to frost? or to blood that is thy question!

[Harmful]

well ive been tanking as blood for a long time now, and some of my guildies have been telling me that frost got the most overall buff and is now the best tanking spec n i should respec, but im not really sure that is true n im used to blood, any insight from any1?

[Cirayne24]

Stay Blood, Vampiric Blood is still better then Unbreakable Armor. If anything going unholy would be better then Frost. UA only effects physical damage, where VB is health+healing or BS is 20% for any damage.

I honestly still don't see anyone going Frost to tank. With 4p T9 as Blood with Vamp Glyph you get 15 seconds every 50 seconds, so roughly ~35 seconds without the buff. Even 4p T9 with BS is good with the glyph its 4 Bones every 50 seconds.

[sharkethic86]

Ugh I just can't seem to see Blood as better than Frost, and Unholy I can't see as good as either of them because the only thing you have going for you in Unholy is Bone Shield which is great when you have it up, but I feel like overall it can't be as strong as what the entire Frost spec can bring you.. can you post me a really good Blood Tank spec so I can compare it to my Frost tank spec? Just if you ask me, Frost is such a great tanking tree and you saying you still don't see anyone going Frost is crazy cuz I see the majority of tanking posts focused on Frost

[General Vezax]

Improved health + that one talent that reduces spell dmg equal to a % of your parry chance + Vampiric blood > UA, 3% less chance to be hit and 2% less dmg taken.

[sharkethic86]

I can't see Vamp Blood as THAT good since when it runs out you lose that health which puts stress on your healer, plus I feel like as Blood you are taking more damage overall and having to react with all your healing from DS, worms, Imp Blood Aura, and your one cooldown which I do like - Mark of Blood.. so can you show me a spec?

I think 2% static dmg reduc, 3% less chance to be hit, UA, better CD on Icebound Fort, HC and HB seem to make up a stronger tanking tree.. not to mention a free silence with endless winter and other great talents

I'm asking all of this out of pure curiosity and just would like to do some comparison with a good spec that you might be using.. just never Blood tanked before because from what I experienced first hand was that it was far weaker other than the greater health pool from stam gain talents

[Whitcher]

Blood is still the better spec as far as main tanking goes. Offtank I would recommend frost for the snap aoe agro for fights with multiple adds you need to pick up.

[desyphur]

I can't see Vamp Blood as THAT good since when it runs out you lose that health which puts stress on your healer, plus I feel like as Blood you are taking more damage overall and having to react with all your healing from DS, worms, Imp Blood Aura, and your one cooldown which I do like - Mark of Blood.. so can you show me a spec?

I think 2% static dmg reduc, 3% less chance to be hit, UA, better CD on Icebound Fort, HC and HB seem to make up a stronger tanking tree.. not to mention a free silence with endless winter and other great talents

I'm asking all of this out of pure curiosity and just would like to do some comparison with a good spec that you might be using.. just never Blood tanked before because from what I experienced first hand was that it was far weaker other than the greater health pool from stam gain talents

You don't "lose" the health with Vamp Blood. Your max health just goes back down. If you hit it and gain 5k health or whatever, and you are at 5k health when it goes away, you won't die. You'll remain at 5k health.

The talent doesn't decrease the cooldown of IBF, it simply increases the duration. (Still good, of course.)

Hungering Cold isn't that great for tanking, considering the AOE damage from Howling Blast. Howling Blast is good, but it's got a pretty decent cooldown to it.

Why are you speccing into Endless Winter as a tank? You can spare the RP, afaik.

- Morosshadow on Sentinels.

[sharkethic86]

Endless winter as a tank because I want a free silence no matter what I'm doing and I'd hate to need one right after I just dumped a FS or RS..

Hungering Cold I feel is great for tanking when you have either a pull that is getting out of control or just too many and it's a fast way to get FF onto every target and as long as no other AOE is going on, you can give your healer/dps a breather before you reengage..

Longer duration IBF is what I meant, sorry for that..

I guess maybe I was looking at Vamp Blood slightly differently, I still see it's strength but still not enough to make 1 clicky worth going down a whole tree idk.. Can someone show me their full spec for Blood MT? Because what I put together just doesn't look as versatile or strong as my Frost spec

[desyphur]

Endless winter as a tank because I want a free silence no matter what I'm doing and I'd hate to need one right after I just dumped a FS or RS..

Hungering Cold I feel is great for tanking when you have either a pull that is getting out of control or just too many and it's a fast way to get FF onto every target and as long as no other AOE is going on, you can give your healer/dps a breather before you reengage..

Longer duration IBF is what I meant, sorry for that..

I guess maybe I was looking at Vamp Blood slightly differently, I still see it's strength but still not enough to make 1 clicky worth going down a whole tree idk.. Can someone show me their full spec for Blood MT? Because what I put together just doesn't look as versatile or strong as my Frost spec

Search Morosshadow on the armory. It's the blood spec.

Certainly you could hit Horn of Winter if you needed the interrupt right then.

Technically you could apply FF to all the mobs with Howling Blast+Glyph.

[sharkethic86]

this is what i had put together : http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...F1mDVU1,,10482

seems good i guess but i just am very skeptical on blood for some reason..

also, mind freeze is 20 RP so a HoW wouldn't quite do it, but i mean i'm talking about a rare situation here, it's just the way i have spec'd and glyph'd my Frost setup is the the only places i spend RP is on FS and RS.. i have a free silence, and a free "oh shit button" with the hungering cold glyph

[Plutarch]

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the lies and slander of the outrageous community, or to take up arms against the ArP nerfs, and by opposing end them.

(I like Blood, I still pull about 4.5, but Frost pretty much negates the nerfs in this patch.)

[Ronark]

Is there any noticable TPS between the two? I was tanking as Frost today (prior to Blood) and it seems like Im pulling less TPS than as Blood.

[sharkethic86]

I am currently Frost and never seem to have any problems if people pulling off of me.. not once
I still am researching how to spec Blood for a MT build just for the increase in health and ability to self heal a lot, but I see no problems with Frost like some people claim.. extremely easy to hold AOE threat as well as single target and it's not like just because you're Frost you can't Death Strike for some health return, I do it all the time and I've had dozens of healers tell me how easy I was to keep up

[Nekkros]

Change to Frost, i've tanked as both frost and blood, and frost is the better spec.
it makes things easy enough for the healers, which is bloods main pro, but blood is not as good for aggro

this is just my opinion, but try both and see which one is better for you. WoW is all about personal preference, not the majority's opinions.

hopefully helpfull xx

[Noomz]

well ive been tanking as blood for a long time now, and some of my guildies have been telling me that frost got the most overall buff and is now the best tanking spec n i should respec, but im not really sure that is true n im used to blood, any insight from any1?

It's all up to taste and what you feel works best for you. Don't listen to what people say, go with what works the best for you, all specs have good perks for different situations. Although I would argue for Frost, seeing as how I feel the passive bonuses provided by Frost are superior to the one and only thing Blood tanks use as an argument, which is Vampiric Blood.
I believe the self-healing is negligeable, since you don't do particularly much damage in your tanking gear anyhow.

[Sarasyn]

The healing on a glyphed Death Strike for deep Blood is quite noticeable.

I'd also parrot the suggestion to try out different things. One thing that you almost never hear is what level of game play are people working with. Are they just running heroics? Are they in Naxx? Are they trying heroic 25-man Trial? It makes a difference. I started Naxx as Unholy and switched to Blood whenever we started working on Sarth3D seriously and have been blood every since. However, one thing that will be fairly constant is that DKs do take (or rather can take) spikey damage at times.

I prefer Vamp Blood as a survivability button over Unbreakable Armor. I'd rather know I have enough health to survive a hit and get healed up quicker from Vamp Blood.

[Stieger23]

I can't see Vamp Blood as THAT good since when it runs out you lose that health which puts stress on your healer, plus I feel like as Blood you are taking more damage overall and having to react with all your healing from DS, worms, Imp Blood Aura, and your one cooldown which I do like - Mark of Blood.. so can you show me a spec?

I think 2% static dmg reduc, 3% less chance to be hit, UA, better CD on Icebound Fort, HC and HB seem to make up a stronger tanking tree.. not to mention a free silence with endless winter and other great talents

I'm asking all of this out of pure curiosity and just would like to do some comparison with a good spec that you might be using.. just never Blood tanked before because from what I experienced first hand was that it was far weaker other than the greater health pool from stam gain talents

I'm not trying to be insulting when I point out that you clearly don't understand blood tanking at all.

Blood tanks almost never take:

Worms
Imp Blood Aura
Mark of Blood.

There are a variety of reasons, but if you look at 95% of raid tanks they will have allocated zero points to any of those three talents.

Each tanking tree provides several advantages. For blood: 3% bonus health, VB, Will of the Necropolis. For frost: UA, 3% miss, 2% less damage taken, extended IBF.

The problem is that extending IBF a few seconds is not usually very useful. Boss self-buffs/burn phases usually don't last much beyond the normal duration of the ability, so extending it pretty much just soaks a couple of normal-strength hits.

UA is a good ability now. You'll take 10-15% less physical damage for the duration, get some extra threat and some extra parry. But it's just not as good as VB. The extra health does "go away" but it doesn't go away in the form of damage to you. It just lowers your maximum health to your normal level. So if you're at 100% when VB expires, you won't suddenly be damaged. The extra health allows you to soak more damage of any type and the improved healing is immensely helpful. Try popping UA for frozen blows or any other spell damage based attack and see how much good it does.

3% miss is okay... but it doesn't proc Runestrike and while it does decrease average damage taken, it doesn't make you less spiky to heal. Will of the Necropolis doesn't impact the average damage taken by much, but it does situationally reduce spike damage, which is the main healer complaint with DK tanks.

2% mitigation is great. No doubt about it. If you have 66% mitigation from armor and talents then an additional mitigation 2% is actually ~6% reduction in incoming damage. Great ability. But so is 3% health and 6% strength.

Even if you consider the "special abilities" to be equal (which is kind of a stretch), the difference in single target threat generation and the advantage that death strike healing provides clearly breaks the tie in favor of blood. Yes, most of death strike healing is either overhealing or causes overhealing from your healer, but it does at times make a big difference. A 6000 point heal from an ability you were going to use anyway in your rotation is never unwelcome.

Look, you may think that frost tanking is fine. And you're right, it is. If you're doing heroics and low-level raiding you're totally fine. When you're trying to out-threat geared dps in an 8 minute fight against a mob that hits for 25k through armor, you'll be happy to be blood.

edit: clarity

[Chokaa]

The TPS on Blood is awesome. If you're OT is a warrior, or you have a rogue who can hit expose armor. The TPS as Frost is mediocre, but you have much more snap aggro (deathchill + HB = no one's pulling off you anytime soon!)

Blood as MT was amazing, but my guild died and I joined a new one. Where the prot pally was well established and he was THE MT NO MATTER WHUT DAMNIT. So being demoted to an offtank, blood sucked ASS. Sure, I could stay alive better, but you try tanking the jormungar whos stuck in the ground without HB - it sucks. Same with those guys at anub. In heroic mode, having HB is awesome.
While I do miss being THE main tank, I enjoy frost spec just as much.

[tialol]

I was a Blood Tank pre 3.2.2 and specced Frost now.

I never had aggro problems against my 9k dps mages, but with frost they overaggro so often.

Going back to blood as it is better (what I think)

edit: and no my dmg dealers are not low or something, they can pull 7k+ dps easily and nuke from the first moment in just get near a mob ;O

[jai151]

The TPS on Blood is awesome. If you're OT is a warrior, or you have a rogue who can hit expose armor. The TPS as Frost is mediocre, but you have much more snap aggro (deathchill + HB = no one's pulling off you anytime soon!)

Blood as MT was amazing, but my guild died and I joined a new one. Where the prot pally was well established and he was THE MT NO MATTER WHUT DAMNIT. So being demoted to an offtank, blood sucked ASS. Sure, I could stay alive better, but you try tanking the jormungar whos stuck in the ground without HB - it sucks. Same with those guys at anub. In heroic mode, having HB is awesome.
While I do miss being THE main tank, I enjoy frost spec just as much.

If that happened to me, I'd find another guild. I hate doing adds, and I hate running frost, that's one hell of a double whammy =P