Active Mitigation Hipsters - 5.2 DK Tanking Guide

[Reniat]

If you're not taking any burst damage and still die then you are simply not getting enough heals. If you're not getting enough heals, you're likely not going to get out of purgatory easily unless you have DP available. In that situation Lichborne could have been a better option.

And if youre not in any danger at all, then what does it matter? You're not going to proc purgatory and you're not going to need lichborne, so it's kind of a moot point.

[claisa]

very helpful thankyou

[Darkfriend]

I have to disagree with the part about Purgatory being risky and, or, worse than Lichborne.
Main point is Death pact - if you use that in combination with Purgatory, it essentially turns in to an absorb shield against ANY damage.
Let's say you're decently geared, and have 700K hp raidbuffed (my dk at 492 avg has that, with only 2 items aquired from a raid - safe to say most DK's who are doing heroics should have the same or better). You're about to take a 1M hit, with no cooldowns aviable.
In this situation, you'd be overkilled by 300K, but if you use your death pact immidiatelly after the hit goes out, you'll end up alive, at 50K(+whatever the healers managed to bomb into you). While I can't think of any specific encounters for this tier where it's entirely relevant, a prime example could have been Madness Heroic, where you needed to cooldown every impale, and would quickly run out of CD's.
That's not to say that this doesn't WORK for encounters of the current tier - you can always use another cooldown. I'd just say that it is FAR more usefull than Lichborne - during the 10 second gap, you can get 3, maybe 4 DC's off, which heals me for a 50K base (I assume it scales with attack power as to not be totally useless). However, all the runic power you spend on coils will not be contributing to your Tier 75 talent, which means less death strikes, and less healing/mitigation through THAT.

I raid casual on my blood DK, and purgatory seems to work better for me simply because the healers aren't as good, and it gives me a short buffer to fix if things go south. (Note, I'm not as good on my DK either.)

[stephenc87]

I have an LFR glove token, is it worth replacing my 496 Tsulong (parry/expertise) gloves with the LFR tier which would give me my 2 set bonus? The bonus does look quite good.

[Reniat]

The bonus is worth it. Go for it.

[stephenc87]

Ah cool, thanks

[Nillo]

Idk.... the set gloves are kind of shitty and it's also a 20 ilvl downgrade - and then the 2pc is somewhat situational.

[Reniat]

The 2pc is only situational if you are thinking about situations where you don't need CDs, which is low dmg content where the 20 ilvl won't matter anyway.

[Nillo]

The 2pc is only situational if you are thinking about situations where you don't need CDs, which is low dmg content where the 20 ilvl won't matter anyway.

Situational meaning that you actually need get more valuable uses of Vampiric Blood by reducing the cooldown where the only boss I can think of would be Will of the Emperor heroic.

[Reniat]

I guarantee there are more fights than H will that can take advantage of reduced VB cd. Namely, any of them with meaningful damage. Iconic ones that come to mind: blade lord, Sha, Elegon, Will (as you already mentioned), it's HUUUUGE on grand empress ph2 (especially on heroic), on lei shi, and more-so on the heroic versions of all these fights.

[Dracodraco]

Any fight that provides consistent tank damage will benefit from the 2 set, realisticly. With a 40 sec cooldown, it is almost never worth holding on to it, unless you're absolutly sure you'll need it - you'll spend too much time holding on to it, and miss it. On the other hand, due to DK's wide array of cooldowns, using VB on CD is perfectly viable, and will help the healers, along with your own mitigation on any fight (higher DS, higher blood shield). When you've got BS, DRW, IBF, Army, ERW, Necropolis, AMS, and Purgatory+Death pact, "losing" vamp blood to make your healers lifes that much easier seems fairly insignificant. The only fight I can think of where you'd want to hold out on it would be Garajal (no point using it if not tanking), and sha (same concept).

[Nillo]

I guarantee there are more fights than H will that can take advantage of reduced VB cd. Namely, any of them with meaningful damage. Iconic ones that come to mind: blade lord, Sha, Elegon, Will (as you already mentioned), it's HUUUUGE on grand empress ph2 (especially on heroic), on lei shi, and more-so on the heroic versions of all these fights.

Blade Lord?
The 35-40 sec between each of his strikes pretty much allows you to only use VB efficiently once every 70 seconds unless you go out of your way just to make use of a second VB by asking your co-tank to wait another 20 seconds before taunting. (and even then you still wouldn't get that many extra uses out of the 2pc). Besides idk about 25H but on 10H his damage is laughable to the point where you can actually tank him without needing any direct heals.

The same thing goes for Sha - you're on his platform for about 90 seconds at a time meaning you'll have a hard time getting a 3rd use of VB even with the 2pc.

On will heroic it works well because the combos are about 50 seconds apart meaning you pretty much get twice as many uses of VB with the 2pc.

Any fight that provides consistent tank damage will benefit from the 2 set, realisticly. With a 40 sec cooldown, it is almost never worth holding on to it, unless you're absolutly sure you'll need it.

Now the question is if it's actually worth going for the bonus at the cost of using low level set gloves if basically all you get is 3% more healing taken overall.

[Nangz]

496 has these stats over teir assuming stam/mastery gem

235 stam
160 mastery
124 avoidence stat
12 accuracy ( note however that it gives expertise which is worth less than the hit that tier gives.)

That isnt exactly.... huge.

~.25% avoidence
~3k health. .4% of 700k
Negligible expertise
160 mastery

Vs 3.3% healing.

Go with tier

[Reniat]

I was thinking of Heroic blade lord where you trade off every OA. that's my bad. You may remove normal blade lord off that list of fights.


It's more than just 3.3% overall healing. Left unglyphed the EH gained from VB is fantastic. Every 40s you can increase your health by 15% for 10 seconds, which can be thought of as 15% dmg reduction in most situations.

[Nillo]

I was thinking of Heroic blade lord where you trade off every OA. that's my bad. You may remove normal blade lord off that list of fights.

Im talking about Blade Lord heroic °_° which is where he uses Overwhelming Assault once every 30-35 seconds rendering the 2pc next to useless.

[Reniat]

He does his ability about every 45 seconds. If you are trading every other OA (which you should be) you can use VB on every one with 2pc. You couldn't do this with the normal 1m CD.

[Nillo]

*sigh*
[20:34:55.312] Telare afflicted by Overwhelming Assault from Blade Lord Ta'yak
[20:35:20.711] Sindary afflicted by Overwhelming Assault from Blade Lord Ta'yak
[20:35:53.309] Telare afflicted by Overwhelming Assault from Blade Lord Ta'yak
[20:36:23.565] Sindary afflicted by Overwhelming Assault from Blade Lord Ta'yak
[20:36:56.140] Telare afflicted by Overwhelming Assault from Blade Lord Ta'yak

that's 30-33 seconds not 45 besides it wouldn't be any different with 45 seconds because it would still be ready exactly once per tanking swap with or without 2pc.

[Reniat]

Fair enough I was mistaken. You may remove both versions of blade lord from that list.

[Nangz]

*sigh*
[20:34:55.312] Telare afflicted by Overwhelming Assault from Blade Lord Ta'yak
[20:35:20.711] Sindary afflicted by Overwhelming Assault from Blade Lord Ta'yak
[20:35:53.309] Telare afflicted by Overwhelming Assault from Blade Lord Ta'yak
[20:36:23.565] Sindary afflicted by Overwhelming Assault from Blade Lord Ta'yak
[20:36:56.140] Telare afflicted by Overwhelming Assault from Blade Lord Ta'yak

that's 30-33 seconds not 45 besides it wouldn't be any different with 45 seconds because it would still be ready exactly once per tanking swap with or without 2pc.

Ok, lets be entirely clear here. If you don't need the cooldown reduction, even used on cd, it doesn't matter which you use. Other damage goes out on bladelord other than tank damage and having vamp blood up, even while not tanking, is valuable.

If your cooldowns aren't needed to survive boss mechanics, they should be used on CD to help the healers. Else they're just sitting there.

[Reniat]

Well in the case of blade lord you wouldn't want to use it off cd since you do want it up on every OA. Using CDs while youre not tanking is also not generally recommended, as raid wide damage on you isn't worth blowing CDs unless you will have them back again before you tank something.