Hit and Expertise for Blood DKs

[Smiegel]

It is my understanding that if it misses, you no longer get the heal. That was a band-aid fix from after Firelands.

I highly recommend Hit/Expertise for any tank, but I've been advocating that position to all my tanking buddies. Tanks aren't only there to take damage, they also do damage and by doing so generate threat. Even if your threat is okay, increasing your damage output by 1% --while not as significant as a dpser increasing their damage by the same-- can make a difference. Whereas 1% avoidance/mastery should never come to the point of making or breaking a fight.

Before blowing that argument to extremes, I say this up until a point of hit/exp soft cap. 15% of dodge/parry/or mastery is lost in order to gain 15% hit/exp. At this point you greatly increase your damage output, greatly increase the reliability of your threat and survivability thus evening out spike damage--which cannot be removed completely with reasonable amount of avoidance.

---------- Post added 2012-09-01 at 02:36 AM ----------

Well I, and other people may be wrong on this matter.

While I am fully hit/exp softcapped, I went and hit the raider's training Dummy. I was dodged a few times and each time I did receive a death strike heal. Perhaps a bug?

02:32:50> Your Death Strike healed You 0 Physical. (14216 Overhealed)
02:32:50> Your Death Strike Dodged Raider's Training Dummy. (Dodged)
02:33:45> Your Death Strike healed You 0 Physical. (14215 Overhealed)
02:33:45> Your Death Strike hit Raider's Training Dummy 12117 Physical.
02:33:47> Your Death Strike healed You 0 Physical. (17058 Overhealed)
02:33:47> Your Death Strike hit Raider's Training Dummy 15558 Physical.
02:34:03> Your Death Strike healed You 0 Physical. (19902 Overhealed)
02:34:03> Your Death Strike hit Raider's Training Dummy 16111 Physical.
02:34:09> Your Death Strike healed You 0 Physical. (14215 Overhealed)
02:34:09> Your Death Strike Dodged Raider's Training Dummy. (Dodged)

Didn't see an answer to this in the thread yet, but the reason it could be happening is the raiding dummies are now tuned for level 90 and something odd could be happening with how DS and the new dummies interact.

[Schizoide]

They are actually level 93.

That's why his attacks were avoided so frequently. It isn't why death strike still healed/shielded when it was avoided.

[Spoir]

Didn't see an answer to this in the thread yet, but the reason it could be happening is the raiding dummies are now tuned for level 90 and something odd could be happening with how DS and the new dummies interact.

That was the point of me hitting them. To BE avoided since I was already hit capped. I already knew it was 93, and being such, the only thing that I could miss.

[Deeky04]

I have yet to decipher which route I should truly proceed with. With Vengeance, its really tempting to push to have hit/exp caps met (makes playing the DK more fun). But, to reach those requirements, you have to give something up.

Still trying to decide which route is best... Obviously, what will work for 1 will not necessarily work for another.

[Schizoide]

That's not true, there is one objectively superior stat priority, and it's mastery > avoidance > hit/expertise. If you prefer to gear differently that's up to you, it will probably still be viable, just not optimal.

[Deleted]

(This post is assuming that Death Strike has to land to get the Blood Shield and that the current live version is bugged.)

That's not true, there is one objectively superior stat priority, and it's mastery > avoidance > hit/expertise.

This is a bit of a misleading statement. This stat priority is superior for one thing and one thing only: reducing overall damage taken. That's it.

And if we were tanking in a world where reducing overall damage taken was the most important thing to do, we'd gear like this, just like DPS in reverse gear for increasing overall damage done. But fortunately, this is not the case. We don't use our defensive cooldowns whenever they are ready and neither do we Death Strike on CD (if you do this and can get away with it, you are not tanking anything that hits hard enough to matter because at some point you will get min Blood Shields and open yourself up to taking a lot of damage if the boss is threatening at all - in the worst case getting yourself killed).

As tanks we need to respond to burst damage because that is what will kill us and accuracy stats help us with that by making our Death Strike land more reliably and allowing us to time it if necessary (you really don't want to deliberately take as much as damage in your heal window as possible for a huge Blood Shield just to have your Death Strike miss). Avoidance can help by decreasing the odds of having multiple swings land in a row which can constitute as one form of burst damage but you have to make a choice here: Do you want to rely on RNG or do you want to take control of how you can respond to damage? Neither choice is inherently wrong and everyone will have to decide for themselves. Some people prefer having passively less chance to get bursted down through avoidance whereas others want to be in control of said burst mitigation.
And this is just the effect on Death Strike timining.

Accuracy also helps you with letting Outbreak hit which is kind of a big deal for anyone who remembers Firelands with our 1 min Outbreak. Manually reapplying diseases sucked because you opened yourself to a lot of burst damage with no way to respond to because you had to skip a full Death Strike. It didn't suck because we took 2% (or whatever small number) more damage overall by losing on Death Strike per minute. No, the issue was the increased chance to die during said window where you skipped the Death Strike.
Now with Scarlet Fever we would not care much about Outbreak missing because we only need to apply it on the pull, right? Except no, if you specced Plague Leech you will still want to redo diseases before Weakened Blows runs out so accuracy stats makes speccing into PL more viable (and PL definitely is the optimal talent for survival, no questions asked) - so it's either getting spell hit capped or glyphing Outbreak.

That's in addition to more Scent of Blood procs and added DPS. The latter of which is also important in progression fights.


Anyway, my advice to anyone who is still struggling how to gear: Find out what you want and your raid needs. If you need to reduce your overall damage taken and/or passively lower chance to be bursted, go for avoidance after Mastery. If you need more DPS, more reliable burst damage response capabilities go for accuracy. In addition, keep in mind that accuracy stats also are cheaper than avoidance so you are not going to lose much avoidance overall if you decide to go for this even before diminishing returns.

[Schizoide]

(This post is assuming that Death Strike has to land to get the Blood Shield and that the current live version is bugged.)

If that's the case, I agree with you. But like I said earlier, none of the other tanks have to hit for their active mitigation, so there's a sizable chance that the change was deliberate.

[Manatwar]

For now I am having fun I opted for Hit/Exp to make the most of how things are now at lvl 85 with the changes in 5.0.4, With that I can sustain 100k+ damage on a majority of raid fights. Here is a vid from the first week of patch forgive the UI its cleaned up now and I have tweaked my spec/gear and Blood damage has never been this insane so enjoy it until we get back into progression raiding when Mists drops.

[COLOR="red"]

[batman30]

which did u prioritize 1st manatwar? hit>exp or exp>hit? and did u swap out some tank pieces for dps' pieces? if so which ones, or did u achieve it in full tank set, got an armory link?

[Milocow]

So post 5.0.4 25% Blood Presence hotfix, DS still heals and shields on being missed/dodged/parried?

[Manatwar]

Here is my armory - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...atwar/advanced

I just made sure I got both Hit and Expertise softcaps of 7.5% (769 rating) as it is a DPS Increase, I use full t13 Heroic tank set I may swap out [Indomitable Pride] and use [Eye of Unmaking] or [Creche of the Final Dragon] depending on which fight. I gem and enchant for mastery/stam.

Using [Gurthalak, Voice of the Deeps] as my weapon I make the most of Vengeance in combination with the following two talents [Rolling Blood] and [Blood Tap] our Blood Boils absolutely destroy.

@JKinTMC the increase to 25% stamina up from 8% blood pres isn't on live servers yet and DS has healed regardless of being missed/dodged/parried since patch 4.2 I believe and I have not heard anything about this changing.

hope that helps

[Murdos]

So post 5.0.4 25% Blood Presence hotfix, DS still heals and shields on being missed/dodged/parried?

TL;DR.

25% Stamina from Blood Presence, rather then 8%.

Death Strike can no longer be parried, but will still give a heal/shield if it's dodged or misses.

[Deeky04]

Here is my armory -

I just made sure I got both Hit and Expertise softcaps of 7.5% (769 rating) as it is a DPS Increase, I use full t13 Heroic tank set I may swap out [Indomitable Pride and use Eye of Unmaking or "Creche of the Final Dragon depending on which fight. I gem and enchant for mastery/stam.

Using Gurthalak, Voice of the Deeps as my weapon I make the most of Vengeance in combination with the following two talents [Rolling Blood] and [Blood Tap] our Blood Boils absolutely destroy.

JKinTMC the increase to 25% stamina up from 8% blood pres isn't on live servers yet and DS has healed regardless of being missed/dodged/parried since patch 4.2 I believe and I have not heard anything about this changing.

hope that helps

I remember checking out your video, your armory, and your stats thru Mr-Robot. Did you use a different tool to reforge, or did you basically do it manually?

On a side note, as of recent and using MrRobot, I noticed how on two separate pages & different computers, the exact same setup has requested me to use two different types of gems. I would hit refresh on 1 and it wouldn't change along with refresh with another w/o any change.
I thought it was weird, but in the end, I decided to swap out my Parry/Mastery Gems for Strength/Mastery and I switched another 50 Mastery gem for a Strength/Mastery.

Do you use the 416 Gurth for the additional strength, or you just fine-tuning your DK to be a viable tank that puts out massive dmg in the meantime until mop?

[Milocow]

Here is my armory - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...atwar/advanced

I just made sure I got both Hit and Expertise softcaps of 7.5% (769 rating) as it is a DPS Increase, I use full t13 Heroic tank set I may swap out [Indomitable Pride] and use [Eye of Unmaking] or [Creche of the Final Dragon] depending on which fight. I gem and enchant for mastery/stam.

Using [Gurthalak, Voice of the Deeps] as my weapon I make the most of Vengeance in combination with the following two talents [Rolling Blood] and [Blood Tap] our Blood Boils absolutely destroy.

@JKinTMC the increase to 25% stamina up from 8% blood pres isn't on live servers yet and DS has healed regardless of being missed/dodged/parried since patch 4.2 I believe and I have not heard anything about this changing.

hope that helps

Isn't 25% Stamina buff already hotfixed into live servers? The tooltip isn't updated yet.

EDIT : Scent of Blood procs on EVERY connected auto-attack? (not missed, dodged or parried)
I got this impression after reading the guide on EJ but the tooltip says "has a chance"

[Schizoide]

It is live, and that's right, the tooltip isn't updated.

[Manatwar]

Sorry about that you guys are correct the buff to our Blood Pres is on live, just the tooltip has not been updated.

@Deeky04 - I use Reforgelite (addon) I can enter in my personal stat weights that I get out of Simcraft.com, I have found this to be far more accurate than askmrrobot.com. It's a great site for reference especially when you are wanting to know if a item is an upgrade from your current piece but as far as reforging goes its fairly basic.

I use the 416 Gurthalak as there is no ICD or limit to the number tenticles I can spawn some cases I have seen 20+ on large add packs (i.e trash mobs in Lady Deathwhisperers room in ICC25man) and with that damage just goes through the roof. I will frap or take pics when I go through the instances this week.

The main factor behind me playing around with damage is that survivability has not been an issue since we finished our progression in early April of this year.

[Sentientsix]

Can't... handle... the amount... of clicking in that video >.<

[Manatwar]

Close your eyes then.. Use both why restrict yourself to one method, for anyone else its not just clicking there is a combinations of gKey's (macro keys on the g15) and Mouse KB's I will change to click when I am peddling backward or strafing with the boss that's about it.

[Deleted]

Isn't 25% Stamina buff already hotfixed into live servers? The tooltip isn't updated yet.

EDIT : Scent of Blood procs on EVERY connected auto-attack? (not missed, dodged or parried)
I got this impression after reading the guide on EJ but the tooltip says "has a chance"

I got the same impression: it seems that the proc chance is 100% when hitting with autoattack. After all the tooltip doesn't say "X% chance" like others so 1) the tooltip is inaccurate or 2) the proc chance is bugged.

I hope the tooltip is inaccurate because the talent is really pointless at the moment so if there is a lower chance than 100% to proc it's better they remove it at all.

[Wih]

It's a PPM system, so if you're using a 3.6 weapon you'll find it's 100%, but that it will be less than that with faster weapons (ie DW).