The way of tanking

[Whister]

Hi,

I was curious if this spec I made work for tanking:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=161910040105


What u guys think??

[Hellsdottir]

DKs aren't really an 'aggro-tank' with spammable high-threat skills, they're more a 'DPS-tank', they hold aggro by doing lots of damage. That said, you have to balance taking DPS talents with tanking talents.

You're specced out of both Killing Machine and Rime, two very, very powerful elements of the Frost tree. One point in Runic Power Mastery for only 10 extra RP probably isn't doing you a whole lot. I don't think the 2/2 points in Butchery is serving you well. It gives you 2 RP/5, which is a full bar in 250 seconds... that's over 4 minutes. It may help a little on trash pulls, but I haven't found the skill too useful, I think there is much better elsewhere. Scent of Blood can only happen once every 20 seconds. Even if your group is moving kind of slowly, you're not likely to spend more than 20 or 30 seconds on any one pull, so you may get the proc once per pull, which is giving you 15 RP at most. It is a nice 1-point talent, I can't see 3 points though unless you are really hurting for RP. Subversion is a nice talent to spec into, it does not reduce threat in Frost Presence, and it increases the cit chance of Blood Strike (a very fast single-rune strike, great for fast aggro) by 9% at 3/3. You should not need Rune Tap, you should have a healer. Max out Dark Conviction, that's 5% crit to everything... everything you have. There are a lot of useful Unholy talents you don't have, things like Vicious Strikes, Morbidity, Anticipation, Epidemic, Virulence, and Unholy Command are all pretty useful, and dual-wielders get a lot of mileage from Blood Caked Blade and Necrosis.

In short, it seems you went for all the tank-flavored talents. That's fine, but you need to hold up your DPS to keep aggro. You also really, really maxed your RP generation. I'm not sure you need anywhere near that much RP, especially if your only RP dump is Death Coil. If you're going to be dual-wielding, for sake of all that's Plagued and Unholy, pump your crit. Your Strikes are going to be doing less damage just because you have lower damage range weapons, and you won't have the massive magic damage of Unholy. Crits will go a long way to holding up aggro. Soon you'll get a cooldown-free HB, but if you're relying on that single skill as your main aggro generator, that's a huge single point of failure waiting to explode. As an Unholy-flavored DK tank I was doing more than 1300 DPS at 75 and was solid on threat.

[Gamehenge]

Your build is going to be seriously lacking in threat. DW tanking is already the weakest in terms of threat generation and going that deep into blood means you miss out on necrosis and bcb from unholy which is very crucial for dw tank threat gen. You seem to be going for maximum group utility in buffs but yet you're neglecting your primary role as the tank, which is holding agro and staying alive. With good dps in your group that build will not hold up to keep threat.

Death rune mastery is useless for a frost build. There is no point in turning your frost and unholy runes into death runes since most of your abilities will be using frost and unholy runes. Also your obliterate damage is going to suck, so once they remove the cd on HB you won't ever use it if you're dwing which means no death runes from DRW (death strike absolutely sucks to use tanking as it gives shit threat). As a dw tank HB is going to be your primary source of dmg/threat, yet you have not maxed out black ice and glacial rot which add a very nice bit of dmg to it. If you really are adamant about going the dw tank route (something i advise against as the only benefits it has over a 2 hand tank is that it's easier to hit the def cap with dw, other than that you'll take more dmg and do less threat) you need to maximize the amount of dmg your HB does as it's your only attack that is on par with 2 hand strikes.

If you want to be tanking you need to atleast have a couple points in anticipation. It's an amazing talent and gives some of the highest returns per point investment.

Really the best advice i can give you is don't go DW to tank. It works very well for dpsing but no matter how many arguments there are for how it's not that much worse than 2hand tanking, the fact is it doesn't matter if it's only 5% worse (obviously there is no % crap like that relating to tanking just making a point) it's still worse than 2 hand tanking. Yes the parry gib is not some amazing amount, but it still means you get parried more than if you're using a 2 hander which means you're taking more dmg. Yes with enough gear you can manage to scrape enough threat if you have a perfect build but you'll still manage a hell of a lot more threat with 2 hand tanking and a mediocre build.

Reaching the def cap with a 2 hander is not that hard. The gear guide that is stickied in this forum can get you there with only a couple days of work, especially with the upcoming craftable tanking 2 handers and the new tanking sigil. There are people who are strictly dw tanks cause the love to dw, which is fine, but if you're looking to be the best possible tank that you can, use a 2 hander. A quick bit of searching this forum will find you lots of 2 hand tank builds too. There are probably some dw build threads too as people still cling to that inferior method of tanking.

[Sorraxe]

Hi,

I was curious if this spec I made work for tanking:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=161910040105


What u guys think??

http://www.deathknightbuilds.com/

[Gamehenge]

http://www.deathknightbuilds.com/

Wow that site had some shitty frost tank builds tbh. Every one of their tank builds took imp IT which is a huge investment of talent points that is made moot by having an enhancement shaman in your group. In 25 mans you're most likely going to have a shaman in your group and in 10 mans you'll have prolly 2-3 melee dps tops and only rogues and fury warriors really get any use for it (yes enh shams do but if you have an enh sham you don't need it ya :P). As a tank why are you going to waste 6 talent points on buffing a couple members of your group when you can spend those points towards keeping yourself alive or providing yourself a lot more threat, which are much more important.

I mean for fuck sakes they don't even have frigid death plate in their supposed "2 hand tanking frost build." Another one takes ravenous dead over bladed armor or 2 hand spec which will give much more dps/tps than rav. Really that site has bad builds and i wouldn't recommend using them.

[Keile]

DKs aren't really an 'aggro-tank' with spammable high-threat skills, they're more a 'DPS-tank', they hold aggro by doing lots of damage. That said, you have to balance taking DPS talents with tanking talents.

Death and Decay can come close though, its High Threat lasts 10 seconds and, when specced, is a 15 second CD.

Therefore THEORETICALLY you only have a 5 second gap that you cant have it up. But it depends on what runes you have used up from the rest of your rotation.

[Gamehenge]

Death and Decay can come close though, its High Threat lasts 10 seconds and, when specced, is a 15 second CD.

Therefore THEORETICALLY you only have a 5 second gap that you cant have it up. But it depends on what runes you have used up from the rest of your rotation.

Yah i've seen more and more people who like to dnd spam which does work i'm warming up to it more as i've seen it action. Personally though i feel like i have more control during the fights if i'm not spamming it as it's such a huge rune investment. I like to save it (i always start a mob pack with dnd though) for if we gain an additional add pack and then pop blood tap (if it's enough) or empowered rune weap and dnd the adds. Can't do that if dnd is always on cd. This is mainly for adds not coming directly from the front as chances are they will run through your dnd on their way to your healers if it's up and they come from the front.

[Abandon]

DW tanking as deep frost should have some better threat next patch with the removal of the cooldown on Howling Blast.

[Hellsdottir]

DnD may do the job if you're speccing away from Unholy, but I found unless I have a whole crowd of mobs, like 6 or so, that I have to pull, I actually seem to do more damage and hold threat much better using those runes on Unholy skills rather than DnD. That isn't to say it is useless, it certainly does have its place, but with the magic AoE damage can put out, I pretty much stay away from DnD unless I really need some immediate AoE aggro over lots of mobs really fast... otherwise Pest+BB and Wandering Plague hold mobs to me pretty well, and a quick tab+Blood Strike is useful too.

[Cingen]

I wouldn't like running around with that build personaly...
First of all, you lack one of the most important talents DKs have for tanking, namely anticipation, it's a must in any tank build as far as my experience goes.

To me, it looks most like an offtank build that is aiming to buff the raid while (off)tanking in the forms of bonus AP and haste?

As others have said aswell, you will have SEVERE agro problems, maybe not in normal instances, hell, maybe not even in heroics, but when you get to the real stuff, namely raiding, you'll end up running into problems keeping agro.
If you really want a build like that, the least you could do is switch some talents around, since alot of those you took aren't what i call reliable for tanking.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=161910040105

That is a build based on yours, keeping in mind what i think you're aiming for, but with some improvements that will REALLY help you out in the end, although i still have to admit... I would never tank with it=/
The reason i didn't take death rune mastery is simple.. With a build like that, you'd use the Unholy/Frost runes that get turned into Death Runes by the Death Rune Mastery proc as Unholy/Frost runes for Howling blast, in other words, you'll turn Unholy/Frost runes into Unholy/Frost runes, the Death Runes would go to waste and so would the talent points you put in Death Rune Mastery.

I also didn't take blood of the north because in my eyes, it's an everything or nothing talent, it's a very nice talent to have, but you need to be able to rely on it.
The rotation I'd use for that build would be Icy Touch>Plague strike>Blood strike>Blood strike>Howling blast (and if rime procced of the icy touch, follow this by an obliterate). The reason behind using Howling Blast before even thinking about Obliterate, is that while dual wield tanking, your Obliterate won't hit all that hard since it's damage is based of weapon damage. This isn't the case for howling blast.

If you're looking for a build that's capeable of tanking both heroics and (25 man) raids, i'd go for http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=161910040105 , it's the build i use and it hasn't let me down so far (and for those of you argueing that Hungering cold is a waste in a tank build, you wouldn't believe the amount of times i saved a raid with it, it's perfect for giving healers some time when stuff turns nasty on trash (raids don't exist only out of bosses you know) and it isn't like that single talent point will make or break a build )

Hope i was of any help to you^.^

-Cingen