What spec for DW tanking?

[Lanceflex]

As topic.

I just got Broken promise & Red Sword of Courage for DW tanking.
Until now ive used a blue 2h with Unholy spec, loving the spec.
but im guessing DW with those badboys would be better for tps and what not.

So yeah, any suggestions on a spec/glyphs?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: even rotations would be great.

[Lanceflex]

Bump :P

[Tsipar]

You're better off 2H tanking.

[Lucky_]

DW for Tanking is not THAT great, because everytime you miss, or the boss dodges, his hit timer gets reset and he will hit you right back...
So you would need alot of Hit Rating first...
Spec what you like most for tanking

Translation: Every time boss parries an attack, his swing timer is reset and you take a white hit in your face. You will need a lot of expertise to overcome this. So you'll need some serious gear on you to tank with two one-handers. Our MT does this: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-ta...ncrest&n=Karzi

[Lanceflex]

Soo...bank the broken promise and stick with the blue polearm until 'Inevitable defeat' ? :P

Cant say that im disappointed, 2h tanking is teh sex.

[Kathis]

It was proven definitively by theorycrafters on Elitest Jerks that the parry hasting concerns are GROSSLY overexaggerated by people. A dual wielding DK has LESS chance than a one hand wielding warrior to be affected by parry-haste. The reason for this is fairly simple. As a dual wield, you look to frost over the other specs and pretty much never touch obliterate, Scourge Strike or Heart Strike.

DW frost tanks primary damage sources are Howling Blast, Rune Strike and Icy Touch. All three abilities CANNOT be avoided. No dodge, no parry, nothing outside of an outright miss (which does NOT create the parry haste effect despite the claim made by someone earlier). The only chances you have of being parry-hasted are by melee white attacks, blood strikes and the VERY occasional use of Frost strike which you generally avoid in favor of using your RP to Rune strike on every opportunity.

That said, so far as DK's as a whole are concerned, it's still generally accepted that you will get marginally less parry-hasting using 2h's, but it's nowhere near enough for it to make either side definitively 'better'. The main advantage of 2h right now is outright damage and threat generation on single targets, which is still higher than DW. I've seen DW-DK's MT 25 mans without a single problem in terms of threat and aggro control over the dps in the raid that were sitting around 4-5k.

Essentially, what it boils down to is your personal choice. There is no definitely better or worse choice. 2H is much easier to start off with thanks to the new rune, DW with Broken promise and Red Sword of Courage works well too, but you'll have to learn to play a frostie to use them. They won't work well in any other spec so far as I know.

Edit: The spec linked above looks pretty damn solid, though I have to wonder personally why they chose vicious strikes over morbidity or epidemic. Since you don't have scourge strike and Death strike is a waste of time with 1h's, you're really only buffing plague strike which is an ability you use sparingly as well (or at least I do). Morbidity makes the most sense to me, allowing the use of DnD much more frequently for more reliable AoE threat, or if you're less concerned about that, then Epidemic makes for more time in your rotations before you need to reapply diseases. I never got a good feel for specs without it, though I'm trying one now. It requires a much tighter rotation and may in fact end up with more threat generated with more icy touches cast and thus more chances for rime procs.

[yomyom]

What kathis said, follow that. Most other posts in this threat so far are crap.

Parry haste for starters does NOT give the boss and instant hit. What it does is speed up his next attack depending on how long till that next swing was (on a percentage), the only time when this will mean an instant hit is if it is in the last 20%(?) of his swing, and as such you are giving the boss less than 20% haste on one single swing.

As for expertise, you do not need to stack it. You will find enough of it on various tanking items to more than cover your needs.

[Zelven]

DW frost tanks primary damage sources are Howling Blast, Rune Strike and Icy Touch. All three abilities CANNOT be avoided. No dodge, no parry, nothing outside of an outright miss (which does NOT create the parry haste effect despite the claim made by someone earlier). The only chances you have of being parry-hasted are by melee white attacks, blood strikes and the VERY occasional use of Frost strike which you generally avoid in favor of using your RP to Rune strike on every opportunity.

Actually, not quite.
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=49143
Frost Strike is just like Rune Strike. It cannot be dodged, parried, or blocked. And I use Frost Strike when I get full on RP, but not to complete depletion.

I myself have been thinking of going DW tanking. And I adore frost spec, so I wouldn't really have to change much. I'd likely need to get more hit (lord knows I don't really have enough -now-) and the defense to take over for the lack of Stoneskin, but I'm trying to do that anyway so I can pick up the 4% parry rune. I figured I was right in the notion that parry haste isn't that insane with DW tanking since I used to OT Kara as my Enh shaman (of whom wore mostly leather gear with ONE mail item, the Cyclone Helm; 'course, 2.4 changed quite a bit of that). Healers had no problem keeping my shaman up. And most times, he'd have less health than some of the casters in the raid. Fact remains, I never noticed parry gib. And if you're the only one attacking from the front, it really shouldn't be a major issue.

[Kathis]

Awesome, thanks for the correction. I wasn't aware that Frost Strike was unavoidable as well. I'll have to start making more use of it.

[Nyriph]

It is my job as a tank to ensure I take the last amount of damage possibly in any situation that can. If I can reduce my intake by 1% then that is what is required. DW WILL create more, be it 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10...

[Abandon]

So you gague that against the tanking and avoidance stats you gain by dual wielding tanking weapons. It's a choice.

[Lanceflex]

Thanks for the replies guys :>

About frost dw, does anyone have a solid rotation or a suggestion on one?

[Lucky_]

It was proven definitively by theorycrafters on Elitest Jerks that the parry hasting concerns are GROSSLY overexaggerated by people.

It was factually proven in practice that having 2 offtanks hit mother resulted in a very likely tank gib pre-nerf where she stopped parry-hasting. We couldn't even kill the bitch before we figured it out, because our tank would just display that nice "10k+10k+9k" within 0.2 seconds and die. This happened several times in one evening when we were practicing her.
You can theorycraft it to death if you want, but everyone who killed mother pre-nerf knows otherwise. Your offtanks tanked her cleaves afk unless your main tank was grossly overgeared (which was almost never true because parry-hasting on her was killed before SWP).


The issue at hand is that in the current content, there are zero heavy-hitting melee bosses that can parry-haste. All the hard bosses hit hard through magic, and patchwerk, the only candidate for parry hasting awesomeness cannot parry-haste. And it only takes one shahraz-like boss to wipe the floor with your raid because of parry hasting. Therefore, don't bet on it.



Is it worth it to run with a DW tank now? Sure, if he's geared and you're long through content he does more DPS, and nothing in the content can really touch him.

Will it be viable in ulduar? Hell no, for the same reason why def cap is mandatory - you don't want to turn first kill into a wipe because of "oops, bad luck".

And absolutely minimizing "oops bad luck" moments is what main tanks live and die for.

[Offhand]

To answer the OP's question, your threat will remain higher with a 2h weapon. DW dps specs follow a very rigid talent distribution that simply doesn't have room for tanking talents (0/44/27 or 0/32/39).

[Lucky_]

To answer the OP's question, your threat will remain higher with a 2h weapon. DW dps specs follow a very rigid talent distribution that simply doesn't have room for tanking talents (0/44/27 or 0/32/39).

Provided the weapons are on par item level wise, you damage will go up as DW is a better damage source.

Threat, being directly derived from damage for DK will go up as well.

You will lose tanking talents however - this is true.

[Offhand]

If your advising to tank in a straight up dps build then yes, your threat will increase for the 10 seconds you're alive.

[Kathis]

It was factually proven in practice that having 2 offtanks hit mother resulted in a very likely tank gib pre-nerf where she stopped parry-hasting. We couldn't even kill the bitch before we figured it out, because our tank would just display that nice "10k+10k+9k" within 0.2 seconds and die. This happened several times in one evening when we were practicing her.
You can theorycraft it to death if you want, but everyone who killed mother pre-nerf knows otherwise. Your offtanks tanked her cleaves afk unless your main tank was grossly overgeared (which was almost never true because parry-hasting on her was killed before SWP).


The issue at hand is that in the current content, there are zero heavy-hitting melee bosses that can parry-haste. All the hard bosses hit hard through magic, and patchwerk, the only candidate for parry hasting awesomeness cannot parry-haste. And it only takes one shahraz-like boss to wipe the floor with your raid because of parry hasting. Therefore, don't bet on it.



Is it worth it to run with a DW tank now? Sure, if he's geared and you're long through content he does more DPS, and nothing in the content can really touch him.

Will it be viable in ulduar? Hell no, for the same reason why def cap is mandatory - you don't want to turn first kill into a wipe because of "oops, bad luck".

And absolutely minimizing "oops bad luck" moments is what main tanks live and die for.

I should clarify my comment since you're obviously intent on taking it out of context to try and make.... I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make, really, since none of it applied to Dual Wield DK tanking. My comment is that Parry-haste gibbing AS a dual-wield Death Knight is grossly over-exaggerated by people. I'll point out that you completely avoided any and all things I actually stated to prove that. The bulk of the damage that a dual wield DK is putting out CANNOT be parried. Period. In fact, with the vast amount of rune strikes being thrown up, a lot of your white damage is turned into rune strikes as well which again... cannot be parried. The point is very simple. A dual wielding Death Knight has LESS chance to cause a parry-haste effect on a boss than a warrior does because ALL of a warrior's attacks are weapon based whereas all but the simple white melee hits of a DW DK are spells and as such cannot be parried to create the parry-haste effect.

Why you would have had 3 tanks hitting one boss from the front I simply can't understand, that's just plain idiotic and of course that's going to cause parry-hasting. Having ANYONE other than the tank in front of a boss is going to cause that. That does not change the fact that everyone and their mother is exaggerating the parry-haste concerns of a dual wield dk.

As for the 0/44/27 and 0/32/39 specs... those are not tank specs people. Those are Dual Wield DPS specs. Look at the spec lined earlier in the thread: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-ta...ncrest&n=Karzi

There are NO missing tank skills. He has Blade Barrier, he has anticipation, he has Toughnes, Improved Icy Talons, Lichborne, Unbreakable Armor, Frigid Deathplate, and Guile of Gorefiend.

The only tank skills in frost that he's missing are the ones generally considered not worth taking, Acclimation and Frost Aura. Frost aura because it doesn't stack with MotW means it's 2 talent points for an additional 5 resistance. Unless you have ZERO druids at all in your raid, Frost Aura is a waste. Acclimation only helps against spell caster bosses and as such is very situational whether it's useful or not. I, myself, prefer to have it because I find the caster bosses are the ones I take the most damage against and that talent helps -alot- with that.

My personal choice in that build would actually be to drop the points in Tundra stalker and put them in acclimation, resulting in 6% less threat but more survivability. But that's a personal choice, not a requirement either way.

[Diablomortis]

It was factually proven in practice that having 2 offtanks hit mother resulted in a very likely tank gib pre-nerf where she stopped parry-hasting. We couldn't even kill the bitch before we figured it out, because our tank would just display that nice "10k+10k+9k" within 0.2 seconds and die. This happened several times in one evening when we were practicing her.
You can theorycraft it to death if you want, but everyone who killed mother pre-nerf knows otherwise. Your offtanks tanked her cleaves afk unless your main tank was grossly overgeared (which was almost never true because parry-hasting on her was killed before SWP).


The issue at hand is that in the current content, there are zero heavy-hitting melee bosses that can parry-haste. All the hard bosses hit hard through magic, and patchwerk, the only candidate for parry hasting awesomeness cannot parry-haste. And it only takes one shahraz-like boss to wipe the floor with your raid because of parry hasting. Therefore, don't bet on it.



Is it worth it to run with a DW tank now? Sure, if he's geared and you're long through content he does more DPS, and nothing in the content can really touch him.

Will it be viable in ulduar? Hell no, for the same reason why def cap is mandatory - you don't want to turn first kill into a wipe because of "oops, bad luck".

And absolutely minimizing "oops bad luck" moments is what main tanks live and die for.

I just posted a slightly less wordy but very similar response in Wowhead. Basic answer: you can get away with anything tankingwise in the current content, but don't fall in love with DW tanking because come Ulduar I seriously doubt its viability.

D

[Kathis]

I just posted a slightly less wordy but very similar response in Wowhead. Basic answer: you can get away with anything tankingwise in the current content, but don't fall in love with DW tanking because come Ulduar I seriously doubt its viability.

D

This I agree with but for different reasons. There is NOTHING in DW tanking that causes you to take massively more damage or even enough of a difference to be talking about. However, that said, it is a tanking method that relies very heavily on AoE attacks to maintain threat, even on single target mobs. So unless Frosties are given a single target version of Howling Blast before Ulduar, where they've mentioned that you're going to need to CC again, then DW tanking is going to be a bad idea simply becaues it risks breaking CC too often. The only single target option for Frosties are Icy Touch, Frost Strike and Obliterate. Icy Touch doesn't deal enough damage to a single target and doesn't have a boosted threat rating on it so it won't be enough to hold a mob and Frost Strike costing RP alongside Rune Strike will make for holding a target without Howling Blasts difficult against the kind of DPS we're going to see in Ulduar. Obliterate is basically useless with DW and most people simply spec out of the damage boosting talents of it because it's too heavily weapon damage based.

I don't see a way for DW Frost Death Knights to handle mobs in CC heavy situations, unless they're a third or fourth tank that have some time to build up threat before the dps unload.

[Lucky_]

I don't see a way for DW Frost Death Knights to handle mobs in CC heavy situations, unless they're a third or fourth tank that have some time to build up threat before the dps unload.

As it stands right now, no tanks but druids can. Warriors need shockwave, DKs need howling blast and DnD, paladins need consecration.

Notably, druids are the only class that could potentially handle sitation with heavy CC without breaking it by accident without losing a lot of their tanking tools, but they are also the worst class by far for AoE tanking - if in doubt try taking druid along for blaze/whelp tank in sath3d. It will be a nightmare.