Balance or focusing on a single stat/build,

[Hellkung]

Ok this is my armory now > http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...%ADel/advanced

I feel really good about my stats which are in short;

- 550k unbuffed
- Hit capped / 6.15% Exp, (almost capped)
- 132.45% Mastery
- 10.15% Dodge
- 20.25% Parry

I love keeping a balance between things but at the same time I have this nagging doubt that one should focus on a single stat build, either mastery/avoidance and then there is also the question of choosing to cap hit/exp or not, I personally feel comfortable doing so.

I think my build is probably an avoidance heavy build because my mastery seems on the low end.

What do you guys think? Is there anything I can improve?

Or choose to do entirely differently?

[Omertocracy]

Mastery and avoidance work fairly close to the same. Both essentially let you take no damage from an attack, provided your mastery is high enough that your shield doesn't break from one shot. But because Mastery essentially lets you pick which attacks you are nullifying, it is generally percieved as better. The best solution is to eyeball your diminishing return ratio and get that in the ballpark while working on Mastery. In essence, Mastery > Parry > Dodge, because of the passive dodge you get that you can't reforge out of. I think/hope I have correctly parroted the party line.

The Shieldwall or Shado-Pan tanking trinkets are fairly good, accounting for 691 dodge and 1419 mastery (Shieldwall, post-reforge) or 1619stam and 899 mastery (Shado-pan).

Also, are you Exalted with the Klaxxi and Golden Lotus? Their Exalted ring and neck are made of awesome with a gooey pwnsauce center, all with sprinkles of amazing on them.

Other thoughts: I thought Glyph of Outbreak was a net survivability and dps loss for us...

[Hellkung]

Mastery and avoidance work fairly close to the same. Both essentially let you take no damage from an attack, provided your mastery is high enough that your shield doesn't break from one shot. But because Mastery essentially lets you pick which attacks you are nullifying, it is generally percieved as better. The best solution is to eyeball your diminishing return ratio and get that in the ballpark while working on Mastery. In essence, Mastery > Parry > Dodge, because of the passive dodge you get that you can't reforge out of. I think/hope I have correctly parroted the party line.

The Shieldwall or Shado-Pan tanking trinkets are fairly good, accounting for 691 dodge and 1419 mastery (Shieldwall, post-reforge) or 1619stam and 899 mastery (Shado-pan).

Also, are you Exalted with the Klaxxi and Golden Lotus? Their Exalted ring and neck are made of awesome with a gooey pwnsauce center, all with sprinkles of amazing on them.

Other thoughts: I thought Glyph of Outbreak was a net survivability and dps loss for us...

Thanks a lot for all the information. I'm almost Exalted with both, this is an alt so I didn't pursue it as strongly at the start after I hit Revered but I'm actually considering making my Blood DK my main.

Same with most of the other rep factions, so I think I'm gonna make that a priority from now on.

As far as Outbreak goes I've heard a lot of people saying it is indeed situational but I'm not so sure what and how much the loss of survivability or DPS is, I've been using it rigorously as it works extremely well in combination with Roiling Blood.

I'm open to change though if there is a clear superior choice, most people mention Plague Leech but I'm hearing mixed stuff about that too.

[Reniat]

Glyph of outbreak should ONLY be used if you are chain pulling with Rolling Blood. Outside of that you shouldn't use it since we can keep diseases up without it and we don't want to lose RP for something that could be free when we do have to use outbreak. Plague leech isn't worth it. It's 1 DS every 2 minutes, which is almost useless. The utility gained by RB or UB outweighs the negligible DS/min gain of Plague Leech.

[Hellkung]

Glyph of outbreak should ONLY be used if you are chain pulling with Rolling Blood. Outside of that you shouldn't use it since we can keep diseases up without it and we don't want to lose RP for something that could be free when we do have to use outbreak. Plague leech isn't worth it. It's 1 DS every 2 minutes, which is almost useless. The utility gained by RB or UB outweighs the negligible DS/min gain of Plague Leech.

Thanks for this.

Any suggestion for a proper third glyph next to AMS and VB?

All of them seem way too situational, most of all IBF...

[Omertocracy]

Any suggestion for a proper third glyph next to AMS and VB?

I use: Pestilence, Icy Touch, Dark Simulacrum.

The strong choices are: Vamp Blood, Pestilence, Icy Touch, AMS and DnD.
For minors, I heavily recommend Path of Frost. Dem extra fall distances can make the difference.
Minor glyph Corpse Explosion is also useful. It puts you in combat for 7 seconds, and has a 15 second cooldown, halving your RP degeneration between fights. If you use Corpse Explosion, Horn of Winter and DnD on cooldown while idling, you gain about 5 RP per minute, provided you have a pile of corpses to asplode.

[Hiboyslol]

Thanks for this.

Any suggestion for a proper third glyph next to AMS and VB?

All of them seem way too situational, most of all IBF...

You hit it on the head - the 3rd one is situational. Sometimes I use IBF sometimes I use DRW (it's great for taunt swapping - the other tank doesn't have to stop dpsing) sometimes Pestilence (Elegon, Garalon) and sometimes DnD (last boss of HoF)

[fangless]

Parry/Dodge isn't the same balance as it was in Cataclysm. Now it's almost more like a 1:2 ratio that you want.

Or, you can run this macro into your chatline (assuming you aren't using the Swordshattering runeforge, which you probably arent);

/run d=GetDodgeChance() n=3.22 b=5.01 if UnitRace("player")=="Gnome" then n=n-.01 end if UnitRace("player")=="Night Elf" then b=b+2 end p=235.5*d/90.6425-((235.5/90.6425)*b-n) DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Ideal parry: "..string.format("%.2f",p))

[Damyou]

Nobody seems to have mentioned accuracy stats at this point so I think I can add my opinion to the mix. It's not everyone's cup of tea but I personally skip the majority of hit/expertise. I don't reforge out of it at every opportunity but I tend to only try to get a few %, 3-5 at the most on my tank set.

The reasoning is that you only gain dps due to the mechanics of DS. The merits of this are currently being discussed in this thread: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...pping-as-Blood
If you're interested in giving it a try then you can switch your orange gems to parry/mastery instead of exp/mastery and stam/mastery instead of hit/mastery. It will boost your health pool a little which isn't often a waste and it would give you a bit of parry to boot which (combined with some reforging) could give you a nice chunk of extra avoidance.

I would also point out that I go with a full mastery build, which again is not what everyone feels is the best but I like the control it gives me and i've tanked heroic progress to a pretty reasonable level for the whole of cata and a few fights in mop (I haven't been able to raid progress much this xpac so far).

Anyway, just another opinion but I hope it helps.