Death Knight Tanking - Frost build breakdown and Discussion

[gyfted]

bumping to 1st page since there's good discussion in here

[gyfted]

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

That spec is what im thinking on.. I find it kind of nice.. whats your opinion

If you won't be with a shaman, and bosses attacks CAN be slowed by Icy Touch, then it's a pretty solid build.

Acclimation - Everyone thinks is SO much crap right now that blizzard is gonna change it, but until I see at least a blue post about upcoming changes to it, I won't even consider it. I used to play a holy priest, and I know all about crap talents that stayed in our trees for years.

[ArthicEU]

Isn't Frost Fever like Thunder Clap (Improved)?

Thunder Clap definitely works on bosses (in TBC).

[angryempath]

I think of Imp. Icy Talons kind of like Warrior tank's Sunders.
It's a raid buff that's basically free because you're going to be using Icy Touch anyway (and in 5 or 10 man content the probability of not having an Enhancement Shaman is higher).

[Partyraiser]

Woow! Thanks mate for this incredible thread!!!!!!
It's been a while since I read such good info that's actually usefull! Keep it up I'd say

[Yrim]

Sorry for not getting back to things so quickly - I have been gone all weekend (sadly not Blizzcon)

I understood that blade barrier not working with Blood of the North was a bug. The tooltip does say, whenever your blood runes are on CD. If they become death runes, and then you use them.. they are still your blood runes. This should get fixed by live.

Yeah - I was looking around and saw a few things about it being a bug, however no blue posts.

Blade Barrier
Rank 5 - Whenever your Blood Runes are on cooldown, your Parry chance increases by 10% for the next 10 sec.

The reason I feel it is not a bug and that it is working as intended is because it specifically says when your Blood Runes are on cooldown, increases Parry by 10% for the Next 10 Seconds. When you use those two Blood Runes and it activates Blade Barrier it will last for 10 seconds. If you have Blood of the North you no longer will have two more Blood Runes, you have two Death Runes. The tool-tip says nothing about it counting those Death Runes as Blood Runes. This separate the DPS and the Tanking builds of Frost even more. You get more DPS without Blade Barrier and using an extra Obliterate. With Blade Barrier you lose a bit of DPS if talented into Blood of the North if you want to bring up that Blade Barrier proc.

If you don't run with 3 shaman all the time, yes I can definately see taking icy talons. Even if you have 2 resto shaman and an elemental, 1 can still drop reg WF for 16%. And yes, if WF isn't up 100% of the time you are in combat, you have shaman issues.
You've got 1 shaman dropping spellpower totem, and another dropping WF. It only takes 2 shaman to give the entire raid highly useful air totem buffs.

I think this all comes down to preference. Do you trust your Shaman? Is he going to Die? Where are you going to spend the additional 6 Points?

Icy touch adds a disease, how long is this disease? With Epidemic does it go over 20s? If it did then this would also cause your 20%/25% haste to drop off some of the time, if you USED the 6s that is 'vital.'

It lasts for 12 + 6. 18 seconds. If you rotate correctly you will be applying both Blood Plague and Frost Fever just at that 18 second mark each time. That extra six seconds give you time to burn Blood Runes and RP again so that Blade Barrier (with its current coding) will always be up.

Does Frost Fever's slowing effects work on bosses?

YES - It does slow the attack speed of bosses by 6%

IF

• Blade Barrier is working how intended
• Acclimation gets it's buff (or what is it?)

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...0&pageNo=7#132

2H Frost Tanking
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

DW Frost Tanking
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

[Lyciphur]

zomg, what a nice topic. Thank you, guys, you answered most of my tanking questions.

[gyfted]

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

Well is this better then? ^^ Just trying to find the perfekt spec

Someone a post or 2 below you posted the blue saying there was a change to accimation, and it was buffing rune strike. I don't however see what kind off buff this is, and it should be buff to acclimation, not just adding on something else that doesn't affect that worthless stacking buff.

So, as far as current build changes go. Blood of the North is also broken/working properly, because it's not functioning the way it should (I believe) with Blade Barrier. It says whenever your blood runes on are CD, you get 10% to parry, but when you use them as death runes, aren't your blood runes STILL on CD?  You have 6 runes on your sword, 2 blood/frost/unholy. When you use your blood runes, they grey out (on CD), when Death Runes become active, are they in the spot where your blood runes were? If they are.. when you those death runes, those are STILL your blood runes.. just on CD again.

The reason I feel it is not a bug and that it is working as intended is because it specifically says when your Blood Runes are on cooldown, increases Parry by 10% for the Next 10 Seconds.  When you use those two Blood Runes and it activates Blade Barrier it will last for 10 seconds.  If you have Blood of the North you no longer will have two more Blood Runes, you have two Death Runes.  The tool-tip says nothing about it counting those Death Runes as Blood Runes.  This separate the DPS and the Tanking builds of Frost even more.  You get more DPS without Blade Barrier and using an extra Obliterate.  With Blade Barrier you lose a bit of DPS if talented into Blood of the North if you want to bring up that Blade Barrier proc.

Where are you going to spend the additional 6 Points?

Your right, after not wanting to talent into blood of the north/killing machine/RPM I was kinda left with this. Ended up having to spend a few more points in frost to get what I wanted, but still. Not 1/2 bad.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

I spec'd into Subversion/2h specialization, because I have an idea this is gonna give me more threat than bladed armor.
BUT I'm gonna run the numbers on Bladed Armor, unless someone already has, and if they have I'd love um!  How much AP from 80 naxx gear in Blood Prescence/Frost Prescence.. With Icebound Fortitude/Unbreakable armor. With Shaman/Priest 25% armor buff.. etc
These armor buffs do stack right? Frost Prescence, Icebound Fortitude, Unbreakable Armor,  Ancestral Healing.
If they do, are they cumulative or multiplicative. With 4 buffs there's a big difference in the 2.

[gyfted]

Dude lemme say straight away bladed armor is a must or at least I think so its so much AP which is so much threat you cant really play without in my opinion :P

Just in a basic case. with 30k armor, (I believe this is on the extremely high side) is 833ap.
                                  25k armor, (which I've understood is the "norm")            694ap.
                                  20k armor, not in frost prescence or something              555ap.

So yeah.. lol.. changing my spec again.

to this
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

[Yrim]

Well looks a little better but acclimation really sux for tanking until blizzard updates it and improve it.. Also Hungering cold is kinda useless..

Merciless combat I find redicilous as wtf would it help to make more dmg when the mob is under 35%..
So I would say take 2 points out of Merciless combat and 3 points out of acclimation and put them in Blood of the North..

If you really want your hungering cold that much you still got 1 point left GL with it mate

Blood of the North - This issue has been discussed and if you are tanking (with the current functionality of Blade Barrier) Blood of the North only hinders your avoidance. You do NOT want to spend 5 points on this talent. That being said where are you going to put those other 5 points. Merciless combat is greater than any of the other talents unused on the frost tree. It helps keep that threat at the end of the fight when people start catching you during the Blood Lust and when everyone blows everything they have because THEY are dealing more damage with a lower % left.

Acclimation - Right now yes, it seems as though it is pointless. I have a forum post where that Blue Post is at hoping for a reply there for more info (This spec obviously depicts what he will use when they show what this buff will be and if it is useful, stop hating on ideas for something that is a month away)

Hungering Cold - With that build you have 2 extra points for almost whatever you want. IMO put them where ever you want.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

I however would put them in Subversion for 6% more critical on on Obliterate and Blood Strike (since you will be forced with Blade Barrier to use that strike a lot more), but its ones personal interest.

Just in a basic case. with 30k armor, (I believe this is on the extremely high side) is 833ap.
25k armor, (which I've understood is the "norm") 694ap.
20k armor, not in frost prescence or something 555ap.

+

It's 49 parry rating for 1% to parry, (http://www.wowwiki.com/Combat_rating...Defense_skills) and Death Knights get 25% of their str turned into parry rating. This makes the 1k str add 250 parry rating or ~5% parry.
The additional 30 str from ravenous dead would add 7.5 parry rating, or 1/7 of a % to parry.
So you basically get 1 parry rating from 4 str, or 1% to parry from 200str.

These are estimations just to get an idea close to the actual numbers.
Yes I can see it's 49.18 parry rating per 1% but it's close.

At 25,000 armor you will be also obtaining 3.5% Parry with Bladed Armor

[Yrim]

Guys this has been a GREAT run. Sooooo much information has been given by so many causing so many changes from that first post I posted. That being said I will create another 1st post breaking down the reasoning for everything for this following spec:

Death Knight Tanking Build - Frost
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

I will post it in a new post. Currently there are TWO floating talent points.

[Gestalt]

What does Death Strike have to do with Runic Power? It creates it yes - but has nothing to do with talenting into RPM. If your rotating correctly - Death Strike or Obliterate - you should be putting all your Runes on CD with ~ 60-80 RP. Thrown in with Rune Strike and the use of Frost Strike while Runes are on CD you should be hurting for RP not sitting with it at 100.

Okay, I know it's been a bit late, but did you even look at the link? Death Strike has EVERYTHING to do with Rune Power if you're Glyphed for it, and as a tank you'd better be glyphed for it.

The definitive difference between DW Frost and 2H Frost is how you spend Rune Power.

DW-Frost mostly burns Rune Power on Rune Strikes, which are "on-next" attacks similar to Heroic Strike. A DW-Frostie will glyph IT to get enough Rune Power to be nearly perma-RS on their mainhand swings. Death Strike damage is quite low, so the glyph provides fairly poor returns (little incentive to sit on RP).

2H-Frost mostly burns RP on Frost Strike as the 2h swings are not fast enough for Rune Strike to keep up with RP gen. Instead, they focus on the Death Strike glyph bonus: up to 52% to both damage and healing (40% without RPM). While this tactic is less potent than in an Unholy build, Death Strikes still provide a massive amount of threat and healing when sitting on a full or near-full RP pool. The main benefit of RPM in this build is to allow the DK to sit on as large a pool as possible while still throwing Frost Strikes on their free GCD's. The IT glyph is still helpful, but not as definitive as in a DW build.

One consistent problem I see in some of the theorycrafting here is ignoring the presence of Glyphs. Sure, a snare from Frost Fever isn't that interesting... but if that's providing an extra 20% damage on Blood Strikes? Glyph build is almost as play defining as talent spec.

Few points that have come up in the thread:
-Blood of the North is not INTENDED to prevent Blade Barrier procs, and as of this afternoon it was not preventing them for me. I'm 5/5 BotN and was at 99.5% BB uptime (including OOC) in HHoS today.
-Frost Presence stacks with everything.
-Acclimation procs off DoT ticks, elemented attacks, everything except "caster-less" environmental damage. Even Sal's lava waves can proc it. On element-heavy encounters I usually have a full stack within a few seconds and retain it throughout the fight. I have never NOT had 3x Fire and 3x Shadow in OS, for example (and that is from breath and DD only, no lava). The upcoming Acclimation buff is a base damage boost to Rune Strike, NYI.
-Bladed Armor does not return Strength (AP for a few weeks now). Hence, no Parry.
-Hungering Cold allows you to solo pulls that would normally require an offtank to manage the spike damage. Since it is effectively a stun (that works on stun-immune mobs) it also functions as an interrupt. If you have a build that is completely broken by spending one point on HC, sure, skip it, but a serious frost build is 50 points minimum. It's the most powerful utility spell you're going to get for one point. You can solo DK pulls with this sucker. Even Boss adds are vulnerable to it.
-Frost Fever and Improved Icy Touch slow every boss in the game except Sapphiron (due to immunities).
-Killing Machine is mandatory for a DW spec. You will be getting enough AA crits that your Howling Blasts WILL crit almost every time, even with no crit rating on your gear. KM is the whole point of DW.

[Yrim]

Death Knight Tanking - Frost Build

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

Two floating Talent Points that can be used for personal preference

_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________

This build and information is focused towards end-game raiding, not 5-man Heroics.

Blood - Tier 1-3

Tier 1
Butchery - You won't be gaining Experience or Honor from killing a boss, and even then - you would benefit after the fight ends

Subversion - A good area for the two floating points. Would supply 6% critical strike to both Blood Strike (used frequenly to put those Runes on cooldown) and Obliterate (a key strike in building threat through damage)

Blade Barrier - Blood Runes have a 10 second cooldown. This 10% Perry lasts for 10 seconds. Grants an unlimited 10% Perry throughout a fight

Tier 2
Bladed Armor - More damage on every attack causing more threat

Scent of Blood - The bonus Runic Power is not worth gaining due to the way Runic Power is built. You recieve it directly from being hit and also aleady through your attacks. You will not be RP starved

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization - Another area for person preference as to where the two floating points could be placed

Tier 3
Rune Tap - You should not need to use this due to healers healing you and your other defensive abilities to reduce damage

Dark Conviction - The two floating talent points would be better used in Subversion for its focus +6% critical than a wider 2% critical

Death Rune Mastery - Your going to be used Frost and Unholy Runes as they are so there is no need to change them

Frost - Tier 1-11

Tier 1
Improved Icy Touch - The reduction of melee swing speed against you of 6% is huge and such Frost Fever should always been applied, and the addition 30% damage is great for initial threat pulling

Glacier Rot - Icy Touch will now do 40% damage to those with eithor Frost Fever or Blood Plague in addition to using Runic Power on Frost Strike dealing another 10%

Toughness - Your getting hit, hard, the more armor you have the better. Stacking this with other talents greatly increases your damage done and mitigation

Tier 2
Icy Reach - Not really important when you are going to be the man on the front-line. Increased range of Howling Blast is nice, but everything needed to be hit should be hitting you already if you plan to AoE tank

Black Ice - Another 30% damage done by Icy Touch and Frost Strike; more threat

Nerves of Cold Steel - Unless you plan to Dual-Wield (That is another issue, but this is for 2H tanking)

Tier 3
Icy Talons - Frost Fever will last for 20 seconds, the bonus 20% haste will last 20 seconds, see the rotation?

Lichborne - Time this with very power attacks or a soft-enrage and you will greatly reduce your damage taken

Annihilation - Your disease benefit you and the raid, keeping these up as long as possible is key. Obliterate is a huge attack you want to be using as much as possible. A 3% bonus to critical strikes for every special attack will allow greater damage, thus more threat

Tier 4
Runic Power Mastery - Use your Runic Power before it gets to 100; Frost Strike / Rune Strike

Killing Machine - You will not be attacking fast enough to receive the benefits from this talent

Tier 5
Frigid Dreadplate - Think of this as an additional 6% to your dodge

Chill of the Grave - Two points are needed to reach the lower tiers from this build, this allows you to have more flexability in your rotation and thus a stronger talent than others skipped

Deathchill - Use this every time it is up, including on your pull. Every tank knows the initial threat at the pull builds the foundry for the fight

Tier 6
Improved Icy Talons - The whole raid gains an increased attack speed in addition to a bonus 5% for you

Merciless Combat - Another issue as to where to put two points. This will help for that end-of-fight threat where most catch up while blowing cooldowns and taking advantage of their X% left bonus damages, as well as just helping to finish the boss off

Rime - More and more critical hits with two abilities that are used constantly

Endless Winter - You wont be chaining or mindfreezing many bosses, there are other classes than can handle such issues if needed

Tier 7
Howling Blast - A very strong way to hold multiple mobs on you without having to even target them, causes a lot of threat

Frost Aura - So far every Raid Instance has had a lot of spell damage being thrown around in some way or another, a bonus +80 for everything can never hurt as it helps the healers focus on you more

Chilblains - Does not affect bosses therefore not needed

Tier 8
Blood of the North - Death Runes do not count as Blood Runes in Blade Barrier, this only hinders the benefits of that ability

Unbreakable Armor - Increasing your mitigation of damage for 1/3 of a fight can only benefit, use this every time it is up and you will save your healers a few gray hairs

Tier 9
Acclimation - Still waiting to hear what benefits this give Rune Strike, but Rune Strike is a major factor in tanking so any benefits should help (again this build is for WotLK not right now)

Frost Strike - A large damaging attack that can be used while all your Runes are on cooldown, just make sure you rotate correctly to have Runic Power

Guile of Gorefiend - More damage from all those critical strikes you will be landing, in adition allowing Icebound Fortitude to become a second almost 1/3 of a fight mitigation; thats two abilities that can create a 2/3 fight mitigation

Tier 10
Tundra Stalker - An overall big benefit towards many abitlites causing more damage and threat

Tier 11
Hungering Cold - A place for one of two floating points, I do not suggest it but they can be put here

Unholy - Tier 1-2

Tier 1
Vicious Strikes - Only benefit would be to Plague Strike which is not use often enough for it to be viable

Morbidity - Frost Strike > Death Coil and you should only use D&D at the start if you use it at all

Anticipation - Mitigation and more Mitigation

Tier 2
Epidemic - Allows for a longer rotation of higher damaging abilities while keeping diseases up

Virulence - A boss won't be curing your diseases

Unholy Command - A possible use of the floating talent points however you have Dark Command every 8 seconds

Ravenous Dead - Does not increase your damage / threat that much because you do not have other talents combined with your ghouls

[huntsman22]

From what I've read the Icy talons and WF do not stack, if they did I'd imagine it to be a bug and blizz would fix that.

I've heard the same thing about Icy talons and WF, but there's a lot of evidence presented by beta testers that Icy Talons should stack with WF and the way it stands now might be a bug.

I'm too lazy to look up the exact post, but the point was made that Icy talons would be the ONLY self buff in the game that didn't stack with a group buff.

[Amandi]

Okay, I know it's been a bit late, but did you even look at the link? Death Strike has EVERYTHING to do with Rune Power if you're Glyphed for it, and as a tank you'd better be glyphed for it.

The definitive difference between DW Frost and 2H Frost is how you spend Rune Power.

DW-Frost mostly burns Rune Power on Rune Strikes, which are "on-next" attacks similar to Heroic Strike. A DW-Frostie will glyph IT to get enough Rune Power to be nearly perma-RS on their mainhand swings. Death Strike damage is quite low, so the glyph provides fairly poor returns (little incentive to sit on RP).

2H-Frost mostly burns RP on Frost Strike as the 2h swings are not fast enough for Rune Strike to keep up with RP gen. Instead, they focus on the Death Strike glyph bonus: up to 52% to both damage and healing (40% without RPM). While this tactic is less potent than in an Unholy build, Death Strikes still provide a massive amount of threat and healing when sitting on a full or near-full RP pool. The main benefit of RPM in this build is to allow the DK to sit on as large a pool as possible while still throwing Frost Strikes on their free GCD's. The IT glyph is still helpful, but not as definitive as in a DW build.

One consistent problem I see in some of the theorycrafting here is ignoring the presence of Glyphs. Sure, a snare from Frost Fever isn't that interesting... but if that's providing an extra 20% damage on Blood Strikes? Glyph build is almost as play defining as talent spec.

Few points that have come up in the thread:
-Blood of the North is not INTENDED to prevent Blade Barrier procs, and as of this afternoon it was not preventing them for me. I'm 5/5 BotN and was at 99.5% BB uptime (including OOC) in HHoS today.
-Frost Presence stacks with everything.
-Acclimation procs off DoT ticks, elemented attacks, everything except "caster-less" environmental damage. Even Sal's lava waves can proc it. On element-heavy encounters I usually have a full stack within a few seconds and retain it throughout the fight. I have never NOT had 3x Fire and 3x Shadow in OS, for example (and that is from breath and DD only, no lava). The upcoming Acclimation buff is a base damage boost to Rune Strike, NYI.
-Bladed Armor does not return Strength (AP for a few weeks now). Hence, no Parry.
-Hungering Cold allows you to solo pulls that would normally require an offtank to manage the spike damage. Since it is effectively a stun (that works on stun-immune mobs) it also functions as an interrupt. If you have a build that is completely broken by spending one point on HC, sure, skip it, but a serious frost build is 50 points minimum. It's the most powerful utility spell you're going to get for one point. You can solo DK pulls with this sucker. Even Boss adds are vulnerable to it.
-Frost Fever and Improved Icy Touch slow every boss in the game except Sapphiron (due to immunities).
-Killing Machine is mandatory for a DW spec. You will be getting enough AA crits that your Howling Blasts WILL crit almost every time, even with no crit rating on your gear. KM is the whole point of DW.

I love you

[Amandi]

Also, i've been wondering about the style Frost/2-hander leans towards when starting a fight. not the rotation, but the RP usage.

We don't use Rune Strike because we can't spam it, yes? What i want to know is how much more damage does frost strike do than rune strike with a 2-hander, as rune strike seems to be a better attack even with a slow weapon, albiet on a 5 sec cooldown. Is frost strike worth the extra 20 RP?

Also, what do you usually start tank pulls with in terms of rp usage with a 2-hander? do you start with rune strike to build up rp or just burn all of it with frost strike for the extra threat first? What's the case for AoE pulls, versus Boss pulls?

Thanks in advance ^^

[Yrim]

Also, i've been wondering about the style Frost/2-hander leans towards when starting a fight. not the rotation, but the RP usage.

We don't use Rune Strike because we can't spam it, yes? What i want to know is how much more damage does frost strike do than rune strike with a 2-hander, as rune strike seems to be a better attack even with a slow weapon, albiet on a 5 sec cooldown. Is frost strike worth the extra 20 RP?

Also, what do you usually start tank pulls with in terms of rp usage with a 2-hander? do you start with rune strike to build up rp or just burn all of it with frost strike for the extra threat first? What's the case for AoE pulls, versus Boss pulls?

Thanks in advance ^^

Blizzard has cleared stated they want Death Knights (in both tanking and dps) to be variable; no set pattern, that things can change. Obviously there will always be a pattern when things are put on a timed scale with the variability being a miss attack of some type.

Based on the Runic Power use - If Rune Strike is activated, Use It, if not and your Runes are all on cooldown (or at least for your next attack for example Obliterate with only 1/2 needed) then throw in a Frost Strike filler. The key to using RP here is not how often you use it but using it at the right time.

The issue with Rune Strike vs Frost Strike should not even be one. They are two different attacks at two different variables. Rune Strike is free damage for a very low amount of RP. Frost Strike, while using a speed rotation, just becomes a great filler. Competing RP between the two I have yet to see an issue. Rotating all Runes to a 100% cooldown builds enough RP to take advantage of both.

Tanking pulls - I start off with an Icy Touch -> Blood Strike-> Blood Strike-> Plague Strike -> Obliterate. Using Rune Strike if it is up at all times. Building RP from your attacking and from being attacked will allow both Rune Strikes and Frost Strikes while being locked on Runes.

You were saying Rune Strike but I believe you mean Death Strike (if not my mistake - figured Id touch on both). I only use Death Strike so far in two occasions. A boss like Patchwork and a fight where I would be RP starved. In any other case building RP is no problem thus using Obliterate to cause more damage long term and have more filling attacks with Frost Strike between 100% Rune cooldown outputs an overall higher DPS (more threat). If you use Death Strike you could be putting all your Runes on a cooldown and just be sitting there for up to 5 or 6 seconds just waiting (which should NEVER happen). Death Strike is powerful, especially with the glyph, however it causes potential rotational issues and downtime. All depends on how you use certain abilities and when.


That said - anyone who has a solid Death Strike rotation for using it with max RP and not running into any downtime please post it because I would be very interested in testing it out.

[Amandi]

That was poorly worded on my part, apologies. I was speaking of using rune strike instead of frost strike for a part of the fight, since it has a low rp cost, and building up RP for either a HC combo or Death Strike (with glyph) followed by frost strike spam. I wanted to know if this was more useful than the rune/frost strike combo while burning away oblit's as a rotation.

[Radament]

Tons of great info in here for me! I've recently decided to switch my main to a DK tank in the expansion and this is just what I needed!

[infinitis]

there are definatly rotations for most the class's belive their already posted on ej forums for rotations ^_^ ps non afflic locks r lol all random :P

moving on to tanking...

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000
-if you dont need the spell reduction

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000
- if you do

even without using obil you still should take annihilation for the 3% crit to melee specials ....

two hand is basically for frost strike and your white hits.. as i belive thats the only skills based off your weapon for frost tanks