Death Knight tanking questions (semi wall of text)

[Elessa]

I apologise for any bad grammar or bad wording.

Hello, I am currently levling a Death Knight tank, and I have some questions about spells, glyphs and talents!
I will edit my to say wether or not I have got the info I wanted about a question.

first off, my armory (if it matters at all)
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...ider&cn=Decaya


First question is about http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=48792.

How does it scale?
I understand that it's a 20% damage reduction without glyph and without any defense.
But how much does it benefit from defense?
Does it benefit from total defense, or from +defense from gear?

Does http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43545#modifies make it a 30% reduction always, or does it "stack" with defense?
For example, if I normally get 40% reduction without the glyph, would the glyph take it to 50%, reduce it to 30%, or would it do nothing?


I understand that Frost is the AoE spec of choice because of the quick threat you can get with DnD and HB and I understand that Blood is the single target spec of choice because of the high single target threat, higher health pool (only 3%, but still, it is higher), the self healing, and the superior cooldowns to frost. Some people argues that Frost is better, but just looking at the talents, Blood seems superior (to me atleast).
Could someone give me a better explanation behind the two specs?
A clearer explanation of Will of the Necropolis, and some comparision (is this even a word?) between the two specs (talent wise! example: Imp. Frost Pres. vs Vet. of the Third War) both threat-wise and survival-wise.

I have not seen a single unholy tank since the good old naxx days, why is this?
Is Frost and Blood really that superior to Unholy?
Bone Shield seems great for a one minute cooldowns! But is it?
Is there any Internal Cooldown on it? And if there is, when the it's on cooldown (internal cooldown, but the buff is still up) would I get the damage reduction anyway?

I made an Unholy build just for fun (http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...U,qRYOeR,11623)
I am not sure wether to put the last five points into Black Ice or Bladed armor, which would be better for threat?

Please answer with a complete aswer, with explanations and with any logic or math behind your aswer, short answers sucks.

Thanks for taking the time reading my post, I hope that you can answer most of my questions.

[BoxofRox]

Okay, Icebound Fortitude. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) they patched the reduction just a little while back, and the glyph is pretty obsolete.

When it comes to the various specs, I've had the best time AoE with Unholy, and the best time Single Target with Blood, while Frost is in the middle. For me, I find aggro in frost in say... heroics much more difficult, though I hate the ammount of downtime blood has on pull.

Unholy is really not a competitive tanking spec, specially the one you'd like. 100% AMS is the only real cooldown they have going for them, since AMZ is pretty much instantly blown away. While they do have higher dodge, the ammount of damage they take is immense (I was getting 1shotted in ulduar with 40k health).

Vampiric Blood is on a 1 minute CD and is much better in general, and I don't seem to have threat issues at all with blood, just make sure you switch targets and get a few HS / RS off and you'll be fine.

[Elessa]

Okay, Icebound Fortitude. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) they patched the reduction just a little while back, and the glyph is pretty obsolete.

When it comes to the various specs, I've had the best time AoE with Unholy, and the best time Single Target with Blood, while Frost is in the middle. For me, I find aggro in frost in say... heroics much more difficult, though I hate the ammount of downtime blood has on pull.

Unholy is really not a competitive tanking spec, specially the one you'd like. 100% AMS is the only real cooldown they have going for them, since AMZ is pretty much instantly blown away. While they do have higher dodge, the ammount of damage they take is immense (I was getting 1shotted in ulduar with 40k health).

Vampiric Blood is on a 1 minute CD and is much better in general, and I don't seem to have threat issues at all with blood, just make sure you switch targets and get a few HS / RS off and you'll be fine.

Thanks for the info on IBF glyph, but I am not going to "cross it off" from my original post, since you are not sure.

AMZ could be useful for saving a healer or a dps, but as a tanking cooldown I agree that it's pretty bad.
It could save someone from ghosts on Deathwhisper for example.

How could you get one shotted with 40k health?
The difference in damage reduction between blood, frost and unholy is not that big, is it?

[BoxofRox]

Honostly I don't understand how I was oneshotted, I just know it's happened to myself, and another DK in our guild with even more health. Frost is the only tree with more damage reduction than the rest, though Blood makes up for it with a much higher health pool. Unholy is stuck out in nowhere with the only thing going for it being high avoidance, which isn't terribly great now-a-days.

AMZ is a useful thing, the problem is to use it to save someone, they'd either have to walk into it or you'd have to move the boss closer, which would screw the various melee dps on the boss, who aren't expecting it to move.

[kumduh]

How could you get one shotted with 40k health?
The difference in damage reduction between blood, frost and unholy is not that big, is it?

Will of the Necropolis would provide roughly 6k damage mitigation against a 40k hit, 6k might not sound like much, but it can easily be the difference between life or death.

[Elessa]

Honostly I don't understand how I was oneshotted, I just know it's happened to myself, and another DK in our guild with even more health. Frost is the only tree with more damage reduction than the rest, though Blood makes up for it with a much higher health pool. Unholy is stuck out in nowhere with the only thing going for it being high avoidance, which isn't terribly great now-a-days.

AMZ is a useful thing, the problem is to use it to save someone, they'd either have to walk into it or you'd have to move the boss closer, which would screw the various melee dps on the boss, who aren't expecting it to move.

Okay, maybe you didn't have 540 defense? Or maybe it was a bug, but nevermind.
Am I missing a talent in the Unholy tree? How does it have more avoidance?
Both blood and Frost specs picks up Anticipation.
Frost seems to be the highest avoidance tree to me, as it is the only spec that picks up Frigid Deathplate (3% miss).

[Elessa]

Will of the Necropolis would provide roughly 6k damage mitigation against a 40k hit, 6k might not sound like much, but it can easily be the difference between life or death.

So, Will of the Necropolis works like a nerfed Ardent defender without the heal?
Thanks for clearing that up!

Also, I can't think of ANY boss that hits 40k after mitigation, not even in current content.

[BoxofRox]

Festergut 2-3 Inhales, Lich King, Sindragosa. Those are the big 3 I can think of.

Also, again I don't know how it has more avoidance, I know I dropped like 4% dodge (From 32% to 28%) just by respeccing.

[Elessa]

Festergut 2-3 Inhales, Lich King, Sindragosa. Those are the big 3 I can think of.

Also, again I don't know how it has more avoidance, I know I dropped like 4% dodge (From 32% to 28%) just by respeccing.

Oh, maybe you're right, but I wouldn't know because I am in a 10-man guild :-X

That's werid, I can't see any talent exept for Anticipation that would increase avoidance (the 3% str talent would ofcourse, but just a tiny tiny tiny amount).
Maybe it was some old talent, when did you respec?

[rahdek]

Thorim's Unbalancing Strike maybe? I used to get insta-crit right after his debuff went up back in Ulduar, that was as blood, so I don't think it was spec, but irrelevant nonetheless.

I do believe IBF ends up giving anywhere from 40% to 50% dmg reduction depending on how much defense you have. (for instance now I only get a little over 40%, but when my def rating was at 580 something it was higher, I sit at 545 after changing some enchants and such around).

As far as unholy tanking goes. I used to use it to solo tank 10man Sarth back in 3.1, because wandering plague was useful, but it was more of a for S 'n' G's than anything else. I used it for a couple weeks early on in ICC when the guild I was running with didn't have a warlock in the group, but as far as damage taken, I seemed to be okay, and we didn't wipe at all, so yeah.

You can search me and look at my blood tanking spec. It is by no means cookie cutter, but the decrease cooldown timers on DnD and DG help me continue to pull 5mans faster as opposed to sitting around waiting for 10-15sec for something to get off CD because the DPS just aoe'd everything to bits in 5-10 seconds. Otherwise I don't have threat issues in 5mans, unless DPS severely outgears me and nukes something that I didn't get a chance to hit, but even then, the mob will probably die so it wouldn't be worthwhile to taunt it back anyways.

Will of the Necropolis is a decent mechanic that is getting improved upon, so that'll make survivability better since there won't be a 15sec internal cd on it, next patch, or something like that.

As far as Frost tanking goes, just don't make the dk community cry by DW Rimefang's Claw. 2h frost tanking still works, it's just not as fun as DW. I digress. The AOE spamability of HB (kinda spamable, depends on how fast everything dies really) makes it a simple spec to use to just blitz through 5mans, so keep that in mind, if that is something you're planning on doing.

Bone Shield's internal cd is either 2 or 4 seconds, or something but I can't really remember, I'm sure someone else can confirm this.

Unbreakable Armor is a pretty decent cd, but I just like looking at a massive health pool when I pop Vamp. Blood fully buffed, and get fully healed (/flex epeen).

Good luck with your decision, and remember that if you're more comfortable tanking in the non-fotm spec then go for it.

[Mordockk]

I think by oneshotted you probably mean you went from 100% to 0% in under a sec...when that happened to my tanks i call that being WotLK'd. It just means that a bosses ability lined up right with it's melee swing and both hit you at almsot the same time resulting in a wipe.

at 540+ defense IBF will reduce your damage by about 40%...but they did a hotfix to inc the base dmg reduction by 10% so if you are over defense capped then your IBF will reduce damage by ~50%...making glyph obselete.

Ok now with your comparison question between frost and blood. first look at their cooldowns...vamp blood vs unbreakable armor. People prefer bloods CD because not only does it inc ur health by 15% but also healing recieved is inc by 35%....you ur rune tap and death strieks will also heal you for more. Unbreakable armor increases your armor by 25%...which is great for bossses that hit physically but a lot of huge hits come in the form of magic and the inc health and healing to you is far superior than the armor...also the armor gets less effective after you reach a certain amount(i.e. the armor cap at 75% phys reduc) not sure if anyone has reached this with unbreakable.
Blood and frost both have good single target tps, the reason blood makes a better main tank/single target tank is the higher health, better CD, and will of the necropolis. will of necro is also getting its cd removed next patch. WotN will allow your tank to more easily deal with humongous hits that other tanks would eventually die to...since it reduces the damage on hits that bring you below 35 but not below 5%(therefore huge hitting bosses wont make your healers panic as much as they see your health pool drop very low)..its simple if you read the tooltip and realize that bosses frequently deal enough dmg to bring oyu below 35% but not kill you, thats why will of the necroplois is so good.

blood only lacks in aoe threat...however what I mean by lacks means that it is just easier to keep aoe threat as frost, a good blood tank can still click around rune strike and blood strike a decent sized group of mobs and maintain threat....but who cares about trash...fights with lots of adds i'd say frost would be better at holding the aoe threat--but id also say id rather have a tank with a shield.


as for unholy, there is a hidden internal coldown on the bones ofboneshield. its stilly good especially if you glyph it to add MOAR BONES! the more avoidance you have the longer it will last. im not sure of the internal CD on the bones tho. however i think the reason you don't see unholy tanks is because of there reliance on diseases and the weaknesss of scourge strike without diseases and without armorpen... and you only get teh dmg reduction when you get hit and it removes a bone....you can keep boneshield up for a long time to get a "passive random" 20% dmg reduction on a hit. the internal CD on the bones make it weaker then VampBlood and UBarmor IMO...

[Zao]

Pretty much everything in your post has already been answered in the sticky.
For the exact math on all of those talents you'll probably be better off with EJ than MMO-Champion.

[Isollae]

I would strongly recommend you read the fireside chat over on Tankspot. not that there's not good info here but Even EJ's dk tanking threads are inferior.

because your leveling, I'd recommend Blood tanking. not because its better but because your GOING to be doing some soloing and blood dp's is teh way to go leveling.

as far as single/aoe tanking. all three spec are more then sufficient. there are just not enough caster bossfight to justify unholy tanking at this time.

i personally run frost as my main tank spec. and you can MT/OT every boss in the game as frost. but most people prefer blood. and for soloing, bloods healing is far superior.

[Elessa]

Thanks for your posts Mordockk and Rahdek, they where a nice and informative read.
@ zao, actually they are not. I couldn't find any info about the IBF questions, and onlt very simple descriptions of the specs. I am looking for more in depth comparision/description of the trees.
I will take your advice and look on EJ, it's been a while since I visited that site, thank you.
@ Isollae Thanks, I will read the fireside chat at Tankspot.
Actually I will not be soloing anything while levling, I am using the dungeon finder.

[vkei]

most ppl. like blood because everyone like tanks with more HP , no matter how much DR u have
blood do have a better CD , but i will say frost if u can have only 1 tank spec

frost is fun with more random proc ,and HS spam is boring , i have both spec but using frost 95% of the time

[Zao]

That's because most of these are answered in the "Simple Questions" tab.