DK tanking - Active vs. Passive

[Anarchor]

Isn't it just about a preference of playstyle as well?

To be honest theorycrafting points out that there is very little "wrong" with a DK tank that might gear and gem for passive tanking (prioritizing stamina/dodge/parry) in contrast to one that might gear and gem for active tanking (prioritizing mastery). Sure, the passive tanking route might be not as optimal for some fights, but it stands out as being better for certain others.

A passive geared DK will still have the same heals as the active one, just his blood shields won't be as big. Yet they'll have a longer uptime on Bone and Blood shield. And they generally will be better for tanking fights where most of the damage is magic damage, due to a bigger healthpool and less "stats" wasted on improving blood shield which is useless against magic damage.

In my "passive" gear I have the following stats:

• 230k hp unbuffed.
• 47% dodge/parry/miss chance
• 126% blood shields

In my "active tanking" gear I have:

• 200k hp unbuffed.
• 40% dodge/parry/miss chance
• 180% blood shields

I keep on being more inclined in seeing my (stamina/parry/dodge) gear & gemming as being better than the mastery stacking. But I might just be looking at it with old-school glasses.

[Wythel]

Different boss, different gear... Seems normal, but i'm the only regular tank in my guild.

[Catokot]

Isn't it just about a preference of playstyle as well?

To be honest theorycrafting points out that there is very little "wrong" with a DK tank that might gear and gem for passive tanking (prioritizing stamina/dodge/parry) in contrast to one that might gear and gem for active tanking (prioritizing mastery). Sure, the passive tanking route might be not as optimal for some fights, but it stands out as being better for certain others.

A passive geared DK will still have the same heals as the active one, just his blood shields won't be as big. Yet they'll have a longer uptime on Bone and Blood shield. And they generally will be better for tanking fights where most of the damage is magic damage, due to a bigger healthpool and less "stats" wasted on improving blood shield which is useless against magic damage.

While the differences are minimal, I'll continue dedicating my dk to a solid mastery route. You appear to be looking at it from a very biased pov, skewing your idea. No offense intended. There is so much math required to legitimately argue one or the other, and even then its all just "ideas". As a few counter-examples though...

You mention more bone shield uptime, as well as blood shield. The things that keep pointing me towards mastery are as follows:

Fully absorbed attacks don't use up a charge of bone shield
On a fight like madness, avoidance does nothing to mitigate an impale, while blood shield just piles on the eh. While a normal tank will have 200k hp for an impale, thus requiring a shield wall for a single impale, a dk can have 300k (minimum), and up to 400k if you get lucky with damage before impale, meaning we can get by with just a bone shield/unglyphed vamp blood. I took 2 impales on every platform on my dk with no external cds pre-nerf, pretty sure no other class is capable of that.
Blood shield gets bigger based on magic damage taken, causing you to take less physical damage in the future. Avoidance gains nothing from magic damage.
Blood shield absorbs focused assault on hagara, avoidance does nothing.

I have experience with 6/8 heroic as a resto druid, and I've downed 5 of them. I've tanked 8/8 normal on my dk (I know, nothing spectacular in the slightest), but the only fight I'd say might favor avoidance is zon'ozz/spine (no idea about spine, haven't seen it on heroic), and if you're good with death strike then mastery would take the cake on zon'ozz by a mile. However, you'd have a 1-1.5 second window for death striking properly, and god help you if you don't hit them at the right time.

From a 10 man perspective...
Morchok (due to stomps) far favors mastery
Yor'sahj mastery can cut physical damage completely out of the equation
Zon'ozz again is iffy, but a good dk will make mastery really shine here
Hagara avoidance shouldn't even be considered due to focused assault
Ultraxion (tank damage matters?) plenty of magic damage to feed your blood shields, so mastery again
Spine haven't seen it on heroic, I don't really know. Normal mode either one is fine
Madness Mastery all the way, no feasible argument otherwise

[xtramuscle]

My two cents;
As I've comment on several like minded posts, I'd definately lean towards stamina for 25man HC bosses.. My DK unbuffed with only Blood Presence sits at 245.8k HP, raid buffed with a shammy healer around 305k. I can tank madness with only a bloodshield up on normal, and fights like HC yorsajh are so easy for me now compared to other tank classes. I can comfortably take 4+ stacks of void bolt (yes, even on 25man!) in fact I have took a full 7 once whent he OT died. That simply wouldn't be doable in a mastery build.

[monkeyshine]

One thing that most people dont notice is that more hp actually gives you higher blood shields.. and as xtramuscle mentioned stamina is very useful on magical fights, where mastery gives you no benefit in form of the shield against the magical damage. At my gear level ( ilevel 398 ) 251.1k unbuffed 26.83 mastery my shields absorb around 700 - 1000 less than someone who is equally geared in full mastery whilst having around 50,000 less hp. I just dont see the gain? Again on hagara I can solo tank it while the warrior tank seems to go splat quite often, mainly because of the blood shield but I can imagine that while im over 300k raid buffed that is also helping alot aswell.

[xtramuscle]

Id love to see ur gear.. wondering how you got more stam than me tbh.. Im in full stam gems with both HC stam trinkets \

[chemicader]

I am quite sure it is skillcapped mastery in top end-gear>avoidance build in top-end gear>mastery with average gear > avoidance

Of course there are fights you cant apply this on and there are many factors. And this is just my opinion, I dont have maths to prove it, but I recall reading from people who have done the math that mastery build played well is better than avoidance build.

---------- Post added 2012-02-11 at 02:10 PM ----------

And why do you have hc tier shoulders? Morchok`s are BiS so that is a wasted hc token.

[Nillo]

Mastery/Stamina all the way.... except for Spine (avoidance here due to low DS/min and avoidance actually being good against 10s of hits)

[xtramuscle]

And why do you have hc tier shoulders? Morchok`s are BiS so that is a wasted hc token.

Morchok shoulders are horribly itemized for a mastery DK, aswell as having 1 less socket. I consider the tier ones to be FAR superior.

[Mawaru]

In my "active tanking" gear I have:

• 200k hp unbuffed.
• 40% dodge/parry/miss chance
• 180% blood shields

Your low mastery is the flaw I see in your "active tanking" set.

Unbuffed in my mastery set I have:
199181 hp
35.5% dodge/parry/miss (14.57% dodge, 16.06% parry)
215% blood shields (34.41 mastery)

I only have one piece of 410 gear, too.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Blood/advanced

And why do you have hc tier shoulders? Morchok`s are BiS so that is a wasted hc token.

Because tier shoulders give you 495 mastery (Gemmed with 50 mastery + 25 mastery / 37 stam) opposed to the Morchok shoulders only giving you 203 mastery at best (Gemmed with 50 mastery) if you reforge the dodge. But reforging dodge this tier is stupid because in full 410/397 gear you'll have a lot more parry rating than dodge rating.

[Kerbaroth]

not really on topic but i wonder if it's better to spam deathstrike, or if it's better to time it around incoming damage.
(in general not special situation)

[Scarybeasty]

In most fights blood shield in big parts works like a strong cooldown, hagara hc focused assault for example. So it is allways better to time your ds usage, knowing the fights you do you should know when you will take a lot of dmg, and time your DS usage after this.

[Nillo]

In most fights blood shield in big parts works like a strong cooldown, hagara hc focused assault for example. So it is allways better to time your ds usage, knowing the fights you do you should know when you will take a lot of dmg, and time your DS usage after this.

Hagara focused assault is pretty much the only ability where it's actually worth delaying DS for imo (and it's pretty much a must considering how hard it hits) - everywhere else there's a good chance you're just wasting dps and self healing by delaying DS usage.

[Scarybeasty]

Zon'ozz is another one, delaying ds usage there when he starts getting stacks is important. I am not talking about it delaying it many seconds, but planing ahead, using cd:s and stacking shields when you really need it makes you a strong tank. Planing ahead is a must

[Spacemeat]

Imo the name of the game is a balance between the two. Of course it depends what exactly you're tanking at any given time, but this is exactly why I personally like to have rounded stats, instead of favoring either one. Now, I don't tank heroics so it may be completely different, but for me I find instead of going "Pure avoidance" or "Pure mastery", you equalize the 2. Just as example, use Puissant's instead of Fractureds for gems. Like someone mentioned above, your mastery absorb caps out at your HP. What that means is if you have really low HP on a boss that does almost no physical damage, you're likely to cap out your absorb shield frequently, wasting a ton of your mastery since you're sitting at capped absorbs anyway. In this scenario, obviously more HP is prudent since your mastery is isn't doing you much good. On the other hand, if you're facing a boss that deals very high physical damage, you won't get close to capping your absorb during the fight, even with a very low health pool. In this case it's better to eat as many absorbs as possible, IE, have tons of mastery. Now obviously these 2 scenarios are both extremes. In reality you won't cap out absorb shield while tanking anything, but there are possibilities in which you may get massive spike damage (Zon'ozz), which you need a large topped-off health pool to survive. Long story short, it kind of depends on your role in the raid, your healer's capabilities, and raid set up. but Me, personally, I like to have things evened out and not to neccessarily "favor" mastery over avoidance, but to equalize them. It just seems to work better overall, especially if youre tanking different types of damage during the same instance run, which you will be doing if youre in DS. Again, I don't tank heroics, so if you're looking for advice for that, that may be a completely different story, i honestly don't know. But for norms I personally try to get a nice balance between dodge/parry and mastery/hp, and it works just fine for me.

[kaelleria]

Pure stam gems are still ick in my opinion... Using pure stam gems vs stam/mastery mean you lose out on 400+ mastery or like 14% on your blood shield. Yes, you'll lose about 9-10k hp, but realistically you don't need 270k+ hp for *ANY* fight in H DS. Your minimum DS heal will go up all of about 700, but that's more than off set the loss of mastery.

[Catokot]

One thing that most people dont notice is that more hp actually gives you higher blood shields..

For stamina to increase your shields, you would have to be death striking for a minimum heal. Anything higher than minimum, and stam does less for your shields than mastery. For all intents and purposes, if you are "regularly" death striking for a minimum amount, you aren't doing content hard enough for it to matter.

[SSHA778]

Morchok shoulders are horribly itemized for a mastery DK, aswell as having 1 less socket. I consider the tier ones to be FAR superior.

No, they're not.

You're weighing mastery far too highly than you ought to be if you're drawing that conclusion. There's about a 100 total rating differential. Mastery isn't that strong relative to avoidance. You're weighing it nearly 30% higher than you should be.

Fights in DS almost all favor mastery, but not overwhelmingly so.

I think you can make a case for both setups on a lot of the bosses, which will, at the end of the day, still be arguable.

Morchok - Stomp definitely favors mastery, but Stomp is on an extremely predictable timer. I've never been put in danger by stomp itself. Only the melee attacks.
Yor'sahj - Mastery until you hit the point where you'll absorb mostly every physical attack. This doesn't require 215% shields. Void Bolt extremely boost shield sizes for both setups. Not to mention, on 25's, you swap off anyway. You can also stay on the boss while your raid goes for oozes.
Zon'ozz - Psychic Drain is on a timer, you'll be AMS-ing it, and you'll be using a heavy CD for the 2nd one. If you take a 3rd one, you'll also be AMS-ing it.
Ultraxion - who cares?
Warmaster - Avoiding Devastate is a huge advantage, not only on your immediate damage taken but also on the subsequent hits. Shout and Breath favor mastery. Melee hits past the 60% mark are pretty lethal by themselves.
Spine - Mastery does scale just fine with tanking adds, but that's assuming you can also DS at the same rate, which you can't always do, which favors avoidance.
Madness - Impale is the primary threat--offtanking means you can build up a Blood Shield in either setup. Mastery setup builds faster, but you have a lot of time.

You all are way overselling just how much unavoidable damage boosts mastery. It also seems that people think that only mastery setups can synchronize DS's with boss attacks--that's not true.

Just to see what it would look like, I used these two setups,
http://chardev.org/?profile=341957
http://chardev.org/?profile=344565
with trinkets intentionally omitted as a comparison in my sim. Trinkets are omitted because they should be changing based on the fight you're doing, and because if I picked any, then I would get flak for "picking a stupid trinket" or "one that clearly biases what you want to show." I also coded in an attack that was incapable of being absorbed, unavoidable, and unresistable for 75k every 20s. Relative to the results when that attack wasn't there, the mastery setup took 1.2% less damage (that decreases HP) than the avoidance setup. Bump that up to 100k at the same interval? 1.7%. And that's with a fight duration so long that variance can more or less be ignored. Realistically, RNG does make a difference, and on a 12m fight when you've got a standard deviation of 5.88%, there goes that advantage.

You need to see which one your healers prefer most. They're the only ones who can tell you.


Unrelated, this thread makes me want to go add in Bone Shield support to my sim to challenge some of these claims. I think I will.

[Darsithis]

not really on topic but i wonder if it's better to spam deathstrike, or if it's better to time it around incoming damage.
(in general not special situation)

If you're aware of incoming damage within 2 seconds or so, time it. Otherwise, use the runes to allow RP dumping to bring them back quicker.

[flashur]

If you're aware of incoming damage within 2 seconds or so, time it. Otherwise, use the runes to allow RP dumping to bring them back quicker.

That's a bit ambiguous. Do you mean time it with preshielding, forfeiting some or all of the potential healing, or take a full hit and ds after?