The best Unholy tanking build for lvl 80? (Calling for MTs!)

[Uuker]

The name says it all.
What do you think is the best unholy tanking spec for heroics&10 man raids?

I think about something like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0gZ0xZfghc0coxeqocsut

Is Anti-Magic Zone really worth talent points? What about Magic Suppression?

P.S. I will update this post when I will see the best tanking spec.

[Vallos]

Dump Bladed Armor, pick up Dirge. Remove all points from Desecration. Put three points into Ravenous Dead (much, much better for 3 points-- same effect, but always active and increases ghoul damage and stam as well). Last two points go in Death Grip.

Also, Blood Caked Blade isn't good for this build. On a Pale Horse is much better-- fear and stun reduction is an excellent thing for a tank to have.

AMZ and Magic Suppression are certainly worth it, especially if you plan to raid tank. By contrast, Desecration is awful for raids. The talent points are pretty insignificant, it's completely wasted on mobility fights (most of them), the slow effect does nothing, and the ground-cover effect is very irritating in Naxx.

Good luck!

Edit: Forgot you have one point left. I stick that in Night of the Dead usually, since your ghoul is going to be constantly dead. One point's usually enough for that, though-- a 2.5 minute cooldown on rez isn't bad at all.

[z8472]

Drop desecration WTF??? That's an easy 5% damage increase. Why why why? easy TPS right there.

I used wandering plague for a while it was such a crap damage ability as dps when you have 30% crit. When you have around 10% in tanking gear it's absolute waist of 3 points.

Anti magic zone and shell are VERY worth the points.

Dirge is nice but not necessary

Ravenous dead is an easy 3% str and a huge up to your ghoul.

Your right to take virulance that way when you get melee hit capped you'll only be slightly off being spell hit capped. And if you ever roll with a spriest in your raids you will than be spell capped.

The gargoyle it hurts my heart to see people not spend one point on this guy. He's a huge dps increase at the cost of one point. And with all the tanking changes yes that's right tanks still do decent dps while tanking so get it.

Also I'd drop reaping the extra healing you get from that extra death strike every second rotation is so negligible. Take the points and spend it else where maybe on unholy command or pale horse maybe even unholy aura if you have alot of melee in your groups/raids they'll appreciate you for it I bet.

Night of the dead I don't see why you'd want it. Your ghoul is impossible to keep up in alot of fights soon as your bring it back up it'll go back down. But there might be something to say for the deathpact take on him I dunno.

[Vallos]

Desecration is purely and simply a PVP talent. 5% strength increase for 5 points is pretty awful when you're skipping stuff like Ravenous Dead. Every skill I advised above it is completely necessary for tanking. The only saving grace of Desecration is that it slows targets, which is awful for tanking.

You shouldn't have any problems with TPS right now, anyway. I'm pulling 3500-4000 TPS in heroics on all targets. Unless you have an over-eager Ret paladin in your group, that's overkill.

Wandering Plague, which you advised him to drop, is an AMAZING skill. In pulls of 3-4 mobs, it'll keep your TPS unbelievably high. I pull 1800-2000 DPS in standard heroics while tanking, and Blood Plague/Frost Fever add up to around 20% of my damage purely because of this talent. If you think you should drop it, I think you need to do some damage tests. It's probably one of the best talents in the entire tree.

Dirge is only really good because it allows you to put out an Unholy Blight after your first damage rotation, which helps to establish initial threat (the biggest problem with DK tanks besides cooldowns).

As for dropping reaping, that's just the worst idea I've ever heard. You should -not- be using it on Death Strike, you should be using it on Scourge Strike. This will build you threat much better and contribute to your damage. Additionally, if you're glyphed (you should be) it increases the chance that you don't have to apply diseases on your next rotation. ++damage.

Night of the Dead is worth the one point because ghouls, even when they die frequently, will account for about 2% of your DPS-- it's worth that one extra point. Way more than Gargoyle, anyway :

[Neuriot]

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000

This is my planned level 80 build for tanking Heroics.

- Virulence , a waste of points from everything I've seen on it. Essentially as Unholy it looked like the only thing that benefited from it was Deathcoil. (the other things being in Frost) And that was like 8% or something is all. Not worth 3 points imo.

- Wandering Plague , another waste of points as a tank. Your crit rate even raid buffed will be a joke. Something along the lines of 10% at most probably. 3 talent points for a 10% proc rate? As a DPS spec it's a must imo, as a tank I'll pass it easily.

- Blood-Caked Blade , if you really need the threat it'd be a decent talent. But, are any tanks really hurting for threat atm?

- Anti-Magic Zone (and Magic Suppression) , these are the sticky ones for me. If I was raid tanking I'd pick this up in a heart beat. I'd switch the build up to this, http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000

------------------------

As for Vallos's comments.

Desecration... You keep stating that it is a 5% strength increase in multiple threads. It is NOT a strength increase. It is a 5% additional damage to everything that we do which is much better than a 5% strength increase. It is that it is the best source of threat that we have pure talent point. It's like a Prot Paladin passing up 1 Hand Weapon Spec...

Wandering Plague is junk. A chance to go off every 10+ swings (it's based off of crit and tanks don't have it) does not make for a great talent.

Reaping. I completely agree. Anybody who advises not having Reaping (or the similar talents in other specs) is really not a good DK. More Death Runes equals more threat, dropping Reaping would be a huge decrease in my threat.

[Vallos]

Ah, my bad-- I believe in beta it was a 5% strength increase. I'd actually probably prefer the 5% increase to strength, because then at least you get some parry rating out of it!

It's still awful, though. Any kind of mobility fight, any kind of raid boss, any extenuating circumstance and you're out of it. It's simply not worth the 5 points. It's useful for me because I can look to see if a death knight has Bloodcaked Blade, Necrosis, Corpse Explosion or Desecration in a tanking build-- and I can know that they've never successfully tanked. It's like the Lightwell of the death knight!

That said, I imagine that this is the reason I've never seen anyone else approach 1400 DPS while tanking. Wandering Plague is vital to your DPS and your threat, and anyone who says otherwise has clearly not played the class or done damage tests (ahem).

[Ultrakossan]

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0EZhxZfgMc0cogfoMcsut

The 2 points in AMS can be put wherever you like, i have them in on a pale horse because i love the mount increase.

But overall this is a very strong specc if you like to tank anything.
i have ghould but not improved because i think its really shit if u dont specc ghoul specc, which becomes very talent heavy, just as AMZ becomes.

If you dont understand the beauty of a tank with bladed armor + impurity, then its your loss, much better then desecration.

my 2 cents

[Gamehenge]

I got a question for you unholy tanks. Recently i switched over to unholy cause i'm at about 50% avoidance when i have blade barrier up, and i really like the length bone shield can last against bosses. That being said i've noticed for the first time ever i'm having threat issues. here is my current talent build:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-t...as&n=Gamehenge

Single target rotation i use is:

it->ps->bs->bs->ss->dc if i haven't dumped all my rp into rune strikes
ss->ss->ss, usually i can get a disease refresh from the glyph
ss->ss->bs->bs and i just repeat that, refreshing my diseases if needed, dumping excess rp into dc's, and keeping my death runes created.

When i was using this heavy frost spec:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0eMoZGgxzhcd0GRVssx0g
i never seemed to have any issues. I seemed to hold better aoe agro too even if my aoe dps wasn't as high due to howling blast.

One thing i actually think is hurting my aoe threat quite a bit is that from my frost build i still have rune strike macroed to everything so i'm finding it hard to get to the 60 rp needed for UB. I'll prolly remove the rune strike macro from blood boil, scourge strike, and bs and leave it on the other abilties to just use them to light it up when their runes are on cd.

I really like unholy for the utility, especially amz as it is great for certain fights in nax, but if i'm losing hold on targets in 5 mans i dunno, cause i can't afford to do that in raids by no means.

[Ultrakossan]

Hey Game

Wandering plague is amazing for aoe tanking, and BCB is good for single target threat.

5/5 Bladed armor is a must imo.

I don't even go with lichborne, but i haven't started raided yet, tanking naxx next week tho with the guild since they gave me an OK on my gear level.

AMZ is a good utility but very talent heavy, as well as improving your ghoul, when in fact for tanking ghouls is utterly useless, i take the point only to have a ghoul for occasional pvp

[Profane]

Best tanking spec/glyphs for 5/10 man unholy tanking

If you don't understand what desecration is for then you need to stop and think a bit.

About wandering plague, its a very solid dps talent and im very sad not to have it in my tank spec, anyway with 3 points in it it will give you circa 3-6% dps on a SINGLE target on aoe its awesome, it used to be insane but got a bit nerfed in beta.

[z8472]

I have done damage tests thank you Wandering plague will take ONE of each of your disease ticks and than that damage is applied to everyone within 8 yards the chance of this happening is based of your melee crit which in tanking gear is going to be around 10% so with two diseases up ticking every 3s that averages (and I'm being generous with my math) to about 1 proc every 10s if my math is right one proc of one tick for at max what 200dmg? I honestly don't even know what my diseases tick for but come on! As for reaping I still don't see the benefit of it over garg and other things. Oh and Impurity buffs DnD,IT, SS and deathcoil as they are all spells I do believe thus very worth the talents.

[Gamehenge]

Hey Game

Wandering plague is amazing for aoe tanking, and BCB is good for single target threat.

5/5 Bladed armor is a must imo.

I don't even go with lichborne, but i haven't started raided yet, tanking naxx next week tho with the guild since they gave me an OK on my gear level.

AMZ is a good utility but very talent heavy, as well as improving your ghoul, when in fact for tanking ghouls is utterly useless, i take the point only to have a ghoul for occasional pvp

Yah i got the ghoul talents mainly just for the self buffs and the master of ghouls was more of a what the hell it's one point kind of thing, i hardly ever put any effort into keeping the little bugger up cause he doesn't add to my threat and dies any time there is a smidge of aoe. Also ghouls seem to have by far the worst ai and even on passive he would occasionaly run randomly off to attack something after a fight was finished. The 3 points in ravenous dead i can definitely see as being more useful elsewhere as 3% strength really isn't a whopper tbh, the 1 point in shadow of death i more like for the stam really. Do you notice BCB procing a lot? I figure 30% off my slow 2 hander might make it somewhat lackluster for the investment.

In the end i'm not worried as much about my aoe threat as it becomes less of an issue for raids as i'm the OT to a prot paly so i'm usually just tanking the biggest one of the group while he tanks everything else. Really it's my single target dps i'm most concerned about. Especially considering i usually MT patchwerk so our paly can eat hatefuls, and the thought of losing agro on patch is a very dire one indeed cause our dpsers are going balls out on that fight. The aoe issue is mostly from heroics and i can usually just taunt any loose mobs back onto myself.

What do you think of a spec like:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0EMZhxZfgoc0ckge0ocout

I really don't want to lose amz if i don't have to, as it's great for eating aoe on fight s like KT/saph/loatheb where the magic dmg can really start to eat at the healers so the respite from it every 2 min can be a big boost for them.

I figure 2 hand spec would be nice as it's almost as good as desecration since most of my attacks involve my 2 hander, yet it's less than half the talent points.

@z84 does impurity actually buff scourge strike? That was my main concern about impurity as i knew it did dc/it/dnd, but was left wondering if it affected scourge strike as that's unholy's big money maker. Were you able to notice a difference in your scourge strike dmg with and without impurity talented?

[Profane]

Impurity does not buff scourge strike, its a melee attack that does shadow damage.

But what it does is buff unholy blight and your diseases and the increase to your disease damage alone makes it worthwhile

[Odep]

atm i use

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-t...%27Thos&n=Odep

gears not great atm but made this spec so i can run heriocs and OT 10mans (which it does fine without trouble) and then if i need to dps a fight i can still pull 2k (self buffed) with my dps gear (which is horrible 0 epix)

but if you're after PURE pve, 100% best mitigation u can get then it would have to be

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xZhxxzZbghu0coGemocout

u got all your mitigation abilities, maximize strength which gives u parry (i prefer ravaneous over morbidty cos of my rotation)
but u obviously lose alot of things here that will help with tps... but tps isnt a problem specially if rune strike is getting its tank buff
i also believe i placed 5/5 Black Ice, u can play around with that for personal preference.

[Totschlager]

I'm considering going with this build when I hit 80. Because I don't have necrosis or blood-caked blade do you think I'll have issues with threat? I see some of you say wandering plague is useless, but I also see some people say it's great for aoe tanking. Will my ability to aoe tank be hampered if I don't take it?

I'm just trying to combine the examples that many of you have posted in hopes of finding the best all-around tanking spec for unholy.

[Uuker]

Thank you for the answers, I read them all. It's quite strange that some specs absolutely counter other specs.

So after concluding what everybody said, I changed my spec for this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xZhg0zZfg0I0zkxeqocout

By the way, can I have posts from MTs and OTs?

P.S. You said that this spec http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=040911050406
is the best tanking, but I disagree. You wasted your talent points on Bladed Armor instead of Anti-Magic stuff. The glyphs on that page, however, are really the best tanking glyphs.

[danzaedge]

Ive main tank heroics no prob and mt/ot nax no prob

heres my 2 cents

your spec coudl still improve

this is what i ran with for a while now im tryin out frost
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xZhg0zZfgMG00ogeMocsut

- You dont need master of ghouls. As a tank its jsut not needed.
- 5/5 desicration is to much. with 2/5 you hit it enough to be effective
- Wandering plauge is great. As unholy you are more of an aoe tank. Between D&D UB and WP u can deal enough aoe threat
- glyph to make icy touch give u runic power. if u do icy touch plauge strike pestilence blood boil u have 60 rp and u can pop UB.
- Magic Supression and AMZ are great talents. At first i was iffy on AMZ but ive foudn alot of uses for it.
- Unholy command is great. lowering a cooldown on a taunt is always a good thing.

thats my 2 cents take it or leave it



a spec i played around with and did well with-
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xZG...fgMI00ogxMocod
with this spec u have alot of avoidence. Also with this glyph for death strike and use it in ur tanking rotation

current spec
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xZGgxzIcd0hkVsstcgM

Armory
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...orn&n=Glaurenn

[Cottenmouth]

I have almost the same build, I have points into Ravenous Dead instead of BcB, i didnt take Anti-magic zone and its prereq for On pale horse and 2 more into Bladed armor

[Ultrakossan]

... text ...

What do you think of a spec like:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0EMZhxZfgoc0ckge0ocout



...text...

Very close to an optimal specc, if you're still struggling with single target threat the ONLY way to get better would be to take out the magic defence talents + AMZ and 1 point out of virulence and go with necrosis and Desecration.

Now I know necrosis sucks ass/boring as hell, but however, its the last option for single target threat.


Funny part is how close your tanking specc is to my PvP specc

[Nyanmaru]

I'm pretty confident with my tanking spec, check it in the armory: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...r=Thrall&n=Nye

Don't mind the DpS-Gear, was checking my stats before I logged...