Blood DK, Solo Tank, 10m Heroic Thok suggestions

[phayze]

Hello Everyone,
My guild has, after a long hiatus, started working on heroic 10m Thok. My job is try to solo tank it. We're still trying to figure out the cd rotation and what not (we've only had maybe a total of 10 or 12 pulls on him so far). But I was wondering, specifically to the people who have done it already: what gemming strat would you suggest?

I have used a heavy mastery build up until now for the previous 10 bosses to help our healers, and they say it really does help them. But I have been experimenting with a heavy stamina build for this one fight simply to have a large enough hp pool to be able to drop stacks later on. But I feel "squishier" this way, despite the hp boost. Have you found that it's better to go Mastery, Parry/Dodge, or Stamina on this fight?

Our attempts have usually wiped because we're still learning/perfecting our CD rotation on the raid. But there have been a couple attempts where he just wtfdestroyed me.

Thanks in advance.

[rhapso]

I went with a parry>mastery build, with somewhere around 170% mastery raidbuffed. What was really important for me was to always have at least one Death Strike ready for emergencies, which you can accomplish by using Blood Tap and don't care about dps as long as your survival is at stake. Having both the Malkorok and Protectors Trinket (HC preferable) is most likely mandatory.

I went with nothing until somewhere around the 6-8 Roar-Mark without any major cooldown, and started chainging everything from that point on. IBT was the last one I used, you should create your CD-map from backwards and use everything available (Ironbark, Hand of Salvation, Vigilance, ...).

At the 10-11 Roar-Mark the damage starts to oneshot you if you have no cooldown or absorb active, you need to make sure that from this point on you always have a cooldown running. Make sure your raid knows exactly when to give you what cooldown, instead of asking for it in raid. His roars are coming in more or less every 2.3 seconds which is a good grid for cooldowns, we kept working with "At stack X give me Y" and I shouted at which roar we currently are.

Here our video of the firstkill from my perspective, solotanking it as Blood DK with ~571 ilvl. I didn't do it perfectly, as you can see I mess up twice in the first phase, but I managed to survive and that's what counts. You can see the Roar-Mark in the middle of the screen and all cooldowns should be visible in the middle when they are active.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9OhojAC-o

Don't get depressed when you die, it happens quite often until your healers feel comfortable healing the encounter. After the first phase you should be fine, in theory you only need to take every second stack from all his breaths, as you can immune yourself with AMS. I didn't master that part very well in the firstkill, but it helps a lot if you manage not to get every breath.

EDIT: Talentwise, DeathSiphon and BloodTap should be mandatory, 2 Death Siphons heal more than a single Death Pact and you can easily deal more damage with it as well (as your vengeance goes through the roof) and with BloodTap it's quite easy to use them.

[MagmyGeraith]

This is wonderful. My guild has opted out of using me to tank and was going to switch to our Prot Pally instead. I might have to give it another shot using DSi+BT.

[rhapso]

If you have another tank with similar gear and skill (especially Warrior, Paladin or Monk) you should opt to use him instead. It's annoying, but those tanks are by far better suited even with 5-10ilvl less than a dk. After our firstkill we switched to a 2tank strategy, as the general tank damage could be reduced to a negible amount, where one tank can take the bats and the other the boss during the second P1 or you can taunt at 2-3 stacks during the first P1 - this might help your healers and in the end most guilds kill the boss during the third kite-phase anyway, while you could easily trigger another kite phase (fire), meaning you don't really need those uber-dps to down the boss. We are now trying to kill him as fast as possible every reset and that works a lot better.

[Deleted]

Reroll paladin.

Just kidding. I personally step out for our Prot Pally to tank Thokhc but I've tanked it before and I'm running parry/mast build atm.

[rhapso]

We just killed it tonight again with the nerfs, and by now it should be easily doable to solotank. You have to be aware tho that you will get to 7-8 stacks of his breath in the first phase and that is a ton of damage. You should try to end your first P1 with 20-24 stacks, otherwise it would be a lot harder since the nerf for you.
Every other phase can be extended as long as you want (almost), as you can negate the effects and it's not a simple "you take more damage"-debuff.

[Deleted]

Protectors trinket is no needed (before nerfs) because its reducing aoe dmg only and its like 30-35% dmg-taken overall, main dmg comes from his melee atacks. There are few better trinkets for this fight

[rhapso]

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-og...?s=8301&e=8392
(EDIT: Only looking at the first phase, not the whole fight.)

This is the log from our firstkill when I was solotanking it. As you can see I took ~44% from the RaidAoE and ~7% from his Breath, both of which can be reduced by this trinket. As the only really challenging part of this fight as a dk tank solotanking it is the first phase, that's the only thing that counts. With 5-8 stacks you can expect bursts of roughly 2M in very small windows (Melee, Roar and Screech in 1.5s) so this trinket one of the better trinkets for this fight and I don't see why anyone progressing on it would choose something else, the only real other option would be Thok which doesn't help as much with burst as it also reduces your health, comparing it to the Protectors trinket, especially before nerfs.

[Deleted]

- notice that protectors trinket cant be up for 100% time you are tanking it and stamina on it doesnt really matter. Its only 15s reduction and there is a lot of cooldowns to cover dmg while tanking thok if all of them are planned (to make you safe). I was first b-dk to solo tank him on 10mans hc (according to WOL), havent protectors trinket that time so i was using IJ life steal + reduction trinket. DMG taken wasnt an issue at all even on progress if you know how to DS properly. Best setup for him is malko(reduction) + thok(multiplier) trinkets in my opinion. Mastery multiplier is awesome. Also thok tail tip gives you slightly more dps so the fight could be shorter > easier.

[jasonleekungfu]

I swap my 573 BrM monk for my 560 Prot pally alt (who is my latest alt levelled in late 5.3, still has most flex gears) to one tank this, and he was like LOL at this fight. Only one death was on me and that was because we pushed Thok to 29 stacks with one undergeared tank. That's how OP pallies are on this fight.

PS: My pally is the only pally we can bring.