Maloriak 10 HC - add handling

[Trummel]

Tbh all you have to do is let out one set of adds during the black phase and kite them around with the vile swills and then gg. No problems at all doing it that way with my ten man.

[Deleted]

If you're on heroic mode BWD, you really ought to have figured out by now that DK's take a lot more damage while tanking packs of mobs than warriors/pallies do.

Death knight mitigation comes entirely from death strike, which heals the DK for a percentage of the damage he's received in the past 5 seconds, and puts a physical damage shield on him that shields a percentage of whatever that heal was (based on mastery. Generally around ~100%). In add tanking situations, the two runes required to cast death strike are sometimes used for other purposes, and also generally not put on CD using death strike every opportunity. DK tanks are balanced around a lot of death striking, so this is more or less equivalent to a pally or warrior losing half (or more) of their chance to block while picking up mobs.

Furthermore, if a DK is kiting the adds, he often won't be using ANY of his abilities on them, meaning that when they catch up to him, he will suddenly take quite a lot of damage to the face. Again, this is as if your pally tank had to use a melee ability to equip his shield for a few seconds.

Finally, pallies and warriors have more armor than DK's (not sure why blizz decided to do it this way, but that's just how it is), meaning that they take less damage from an otherwise unmitigated hit than their DK counterparts.

Aren't DKs able to apply both -20% attack speed and -10% damage with AoE? As far as I know, Paladins are only able to apply -10% damage in an AoE situation. Also, the DKs Blood Presence should make up for the lack of a shield. And why would a DK be worse than a Paladin at kiting? Just apply the shield as soon as you take damage?

[zox]

Aren't DKs able to apply both -20% attack speed and -10% damage with AoE? As far as I know, Paladins are only able to apply -10% damage in an AoE situation. Also, the DKs Blood Presence should make up for the lack of a shield. And why would a DK be worse than a Paladin at kiting? Just apply the shield as soon as you take damage?

Truth be told, warriors can apply a 100% dmg reduction debuff, as well as attack speed and 10% dmg debuff in aoe.

[Deleted]

Truth be told, warriors can apply a 100% dmg reduction debuff, as well as attack speed and 10% dmg debuff in aoe.

Warriors are clearly the best at it; I even do it myself. I was just surprised over how he said Paladins were clearly better than DKs at the task.

[Wilderness]

Aren't DKs able to apply both -20% attack speed and -10% damage with AoE? As far as I know, Paladins are only able to apply -10% damage in an AoE situation. Also, the DKs Blood Presence should make up for the lack of a shield. And why would a DK be worse than a Paladin at kiting? Just apply the shield as soon as you take damage?

I'm pretty sure Pallys can apply both of those debuffs. But you are wrong, Blood Presence doesn't make up for a shield, their self-healing and mastery (blood shield) is what makes up for it. Paladins are better at kiting because they take less damage from multiple mobs and have better tools for AoE threat and movement. Blood DKs are best when they are hitting and being hit, which isn't conducive for kiting.

I'd say that their raid would probably be best off switching the two tanks - however, the best strategy is the one mentioned already in which you release the 3 adds with the black phase and thus having only 6 adds up at once for the later phases will make swapping those tanks less necessary although it would probably still be better overall for the healers with the Pally on adds.

[Deleted]

I'm pretty sure Pallys can apply both of those debuffs. But you are wrong, Blood Presence doesn't make up for a shield, their self-healing and mastery (blood shield) is what makes up for it. Paladins are better at kiting because they take less damage from multiple mobs and have better tools for AoE threat and movement. Blood DKs are best when they are hitting and being hit, which isn't conducive for kiting.

I'd say that their raid would probably be best off switching the two tanks - however, the best strategy is the one mentioned already in which you release the 3 adds with the black phase and thus having only 6 adds up at once for the later phases will make swapping those tanks less necessary although it would probably still be better overall for the healers with the Pally on adds.

Pallies can apply both debuffs to a single target, all tanks can, but a Paladin is unable to spread -20% attack speed to all targets around him.

Blood Presence increases the DKs armor from plate items by 30%. As a Warrior, I got 35693 armor using a block meta rather than armor meta. My shield has 11896 armor and is as of such almost exactly 33% of my armor. With the armor meta, a DK should have almost exactly as much armor as the block tanks.

[Injinjpow]

Releasing 3 adds before Black Phase and killing them with the Vile Swills is perfectly doable (that's how we got our first kill yesterday). That leaves going into the green phase with 6 adds, so there's less chance your add tank can get insta-gibbed.

The only problem is that the first Black Phase can start without Maloriak casting an add release, I'm not sure if it's a timing thing or what.

^^ THIS
we use sv hunter, demo lock, fire mage, combat rogue, frost dk and a warrior tanking adds. the problem is the RNG of Maloriak casting an add release before Nef throws in the black vial. either get lucky or run out and reset.

[reflection]

It is also possible to kite 9 adds. The last 3 will spawn just before the green phase so some of the can be grabbed by the kiting tank and 1 or 2 can also be "tanked" by some kind of dps. Pull them to the boss and they die. The only problem is kiting 6 Adds. You have to kite them really long and if you do one little mistake they'll get you and kill you.

[Dracodraco]

Pallies can apply both debuffs to a single target, all tanks can, but a Paladin is unable to spread -20% attack speed to all targets around him.

Blood Presence increases the DKs armor from plate items by 30%. As a Warrior, I got 35693 armor using a block meta rather than armor meta. My shield has 11896 armor and is as of such almost exactly 33% of my armor. With the armor meta, a DK should have almost exactly as much armor as the block tanks.

Armor isn't the defining factor here. Block vs Blood shield is. If you believe Blood shield is as good block for adds, then you need to look more into it.
Along with that, my DK has 358 average level, armor meta, and has 31K armor. Not exactly sure where the last 4.5K is supposed to come from, unless youre in full 372.
Besides, why wouldn't you want a DK on the boss? it has the most cooldowns aviable to any tanking class, and will be able to chain them during the swill phase. Especially AMS is incredibly powerfull in a pinch there, and with a low cooldown.

[Deleted]

Armor isn't the defining factor here. Block vs Blood shield is. If you believe Blood shield is as good block for adds, then you need to look more into it.
Along with that, my DK has 358 average level, armor meta, and has 31K armor. Not exactly sure where the last 4.5K is supposed to come from, unless youre in full 372.
Besides, why wouldn't you want a DK on the boss? it has the most cooldowns aviable to any tanking class, and will be able to chain them during the swill phase. Especially AMS is incredibly powerfull in a pinch there, and with a low cooldown.

Never said it was either. And you're completely right, my logic is terrible when I'm tired and BP increasing armor by 30% does obviously not mean it's the same as a shield being 30% of my armor.

I do, however, fail to see why Block would be so much better. Block is -30% damage to a Warrior. If the swing is 10 000 the block is 3000. If the swing is 100 000 the block is 30 000. In comparison, the Blood Shield heals and puts a bubble around you after you suffer damage, and as an add kiter, the only time you do suffer damage is when you must pick up new adds, should MDs not be available. The DK can instantly heal most of the damage suffered on demand and then place a shield on himself preventing the gibs I experienced as a Protection Warrior.

Overall I'd obviously place the DK on Maloriak and the Warrior on the adds, but that isn't because the Warrior has a shield...

[Dracodraco]

Never said it was either. And you're completely right, my logic is terrible when I'm tired and BP increasing armor by 30% does obviously not mean it's the same as a shield being 30% of my armor.

I do, however, fail to see why Block would be so much better. Block is -30% damage to a Warrior. If the swing is 10 000 the block is 3000. If the swing is 100 000 the block is 30 000. In comparison, the Blood Shield heals and puts a bubble around you after you suffer damage, and as an add kiter, the only time you do suffer damage is when you must pick up new adds, should MDs not be available. The DK can instantly heal most of the damage suffered on demand and then place a shield on himself preventing the gibs I experienced as a Protection Warrior.

Overall I'd obviously place the DK on Maloriak and the Warrior on the adds, but that isn't because the Warrior has a shield...

Not exactly how DK's blood shields works. In order for me to get bigger heals than the ~16-20K baseline I get, I need to suffer more than 100K damage in the past five seconds. Along with that, we HAVE to be up close in the adds face in order to actually activate the shield with death strike, which means that its worthless if youre trying to avoid getting close to them.
At last, DK's have semi-horrible ranged threat - there, I said it. If you want to keep your diseases up, you have to go close to the adds and pestilence them. The only thing Dk's can use is the 30 sec DnD cooldown, which you'd want to pick up adds in the first case. You wont be generating runic power at a stable rate for Death coils, so all you have is blood boil. Even then, you'd most likely have to glyph and spec into bloodboil in order to benefit from using it =p.
It is, of course, possible for a DK to do the adds - I just personally think that theyre inferior to paladins and warriors.