5/59/7 vs 5/11/55?

[rathok]

So lately I've decided to pickup tanking on the side and I've been trying to chose between these two specs as they seem to be the 2 most popular ones among tanks. Right now I am running the unholy version and it has amazing AE threat. Mix this with the AN trinket and the DND glyph and you are an AE tanking machine!

Any thoughts from the pros? I'm sure people have talked about this before... Didn't find any threads on this as of late though. Seems like most people are going with frost but unholy just seems too good right now.

Managed to tank Heroic AK last night as 5/11/55 without wiping once and I'm not even def capped (close though, like 530 def), i think BS is a REALLY nice addition to the cooldown rotation and AMZ definitely helps with caster pulls.

[DarkBlade6]

With the nerf coming to bone shield, frost will diffenatly be the "Tank Spec"
IMO i prefer Howling blast than D&D, and they're going to remove the CD on HB ... =D

[rathok]

Right, but with UB and DND in FP i can literally drop those 2 and auto attack and never worry about threat the rest of the fight. It was retarded simple.

I 'm pretty confident that after the patch frost will be the way to go but, for now i think unholy is better.

[Bailamos]

After the patch unholy will be fine. It's wont be as good as it is now, but if you have high enough avoidance to keep bone shield up for most of the time, then it's still a huge amount of mitigation.

Do some experimenting and see what you like. If your avoidance is low though I'd say stick with frost. It's fun and effective

[Nyanmaru]

With the nerf coming to bone shield, frost will diffenatly be the "Tank Spec"

Uhm, no.

[Emcee]

/agree with nye.

I really don't understand what all the hype was about frost...Unholy has always been superior by a fair deal simply because a glyphed bone shield is LEAGUES better then unbreakable armor.

With the patch, Unholy is taking a nerf, but it's not getting nerfed into the ground...20% less dmg from all sources is not anything to ignore. The only thing you gain from a frost spec is 3% more avoidance, and some mediocre resist talents that don't stack up to 20% mitigation from all sources from bone armor. The unbreakable armor talent is nice, but it pales by a long shot for mitigation (ac% won't give you anywhere near 20% mitigation because of the diminishing returns and the fact you have so much ac already. You are looking at 5%...10% tops more mitigation from PHYSICAL ATTACKS over the duration which should always be less then the duration of bone armor) and the 5% more avoidance doesn't make up for the mitigation difference. Oddly enough, even though unholy dk's tend to gear for more avoidance, they will always have more effective health then a frost dk because of the superior talent for mitigation, and are much less likely to take spikey dmg. Frost on the otherhand has more avoidance, and should probably take as much dmg. Maybe even less overall dmg over the course of the fight, but is much more prone to bad luck and taking spikey dmg.

Edit: I forgot to mention the 6 additional seconds on IBF but that doesn't make up for frost's shortcomings.

Of course, these are just my opinions, but please point out where my opinion falls short.

Random aside...i don't agree that 5/11/55 is the way to go with unholy...i prefer 9/11/51...imo the 2h talent (gives 4% to ALL your dmg including spells for only 2 points) and 2 points in bladed armor (even un maxxed it's a lot of attack power which affects again all of our dmg) are better then the points i'd sacrifice in unholy to get them. Wandering plague is ridiculously good for 3 points as dps spec, but merely respectable as tank spec. While still good i think the talents in blood i just mentioned are superior.

[burn]

idd, unholy is taking a nerf, it wil make it a bit more balanced, not make it suck
besides, lately i been tanking nax witouth using boneshield (or atleat not a lot) to let the healers get used to it
and they stil have no problem to keep me up

[slipshade]

I'm not going to say anything about what spec is better and im not trying to start any DW discusions here.

I have seen over 25 tanking dk's two handers and dw both frost, unholy and even blood.

The best dk i have ever seen tank anything is Galveron

yes he has quite good gear now adays but he didn't always have it and its not perfect or anywhere near cap but i've seen absolutely not 1 war paly or other dk take less damage.

heres a link to his spec hes using a modified 5/59/7

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...cus&n=Galveron

[Tarrask]

id rather get 6% more stamina 20% heals every 30 secs and mark of blood, dont grab nothing in frost and grab ebon plague with courge strike....

Only losing 3% miss and 15% more armor(1% less dmg??) but gaining and amazing oshit mecaninc, being able to survive without heals more then 10 secs even after i were at 2k health at start... (did that for 20 sec already in grobulos)

Treat is never a problem, going at least 4k Tps, neither is dps, being able to put 1.9k avg on 10 man fights with only might and leader of the pack as my raid buffs since we go mostly casters dps.

I know there are more mitigation builds, but after 64% miss dodge parry, 60% armor reduction i don really think that those 15% more armor and the 25% miss every 3 min with passive 3% miss would be better.

BTW imunity to those pesky 10k frostbolts from KT are awesome when u add ur gargoile on its head to help finish off him while he has adds up and maintaning ur runic power full.

Also a little fun thing is to be able to help ur party, as in moving close to an icebloked guy in KT fight and droping anti magic zone to save their asses while the healer wasnt able t get there first. ( done that)

[slipshade]

if your getting hit by those frostbolts ur raid is doing something wrong....

they can be interupted and should never not be its quite easy to do

and if you want to talk about magic mitigation then frost's acclimation simply owns anything else

ya the zone is nice but its a cooldown

i've seen acclimation make sapp a lol lets all heal the raid caz the tank took no damage for the last 30 seconds

[Kareem42]

I need to get this off my chest.  I need dk's to understand that Frost spec is for tanking and curse is for pvp/dps.  If curse was made for tanking then they need to remake the tree a lil.  No offense to the dk's that is tanking with the 5/11/55 spec, but come on.  If anything ur pet to doing more tanking than u are.  Honestly 5/59/7 is the best spec for any dk that wants to tank.  Thats what they made the frost tree for.  But then again like all specs, its what your comfortable with and the play style u like.....sry if i sound harsh at first but i dont see any respect for the frost tree anymore.....

[fallendues]

Frost in all reality is a better spec for undergeared Tanks, it has great utility and really is underrated.

It WILL be THE spec for PvP and Tanking soon, mark my word.

Anywho, UH with the right gear, is atm OP and your best option, BS lasting through CD is basically GG.

With the new buffs to Frost and Nerfs to UH, it will only help things.

Right now is a classic case of FotM kids and no one knowing wtf they are talking about.

Frost has the biggest burst available to DK's and control, MF , Deathchill , HB and FS with an imp Obli is just lovely atm.

All the people talking about UH aoe threat.

Frost has the best AOE ability, and its getting beefed.

As well as abilities scaling with one another, you are really just an idiot if you think UH is the only option or flat out best for tanking.

BS is the savior for UH, and its getting owned here in the next path.

Btw , before anyone says anything about garg, the devs have already stated it is their next target for the ol Nerf Stick.

[slipshade]

while u keep saying bs bs bs

arn't u missing unbreak and lich?

with ibf and unbreak being 1m and lich being 3 you can do a rotation so that 50-60% of the time your tanking is spent tanking alot less damage, theres also the fact that if your not rune striking your way up the threat meter and adding some extra dps with your runic power when you pop lich u can spam heals on yourself with death coil.

im really not seeing why everyone is so hung on uh being the best tanking spec

with the changes next patch as well frost will be much > then unholy its alot about personal preference yes but if you know what your doing as frost quite frankly its amazing, and there is no problem aoe tanking anything in fact i think uh is more spiky with aoe tanking because well the more they are hit the more damage they take when using bs as it will last for a duration of about 2 seconds while the frost talents will last their full duration.

i can see why having the ghoul and gargoyle is nice for some who want to hit the dps meter as a tank but... with next patch frost tank will do more dps and take less damage so if your not frost already i suggest trying it out so you can get used to your rotations before the patch.

[Kareem42]

Finally there is someone in the wow community with common sense....its rare u see that here, lol.

[danzaedge]

both unholy and frost are great tanking specs

after the patch they will still both be great tanking specs and blood will be viable as well.

if u knwo how to tank as a dk either spec will work its about what u liek to play better

most of the ppl on these forums are so closed mind and have no idea about anything they are talkin about it hurts to read soem of the posts

[psicorp]

I need to get this off my chest. I need dk's to understand that Frost spec is for tanking and curse is for pvp/dps. If curse was made for tanking then they need to remake the tree a lil. No offense to the dk's that is tanking with the 5/11/55 spec, but come on. If anything ur pet to doing more tanking than u are. Honestly 5/59/7 is the best spec for any dk that wants to tank. Thats what they made the frost tree for. But then again like all specs, its what your comfortable with and the play style u like.....sry if i sound harsh at first but i dont see any respect for the frost tree anymore.....

You sir, fail.

The idea that the Dks were going to have clearly defined trees went out with the alpha. Hell next patch the top dps spec is going to be a frost dw spec

[rathok]

Alright, so it apears that we have no winner...

[Kareem42]

yeah obvisiously there will never be a winner thanks to ppl that thinks they know better than blizzard..

[danzaedge]

@Rathok

Ive tanked 10man and 25 man nax in dw frost, 2h unholy , and 2h frost

i have done jsut fine in all of them ive ask the healers if they noticed a differnce they all said no

i havnt had threat issues via single target or aoe with any of the specs either.

if u like unholy go unholy if u like frost go frost

ther both very good

when the patch comes out omg bone shield is gunna suck wtf ..
wait no bone shield is still going to be reallly good
so really if u like one over the other and feel more comfortable in one vs the other then by all means spec that way.

if you know how to tank as a dk then either spec will be fine.

[rathok]

well, I do seem to prefer unholy just because I think it picks up adds better than frost (having a constant AE up rather than spikes of AE - UB/DND vs HB but that sounds like its getting fixed with the patch).

As for damage output, I'm not sure how they compare. I just wanted to make sure that Unholy had comperable mitigation.