frost dw tanking vs frost 2hand tanking

[kerwyn]

Threat, however, is a non-issue. You can keep threat with a level 1 grey weapon if you want to. By not going DW, you're giving up a truckload of damage, and that is what makes a difference.

Clearly, you don't raid 0/3 subversion for max DPS potiential. Any raids outside my guild I'll pull aggro off scrub 5-6k tps tanks.

Granted, I play on a shit server, only stay because I have a lot of friends in this guild.

[tekoix]

I've never had anyone pull off me when I was frost 2h tanking, ever. I recently went DW when I got 264 1 hander's but I see absolutely no difference in threat at all.

I went blood from the 2h build as well, and the extra health was a mere 1k or so, really not the big deal people make of it. The threat on single target was no better then frost, and aoe was horrific to pick up.

[mhp]

Clearly, you don't raid 0/3 subversion for max DPS potiential. Any raids outside my guild I'll pull aggro off scrub 5-6k tps tanks.

Of course you will pull of 5-6k tps tanks. They're scrub. But we aren't talking about scrubs here, do we? We're talking about people who can play their class, and they will not have threat issues.

But nevertheless, DK threat is fine, and is a non-issue. I can, and did, hold aggro with one single 1h grey sword. In a 25-man raid. Granted, it was a pickup, but still. If one can hold aggro with a level 1 weapon (and only one), then threat really is a non-issue when one does his stuff properly.

[mhp]

Frost tps is completely insane.

L2R issues. He never said frost threat is shit. 2h frost AND DW frost WITH two tanking weapons are shit. Compared to slow/slow DW or Blood, anyway. They can still hold threat, but compared to proper playing, it is horrible. :P

[kerwyn]

L2R issues. He never said frost threat is shit. 2h frost AND DW frost WITH two tanking weapons are shit. Compared to slow/slow DW or Blood, anyway. They can still hold threat, but compared to proper playing, it is horrible. :P

Thank you, this is the point I was trying to get across.

[Wingwraith]

Not really, no. The higher health and self healing is about equal to frost's increased mitigation. The main difference is VB and WotN, the latter which hardly ever procs in normal ICC, and is only really useful in the very minority of fights.

VB, while awesome, makes blood only slightly better, I'm sorry.

Um... no. Frost's little bit of extra mitigation is in no way even close to the self healing of blood. Taking a little less damage (1500 off a 50k hit) isn't shit.
While Blood can heal itself to full by DS'ing a few times. And that's even before you have to pop VB.

Here's a little test to see which is more useful:
Go and solo Heroic Pit of Saron as DW Frost and then as Blood. Then tell me Frosts extra mitigation is on par w/ Blood self heal. :

[Zao]

Here's a little test to see which is more useful:
Go and solo Heroic Pit of Saron as DW Frost and then as Blood. Then tell me Frosts extra mitigation is on par w/ Blood self heal. :

My mage can solo the first few mobs too, does that make him a tank?

I won't deny the usefulness of the self heals (I'm blood myself) but it's not the main reason to spec blood.
The reason to take blood is in it's better EH than Frost due to VotTW and WotN. And especially for VB which is superior to UbA.
Self heals are a nice additions, but blood would be as good without them as it is with them, because in an ideal environment you won't need them, and DS alone does not compensate for bad healers.

[mhp]

Here's a little test to see which is more useful:
Go and solo Heroic Pit of Saron as DW Frost and then as Blood. Then tell me Frosts extra mitigation is on par w/ Blood self heal. :

Been there, done that, sold two hilts. Yes, it is on part with blood's self heals (it's actually better). I can use DS as frost aswell, ya'know. Won't heal that much, granted, but I won't take as much damage, either >

Also, what Zao said. Except I don't agree with the VotW and WotN parts, but VB is easily superior to UbA. :P

[Wingwraith]

Been there, done that, sold two hilts. Yes, it is on part with blood's self heals (it's actually better). I can use DS as frost aswell, ya'know. Won't heal that much, granted, but I won't take as much damage, either >

Yeah, OK guy whatever you say... You have fun DS'ing as frost...

My mage can solo the first few mobs too, does that make him a tank?

Stop trying to divert from the focus of the example.
The fact that Mages, Locks, and various other classes can do it is irrelevant.

[Bobthreetwo]

Yeah, OK guy whatever you say... You have fun DS'ing as frost...
Stop trying to divert from the focus of the example.
The fact that Mages, Locks, and various other classes can do it is irrelevant.

The example was horrible...

[Wingwraith]

The example was horrible...

Really? What better way is there to show how beneficial self-healing is than to go solo something?

[mhp]

Yeah, OK guy whatever you say... You have fun DS'ing as frost...

I normally wouldn't, but for soloing, why the heck not? You asked for a test, I told you the result. If you want me to do it without DS, let me know. THAT might be challenging.

- As a blood tank, look at overall physical damage taken.
- Then look at overall magical damage taken
- Look at overall self heals done
- Work out your % of self heals versus all damage taken.

I've done that. In Ulduar, I was blood for the hard modes. Around the time TotGC opened, I evaluated whether it is worth speccing frost, or should I stay as blood. I looked at the parses, and concluded that the self heals are irrelevant, I get more out of 2% damage reduction and 6 sec longer IBF. That evaluation included spell damage too.

Self heals as blood is nice and all, but is definitely not the reason for blood being slightly better than frost. WotN (to some extent, on some encounters) and VB is. The self heals are irrelevant.

You can go and try it yourself - I did it before I switched to frost, and self heals were a very very tiny part of the equation.

[mhp]

Really? What better way is there to show how beneficial self-healing is than to go solo something?

Well, the thing is, when you solo something, the self heals are beneficial indeed. When you're in a raid, you have healers, and as of the current expansion, you're getting spammed. In that environment, self heals aren't noticable.

The two environments are vastly different. It's like comparing bread to butter.

[mhp]

Well they obviously aren't irrelevant. I have no clue how much they contribute, but don't forget frigid plate is useless for magical damage.

Please do check how much of that self healing is actually useful. Even if it's not an overheal, if a heal lands a split second later, before the boss hits you, the heal was useless.

Napkin math won't cut it here. You'll have to run some more through tests, to see if the self heals are useful. On paper, they sure are. In practice, not quite so.

[mhp]

Gotta disagree with this, because it is like saying 2% more mitigation isn't noticable since you have healers spamming you.

In that case, we can reduce the comparsion to cooldowns. UbA vs VB. VB wins.

And this is exactly what I was saying. Thank you!

[mhp]

VB + VotTW + WotN.

VB is, and _maybe_ WotN. VoTW isn't. Self heals + VotW are roughly equal to 2% mitigation, longer ibf and 3% miss. You can run the sims if you want to.

We did steer off-topic again, though, so I'll refrain from posting frost vs blood stuff here. If anyone's interested in a toe-to-toe fight with me, there's always an option to open a new thread. :P

[thrizie]

Healer's perspective on blood vs. frost

2% damage reduction: decent, but we're at probably around 40-50% overheal on tanks anyway, so unless you're getting bursted so hard that 2% is going to make the difference between us being able to keep you up or not, it's kinda meaningless.
3% miss: Avoidance? seriously? don't care.
WotN: Big damage reduction, exactly when it's needed. Brilliant talent.

VB vs. UbA: VB is prety clearly the far better cooldown in my opnion, vastly increasing health + healing relative to incoming damage is awesome.

As for 2H vs DW frost, doesn't make much difference really does it? Most hard hitting things don't parry-haste, I hear the new IT means threat is doable with a 2H. If you're struggling for threat, go DW though.

[kerwyn]

As for 2H vs DW frost, doesn't make much difference really does it? Most hard hitting things don't parry-haste, I hear the new IT means threat is doable with a 2H. If you're struggling for threat, go DW though.

The idea is that the IT spam rotation does terrible damage while generating decent but not great threat whereas DW will generate great threat while doing good damage (maybe 6-7k dps depending on how much strength you have)

Even when tanking you should try to output as much DPS as possible while staying alive, really matters in fights like festergut, blood queen, putricide, etc.

[thrizie]

Well if we ignore threat, how does DW vs. 2H effect survivability?

[Fornaw]

Well if we ignore threat, how does DW vs. 2H effect survivability?

2h is slightly more survivability. 2h weapons have more stats than 2x 1h weapons. Looking at ICC 25 reg for example, 2x Havoc's call is 148 Stam and 198 AP, Glorenzelg has 197 stam 181 ST and 2 gem slots. How much of a difference is the 109 Stam going to make? Depends who you ask, but I think it's pretty clear that 2h weapons are better EH weapons.

I refuse to rule out 2h Frost tanking as viable. Two hand weapon spec is easily reachable in a 2h Frost build which will mitigate much of the lost strike damage, important DW talents like Necrosis and BCB are out of reach for a DW build. Further DK tanks rely on weapon dps stats for part of their threat, you cannot deny that 2h weapons have much better DPS stats than 1h weapons. You won't need to IT spam to hold threat in a 2h build.