[Guide] Active Mitigation Hipsters - 5.4 DK Tanking

[Deleted]

Hey Riemu2k3,

thanks for the input, really appreciated! I should be logged out in tank-gear from now on. i'd be glad for some tips and hints...

cheers

[Xarganthos]

from what I understand 4 piece is shit, go for 2 piece helm and shoulders and off pieces or 2 piece dps and 2 piece tank (not sure which 2 pieces then, think it is legs and shoulders for dps?)

i'd gain over 400 more mastery if i'm using Legs/shoulders from the dps set instead of tanking set.. still i'm not sure if i should do this

[devilminion]

4 pc sucks.. just go with 2+2 tanking: shoulders + helm.. dps: legs + chest.. iirc gloves for both dps and tanking dont have mastery.

[Xarganthos]

4 pc sucks.. just go with 2+2 tanking: shoulders + helm.. dps: legs + chest.. iirc gloves for both dps and tanking dont have mastery.

dps shoulders would be a little bit more mastery, also with the tanking chest i wouldnt lose that much avoidance (hit+exp arent a problem currently)

[Kiqjaq]

Item - Death Knight T16 Blood 2P Bonus (New) Every 4 Heart Strikes, Rune Strikes, or Blood Boils will add one charge to your next Bone Shield.
Item - Death Knight T16 Blood 4P Bonus (New) Dancing Rune Weapon will reactivate all Frost and Unholy runes as Death Runes, and make your next 4 Death Strikes free.

That 4piece... refreshes your runes and gives 4 free Death Strikes?

Bear in mind that they're making Dancing Rune Weapon free of Runic Power cost as well.
This is madness.

[Nillo]

Seems nice although I don't get why the 4pc refreshes rune cds since you'll be busy using those 4 DS first anyway.

[Kiqjaq]

I'll be busy applying double dots, so the runes will go on CD immediately and start recharging. It seems alright to me, though it desyncs them by 1 GCD which bothers me, despite having no effect on my actual gameplay.

[Reniat]

There are two ways you can look at the t16 4pc. The first is the most simple, where you have 6 Free DS, the 4 actual free ones as well as the 2 FU pairs (in D runes) you have afterwards. The other possibility is that we will be using the D runes given by the 4pc on Death Siphon to take advantage of them and keep rune throughput going while we use up the 4 free ones. The 4 free ones could last quite a while if you don't adjust your DS usage (anywhere from like 15 to 25 seconds) so were going to want to at least try to keep the rune cycle going, and death siphon will be a solid alternate rune use in both damage and survival.

Ideally this is how it will probably work out:

You use DRW and get the 4 D runes and the 4 free death strikes.
You death strike as normal and use Death Siphon 4 times as you can spare the GCDs
You keep using Heart Strike/Soul Reaper as normal to keep blood runes recharging.
8 seconds after the last Death Siphon you would have 2 non-D rune FU pairs, which you will sit on until the 4 death strikes are used up
You finish your freebies and use one of the sitting FU pairs, and continue your playstyle as normal.

Depending on how the timing works out, you will still probably sit on the 2 FU pairs for a good 5-6 seconds before you can use them, and if you want to trade free survival for some extra dps you can just spam the freebies away to minimize the lost FU throughput, but it's a minor dps gain (a couple DS every 1.5 minutes at best) and throwing away free death strikes isn't ideal for survival.

Again, this is all assuming nothing changes before 5.4, which is a BIG BIG assumption.

[Soularpower]

My guild had an opportunity for me to switch from Warlock to Blood DK when we were about half through normals, and I took it, as I really enjoy tanking. I'm caught up on gear and we've got ToT on farm and working on heroics. We destroyed Jin'Rokh last week pretty quickly, but we only raid 6 hours a week, so we're hoping to 1-shot him and work on either Ji'Kun or Horridon this week and clean up on our 2nd night. We can clear normal in 3 hours, so that's how we plan our time.

For reference, we are 10m, and our offtank is a Monk. He does a ton of damage/threat, but tank swaps are not an issue.

At any rate, I'm assuming I can't post a link, but my armory is below. I've been pretty aggressively stacking haste and taking avoidance (dodge/parry) as a secondary, with some haste and stuff sprinkled in where nothing I perceived as better was available. I'm thinking of changing my strategy slightly - I like where my mastery is, but was considering dropping dodge/parry to either hit/exp cap, or start stacking some haste. I could hit/exp cap by reforging out of dodge/parry easily, but not much room to boost my haste (short of dropping mastery on top). Or I could do something in the middle, get a certain amount of haste and push the rest into hit/exp as available.

Not sure what strategy I should go with - stay mastery/avoidance, or push hit/exp OR haste.

Keep in mind, my goal is to help push hard through the heroics with extra DPS if necessary, although my guild's DPS are pretty boss (especially Aalo, our warlock). But also to help push through farm content a little faster.

And finally, a question on H-Jin'Rokh. I tank a lot of that fight due to AMSing the static charge, but my guild/read leaders were rather against me standing in the pool at a side-angle to boost DPS when we first started. Since I'll have so much bloody vengeance, is this something that we should consider to speed to kill, or is it really a non-issue? I'm not a WoL whore, just wondering if standing in pool (when I don't have static charge) is worth it or not, even if just for parts of the fight.

/wow/en/character/destromath/Tormentus/simple

And logs:
worldoflogs /guilds/ 123197/

[Reniat]

Haste is a really attractive stat for 10m DK tanks. Survival is less of an issue in 10m, and your DPS output has more of an impact on your raids total DPS. For those reasons hit/exp(to 7.5%)>haste>mastery is a pretty common 10m DK tank build. I recommend starting slowly though. Reforge into haste, then if that works regem haste, and if that works use 2x DPS trinkets. Just be aware of your survivability throughout, and don't just go max dps "because it's 10m". Survival is still very important, and while you should be able to use a haste build in 10m content, your healers may not necessarily be on board.


Jin'rokh pools

the dps you gain by having tanks in the water is pretty significant, so the raid dmg it causes is usually very worth it. However if dps is not a concern at all, but healing is, then you might consider not standing in the pool when you have the static wound debuff.

[Nillo]

Why would you take more raid dmg by standing in the pools? °_°

[Reniat]

The static wound debuff does a portion of it's damage to the raid via conduction if you are in the pool. it's a really small amount of dmg though, which is why nearly everyone just ignores it and stands in the pool anyway.

[Nillo]

Which only matters for about 2-3 seconds every time it's applied, because that's when the other tank's debuff will run out and can simply be prevented by stepping out of the zone for that small time frame ~

[Reniat]

I'm not talking about that, im talking about the static wound. The bebuff that is applied after static burst's application. You do need to move out for burst, but you can move back in. If you wanted to completely remove the aoe damage you would stay out until your stacks dropped, meaning the tank who is tanking the boss would be in and the tank who is letting stacks drop stays out.

[Nillo]

What's the point of having the one letting stacks drop off stay out? He only needs to move out right before the tank swap - which is about 2-3 seconds if you care about that small amount of raid damage.

[Reniat]

That's what im saying. Me - "you can ignore the small raid aoe by having the tank with the static wound debuff stay in the pool for a significant dps gain"

[Soularpower]

That was my thought. I think one of my raid leaders is under the impression that the tank can "never" stand in the pool. I'll try to talk to him about it one-off before the raid. My thought is this:

Monk pulls, DPSing and we heal through the static shock debuff the first time (no issues healing raid through the first one pre-pool)
I taunt on throw, AMS the static shock debuff, and move Jin into position. In past, I've had his back towards raid while I stand out of pool. I'd like to stand in the pool so jin's at a bit of an angle (we have a couple melee dps that want his back facing, naturally). Right before next static shock, I move out (just in case monk falls asleep) and he taunts moment before 10stack hits me. Meanwhile, he was standing in the pool, too, but he just stands where I was positioned (also in pool). Then continue normal taunt rotation and heal through it.

I can then go back in pool and dps (as I'm not taking dmg) and continue that way.

The only thing is, we don't *need* the DPS to kill him. On the last kill it was quite clean and we didn't have an issue with the timer, he dies at 4:28.

However, blowing him up faster can't hurt anybody, I just wanted to make sure that this idea made sense before I presented it. I don't really watch kill videos or read up extensively on what other people are doing, just enough to see the difference. I find experiencing the fight and finding the timing of things to be more beneficial, and so I thought that it was a good idea to stand in the pool. Sounds like it's a common practice.

I'll try forging into some hit/exp and keeping my Mastery where it's at for raid tomorrow, see how that goes. I use reforgelite just to save my reforges (I do them manually), so it's easy to swap between my current setup and any other I want to try. Look at reforging gems later if it works for heroics well enough.

[Nillo]

I'm pretty sure you need to be the one to pull or else you'll have troubles with the throw.

[Soularpower]

Nah. Monk pulls, he tanks him until the throw, then I taunt. We just heal through the first static shock, works fine. Then my AMS is ready to avoid the second static shock (which is like 2-3 seconds after throw, so I just taunt, pop AMS, and start moving at about the time he's flying over my head)

[Reniat]

The raid damage of the take being meleed with the debuff is magnitudes larger than the raid aoe of the debuff being in the pool and not being meleed, so im not sure what your raid leaders are thinking