they think there's a problem with me standing in the pool when I don't have the debuff and I AM the active tank.

Not like there's a timer for static wounds and I can step out before it's applied or anything.... /sarcasm

Thanks again for the input!

There is no raid damage from Static Wound if you are not being meleed, regardless of whether you are standing in the pools or not. There's literally no reason not to. If you need to taunt while you still have stacks you will deal a little extra raid damage as Static Wound deals a third of the damage you take to the raid and pools increase your nature damage taken by 100%.

[Xarganthos]

with all this "haste is now important" thing, could anyone fix my blood dk please? dont know if i'm doing it right the way i'm reforging/gemming

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nthos/advanced

thank you ô.o

[blackspark]

You are alright, the haste reforging/gemming (or even crit) is something people do when they feel their survivability isn't a concern and more dps would be better, not to mention that most if not all of the players going the offensive route already outgear the content.

If you feel like you might die or become a hassle to keep alive, go with a standard defensive build.

[Deleted]

with all this "haste is now important" thing, could anyone fix my blood dk please? dont know if i'm doing it right the way i'm reforging/gemming

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nthos/advanced

thank you ô.o

It all depends on how comfortable you are feeling while tanking. If you are doing fine now, consider reforging your trinkets to haste too, or using a DPS trinket instead. Do it slowly, and consider feedback from your healers too, to make sure you ain't straining them
Here's my armory for your consideration: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...aelok/advanced

[Kiqjaq]

Death Siphon damage and AP scaling increased by 10%.
Dark Command now also increases threat that you generate against the target by 200% for 3 sec
Riposte (New) When you dodge or parry any attack, you gain 50% of your Parry and Dodge as additional Critical Strike for 20 sec. Death Knight - Blood Spec.

Apparently someone at Blizz thinks that tanks have issues with tankswaps? Bear in mind, all taunts got this treatment except the Monk one. Dunno, even against haste Pallies I never had problems, but then again they're taking away sitting so maybe I will do.
I won't complain or say no to buffs, it's just a bit lulzy.

I rather like Riposte though. I've always liked the idea of a riposte tied into dodge/parry in general, and the execution not only fits the name but also gives us a decent reason to go for avoidance. 20 second duration is essentially 100% uptime while tanking, which is a bit weird... I'd imagine a stronger effect but significantly shorter duration would fit the theme and be a better solution to what they're addressing. 100% of your avoidance as crit for 3 seconds?
Still an extra 15% crit just because, or more if we start pursuing avoidance, actually kills two birds with one stone. DKs (and Warriors, they get it too) felt cheated that their damage didn't scale well with gear, and they were totally uninterested in avoidance unless they were Reniat. :>

The Death Siphon thing is just a laugh though. It's not a damage issue that's the reason no one takes it. They keep giving it more firepower to work with, but unless it becomes so strong that it becomes rotational it's just not going to fit in outside of niche uses (Blood pushing dps, bosses with hefty damage taken debuffs, Brawler's Guild, etc).
Where's the traditional Conversion buff this time Blizz? Or did you just give up?

[Reniat]

As far as I know, riposte is going to be on ratings, not %s, so it will be more like 5-10% crit not 15-25% crit. If this is true then parry from strength and Swordshattering will not turn into crit, though we won't know for sure until that version of the PTR goes live.

All tank taunts (except for death grip) received that 200% buff except monks, and we're not 100% sure that they won't get it as well at some point. The intent is to make tank swaps more smooth despite the levels of vengeance for each tank. Honestly I don't really see the reason behind this, as it's just simplifying tanking a bit. Managing your aggro versus other tanks and making sure you don't pull off the fresh tank is just as important as making sure you have aggro on mobs that your are supposed to have aggro on. This is just making tank swaps "easier".

[Deleted]

Standing still and doing nothing isn't my idea of challenging gameplay.

[Rumblefist]

The intent is to make tank swaps more smooth despite the levels of vengeance for each tank. Honestly I don't really see the reason behind this, as it's just simplifying tanking a bit. Managing your aggro versus other tanks and making sure you don't pull off the fresh tank is just as important as making sure you have aggro on mobs that your are supposed to have aggro on. This is just making tank swaps "easier".

Obviously you've never played a Brewmaster. On tank swaps, no matter what class it is, I always have to 1.) cancel my vengeance or 2.) sit there doing nothing for a good 10 seconds. With this new change, that's 10 full seconds that I will be able to continue building my shuffle time.

[Reniat]

Obviously you've never played a Brewmaster. On tank swaps, no matter what class it is, I always have to 1.) cancel my vengeance or 2.) sit there doing nothing for a good 10 seconds. With this new change, that's 10 full seconds that I will be able to continue building my shuffle time.

My primary alt is a brewmaster, and WWA does split raids so i'm doing heroics with said brewmaster. I do have to back off briefly after tank swaps, but that's not a bad thing (though I don't have to wait 10 seconds. im curious what your other tank is doing). Having to back off isnt the end of the world, and watching your aggro is not something you should be able to just ignore imo.

[Deleted]

I mainly a 10 man raider, but might be trying my hand at 25 man soon enough, are there major differences to aim for stat wise? Given that bosses hit harder etc?

Cheers

[Reniat]

I mainly a 10 man raider, but might be trying my hand at 25 man soon enough, are there major differences to aim for stat wise? Given that bosses hit harder etc?

Cheers

Battlenet is currently under maintenance so I can't see your armory, but if you are doing a haste heavy build then there might be some changes that need to be made. Generally a haste build is much less effective in 25m content, simply because stuff does hit hard enough where you can't just rock 100% dps gear and not make your healers cringe. Will you die by stacking haste in 25m? no, but your healers will likely hate you. "not dying" is NOT a good metric for tanking. "being stable" is, and that's not a binary "died or didn't". In other words, once you start taking significant damage survivability has significant value beyond "enough to survive", so stacking dps stats is not nearly as effective in 25m. Plus your dps is less relative to the raid as a whole, so you do even less benefit by going dps in 25m. Again, you CAN do it, but you need to be very careful about doing it and make sure your healers are ok with you sacrificing survival if you do.


TL;DR: for 25m content you're going to want a lot of stamina and mastery, so if you are doing a dps oriented build now you might need to change stuff up.

[Deleted]

My reforging is mastery > hit/exp > haste. I take it going for Mastery > Stam > avoidance will work better in 25 mans? Should I still consider hit caps?

My armory is http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...evera/advanced

Thanks for your advice Reniat.

[Hellkung]

My reforging is mastery > hit/exp > haste. I take it going for Mastery > Stam > avoidance will work better in 25 mans? Should I still consider hit caps?

My armory is http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...evera/advanced

Thanks for your advice Reniat.

I'd say yes since you're doing normals, not HC. Something like mastery/stam > hit/exp > avoidance and to a lesser extent haste.

It allows for much smoother play and you've become accustomed to it.

But I'd listen to what Reniat has to say over anyone else.

[Deleted]

I am progressing through heroics, not as fast as some guilds but we're getting there, although my future may be with a guild who are working on Ra'Den so I need to up my game. So I have asked here.

[Nillo]

Your gemming is odd in some places - like you have the bonus in the belt (+120 crit) but don't use the one in your boots (+120 mastery)
Also why did you craft the hit boots rather than the haste boots °_°
And what's up with your glyph (no AMS/Pestillence?)

Otherwise.... I still think that avoidance is mehh even for 25H and the main thing you need to look out for is having enough stamina in case the bosses hit too hard.

[Reniat]

My reforging is mastery > hit/exp > haste. I take it going for Mastery > Stam > avoidance will work better in 25 mans? Should I still consider hit caps?

My armory is http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...evera/advanced

Thanks for your advice Reniat.

Hit/exp caps are a nice QoL move on top of decent DPS/survival boosts. Strictly speaking Mastery>avoidance is the best survival setup for raw survival in 25m content, but it doesn't take much to get the 7.5% caps on each and it's not as much of a significant choice as it was in t14 (not that it was super impactful then either, but more so than now at least).

As long as you are not putting haste on a super high priority like you might in 10m, then you should be ok. Just remember that for STRICTLY survival, the stat priority is stam>mastery>avoidance>accuracy>haste, so while haste still is a nice dps boost the survival gain from it is very minor compared to other non-dps stats and now that you are in 25m content raw survival is something that is a bit more pressing. That's not to say 10m tanks don't have to survive, but the burst damage is much higher in 25m and that's the type of damage that kills tanks (Especially DKs) so the dps-survivability stat important ratio is a bit different.

Also, don't be afraid of socket bonuses. Free stats are always nice. Generally you should be following colors in a mastery build.

---------- Post added 2013-06-23 at 07:26 AM ----------

Otherwise.... I still think that avoidance is mehh even for 25H and the main thing you need to look out for is having enough stamina in case the bosses hit too hard.

Avoidance isn't about TDR in 25m as much as it can work with DS timing in that an avoided attack can delay your next burst, which means you can hang on to that precious FU pair a bit longer. You don't want to stack avoidance, but it's not meh either.

[Deleted]

Hi everyone,

I too am slowly changing all my dodge/parry to haste while keeping mastery and hit/exp to confortable lvls. But i'd like some advice in doing so if possible, especially what stat weights to put in askmrrobot to ease the process.

Right now, i'm just keeping my caps, and reforging everything to haste while trying to find gear with both haste and mastery on it, but i'm afraid it's not really the best way to do it.

here's my armory, any input is apreciated :
Astäsie (EU) (can't post links...)

P.S : i'm only doing 10N once/twice a week.

[Deleted]

Hi everyone,

I too am slowly changing all my dodge/parry to haste while keeping mastery and hit/exp to confortable lvls. But i'd like some advice in doing so if possible, especially what stat weights to put in askmrrobot to ease the process.

Right now, i'm just keeping my caps, and reforging everything to haste while trying to find gear with both haste and mastery on it, but i'm afraid it's not really the best way to do it.

here's my armory, any input is apreciated :
Astäsie (EU) (can't post links...)

P.S : i'm only doing 10N once/twice a week.

Here are the stat weights I currently use for AMR:
1.4 Expertise & Hit to 7.5%
1.3 Haste & Mastery
1.0 Parry
0.9 Dodge
0.8 Stamina

P.S. Don't follow AMR blindly

[Deleted]

Hey, i've been looking around for a while but haven't found anything yet. I'm wondering about the racials for Blood DK (Horde in my case)

I'm currently Undead, and wondering how good the racial is compared to others. Does anyone have any info on this or even some sort of ranking for tanking racials?