WIP: Unholy Avoidance Tank Build 3.2.2

[jai151]

With the cooldown on bone shield dropping to 1m with 6 charges, it is now back to a potential "always on" ability with enough avoidance. To achieve this, we have to take damage no more than once every 7.5 seconds, which could be doable.

Now don't get me wrong, I love blood tanking and this would likely be at best an offspec to play around with, but just for the fun of it...

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...g,3I-eO-,10433

I've been out of unholy tanking since I switched to blood way back when, so I'm sure this spec could use some work. I focused mainly on threat abilities since, well, there just aren't that many non threat abilities in the unholy tree. While I'd like to get to veteran in the blood tree, it's just not feasible as I see it.

This would also require building a new set, one gemmed ad statted heavily for avoidance above EH.

So, what do you guys think?

P.S. If you're going to say "Don't" or "dumb idea" or "LOLnoob" just do everyone a favor and keep your mouth shut. I already stated this was a "see if it works" scenario, I'm not expecting to go full out avoidance tank hardmodes.

[Stieger23]

With the cooldown on bone shield dropping to 1m with 6 charges, it is now back to a potential "always on" ability with enough avoidance. To achieve this, we have to take damage no more than once every 7.5 seconds, which could be doable.

Now don't get me wrong, I love blood tanking and this would likely be at best an offspec to play around with, but just for the fun of it...

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...g,3I-eO-,10433

I've been out of unholy tanking since I switched to blood way back when, so I'm sure this spec could use some work. I focused mainly on threat abilities since, well, there just aren't that many non threat abilities in the unholy tree. While I'd like to get to veteran in the blood tree, it's just not feasible as I see it.

This would also require building a new set, one gemmed ad statted heavily for avoidance above EH.

So, what do you guys think?

P.S. If you're going to say "Don't" or "dumb idea" or "LOLnoob" just do everyone a favor and keep your mouth shut. I already stated this was a "see if it works" scenario, I'm not expecting to go full out avoidance tank hardmodes.

Damage every 7.5 seconds, (assuming a base 2.0 attack speed and a 20% slow on attack speed = 2.4 seconds) would require you to avoid slightly more than 3/4 of all attacks. That is not possible with current gear.

As long as your build allows you to survive the nearly 30 second gap (20 sec with 4 piece tier 9) when BS will most likely be down, it should work okay. I know I'm not going to spec a few extra points of avoidance at the expense of health.

edit: Moved my writing out of the body of the quote. I was running to a meeting and wasn't paying attention.

[Yuron]

<snip>

Yep.

[jai151]

Oh, you actually did respond in there!

75% avoidance does seem slightly excessive, but since it's all rng based... Hmm, I'll just have to give it a whirl come 3.2.2 and see what happens

[john879]

Listen to Stieger he has a lot of knowledge when it comes to DK's. Before 3.2 I was a blood/unholy spec as a tank. It worked great. Was even OT uld every week I was a DW tank and even though every place you look said not to I had great luck with it. After patch 3.2 I had to change specs and didn't really know what to do. So just so happened one day I was on here and came across Stieger's post on a DK tank. He put together me a great dual wield frost spec for tanking that works great! I know that there are going to be alot of flaming responses about DW tanking and I could honestly care less. Talk to him more on depth about it, if there is a way to make a unholy tanking set up he can do it.

[Daehauq]

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...g,3I-eO-,10433

Not up-to-date on this, does Rune Strike infact 'proc' Necrosis?

[Stieger23]

Oh, you actually did respond in there!

75% avoidance does seem slightly excessive, but since it's all rng based... Hmm, I'll just have to give it a whirl come 3.2.2 and see what happens

Okay, so here's the deal. Yes, it is RNG based. Let's say that you could hypothetically hit 75% avoidance and get your average uptime equal to the cool down. There's still a problem, though. When the "average" uptime is equal to the cooldown, that means that 50% of the time your BS will still under-perform the CD. And since there isn't a useful carry forward (just because BS at time A lasted 1 minute 15 seconds, doesn't mean that BS at time B only needs to last 45 seconds. It still needs to last the full minute duration.) Half the time you're still going to spend some portion of the CD without a bone shield.

A ha, you say, but I have IBF! With a 2 min cooldown it should be up half the time the BS expires. Problem solved! Not quite. 1/4 of the time you're going to get back-to-back occasions when your shield will be down and your BS will be on CD. Problem not solved.

The bottom line is that even with wildly optimistic levels of avoidance, you still need to have the stamina to take a few hits.

Now this doesn't mean that a UH build is bad. I'm open to the possibility that it might in fact be better than blood or frost. But what is unlikely to be better is a gearing, gemming and enchanting strategy that sacrifices the only stackable tank stat off diminishing returns (armor is also not on diminishing returns, but it's not particularly practical to stack), for avoidance stats that are on DR. You're devaluing each stat point you allocate to heavily diminished stats.

Unholy tank builds may be practical, but they will still be fundamentally stamina-based. Trying to eek a few more "average seconds" out of BS duration is probably never going to be the correct way to enchant or gem for cutting edge content.

[doomchken]

Wouldn't Glyph of IBF still be a pretty damn good glyph for unholy? Better then Pestilence or Disease at least.
Also i think it has been found that BS has a small Internal CD just a couple seconds but enough i think to protect against really bad rng. Finally i would say that BS could easily be up for all the time it matters or at least quite often for instance your BS falls off and the raid is doing well health wise thats np so you don't put it up the healers start losing it or spike damage is incoming so you pop it back up it falls off and the raid is taking a ton of damage pop IBF you don't need BS up the whole fight although it would be very nice. Also any fight where you take magic damage glyphed and talented Anti magic shield is amazing plus anti magic zone to help your melee. All in all i think that the very high up time of damage reduction plus other abilities puts Unholy ahead of blood and Frost on alot of fights. Now Frost may be better for multiple target tanks or fast hitting bosses and Blood has much better versatility on fight mechanics due to high health and Vampiric blood which helps Damage that needs to be healed through more.

[Delilith]

Wouldn't Glyph of IBF still be a pretty damn good glyph for unholy? Better then Pestilence or Disease at least.

That bug was fixed a few weeks after the glyph was released, so no, it wouldn't be a better glyph.

EDIT: After the diseases are refreshed using glyph of disease, will glyph of scourge strike be able to add 9 seconds to it AGAIN?
That would be something worth knowing when determining what glyphs to use.

[Yuron]

If you're going to use disease glyph I dont really think scourge strike glyph is nesecary, just use rune strike instead.

[Schlip]

Unholy tanking always suffered from low threat. I'm trying this build for maximum threat:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...m,3Y63eO,10433

[tialol]

got fixxed.. 6->4 Charges with Glyph! XD

[jai151]

got fixxed.. 6->4 Charges with Glyph! XD

Oh damn, that's a painful nerf. It should have been 3 charges and 2 glyphed or 4 bones and 1 glyphed, not 3 and 1. That sucks.

[ijimmy]

Better leave it to 4 charges and complete change glyph, for extra absorb for example, asi it is whith UA

[GravityDK]

You can't be a super-uber avoidance tank anymore, but who cares.
Unholy bone shield now has 8 charges over two minutes, it used to be 6 charges. That's a buff.

I've done some simulations on the unholy tps too on 3.22 if you're curious. Frost still does about 7% more.

[jai151]

You can't be a super-uber avoidance tank anymore, but who cares.
Unholy bone shield now has 8 charges over two minutes, it used to be 6 charges. That's a buff.

I've done some simulations on the unholy tps too on 3.22 if you're curious. Frost still does about 7% more.

Way to resurrect a dead topic with info that doesn't really partain. /thumbsup

[GravityDK]

Six days old is a 'dead topic' when the patch 3.22 just came out, and the OP was discussing a relevant issue? I disagree.

[jai151]

Six days old is a 'dead topic' when the patch 3.22 just came out, and the OP was discussing a relevant issue? I disagree.

I am the OP, and the topic died when they reduced the charges on bone shield and made the idea null and void.