Blood Death Knight Mastery is overly dependent on variable factors.

[MdREV]

Just responding in regards to the discussion early in the thread about Druids also needing to be hit and expertise capped for their mastery, which is untrue. Critical hits are their own result on the hit table alongside Miss, Block, Dodge and Parry with the remainder being normal hits. For those that don't know how the melee hit table works, this essentially means that you cannot miss/block/dodge/parry a critical hit in normal circumstances.

It is possible for the mitigation results to cap your critical chance, but unlikely in Cata especially with a tanking setup. Druids also have more hit and expertise (and crit) on their gear due to sharing leather with the DPS specs.

Still disagree about this concern though, hit and expertise are extremely important tanking stats from a threat perspective, more important that strength or weapon DPS. This is because a missed attack generates no threat, and a string of misses on your initial attacks on a boss fight or after a threat dump will send the boss right at the DPS. I know our Warrior tank recently reworked his gems for hit, because of the amount of times his shield slam and heroic throw would both miss on a boss pull.

[Zao]

The only reason a tank should gem expertise/hit is if he really really wants 90% of his DS to land.
It is simply not necessary for threat. If your DPS can't hold back for the first 5 seconds (+ taunt duration of need be) it's their problem, not the tank's.

[AetherMcLoud]

The only thing I would consider capping hit for is interrupting in 10 mans but even then most of the time there are enough DPS interrupters there to do the job reliably. I would never cap expertise right now. Survival stats are way more important in cataclysm raiding than threat stats thanks to vengeance.

[Sellest]

^
about being hitcapped - I have a question - I realized today that my spell cap is different from melee cap because spell hit needs more rating. If I am capped for yellow hits, will I miss mf occasionally because of +/- 2% difference

I am not sure how to hit/reforge as tank specced

/ontopic If I miss/dodge/parry my DS, I can cast it again right away? So it seems not to be so much issue when I occassionaly miss something.

[Admuntour]

Zao, you missed the point, we don't say you need hit/expertize for threat, we are saying you need hit/expertize so that you can use DS exactly when you need it and not get run over by the gods of RNG because you had DS miss/dodged/parried at the precise moment you needed the heal and the shield. And I think its a very valid concern. Hit and expertize are almost mitigation stats for us, and when you consider the massive synergy with DS, threat and interrupts, I'd say its almost mandatory on a DK tank.

[Seraphus]

^
about being hitcapped - I have a question - I realized today that my spell cap is different from melee cap because spell hit needs more rating. If I am capped for yellow hits, will I miss mf occasionally because of +/- 2% difference

I am not sure how to hit/reforge as tank specced

If you're capped for your yellow hits, you'll be fine on Mind Freeze.

8% is the Yellow hit cap, and we now have that 9% from Virulence for free via Runic Focus.

And 8% Hit for melee is something closer to 9% for spell, if I remember correctly. So you're fine

[Zao]

Zao, you missed the point, we don't say you need hit/expertize for threat, we are saying you need hit/expertize so that you can use DS exactly when you need it and not get run over by the gods of RNG because you had DS miss/dodged/parried at the precise moment you needed the heal and the shield. And I think its a very valid concern. Hit and expertize are almost mitigation stats for us, and when you consider the massive synergy with DS, threat and interrupts, I'd say its almost mandatory on a DK tank.

I was answering the poster above me, who said that it should be gemmed for threat.
As for gemming exp/hit for survivability it's been shown that it has a rather small impact on damage taken overall. (until a certain point of mastery has been reached)

http://pwnwear.com/forum/hit-and-exp...s-t853-30.html

[AetherMcLoud]

Zao, you missed the point, we don't say you need hit/expertize for threat, we are saying you need hit/expertize so that you can use DS exactly when you need it and not get run over by the gods of RNG because you had DS miss/dodged/parried at the precise moment you needed the heal and the shield. And I think its a very valid concern. Hit and expertize are almost mitigation stats for us, and when you consider the massive synergy with DS, threat and interrupts, I'd say its almost mandatory on a DK tank.

Well if DS gets parried/dodged or misses you can use it right again in 1,5 seconds when the global cooldown finishes. Now sure if those 1,5 seconds were the difference between your raid wiping and the boss being dead then yes, having more hit and exp would have been sweet. I'd say thought that in 99% of the times that situation does not occur in the real world.

[Ariakas-SoS]

Only fight where I feel the need to be near the hit cap is Nefarian 10, since I'm on a column to interrupt that f******* add

[redd]

Only fight where I feel the need to be near the hit cap is Nefarian 10, since I'm on a column to interrupt that f******* add

Platform adds are 87, basically virulence+incidental hit will get you to cap on them.

Also I keep seeing people say that warriors/paladins have no way to 'control' their mastery, and while partially true, they do have shield block for times when they know they absolutely need to block incoming attacks(H-Chimaeron Fued, big damage moments in Cho/Nef figths, etc). Basically the same effect as us using a blood shield except they don't need to take a big hit first to maximize the effect, they just mitigate that first big hit. We could use DS first but then we're down runes for after we take it, and rolling a shield indefinitely into a spike like that is impossible on any fight save Chim(as DA tank only). I like the uniqueness of the ability and the mastery, but it's just not good.

Also I haven't seen it commented on in here, but on top of our mastery not playing nice with avoidance, it doesn't play nice with itself. There was a discussion on EJ about the diminishing returns on our mastery. It's not a logarithmic DR like most things in this game but much like the relationship with avoidance, a big blood shield will eat into the next hit you take and prevent a 2nd big shield from being produced. You can save runes and wait for the next hit/burst, but that's not always good to do(already max runes and wasting resources is the easiest example).

Overall it is somewhat dissatisfying, but at least it makes the decision on the few 1 tank fights easier to make.

[Seraphus]

Actually, they're level 85. And its not Virulence that gives hit, its Runic Focus.

But yeah, level 85 mob, you should be fine with no added hit. Just Runic Focus will do ya.

[redd]

Actually, they're level 85. And its not Virulence that gives hit, its Runic Focus.

But yeah, level 85 mob, you should be fine with no added hit. Just Runic Focus will do ya.

Ya I still refer to it as virulence out of habit, but it's rolled into our passive now(yay!).

[Ariakas-SoS]

Platform adds are 87, basically virulence+incidental hit will get you to cap on them.

Also I keep seeing people say that warriors/paladins have no way to 'control' their mastery, and while partially true, they do have shield block for times when they know they absolutely need to block incoming attacks(H-Chimaeron Fued, big damage moments in Cho/Nef figths, etc). Basically the same effect as us using a blood shield except they don't need to take a big hit first to maximize the effect, they just mitigate that first big hit. We could use DS first but then we're down runes for after we take it, and rolling a shield indefinitely into a spike like that is impossible on any fight save Chim(as DA tank only). I like the uniqueness of the ability and the mastery, but it's just not good.

You're comparing our tank mastery to mastery+cooldown of pallys and warriors.
Considering their mastery alone, they don't have any control on it and they're "limited" to stack passively avoidance and/or mastery, while if we choose to stack mastery we HAVE to react and use it actively. We can't just stack it and then spam DS everutime runes are up..it makes the difference between a bad, probably dead Dk and a good Dk.
I really feel that I'm playing my class well when my guildmates healers say that I'm easier to heal than our other Dk tank or even our warrior tank...

[RabbitPrime]

Well if DS gets parried/dodged or misses you can use it right again in 1,5 seconds when the global cooldown finishes. Now sure if those 1,5 seconds were the difference between your raid wiping and the boss being dead then yes, having more hit and exp would have been sweet. I'd say thought that in 99% of the times that situation does not occur in the real world.

One Parry/Miss/Dodge doesn't make as much of an impact; it's still aggravating because it cuts off 1.5 seconds of those last 5secs you were trying to respond to with a DS. The real trouble comes from the strings of Parry/Miss/Dodge, you get three in a row and you've basically lost the last 5 seconds of damage with which you trying to time your DS heal; most regular and heroic epic tanking gear sets you at around ~3% hit and ~15 expertise so the odds of getting three Parry/Miss/Dodges in a row are pretty reasonable. Even at only two P/M/D in a row you've lost over half the damage frame you were trying to respond to.

How deeply Death Strike is affected by Hit and Expertise completely underminds attempting to time it skillfully.

[Zao]

Well, if you're running with 3% hit and 15 expertise, you've got a chance of 0,8% that you're DS fails to connect 3 times in a row.
And while it's certainly annoying (especially on the very first hits) the impact of that occurance in the grand scheme of things is rather small