[Guide] Active Mitigation Hipsters - 5.4 DK Tanking

[Nillo]

Do I really have to?
There's a reason everyone ignored avoidance back in WotLK - and it's for the very same reason that avoidance is useless now.

The only exceptions have always been high frequent low damage hits and early cata where damage taken and healing done were so damn low that avoidance was actually noticable.

[Deleted]

Things like abilties missing giving you significantly less survivability (unlike now), parrygibbing, the fact that healers had to (and had the mana to) spam big heals constantly (just incase you'd get hit) and threat actually being a concern were quite relevant reasons why hit/exp had a higher comparative value in wotlk. Despite that avoidance was hardly entirely ignored back then.

So exactly why is <1% raid dps so much more important than up to ~5% reduced raid damage? I don't see how a tank taking significantly less damage has no value, especially now that the healers actually have time to react and cancel/not heal if they notice that the tank avoids an attack.

[celinamuna]

Do I really have to?
There's a reason everyone ignored avoidance back in WotLK - and it's for the very same reason that avoidance is useless now.

The only exceptions have always been high frequent low damage hits and early cata where damage taken and healing done were so damn low that avoidance was actually noticable.

While i will stray away from avoidance build once my dk gets to ~same gear as my paladin (basically 5.2 and the free 502 gear) at 471 ilvl i would like to keep as much avoidance as possible, esp since i do plan to tank MV / HoF / possibly protectors, before 5.2

[Deleted]

I'm gearing up my blood DK alt atm so re-read this guide - it's very useful tx. For relative newbies like me, it might be good to put a few macros in. One combining summoning your ghoul and using death pact, in particular: when you need that big heal, you'll likely need it fast. Maybe a lichborne macro too one too?.

I re-jigged my talents after reading the guide. I switched from RE to blood tap - I definitely "feel" the lower rate of automatic rune recovery but the utility is great and much easier to use than I thought. I think I'll use a double blood tap macro, though, as clicking twice felt clunky.

One thing I would dissent from in the guide is the warning about purgatory. I think you scare off people unnecessarily - it certainly scared me off before. I've been finding lichborne clunky, seldom used, often lacking the RP to back it up and someone redundant given our other self-heals/cds, so I tried out purgatory last night. It saved my life on the horrible trash at the start of HoF LFR. The death pact macro provides a very quick and reliable way to get you back up to decent health, especially with a DS or VB to follow. I don't think it should be reserved for advanced players using it as a trick to counter heroic fight mechanics. It's a good choice for those like me only doing LFR, to recover when you or your healers slip up. As a passive ability, it arguably requires less skill than lichborne - new players just need to be reminded to quickly follow it with DP, DS and/or VB.

My main is a paladin tank, so it reminds me of the old Ardent Defender which I miss. In my experience raiding normals and LFR, most of my tank deaths that lead to wipes are unexpected - a healer was inattentive, I did not use a CD etc - so a passive "save your life" ability you can use to recover is a great addition to your arsenal. In some ways, it's like a second battle rez.

[Kiqjaq]

So exactly why is <1% raid dps so much more important than up to ~5% reduced raid damage?

It's not always more important, it's a tradeoff that a person will decide on their own whether to partake in or not, sometimes on a fight by fight basis.
On many fights, tank damage taken isn't that major a factor, and the most potent threats to tank survival are infrequently on the combat table anyways. Keeping a tank alive through overall damage is piss easy much of the time; it's surviving burst that marks a good tank, and RNG just doesn't cut it for that. It's the same reason we stack Mastery, because the main damage we care about we want to be able to control.

Remember that not all damage dodged contributes to healer mana, RNG especially. It's quite likely that the damage you avoid will contribute to overhealing.
And I honestly can't imagine a single time where an avoidance build will give the healers time to dps because there's really just that little damage flying around, where an accuracy build would have them on you all the time...

That's not to say that dodge/parry are useless or that exceptions don't exist, but the trade isn't quite as black/white as "5% less raid damage, 5% less healing, 5% more mana saved".
Especially when you consider that a hit attack will frequently contribute to DS healing whereas a parried one won't. 2.5% at best with 200% mastery? :P
(I'm also doubtful of whether dodged/parried attacks grant vengeance... Blizz says they should, but my tests on live disagree).

One thing I would dissent from in the guide is the warning about purgatory. I think you scare off people unnecessarily - it certainly scared me off before. I've been finding lichborne clunky, seldom used, often lacking the RP to back it up and someone redundant given our other self-heals/cds, so I tried out purgatory last night. It saved my life on the horrible trash at the start of HoF LFR. The death pact macro provides a very quick and reliable way to get you back up to decent health, especially with a DS or VB to follow. I don't think it should be reserved for advanced players using it as a trick to counter heroic fight mechanics. It's a good choice for those like me only doing LFR, to recover when you or your healers slip up. As a passive ability, it arguably requires less skill than lichborne - new players just need to be reminded to quickly follow it with DP, DS and/or VB.

I think what happened to you is exactly what the warning is about. Outside of the scenarios he mentioned (heroic progression, planned usage, or otherwise ridiculously bursty hits you'd like insurance for), if you had the resources for DP, DS, and/or VB, then you've likely failed as a tank for not using them well before you "died" in the first place. Exceptions exist and **** happens--it's certainly not a noob ability--but a lot of the time when it saves you a well used Lichborne could have been just as effective, if not more so.

Lichborne isn't clunky, it just costs a resource many people are used to spamming on something else. If you find your healers will be distracted for a bit, or they seem to be falling behind, stop Rune Striking for a short while and bank some Runic. If you get through alright then you can spam that Runic and it won't have cost you a thing. If you do end up needing it, then you have it ready.
It's most definitely more difficult to use than a passive, but I wouldn't say it's hard by any means. It just requires more foresight than most other healing cooldowns. (and Death Pact isn't always up to take advantage of)

Plus, what's cooler than popping AMS, hopping into a Cobalt Mine, and giving yourself a nice full heal with the free runic when **** hits the fan?

[Deleted]

Reading the elitist jerks guide, I may be missing something about purgatory. It says that if you have only a low overkill, then your "shroud of purgatory" may quickly expire and you'll likely get killed to a normal melee strike in the next GCD. The tooltip text implied a uniform 3 second period of protection, but if it is much less for smaller killing blows, then I agree a warning is required. Is it true that the shroud does not always last 3 seconds?

[Kiqjaq]

Reading the elitist jerks guide, I may be missing something about purgatory. It says that if you have only a low overkill, then your "shroud of purgatory" may quickly expire and you'll likely get killed to a normal melee strike in the next GCD. The tooltip text implied a uniform 3 second period of protection, but if it is much less for smaller killing blows, then I agree a warning is required. Is it true that the shroud does not always last 3 seconds?

*Saves you from death for 3 sec once every 3 minutes. This counts as an absorb effect so moves that go through other absorbs can still kill you. As soon as the absorb shield is healed off, the effect is removed regardless of when during the 3 seconds that happens.
From the Frost EJ guide.

If you want to know about a non-spec specific mechanic, you can usually go ahead and pop into the other guides as well to see if they phrase things more clearly/mention something the others don't.

[Deleted]

@Kiqjaq. Avoidance isn't purely rng based survival, your death strike and cd usage should be determined by how much you are hit, and having more avoidance will give you more room to delay your death strikes and significantly reduces the chance that you ever get caught without neither a cd or a death strike. In mop (10 man) there's also not the same requirement to actually spamheal the tank constantly, in a situation with somewhat lower tank damage your healers can afford to wait (and save mana) or dps until you actually take damage, and in high damage situations avoidance and reduced damage on the tank is so much more valuable.

This being said, I don't claim that hit and exp capping has no place, depending on your raid/gear it's certainly viable, and on specific fights it's outright superior. However claiming that it always is superior (like Nillo repeatedly does) is simply not true.


Regarding lichborne vs purgatory, I mainly use purgatory (with a few exceptions) simply because we already have a significant amount of abilities that can be used with foresight while having very few emergency buttons, vampiric blood has basically no use in an emergency situation, ibf benefit in a situation like that is limited, death pact requires the ghoul out, etc. Simply having the safety of purgatory means that you can allow yourself to drop slightly lower before popping a death strike, pulling out the ghoul or some other cd, and hence minimizes the chance that you'll end up in a situation without a death strike or any cds (which usually is the only time a dk tank actually dies, the other situations being extreme burst damage where purgatory obviously is amazing).

[Deleted]

I have a question for the blood DKs here. In which type of bosses do you think Blood DKs excel? I have been wondering it myself, after seeing seeing this tier come and go. As always, we have gone with the idea the having a DK+Warrior as tanks will let us use each one as main depending on the boss. In DS it was fairly obvious where a DK outperfomed a warrior, but in T14... I hadn't really seen a boss where choosing it was a clear advantage (seemed better on Lei Shi and Garalon, bosses a little special), but there was several where it was a clear disadvantage.

So... just to expand my knowledge, what type of bosses will you choose a DK over other tanks?

[Nillo]

From my experience:
Good: Ta'yak, Garalon, Lei Shi , Feng
Bad: Mel'Jarak
Only take 1 dk for those: Shek'zeer , Gara'Jal

[Deleted]

I'd just say fights with breaks in between the damage, basically most tankswap fights without anything special. This allows us to have blood shield up almost constantly and to pretty much chain cds when we actually tank. Fights like feng, wote, blade-lord, if there's some added bursty magic damage it's just even better, e.g. tsulong or elegon. The question is just in which of those fights that this is worth giving up the utility a pala/warrior would bring, but purely when it comes to damage taken or pure "tanking" I think dk is superior.

[Deleted]

I finished tanking all the LFRs tonight - don't laugh, but it was exhilarating and rather terrifying. I've done them before on my palatank and warrior tank, but this felt more visceral - my health did seem to jump around more than the shield tanks health does, although it is also more under my control. I don't know how I lived without blood tap, I seemed to be using it constantly, but purgatory was rather underwhelming - it kicked in a couple of times, but I died immediately after. Anti-magic shell was the most pleasant distinct tool of my DK tank - it seemed to negate Tsulong's breath attack (is that right?), which was awesome, and help on Lei Shi.

[Nillo]

I finished tanking all the LFRs tonight - don't laugh, but it was exhilarating and rather terrifying. I've done them before on my palatank and warrior tank, but this felt more visceral - my health did seem to jump around more than the shield tanks health does, although it is also more under my control. I don't know how I lived without blood tap, I seemed to be using it constantly, but purgatory was rather underwhelming - it kicked in a couple of times, but I died immediately after. Anti-magic shell was the most pleasant distinct tool of my DK tank - it seemed to negate Tsulong's breath attack (is that right?), which was awesome, and help on Lei Shi.

If you die in lfr you have much bigger issues than Purgatory not being as good as you think.
Also AMS only absorbs the breath it doesn't negate it.

[Deleted]

I finished tanking all the LFRs tonight - don't laugh, but it was exhilarating and rather terrifying. I've done them before on my palatank and warrior tank, but this felt more visceral - my health did seem to jump around more than the shield tanks health does, although it is also more under my control. I don't know how I lived without blood tap, I seemed to be using it constantly, but purgatory was rather underwhelming - it kicked in a couple of times, but I died immediately after. Anti-magic shell was the most pleasant distinct tool of my DK tank - it seemed to negate Tsulong's breath attack (is that right?), which was awesome, and help on Lei Shi.

I love the feeling as well^^. I don't really see what you like about blood tap though, I find it extremly underwhelming, but I suppose it could be a little helpful in lfr. The key to purgatory being useful is to combine it with massive heals, ensuring that you end up at a high health level coming out of it. In my raid I have death pact, my pala has LoH and my sp has life swap for this, it's obviously a lot worse without a proper guild/in lfr. The debuff still gets applied but yes you can absorb an entire breath (and get some extra runic power for the trouble:P).

[Deleted]

If you die in lfr you have much bigger issues than Purgatory not being as good as you think.

Sorry, did I say "don't laugh"? What I meant was "don't condescend" but I guess your Anglo-EU translator is not working.

Yes, tanks do die in LFR. Get stunned by the trash at the start of HoF and/or eat one of those earthquake things: I've seen more tanks die before that 1st boss than to everything else combined in LFR. Tank the 4th boss on HoF with no one dispelling quickening, that should do it. Botch a tank swap on Tsulong or Lei Shi. It's surprisingly common on the night before reset, when everyone is on their nth alt, the healers just AOE heal, the tanks have never done the fight on that char (guilty) and the dps can't make the enrage on Lei Shi. Yes, in your heroic raid gear and with your heroic raiding experience, it may never have happened to you. Gratz. Have a gold star. Go condescend to people on the internet. But queue for LFR in there on a barely gear alt you've never raided with and are just learning the mechanics of, it happens. What some players who want to improve do then is they read guides and communicate with more experienced players to try to earn how to do better. It is so helpful to them to be told they are bads who have "issues".

/sigh.

I don't really see what you like about blood tap though, I find it extremly underwhelming, but I suppose it could be a little helpful in lfr.

Well, it meant that I could quickly accumulate 10-12 blood tap charges to be on call whenever I needed it (e.g. before a thrash). I guess it's hard to get a clean comparison with the alternative - I'm not familiar with RC, but with RE, having a DS available seemed more out of my control. But my observation was not so much that it's better - it's hard to gauge that from a night's play: I guess with RE, I'd be more likely to hold some runes in reserve, so the DS would still be there. But my point was more how much I used it. I'd equate it to using shield of the righteous as a paladin tank - I was drawing on blood tap to get a DS that regularly.

[Deleted]

Well, it meant that I could quickly accumulate 10-12 blood tap charges to be on call whenever I needed it (e.g. before a thrash). I guess it's hard to get a clean comparison with the alternative - I'm not familiar with RC, but with RE, having a DS available seemed more out of my control. But my observation was not so much that it's better - it's hard to gauge that from a night's play: I guess with RE, I'd be more likely to hold some runes in reserve, so the DS would still be there. But my point was more how much I used it. I'd equate it to using shield of the righteous as a paladin tank - I was drawing on blood tap to get a DS that regularly.

I'm more sleepy than I thought, sorry. For some reason I mixed up blood tap and rune tap, embarassing. Blood tap is indeed amazing, there's quite frankly no reason to use any of the other talents as a tank (RC can accomplish basically the same thing on most fights, but is inferior on a few, and RE is just terrible since you can't save death strikes). You have more control and is able to save up more death strikes with blood tap.

[Nillo]

Sorry, did I say "don't laugh"? What I meant was "don't condescend" but I guess your Anglo-EU translator is not working.

I've had quite a few wipes on the bosses you mention and again - if you encounter these issues (people not dispelling Mel'Jarak, other tank not taunting at Lei Shi) then obviously Purgatory isn't going to keep you alive because the damage you take far exceeds the amount of healing you'll see from an lfr healer and Purgatory only prevents death - it doesn't make you invincible.

Besides I didn't mean to be condescending I only meant to be rude since you seemed to base your opinion of Purgatory on LFR.

[Kiqjaq]

Besides I didn't mean to be condescending I only meant to be rude

We all love you Nillo.

[Reniat]

ok, so this got interesting quick... I'm gonna throw my 2 cents on the various topics that have been discussed over the past 2 pages or so since I wasn't around to respond the them as they were being discussed.


Avoidance vs accuracy:

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.

Even if total damage reduction was a good metric to use for assessing a tank (spoiler alert: it's not), the actual amount of time you save in a fight by hit/exp capping is incredibly small. On the other hand, the avoidance you lose is also incredibly insignificant. That means both are viable depending on what your specific raid needs for the fight. I don't know why so many people say you have to have it one way or the other. I've used both for progression in both 10H and 25H content, and they both work. Hit/exp caps are nice, but 90% of the time they won't make a notable difference. The avoidance is also in a position where 90% of the time it won't make a noticeable difference. it's 6e-10 of one and (12/2)e-10 of the other.


Purgatory:

the fact that a light hit proccing purgatory will lead to a very brief purgatory is why I have the warning. This is what I mean:
you are at like, 20% health (can happen with asleep healers in LFR or 5mans if you're not geared enough to practically solo the content) and you take a hit for 21% of your life. You are now in 1% deep into purgatory, which is instantly healed by a tick of a hot that heals you for 3%, which leaves you with no purgatory at 2% health. Even if you get a couple small direct heals, you can easily be killed by the next melee swing if you are not reacting accordingly, and if you don't think you can/don't want to deal with it then it would be better to take something like lichborne which would allow you to better self heal your self when you are at the 20% mark as opposed to dealing with purgatory. For heroic progression there is no question that purgatory is king, but the guild isn't written for just one level of content - hence the warning.

Bosses DKs excel/don't excel at:

Overall we are very solid this tier. Yes we have some issues with gara'jal, but being 100% viable for 15/16 bosses is not the end of the world by any means. We are also not the only tanks this tier to be non-viable for a fight (for example, druid tanks and H sha). that said there are places where we are viable, but not the strongest either. There are also bosses where we are kings too.

Not viable (from a early progression point of view):
H Gara'jal - This fight just ate DKs for breakfast. Everything about this fight was just bad for DKs. Unavoidable damage? check. Said unavoidable damage was given to raid members at a 1 to 1 ratio? double check. Our self heals do not apply to the aforementioned raid members? triple check. It's not that DK died, it was that the voodoo dolls were just WRECKED. This made DKs non-viable for early progression until the healers got enough gear to handle the massive voodoo damage.


Viable but not ideal:
Shek'zeer and Mel'jarak - I can lump these two together since it's the same rationale for both fights. Lots of little hits that can line up and practically one shot you. DKs have a great mechanic in blood shield. I wouldn't trade it for the world. That said, when we have no blood shield available and no death strike on reserve, we are much more at risk than other tanks. When it's 1 boss with a ~1.8 second swing timer it is much easier to handle compared to multiple smaller hits much quicker. There is more hits being taken between shield (when we're vulnerable) and less time to react to them. All of the other tanks have either a significantly higher avoidance % to mitigate the risk of multiple adds (monk/druid) or have an entire additional avoidance mechanic in the form of block (warrior/paladin). That said, you can still easily use a DK for progression here. It just requires proper cooldown management and alert healers.

Fights we're strong on:
Feng - the amount of CDs we have (especially with AMS in the mix) makes this fight faceroll as blood whether you're tanking it normally or going up to 8 stacks of the DoT for ridiculous vengeance.

Will of the emperor - while this applies to both difficulties it is especially true with the lengthened dance on heroic. Basically we can pool our resources while dancing and basically take no damage at all while actively taking damage from the bosses by using CDs to make our shield last nearly the entire duration between dances. Especially if you're using BT.

Garalon - The ability to hit all the legs with diseases gives us decent damage here, as well the fact that Furious swipe can be absorbed both make us awesome here.

Lei Shi - While we have the lowest amount of passive resistance (10% from blood presence vs 15% for pally 25% for warrior ect.) the amount of cooldowns we have here in addition to the fact that our active mitigation still works (the shield doesn't, but we still get the raw heal which still scales with the incoming damage) means we're solid for this fight as well.

Tsulong - another fight where ams makes the tank dmg faceroll. VB + ams = what breath? not to mention the utility of death grip/gorefiends grasp on the adds in day phase.

H sha of fear - now this one is a bit controversial, as I've seen multiple people say DKs aren't great here, however I have to disagree 100%. With proper use of BT (ironically many of the people who say that we're weak here who have killed it didn't use BT) this fight becomes very strong for us in that we are the least vulnerable to RNG both in that the way we handle thrashes relies entirely on mitigation instead of avoidance as well as the fact that we have purgatory, which is a second chance every 3 minutes for when a really poor RNG thrash does get through. Consistency AND a backup that's up for nearly every dread thrash we take? i'm not complaining


Other stuff:

If you die in lfr you have much bigger issues than Purgatory not being as good as you think.
Also AMS only absorbs the breath it doesn't negate it.

1) There is a reason the guide is not locked to new posts, and that is because I want people to come with questions at all levels. If he's consistently dying in LFR, yes something is wrong. why not help him instead of just calling him bad and being

rude

2) even on 25H, VB + ams has me taking <10% of my health in dmg from the breath, I can see LFR breath being completely negatable with enough HP.

[Nillo]

1) There is a reason the guide is not locked to new posts, and that is because I want people to come with questions at all levels. If he's consistently dying in LFR, yes something is wrong. why not help him instead of just calling him bad and being

2) even on 25H, VB + ams has me taking <10% of my health in dmg from the breath, I can see LFR breath being completely negatable with enough HP.

1) Again I didn't mean to call him bad for dying in LFR (because most of the time it's the lfr raid that's bad) but call him bad for making conclusions based on lfr deaths.

2) By negating I thought more like negating the debuff and iirc that isn't possible.

---------- Post added 2013-02-20 at 02:46 PM ----------

Not viable (from a early progression point of view):
H Gara'jal - This fight just ate DKs for breakfast. Everything about this fight was just bad for DKs. Unavoidable damage? check. Said unavoidable damage was given to raid members at a 1 to 1 ratio? double check. Our self heals do not apply to the aforementioned raid members? triple check. It's not that DK died, it was that the voodoo dolls were just WRECKED. This made DKs non-viable for early progression until the healers got enough gear to handle the massive voodoo damage.

Again you may want to mention this is 25H - being able to almost completely negate melee damage on 10H definitely makes us viable. (as long as you don't use 2 DKs of course)

---------- Post added 2013-02-20 at 02:56 PM ----------

[Viable but not ideal:
Shek'zeer and Mel'jarak - I can lump these two together since it's the same rationale for both fights. Lots of little hits that can line up and practically one shot you. DKs have a great mechanic in blood shield. I wouldn't trade it for the world. That said, when we have no blood shield available and no death strike on reserve, we are much more at risk than other tanks. When it's 1 boss with a ~1.8 second swing timer it is much easier to handle compared to multiple smaller hits much quicker. There is more hits being taken between shield (when we're vulnerable) and less time to react to them. All of the other tanks have either a significantly higher avoidance % to mitigate the risk of multiple adds (monk/druid) or have an entire additional avoidance mechanic in the form of block (warrior/paladin). That said, you can still easily use a DK for progression here. It just requires proper cooldown management and alert healers.

For Shek'zeer: Not really an issue if you split the big and the small adds - DKs are great at tanking the big ones (well timed AMS absorbing 2 of the aoes every 45 sec) and almost everyone else is better at tanking the small adds.

For Mel'Jarak: Since you usually 1 tank this on 10H - this is probably the worst fight for a DK tank. Not only are we bad because we take more damage, we also do way less damage and on top of that just look at the hps a pally or brewmaster can do on this fight °_°. For me this is the fight that falls under the non-viable category.