Active Mitigation Hipsters - 5.2 DK Tanking Guide

[Tyrantworm]

Not sure what Nillo's wanting really. The guide would appear to be aimed at those that have tanked a dk whilst tank was blood spec, but are looking for a view on current modus operandii. Which IMO it has achieved.

Nillo, you know that out of all tank specs blood is the least hand-holdable, and that tanking more than any role is subject to variables.

I personally prefer an approach that provides a framework for experience to teach you how it is for yo. Rather than a prio list with all the conditions in there actually are and hammering that list with "ifs".

As for talents, lichborne is a personal thing imo, I don't generally spec it because I don't use, perhaps I'm simply not good enough, but I could never get away with pooling enough rp for the
talent to be worthwhile, outside of assisting with very specific spike damage.

best regards

Worm

[Nillo]

My issue with the skill usage section is that it's too wall-of-texty and still misses several skills. Then there's the Runic Power section only talks about RE.

I'd much rather have something like this: (hint this priority is for rc/bt and doesn't work well with re)

1) Use Death Strike when needed (further explanation later)
2) Keep up diseases (Apply with Outbreak, use Blood Boil if it is about to run out)
3) Keep 1 pair of FU runes on cd (unused runes equal less Death Strikes - only delay if you need 2 Death Strikes in a row)
4) Use Runic Power: (to proc RC/BT) Rune Strike
5) Use Blood Runes: (for dps/runic power) Heart Strike (up to 3 targets and >35% target hp), Soul Reaper (target hp <35% by the time it runs out) , or Blood Boil (3/4 or more targets)
6) Use Crimson Scourge procs for Runic Power (Death and Decay is more dps than Blood Boil but harder to use and doesn't refresh diseases)
7) Horn of Winter for RP if nothing else is ready.

---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 02:36 AM ----------

Then I'd like to see some mention of the synergy between Bone Shield and Blood Shield either in the advanced section or in the Bone Shield description:
On certain bosses (like Gara'jal) with 2 tanks rotating every 30sec+ this can make a significant difference. Since Bone Shield only loses stacks when you take damage spamming DS (and thus refreshing your Blood Shield) may allow you to get a close to 100% uptime on both Bone Shield (since Blood Shield prevents you from losing stacks) and Blood Shield (since Bone Shield reduces damage taken by 20%).

---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 04:17 AM ----------

I also think the talent section could use a complete rework. As of right now it's way too confusing since the guide tries to explain all skills at the same time and it's hard to find out what the op thinks about which talents fit a certain situation:
Imo it'd be clearer if you first write an explanation for each skill and then add a conclusion that describes when each of those choices may come in handy:

Tier 1:
Plague Leech: In theory this talent allows you to gain 1 Death Rune every 25 sec at the cost of having to reapply your diseases. In practice though reapplying diseases without Outbreak ready costs 2 Runes and a single Death Rune is worthless unless you are specced into Death Sipphon (or Have RE/BT to get a pair). It's also on the gcd which makes it kind of slow.
Roiling Blood: Allows you to spread diseases with a spell you already use in multi target situations. As a bonus it also doesn't suffer from the melee requirements regular pestilence has.
Unholy Blight: In general a blood dk doesn't really need this talent since we can easily maintain diseases with Outbreak, Blood Boil and Roiling Blood is usually all you need to spread them. In some situations, where your diseased targets are unattackable (Gara'Jal) or die regularly (5 mans/challenges) or applying diseases via Outbreak/Pest is too slow (Shek'zeer) this may come in handy.
T1 Conclusion: PL for pure single target fights if you also have Death Siphon (T4) and/or BT/RE (T5). Roiling Blood for pretty much everything that is not single target. Unholy Blight if you need another way to apply diseases.


Tier 2:
Anti Magic Zone: For single, high damage, raid wide, spell damage aoes (Elegon add explosion,...) this talent ignores the damage cap and can absorb millions of damage. Outside of those situation the absorption is fairly insignificant though.
Purgatory: A passive live saver that prevents your death... at least temporarily - what else would you need? It still won't save you from massive overkills and there's also the small chance you die from a dot tick right after you get healed just enough to leave the Purgatory state.
Lichborne The most interesting part about this is being able to heal yourself with Death Coils. This, however, only works well if you've already pooled a large amount of Runic Power and usually doesn't work well as a reactive cooldown.
T2 Conclusion: Purgatory for general tanking, Lichborne if you can fit in the extra cooldown, AMZ for situations as described above.


Tier 3:
Death's Advance: Movement speed is almost always useful and this one (unlike other MS increases) stacks with the boots enchant.
Asphyxiate: Stuff in raids tends to be immune to that and even if they are not this doesn't sound too appealing.
Chilblains: Reliable and easy to apply slow (just spread diseases) - as a bonus you also get the ability to root targets with Chains of Ice.
T3 Conclusion: In general you'll want Death's Advance, but on bosses like feng with adds that need to be slowed Chillblains may come in handy.


Tier 4:
Death's Pact: Massive self heal that requires your ghoul to be summoned (not much of a problem since both are on a 2 min cd)
Conversion Weak periodic heal that requires a lot of RP to maintain and disables the RP gain from Scent of Blood.
Death Siphon: In general this is a small dps gain over DS coupled with a large survivability loss,.... if however you have a massive buff to healing taken and or damage dealt Death Siphon can deal/heal massive amounts of damage.
T4 Conclusion: In general Death's Pact works best. However some bosses like Elegon, Mel'Jarak and Amber Shaper take massively increased amounts of damage and make Death Siphon a reasonable choice. I can't see Conversion working unless some mechanic grants you greatly increased rune and/or runic power generation so it's pretty much a no no atm.


Tier 5:
Runic Corruption: Since this talent increases rune regeneration speed all you need for it to be effective is to have runes being on cooldown while it's buff is active.
On average this talent will cause each Rune Strike to regen 45% x 0.3 x 2(3) x 1.2 = 0.486 runes (0.324 of those being FU runes)
Runic Empowerment: This talent used to work well in cata since Blood Tap allowed us to have a 5th Death Rune giving each RE proc a decent chance to grant another Death Strike. Since MoP we no longer have the old Blood Tap and the only way to get another Death Rune is through Plague Leech. It works well with Death Siphon since that only requires 1 Death Rune - for regular use with Death Strike it is not recommended since it loses most of it's effectiveness if you sit on runes.
Optimally this talent will cause each Rune Strike to regen 0.45 death runes - in practice however this is a lot lower
Blood Tap: With this choice you trade quantity for quality - meaning you'll have less runes gained overall, but get some control over when you want to have them.
This talent grants 0.4 Runes per Rune Strike
T5 Conclusion: Runic Corruption is the default choice since it requires the least amount of attention to use while still providing a decent and steady increase to rune regen. Blood Tap can be good if you need the extra control (and have the skill to use it well). Runic Empowerment is not recommended unless you don't care about using DS efficiently or are running with a Death Siphon spec.


Tier 6:
Remorseless Winter: On fights with stunnable adds this can be useful (Shek'zeer). Usually mobs tend to be immune against stuns though
Gorefiend's Grasp: Great for pulling casters or otherwise seperated adds in to aoe them. (Feng's shadow phase and 5 mans/challenges)
Desecrated Ground: Grants immunity to some cc effects, useful if there's actually an ability this talent is able to counter.
T6 Conclusion: Not much to say here since they are all very situational.

[Ikrekot]

Runic Empowerment with Plague Leech and Glyph of Outbreak is best option for survival in my opinion. I use RC for fights when we have problem with Enrage timer. Runic Empowerment give best survival for experienced tanks.

[Reniat]

Not everyone knows how to apply the talents to a given situation. I give very in depth analysis so someone with little experience can get an idea of when they would use that talent. That said, I can make my conclusions more noticeable. I'll try to make a change sometime tomorrow. The reason I didn't include the bone shield synergy is because there is only so much content where that even works. In heroic modes, even with the 20% dmg reduction you are going to lose blood shields very quickly (e.g 1-2 hits), and spamming DS in an effort to save stacks may result in a DS gap that could kill you. It's the same reason I didn't include the double diseases from DRW. The actual use of that technique is somewhat limited, and using DRW for dps will cost you a cooldown for survivability. Because of this, I leave it out so that people who read the guide aren't improperly using DRW in order to increase DPS if they don't have their survivability 100% down first. (though If i ever add a "tank dps" section, that will go there). The situational value of spamming DS for bone shields sake is very limited, and I don't want to encourage "spam DS" anywhere in the guide, because even if I say "be careful" there will be plenty of people who will read that and just spam DS whenever they hit Bone Shield, which is bad.

As far as your prioty goes, it pretty much says exactly the same thing as mine, except you prioritize yours with numbers making some things seemingly more important. I avoided using this because i didn't want people to use DS off CD "because it was at the top of the priority list".

1) Use Death Strike when needed (further explanation later)
2) Keep up diseases (Apply with Outbreak, use Blood Boil if it is about to run out)
3) Keep 1 pair of FU runes on cd (unused runes equal less Death Strikes - only delay if you need 2 Death Strikes in a row)
4) Use Runic Power: (to proc RC/BT) Rune Strike
5) Use Blood Runes: (for dps/runic power) Heart Strike (up to 3 targets and >35% target hp), Soul Reaper (target hp <35% by the time it runs out) , or Blood Boil (3/4 or more targets)
6) Use Crimson Scourge procs for Runic Power (Death and Decay is more dps than Blood Boil but harder to use and doesn't refresh diseases)
7) Horn of Winter for RP if nothing else is ready.

Use FU runes (including combos of F U and D runes) on Death strike, dump Runic Power with Rune Strike, make sure you always have diseases on targets you are tanking, and dump blood runes with heart strike (above 35%) Soul Reaper (below 35%) and make sure you are keeping diseases up through Blood Boils from Crimson Scourge to refresh them. If you are left with an open GCD, use Horn of Winter. It's free Runic Power and should be used anytime you don't have something else to use.


Your 1 is covered by my "Use FU runes (including combos of F U and D runes) on Death strike"

your 2 is covered by my "make sure you always have diseases on targets you are tanking" and "and make sure you are keeping diseases up through Blood Boils from Crimson Scourge to refresh them."

your 3 is covered in a later section.

your 4 is covered by my "dump Runic Power with Rune Strike"

your 5 is covered by my "dump blood runes with heart strike (above 35%) Soul Reaper (below 35%)" and HS vs BB is covered later in more detail

your 6 is covered by "make sure you are keeping diseases up through Blood Boils from Crimson Scourge"

your 7 is covered by "If you are left with an open GCD, use Horn of Winter."



Basically you have a problem with the format in which the guide is written. I can respect that, and not everyone is going to appreciate the same format. You are the only person so far to approach me with an issue of formatting, however, and I've had multiple people approach me with how they appreciated the "vocalized" nature of the guide, as though someone is talking to you as you read it. Because of this I choose to keep my guide is the same style as it currently is, though I will see what i can do to make my summaries of each talent tier stand out more. I do appreciate your input though, and will keep it in mind as i get more feedback.

[Nillo]

Runic Empowerment with Plague Leech and Glyph of Outbreak is best option for survival in my opinion. I use RC for fights when we have problem with Enrage timer. Runic Empowerment give best survival for experienced tanks.

Since Blood Tap is only very slightly behind RE in a best case scenario for RE I doubt that (0.4 vs 0.45 runes).

[Reniat]

As Nillo said, RE is only best in terms or overall rune throughput, which has little affect on how well you actually survive. The control/flexibility of BT or the dmg/consistency of RC would be better options.

[Nillo]

The reason I didn't include the bone shield synergy is because there is only so much content where that even works. In heroic modes, even with the 20% dmg reduction you are going to lose blood shields very quickly (e.g 1-2 hits)

Yet somehow I managed to get close to 100% uptime on both Blood and Bone Shield on Gara'jal heroic.

---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 12:59 PM ----------

your 6 is covered by "make sure you are keeping diseases up through Blood Boils from Crimson Scourge"

Not completely.

[Reniat]

That's one fight. on 10H garajal's normal melee swings don't hit very hard (they don't hit extremely hard in 25H either), and the shadowy attacks don't take away from your blood shield. There aren't many bosses that allow for this type of blood shield usage, so it's a very situational technique. I still plan on (eventually) writing up the encounter specific section, and I will cover that and a few other things on the heroic garajal write up, so don't think i'm just ignoring it completely. The main bulk of the guide is a 'general guide', with situational techniques such as that being covered (eventually) in the encounter specific section when a fight calls for it. School has been rough the last month or so, and progression hasn't helped. Especially when we add raid nights because half the raid is underperforming and we aren't near where we are supposed to be right now, so I haven't put a lot of work into the encounter guide, though I do intend to get around to it. Perhaps over thanksgiving break?

[Nillo]

Basically you have a problem with the format in which the guide is written. I can respect that, and not everyone is going to appreciate the same format. You are the only person so far to approach me with an issue of formatting, however, and I've had multiple people approach me with how they appreciated the "vocalized" nature of the guide, as though someone is talking to you as you read it

Sure, but why not do both for the skill section (since I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who prefers some kind of priority list).

Because of this I choose to keep my guide is the same style as it currently is, though I will see what i can do to make my summaries of each talent tier stand out more. I do appreciate your input though, and will keep it in mind as i get more feedback.

As I said it's not only the summaries, but also the description of each talent that ought to stand out more.

---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 01:15 PM ----------

That's one fight. on 10H garajal's normal melee swings don't hit very hard (they don't hit extremely hard in 25H either), and the shadowy attacks don't take away from your blood shield. There aren't many bosses that allow for this type of blood shield usage, so it's a very situational technique. I still plan on (eventually) writing up the encounter specific section, and I will cover that and a few other things on the heroic garajal write up, so don't think i'm just ignoring it completely.

It also works reasonably well on any other boss that involves tank swaps like Shek'zeer (P1) and Blade Lord Ta'yak.
It may be more of a 10m thingie though.

[Reniat]

Sure, but why not do both for the skill section (since I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who prefers some kind of priority list).

Because I don't want to give the impression that different abilities take priority over another in terms of the order in which you actually push the button. There are two ways to write a 'priority list'. One is the way you gave it, and the other is ability 1>ability 2> ability 3> so on. What these imply is a sense of "if you can press ability 1, then press it. If not, use ability 2. If you can't do that, then ability 3", and so on. This is the way DPS guides have been written for ages, since the actual order in which they push the buttons matters very much. Tanking is very different. Is it more important to dump RP on rune strike or dump a B rune with HS? The actual order is irrelevant, unless you are about to RP cap or are about to get both B runes off cycle. And if you were to account for those "ifs" then the priority list would turn into a rather complicated tree-like algorithm with many if then clauses. The idea behind not using a strict priority system is to give the reader a sense of "these things need to be maintained" as opposed to "do these things in this order", which people are naturally going to do when you enumerate a list of their abilities.

As I said it's not only the summaries, but also the description of each talent that ought to stand out more.

What about the descriptions need to stand out more? I mean right now i have it set to one segment of description followed by a section of summary for each talent, so im not sure how to make the description stand out more than it already is since it's by itself.


I do appreciate the input, and always will. I hope you don't take my disagreeing with you in places as a lack of appreciation of the time you put in to help me better the guide as you see it.

[Nillo]

Because I don't want to give the impression that different abilities take priority over another in terms of the order in which you actually push the button. There are two ways to write a 'priority list'. One is the way you gave it, and the other is ability 1>ability 2> ability 3> so on. What these imply is a sense of "if you can press ability 1, then press it. If not, use ability 2. If you can't do that, then ability 3", and so on. This is the way DPS guides have been written for ages, since the actual order in which they push the buttons matters very much. Tanking is very different. Is it more important to dump RP on rune strike or dump a B rune with HS? The actual order is irrelevant, unless you are about to RP cap or are about to get both B runes off cycle. And if you were to account for those "ifs" then the priority list would turn into a rather complicated tree-like algorithm with many if then clauses. The idea behind not using a strict priority system is to give the reader a sense of "these things need to be maintained" as opposed to "do these things in this order", which people are naturally going to do when you enumerate a list of their abilities.

It's still somewhat of a priority. First priority is using Death Strikes correctly, the second is getting out as many Death Strikes as possible, the third is doing as much dps as possible for that reason I put that part in this particular order (I also left out RS (90 RP) > Blood Rune (Both ready) > RS > Blood Rune because I think that would make the list too long and harder to read)
Any way both your and my description are just the basic set of rules on how you play your DK, that's why there should also be some further explanation on why you do that and how you do some parts like Death Strike usage in practise

To keep it similar to your idea (added an intro and divided it into 4 sections - DS, RS, DPS/RP,filler spells)
------------------------------
"The general goal for dk skill usage is to get maximum benefit out of our Death Strike ability. To do that you need to both focus on making them count as much as possible while still getting out as many as possible.
In general this means: Use your FU/Death runes on Death Strikes. Keep up diseases by applying them via Outbreak (IT/PS only if you can't avoid it) and refreshing them via Blood Boil. Dump Runic Power on Rune Strikes to recover your FU/D runes (see t5 talents). Use blood runes to generate Runic Power and deal dps by using Soul Reaper (target needs to be sub 35% within 5 sec), Heart Strike (1 or 2 targets, 3 if your main target counts) or Blood Boil (3 or more targets). Use Crimson Scourge Procs (with BB this will also keep your diseases up, DnD is more dps though) and Horn of Winter for RP if everything else is on cd."
------------------------------
Then you say something like this (quoted from the EJ guide):

In case you wanted an actual priority list, here is a simplified version for single target:

After that you put in a prio list.
In the later parts of this section explain more about DS, RS and whatever else needs an explanation.



---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 02:22 PM ----------

What about the descriptions need to stand out more? I mean right now i have it set to one segment of description followed by a section of summary for each talent, so im not sure how to make the description stand out more than it already is since it's by itself.

I mean make an actual section for each talent like the way I did. (Or the way you did with the cooldown and glyph descriptions)

---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 05:00 PM ----------

-----------------------------------

And on to the next topic - the stats section:

Again some intro text:
A tank has many roles to fulfill yadayada...
1) Hold aggro (this is generally a non-issue)
2) Stay alive through burst damage (this used to be a massive issue in WotLK - not so much in Cata and MoP)
3) Mitigate damage to a point where healers can keep you and the raid alive (a huge issue in early/mid cata - not so much since then)
4) Deal as much damage as possible (plays a role in 10m of DS and most of current 10m content)

To fulfill those goals you first get enough EH to survive burst damage:
Armor > Stamina
Then mitigating damage:
Mastery>Parry?=Dodge >Haste>Hit>Exp (hit/exp only play a very minor role here)

And last is dealing damage:
Hit > Exp > Exp (7.5-15%)> Haste>Crit

Overall this means the priority may look something like this for 25m:
Armor > Stam > Mastery > Str > Parry?=Dodge > haste/hit > exp
and something like this for 10m:
Hit > Mastery > Exp > Haste > Str > Parry?=Dodge > Exp (>7.5%) > Stamina
Where you put your turning point for effective health vs mitigation vs dps clearly depends on your raid size, your ability to get the best out of DS and how well your healers can handle the overall damage taken. In some cases it may even be better to favor parry/dodge over mastery.


Further explanation on stats:
Stamina: This is what keep you from dying to burst damage (generally magical damage like breaths), gives your healer some breathing room and (slightly) increases the minimum heal/shield of DS.
Armor: In short it's the only completely reliable damage mitigation stat and can thus be counted as an Effective Health stat with a value at about 3 times that of stamina. It takes roughly 1000 pts of armor for 1% of EH increase. The only way to increase armor is by equipping higher level gear (and some trinkets).

Mastery: Mastery increases the shield you gain from Death Strikes and greatly helps in mitigating damage if you use your DS well enough. If however you don't or can't (AoE situations) use your DS properly it falls behind avoidance in reducing damage taken
Strength: Since MoP this increases Parry at a rate of about 0.9 parry rating. It also gives a somewhat minor (since vengeance is so high) dps increase. Other than some (non recommended) enchants you can only choose to gear for Str on trinkets (A Str+Mastery/Hit/Exp may actually be a great tank trinket)


- work in progress -

-----------------------------------

[Reniat]

prio list:
Again, you are making a priority system where the priority system is importance, not order in terms of time. That's fine, but when people see a priority list they are going to automatically put the priority in a time context instead of your intended value context. This is because every DPS guide in the history of WoW has used them in a time context, not a value one like you're suggesting.

talents:
I originally had each talent broken down individually as you suggest, but the majority of feedback I received told me that they would prefer a more broad overview of each tier instead of the specific talent, so that's what I did. If I get more feedback in the other direction I'll make it like it was before, but as of right now the majority of feedback says stick with what I have.



stats:
It just looks like you've completely rewritten the stats section without adding/detracting any info. What does your format do that mine doesnt? The only thing you've done is put split the stat weights into 25m and 10m. and added a bit of info about some of the stats. I avoided making 25m/10m weights because either works in either content, and your playstyle and comp will determine that more than your raid size. I don't feel the info you gave at the bottom is really necessary, and I cover the stamina thing pretty heavily in the EH section.

Also i'm not sure why you devalue exp so much relative to hit. Yes rune strike can't be parried, but exp still gives a significant amount of dps. 7.5% hit and no exp will be about 6% more dps than no accuracy at all, and both at soft cap will result in a 6% dps increase over just hit caps. They're about even in actual practice until soft caps, so exp is just as valuable from a dps perspective. That said, hit still has slightly more value simply because rune strike is what gives out t75 procs, but i'd still put them both at caps if you are going to strive for tank dps.

[Nillo]

prio list:
Again, you are making a priority system where the priority system is importance, not order in terms of time. That's fine, but when people see a priority list they are going to automatically put the priority in a time context instead of your intended value context. This is because every DPS guide in the history of WoW has used them in a time context, not a value one like you're suggesting.

Can't remember the last time dps guides were in a rotation type or sorted by time (since cata there almost no classes left that have a rotation). They are all sorted by priority or in other words: Do 1 - if 1 is not available do 2,....

talents:
I originally had each talent broken down individually as you suggest, but the majority of feedback I received told me that they would prefer a more broad overview of each tier instead of the specific talent, so that's what I did. If I get more feedback in the other direction I'll make it like it was before, but as of right now the majority of feedback says stick with what I have.

I think the summary/conclusion/whatever part should cover that. Right now it's hard to tell which talent does what

stats:
It just looks like you've completely rewritten the stats section without adding/detracting any info. What does your format do that mine doesnt? The only thing you've done is put split the stat weights into 25m and 10m. and added a bit of info about some of the stats. I avoided making 25m/10m weights because either works in either content, and your playstyle and comp will determine that more than your raid size. I don't feel the info you gave at the bottom is really necessary, and I cover the stamina thing pretty heavily in the EH section.

I wanted to change the focus to the decision making of EH vs Mitigation vs DPS (thus the explanation of what a tank's job is), then explain which stat works best for which part and finally give an example of a summarized stat priority.
And yes I do believe there's a huge difference between tanking in 10m and 25m. Tanks in 25m take significantly more damage and have a reason to stack as much health and mitigation stats as possible, they also make up a smaller potion of their raid's dps compared to 10m tanks. Maybe I shouldn't have used it for my example priority, but I still think that the raid size has a huge influence on gearing strategies.

Also i'm not sure why you devalue exp so much relative to hit. Yes rune strike can't be parried, but exp still gives a significant amount of dps.

That's about it nothing more nothing less => hit > exp.

[Reniat]

Can't remember the last time dps guides were in a rotation type or sorted by time (since cata there almost no classes left that have a rotation). They are all sorted by priority or in other words: Do 1 - if 1 is not available do 2,....

But that's a time thing. If both 1 and 2 are up, use 1 before 2 since its higher in the list. That gives a context of time and that's not a good way to approach death strike.

I think the summary/conclusion/whatever part should cover that. Right now it's hard to tell which talent does what

I'll take another look at it, but you're the only person who's approached me on this part.

I wanted to change the focus to the decision making of EH vs Mitigation vs DPS (thus the explanation of what a tank's job is), then explain which stat works best for which part and finally give an example of a summarized stat priority.
And yes I do believe there's a huge difference between tanking in 10m and 25m. Tanks in 25m take significantly more damage and have a reason to stack as much health and mitigation stats as possible, they also make up a smaller potion of their raid's dps compared to 10m tanks. Maybe I shouldn't have used it for my example priority, but I still think that the raid size has a huge influence on gearing strategies.

Oh don't get me wrong, 10m and 25m are very different modes. I'm just saying don't put 10m 25m in the stat priority itself. There are enough 10m guilds with tanks that could use more mitigation and enough 25m guilds with low enough dps that I hesitate to include a raid size into the mix here. It makes a difference yes, but I'd rather say "heres the prio for dmg and heres the prio for survivability. pick the one thats best for your raid" and let them pick for themselves. In general, 10m raiders will pick the dps one and 25m will pick the survivability one. I will add something in the description of hit/exp below that about dps % in 25m and 10m though.

That's about it nothing more nothing less => hit > exp.

right but why value hit>mastery>exp? if you're going to value accuracy>mastery (which I don't agree with) then why put exp below mastery?

[hyperionx]

My issue with a lot of the changes is that they should be put into a seperate guide.

The whole getting hit/exp capped vs going mastery stacking vs whatever else should be put into some sort of advanced tanking guide. Something similiar to how the maintankadin forums used to be setup with a 101 guide vs an advanced guide for when your doing a different tier. I haven't looked at maintankadin for a while but by tier i mean teir 1 = 5 man content, tier 2 = lfr, tier 3 = normal modes, tier 4 = heroic modes. Just as an example.

I think the original guide is fine. Adding all the details and options that Nillo wants would take the original guide off message. Personally, i just want something that I can send a new blood dk to that gives him a basic breakdown. It used to be difficult to get new blood dk's to realize they need to spend Death Runes on Death Strike rather than on heart strike, let alone blow their minds with the whole hit/exp vs mitigation debate.

The issue is you can't make one guide fit every single scenario without making it confusing to a new blood DK. In renait's first paragraph, he said it himself, this is a basic guide.

[Reniat]

While the bulk is a basic guide, my intention is to include information that would allow someone to tank the highest level of content. That's what the advanced playstyle section is for. If you do exactly what i describe in that section you could viably tank hardcore progression 25H content. I feel like the hit/exp section in the stats section is enough, though I acknowledge a mention of 10m vs 25m dynamics is needed somewhere.

EDIT: also a tank dps section is needed before it becomes a complete guide for all levels of content. Once school dies down for me a bit and finals are done I have a few things i plan on adding, a tank dps section being one of them.

[krunksmash]

FYI pergatory is the best tank talent when you get it just go ape shit on self heals.and your fine. its a great back up last stand I love it.

[Nillo]

Btw. has anyone found out if the 4pc works on Blood Shield?

[Reniat]

Not 100% sure yet. Euliat pointed out that the way it's worded suggests that it doesn't, and I tend to agree with him. It says healing received not done, and your blood shield is calculated off the healing done by DS not the healing you receive. This is why Vampiric Blood also does nothing for blood shield. There's a chance we may be wrong, but I doubt it. The 4pc isn't bad though, even without the bonus to shields. If you're using DS to recover from spikes (as described in my advanced section) then the 10% will give you that much more instant health after a burst, which is definitely significant. That said, due to the itemization of the tier pieces it is actually an overall mitigation loss compared to just getting the raid items with mastery on them and ignoring the 4pc, but as we all know overall mitigation really doesn't mean much anyway. What matters is burst, and the +10% does help with burst. (by the way, you lose about 800 mastery by getting the tier pieces instead of the better itemized raid pieces)

[SSHA778]

Not 100% sure yet. Euliat pointed out that the way it's worded suggests that it doesn't, and I tend to agree with him. It says healing received not done, and your blood shield is calculated off the healing done by DS not the healing you receive.

Nope, didn't say that. You've mixed up two messages.

I said it likely does affect Blood Shield because effects that explicitly state that they affect Death Strike in the past have also affected Blood Shield. Effects that yield a blanket +% healing done/received don't affect Blood Shield.

Take a look at the other tank bonuses. Most, but not all of them, do something around 20%. 10% + 10% = 20%.