1. #1

    Question about our Dk tank

    Hey guys

    I'm not an expert in how Death Knights are supposed to tank, so I was wondering if you could help me out here

    The thing is, that the DK in my guild is making a very little amount of threat (4-6k TPS, mostly around the 5k), while main tanking different bosses.

    He's 245+ geared in all slots, the specs that he is using is (Im not sure if one of them is a dps spec):

    http://eu.wowarmory.com/talent-calc....00000000000000
    With the glyphs:
    Glyph of Death Strike
    Glyph of Vampiric Blood
    Glyph of Rune Strike
    Glyph of Horn of Winter
    Glyph of Pestilence
    Glyph of Raise Dead

    http://eu.wowarmory.com/talent-calc....00000000000000
    With the glyphs:
    Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon
    Glyph of Death Strike
    Glyph of Dark Death
    Glyph of Raise Dead
    Glyph of Horn of Winter

    Can his low threat be caused by the spec, which he's using, or is it a rotation issue perhaps ?




  2. #2
    Immortal seam's Avatar
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    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    He is most likely doing his rotation wrong, maybe forgetting to use some abilities?

    My tank is frost, so I can't help much here =s

  3. #3
    Stood in the Fire Dakario's Avatar
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    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    i can tell that http://eu.wowarmory.com/talent-calc....00000000000000 is probably the tanking specc

  4. #4

    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    No Armory?

    Possible reasons: Too little expertise, too little hit
    Is someone sundering the boss? Bloodtanks' TPS is very dependant on armor debuffs on the mob.

    And as already been said, maybe he fucks up his rotation.

  5. #5

    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    Can we get an armory link to this 245 geared tank?

    Also is Rune Strike macroed to like every button? Does he have low hit/expertise? Ect.

    Kind of need to know that in order to figure out the problem. As blood he should be able to pump out a bit more TPS.

  6. #6
    Brewmaster mhp's Avatar
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    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    Without armory, we can't really help you.

    There's N+1 reasons he might be doing low threat. Low hit, low expertise, horrible rotation, missing buffs/debuffs...

    The spec & glyphs look fine, though.

  7. #7

    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    Thanks for the answers, it was mostly regarding the spec i was seaking information.

    I wont give the armory, since I wont reveal who the person is.

  8. #8

    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    Armorylite.com will anonymize armory profiles.

  9. #9

    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    Quote Originally Posted by Jante
    Thanks for the answers, it was mostly regarding the spec i was seaking information.

    I wont give the armory, since I wont reveal who the person is.
    ZOMG the suspense!

  10. #10

    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    Probably rotation. One second of not hitting any ability can hurt your tps/dps badly.

  11. #11

    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    His first one is the Tank spec.

    Make sure he's at min of 26 exp and close to hit. Also ask him if he's doing the right rotation, I tank as blood and I don't have threat issues. True initial threat isn't as awesome as other classes, but after that it's fine.

    IT - PS - DS - HS - HS
    DS - HS - HS - HS - HS - Runic Dump

    Tried and true from EJ. But as others said, without an armory link there is little we can do to help.
    "Clearly every aspect of one's life, from financial stability to social popularity, to sexual prowess can be boiled down to 4 numbers: One's Arena rating" ~ Xandamere

  12. #12

    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    Apparently the EU armory is down at this time, so there's very little I can do. In the future it may help to create a spec on mmo-champion or something of that nature to help with accessability. Meanwhile, I can only really echo most of what was said previously and try to add a small detail or two.

    As a blood tank (and based solely on the glyphs you listed spec #1 is his tanking spec), his damage is overwhelmingly physical. Do you have a warrior or rogue to sunder/expose? If not, there's handicap one.

    The rotation suggested by Cirayne is good. I might suggest one slight alteration to it:

    IT-PS-HS-HS-DS-DC-HW
    DS-HS-HS-HS-HS-DC-DC

    The reason I suggest the change in ordering on the first pass is that (assuming you start at 0 runic power), the glyph of death strike won't offer as much damage if the move is put earlier in the rotation.

    The other thing that was touched on briefly by Kaelleria was that all of his attack buttons (including icy touch and death coil) need to be replaced with macros so that rune strike attempts to fire at every moment. The general format of such a macro is this:

    #showtooltip <attack name>
    /cast !Rune Strike
    /cast <attack name>

    It's my understanding that the exclamation point is no longer required syntax to prevent the move from being toggled off, but I tend to leave it there for my own peace of mind. The macro itself is so short as to not make me fret over one extra character.

    Based on the numbers in the link you provided, I've pieced together what I believe to be his spec. My first observation is that he's using 3/3 sudden doom. There's nothing inherently wrong in the talent, but it is a random proc. Random procs are traditionally terrible for tanking unless there's a way to stack the odds in your favor. There's no such way with that talent.

    Meanwhile he's skipped Improved Icy Touch. This tells me he's relying on someone else to provide the melee speed slow on the boss. Also he's losing a guaranteed 15% damage increase on that particular attack. Essentially he's gambling rather than going for a reliable thing. Based on your need to make this thread, I interpret the gamble is not paying off well.

    He has chosen to take Hysteria. If he uses it on himself, it should improve his threat quite a bit at the expense of making the healers work slightly harder. I'm guessing he drops it on a melee character instead, which would only work against him in the threat game.

    At some point you might also ask him how frequently he observes Spell Deflection proccing. If, as I suspect, it isn't often he might be ahead to get more damage out of some mixture of Morbidity and Ravenous Dead.

  13. #13

    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    I'd worry less about his armory than his recount, next raid give us an idea of what his % damage is from various abilities, ie Is he using rune strike? Is he using disease applicators frequently enough to keep his diseases up?, also check to see if he's missing being dodged/parried a lot.

    Tank spec seems a bit odd to me, why go blood and skip rune tap? Offhand the only reason I can think of is because he needs to provide your raid with Aboms might, if my guess is wrong and you have a regular marks hunter, enh shaman, or a blood dps dk there are some things there that should be moved around. Another possible target for point moving is scent of blood, as a tank its nice to have some regular runic generation but a 15% chance when you get attacked to generate 30 runic over a time period that could easily be higher than 9 seconds is kind of expensive talent point wise. In my experience that buff is down more than its up, which puts it at about 2x as good as butchery per talent point, still not great. As another poster mentioned spell deflection is a really nice talent, but in TotC its rather lacking, the heavy hitting bosses are Anub, his adds, and Gormak, and that's all physical.

    Improved icy touch and Morbidity are 2 big places where you might want to spend those points, I wouldn't give a definite answer without knowing exactly how much of his damage comes from deathcoil etc, and of course some of it depends on your regular raid composition since Imp Icy is going to be rather less valuable if someone else is doing the melee slow.
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  14. #14

    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    BTW, in my sig there's my tank spec. I tank all encounters minus Heroic Anub as blood, that I do in unholy.

    But as Fornaw said, some talents can be moved around. I'd look at his recount and see his rotation, rune strike count (should be about 60% if I remember correctly), and what not. But again, remind DPS that his initial aggro isn't as strong as other classes, we need to apply our diseases and gain runic power before our damage starts leveling out.
    "Clearly every aspect of one's life, from financial stability to social popularity, to sexual prowess can be boiled down to 4 numbers: One's Arena rating" ~ Xandamere

  15. #15

    Re: Question about our Dk tank

    One possible attraction beyond the group buff of Abomination's Might would be the passive strength increase. That is also what attracts me to Ravenous Dead whenever I have a left over point. More strength would help with threat while also giving you more parry rating for greater avoidance. Of course that avoidance would lead to more rune strikes, so it's a very nice loop the class has going in general.

    I think Scent of Blood is one of those talents where the effectiveness is most definitely judged by the individual. I know that for many it isn't helpful at all. In my case, however, I feel as if I am almost literally never without the buff. And I'll often watch my runic power bar go from nigh empty to utterly full in the span of a second. One thing I think may explain it could be hinted at in the wording of the talent. It says that the runic power will be awarded on a 'melee hit'. Based on the consistent upward leaping of my runic power, I'm left with the impression that I'm gaining from both auto attacks and active strikes, possibly even rune strike itself.

    There was a long, long time where I never even considered Scent of Blood. But after including it experimentally even once, I refuse to ever consider tanking without it. I love being unable to get rid of all my runic power (but trying my hardest!).

    Rune Tap may be a similar talent in that it comes to preference. Generally, I couldn't ever consider doing my healer's job instead of doing more dps and tps on a target. Most of my healers have earned my trust. Those that haven't simply get my unspoken demand that they hold up their part of the raid. Though it is true that healing will generate threat, it is usually vastly inferior to threat generated through damage. That is to say that the healing done compared to the threat gained is a much larger gap than that between damage done and threat gained.

    At the same time, it would be an extra cooldown to use in an ugly situation. I could see it being a very nice survivability tool if the timing of its use could be perfected. I simply wouldn't use it compared to any mitigation/avoidance/dps option.

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