Active Mitigation Hipsters - 5.2 DK Tanking Guide

[Nillo]

benefit 1: faster rune regen means more death strike, whose value is increased by mastery

benefit 2: increased haste gives faster SoB procs, whose value is increased by mastery

that's a double dip of rocky road my fine french vanilla friend.

SoB procs increase at about the same rate as the number of DS do => you just get more DS with about the SAME amount of SoB for each. Double dipping would be if you get more SoB per DS which is clearly not the case (unless you run into overcapping issues with haste in which case haste loses value rather than gaining it)

Want an example of real double dipping?
Righteous Vengeance with 2pc t9 at Twins in ToC:
Crit increases the chance to get RV
Twins buff increases crit damage
Crit then increases the damage of RV
Twins buff increaes RV damage.

That was double (or even triple dipping)
(1+x)*(1+x) not (1+x) * (1+a)

[Reniat]

SoB procs increase at about the same rate as the number of DS do => you just get more DS with about the SAME amount of SoB for each. Double dipping would be if you get more SoB per DS which is clearly not the case (unless you run into overcapping issues with haste in which case haste loses value rather than gaining it)

ok fine, but admit it my ice cream response was probably the best thing i've ever typed on mmoc. Including page 1 of this thread :P

I guess I had the wrong idea of what double dipping was. thanks for setting me straight.

[Kiqjaq]

Just to show you what i mean, I quick did a reforge into the build you propose (we have similar gear. 511 vs 508) and I got a whopping 4.8% reduction in regen time. That's not fast enough to save you in a DS gap, and it's not enough to outweigh the loss of avoidance in terms of TDR, meaning it doesn't have stability or long term mitigation value over the other options (avoidance/accuracy).

Not to particularly advocate haste, but 4.8% doesn't seem entirely trivial. That's roughly 2,040 haste rating, so significantly less than an entire accuracy cap.
If you divert all of that from capped expertise you're left at around 1.5% expertise and 5% haste from it, almost a fair deal. Considering how Rune Strike doesn't care about expertise and Heart Strike refunds, really the only thing that would cost you damage would be autoattack, minion melee, spells, the delta between Soul Reaper and Heart Strike, and Death Strike. You'd miss out on 6% of these that you otherwise wouldn't, but have 5% more of everything including these. You can probably remove diseases from the "spells" aspect as well, since once they're up they're going to stay up more than likely, though application could be a nuisance.

Is that a particularly poor tradeoff? I'm afraid mathing it out much further is beyond by skills, but I wouldn't dismiss it just because 5% seems like a low number. It is a low number, but expertise isn't exactly a generous conversion either.

[Reniat]

4.8% may not seem trivial at first, but keep in mind that's not the same as 4.8% increased rune throughput. That is simply 4.8% reduced rune regen time. As in, if you don't proc/activate any t75 talents you would get runes back 4.8% quicker. A large portion of our rune throughput comes from our t75 options, which are specifically designed not to scale with haste. In other words, you will get much less than a 4.8% overall rune throughput increase because a lionshare of our rune regen (t75 talents) isn't even affected.

You could say that t75 is affected in that more SoB procs means more RP means more rune strieks means more procs, but by getting haste in the first place you are losing hit/exp (unless you are doing the aforementioned haste>hit/exp>mastery build for raw DPS, which doesn't apply to "normal" tanking) which means that even though you will gain an increased amount of proc chances, you will miss more of them, negating the whole thing anyway.

[Kiqjaq]

But our rune regen talents do scale with haste. The more haste you have, the more runes you spend, the more Runic you gain, the more Rune Strike you cast the more rune regen talents you proc. Rune runic rune.
RC has just been tweaked so that it doesn't double dib on haste, giving more frequent casts and stronger effects with more haste, which would make it terrible at low gear levels and mandatory later on for the specs that go for haste.
And then, as you say, you'll swing faster which will be more SoB stacks, which gives more runic in exactly equal proportion.

Our whole rotation scales about evenly with haste, and hit/expertise really don't give all that much to a number of abilities. Even if you drop hit rather than just expertise, a missed Rune Strike only costs... what was it, 4 Runic Power? You can basically just recast it the same way you would a Heart Strike. Consistency would be an annoyance, and empty GCDs might become scarce, but those are whines rather than objections.

And the t75 talents aren't anywhere near the lion's share of our regen.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...ses&boss=60009
I ran with Runic Corruption all last night and on a given fight with no downtime (few and far between it seems) like Feng I had 30% uptime on Corruption. A 30% uptime on double regen speed isn't the lion's share of anything; even 100% uptime would make it on par with my natural regen. The T75s are a bonus, and a grand one at that, but certainly far weaker in returns than natural regen, they're a quarter of our total regen (maybe a third if you take BT and want to only count FUD runes).

you are losing hit/exp which means that even though you will gain an increased amount of proc chances, you will miss more of them, negating the whole thing anyway.

That's nearly what I'm going for. Just running through the situation in my head, it seems like compared to a Mastery>Accuracy build, the worst case scenario is that it's a push.
Nearly every time you miss/dodged/parried, you get a refund on the cost of the attack, enough so to just cast it again. A Heart Strike missing costs you a GCD, of which we have plenty extra, but less frequent Heart Strikes are just that: less frequent. For Heart Strike and Rune Strike it's a total gain.
And for Death Strike, 5% more frequent ones but 6% of them missing is a bit worse off. But it's a push, not a loss.

I might want to give this a shot some time tbh...

[Reniat]

I'm bad with terminology. when i said lionshare I thought it meant like, a large portion. not the largest portion. That's why i said A lionshare not THE lionshare. I'm not an english major so sue me

Anyway I was simply pointing out that the actual overall increase will be somewhere less than 4.8%. You do get more t75 procs with more RP from runes spent, but that's all part of the linear rune system that is increased. There's no direct benefit to t75 (as it would if RC was a set duration as opposed to a duration that decreases with more haste), which is what I meant.

As far as SoB proc chances go, you DO lose it. Your only resource when it comes to SoB procs (and the runic power from them) is melee attacks, and a missed melee attack is a permanently lost resource, since missing a melee won't lead to 2 melees next swing. What I was trying to point out there was that the RP gain from SoB due to haste is negated by the extra missed melee swings. You're trading a better chance to proc for an increased proc chance rate.


I just simmed both choices (mastery>accuracy vs mastery>haste over 50k iterations) and the accuracy build did about 1% more. It's not much, but it's still more. Plus its a bit more reliable. This means the original situation still stands: mastery>haste still does less damage than mastery>accuracy, and does less mitigation than mastery>avoidance. Still no reason in my mind to use haste outside of the haste>accuracy ranking build I mentioned earlier and of course pure magic fights like Lei Shi where mastery/avoidance do nothing.

[Kiqjaq]

I've always had issues simming for Blood. Tank dps is definitely unsupported. (maybe it's just my noobliness, but) I can't seem to get it to use DRW or Necrotic Strike for proper dps simming, and who knows what else it might miss out on.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...detail?id=1535
Blood DK doesn't have any support really, outside of the Frost/Unholy abilities it shares.

But I'll check when I get home ages from now whether it looks about right nowadays. If I see a single Death Strike getting parried, or resources not getting refunded, though I'm throwing this out. >.>

(it's a great and free product, and this is a rather niche use, so no complaints about the wonderful makers; I just doubt its accuracy in this niche)

This means the original situation still stands: mastery>haste still does less damage than mastery>accuracy, and does less mitigation than mastery>avoidance.

That's a rather simplified way to put it though. There's nothing wrong with a middle path. /zen
Even taking simcraft's word as gospel, a 1% delta seems perfectly acceptable to me if it gives significantly more mitigation. Whether it's significant though is the question, and I'm not sure that's easily simmable, since it depends so much on how well you use your resources. I don't think we really can spitball this any more though, won't go anywhere. :P




Also, as an unrelated question, have you found any information on vengeance values relative to dodges/parries? Blizzard says it should give you the "average damage of a swing" as vengeance, but when I round up a group of low-level mobs that I have 100% avoidance on, I don't get a drop of vengeance until I turn by back to them and stop parrying.
Vengeance is too much a mystery, doesn't even show up in logs.

[Reniat]

Even taking simcraft's word as gospel, a 1% delta seems perfectly acceptable to me if it gives significantly more mitigation.

hit/exp also give comparable mitigation through SoB stacks, so the middle path may not be so middle as you think. /zenbulldozer

Also, I never said I ran the sim in simc. I totally did, but I never said it


Anyway, as I understood it vengeance figures out how much dmg you would have taken had you not avoided the attack and given you the vengeance based on that. Same goes with absorbs/blocks. flat dmg reduction (IBF, stonerform, ect.) do not function the same way and you get vengeance based off the reduced damage (with the exception of prot pally i believe). They wanted to not penalize tanks for getting more dodge/parry/mastery, but still wanted there to be some tradeoff with using CDs. Perhaps this was to prevent the use of stacking CDs, taking ridiculous dmg then getting ALL the vengeance? This could all be completely wrong. I haven't kept up with how vengeance is calculated, since no matter how it's calculated, more dmg taken = more AP and that's all that really matters if you're trying to game vengeance for max dps.

---------- Post added 2013-02-07 at 04:56 PM ----------

After going a bit further into simc I found that they do indeed refund resources appropriately and the code is in place to prevent death strike being parried and rune strike being dodged/blocked/parried.

[Ikrekot]

Someone try parry/dodge build on some boss? I have problem with Wind Lord Mel'jarak 10 hc. I was using Mastery with exp/hit build.

World of logs

Healers have small lags.

Would be Glyph of Vampiric Blood better on that fight? I run askmrrobot simulation and I could get +11% dodge and +27% parry but only 5k mastery.

Armory

[Cookie]

There's no reason to use parry/dodge over mastery, it's simply less reliable. If you are struggling with survivability you should definitely get parry/dodge over hit/exp though (I'd suggest using swordshattering as well). You haven't reforged the haste on your back/ring either for some reason.

I feel comfortable using the vampiric blood glyph on that fight but if you're prone to getting gibbed you might want to keep it unglyphed. I don't have time to look that in-depth at your logs but from what I can see the uptime on quickness is quite high, not terrible but should definitely be lower (especially with two priests). Your disc needs to learn to use spirit shell as well, if it's used properly rain of blades will be a non-factor allowing all the healers to simply spam heals into you. Try to save your tanking cds/death strikes for when quickness gets applied (so you stay alive until it's dispelled) and/or when the blademasters return from their kor'thik strike, but if you're using 3 healers and dying chances are that they are doing something wrong.

[Ikrekot]

Thanks for the advice. I'll speak with healers today. Pala has over 400 ms+ and priest have too. Shadow priest uses Mass Dispel and disci don't want because he is scary about his mana. What mana regen utillity has disci priest someone know?

[Cookie]

Your disc shouldn't need to to MD much since you have a sp, but he can easily afford to do a few MD's when necessary (especially since you have a resto shaman), rapture+mana tide combined with the fact that he can do pure atonement healing whenever reck is up means that he shouldn't have mana issues.

[Bendeis]

Am I the only one seriously contemplating keeping my upgraded 4pc t14hc for a pretty long while into T15?
Or possibly go with 2+2pc or 2pc t15+offpieces

The setbonuses as it stands now strikes me as incredibly shitty, especially 4pc.
The 4pc is 6 blood charges every minute if you are using blood tap, which in turn is slightly over one death rune per minute. So half a Death Strike per minute, pretty much. (not to mention, if you are using RE or RC, rng can screw you over so hard that you get no rune regen.. )

I guess the 4pc can be ok for runic power to use DRW, but I have not really had any issues pooling rp for it on live servers atm.

And due to t15 having so little mastery on the set pieces, it seems like to me it's better to just skip the half DS and go for offpieces with mastery. Or possibly use 2+2. (upgraded t14hc 2pc+t15pc) Anyone else with any opinions arounf this?

[Nillo]

I intend to get at least 2pc of the dps set ~

[Bendeis]

Yeah, the DPS set looks decent, but do not really care too much about it since I am first and foremost looking for as much survivability as possible.

The T15 tank 2pc seems a bit weak as well, but I can certainly see myself using it. It's mainly the 4pc that seems very underwhelming to me compared to the T14 bonuses

[celinamuna]

Not sure if the right thread, but does anyone know any addon for easy reforging ?
Generally i use Reforge Lite, but i don't see a way to set it up for it to get the dodge/parry at the ratios of each other, i can only get it to reforge all into one of those stats (after mastery)

[Cookie]

Sadly I can't be particulary helpful (I don't know an addon for that) but quite frankly the avoidance you are losing out from reforging one piece to parry over dodge (worst case scenario if you reforge it manually and press the macro every once in a while) is very insignificant.

[celinamuna]

Sadly I can't be particulary helpful (I don't know an addon for that) but quite frankly the avoidance you are losing out from reforging one piece to parry over dodge (worst case scenario if you reforge it manually and press the macro every once in a while) is very insignificant.

So should i be mostly reforging into parry (given that it also reduces my melee swing time) or still dodge ? Atm i'm going with avoidance build (due to fairly low ilvl of gear available) and set it up to mastery > parry > dodge.

[Cookie]

So should i be mostly reforging into parry (given that it also reduces my melee swing time) or still dodge ?

I'm positive that this was removed a while ago.

For reforging use the macro and reforge as it suggests, if you are "right on the mark" and still have another piece to reforge, reforge into parry (if you want to feel free to sit and reforge pieces back and forth fo a "perfect balance", but the gain isn't worth the effort).

Macro: /run d=GetDodgeChance() n=3.22 if UnitRace("player")=="Gnome" then n=n-.01 end p=235.5*d/65.631440-((235.5/65.631440)*5.01-n)+4 DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Ideal parry for current dodge: "..string.format("%.2f",p))

[Nillo]

So should i be mostly reforging into parry (given that it also reduces my melee swing time) or still dodge ? Atm i'm going with avoidance build (due to fairly low ilvl of gear available) and set it up to mastery > parry > dodge.

Or you could just ignore avoidance completely because honestly it doesn't really do much for survivability and the overall reduce in damage taken generally doesn't compare to reducing the fight length by going for hit/exp caps.