Wish DKs could be like hunters/Locks like...

[Nnyco]

Press N and click on that blue skull.

[Absintheminded]

I mean it's not really possible to get to garg without taking the ghoul talents, 'it's optional' becomes a bit wobbly if you're forced to take tanking talents (which are obviously sub-optimal). Not to mention unholy tanks were 'a thing' for naxx and eye, they certainly weren't 'a thing' come Ulduar.

Unholy always had an issue with the summons and diseases competing for thematic space to the detriment of the spec, as opposed to working synergistically (hello new unholy blight). Also, let's not pretend DK development begins and ends in Wrath. I'm not trying to argue that diseases were never important to unholy but by ToT they were entirely designed around snapshotting and became essentially non-interactive in WoD with its removal.

Unholy tank didn't take Gargoyle, you most likely didn't tank UH if you thought that. The rest of your post is not even argument. UH tanks were good for the entirety of Wrath, but because of a few bros trying to push their spec onto everybody else, people thought they weren't. There are even people who think that Frost was the best tanking spec, which was never even close.

[Cracked]

Unholy tank didn't take Gargoyle, you most likely didn't tank UH if you thought that. The rest of your post is not even argument. UH tanks were good for the entirety of Wrath, but because of a few bros trying to push their spec onto everybody else, people thought they weren't. There are even people who think that Frost was the best tanking spec, which was never even close.

Frost was the best tanking spec bro, at the very least in Ulduar. It had the highest survivability by far, was the best tank for Steelbreaker hardmode for example. I was there.

[Absintheminded]

Frost was the best tanking spec bro, at the very least in Ulduar. It had the highest survivability by far, was the best tank for Steelbreaker hardmode for example. I was there.

Frost being the best tank was always a pipe dream. I was there, too. Alone in the Darkness. Sorry but UH had all the mitigation cooldowns frost had and had Bone Shield.

[Cracked]

Frost being the best tank was always a pipe dream. I was there, too. Alone in the Darkness. Sorry but UH had all the mitigation cooldowns frost had and had Bone Shield.

Yap, I got Alone in the Darkness and Algalon server first with a frost dk tank in raid too. It's not like we can go back and measure epeens then, and this discussion is a bit off topic, I'm just saying it's not that clear cut.

[Absintheminded]

Yap, I got Alone in the Darkness and Algalon server first with a frost dk tank in raid too. It's not like we can go back and measure epeens then, and this discussion is a bit off topic, I'm just saying it's not that clear cut.

It's not really off-topic from my perspective, because all I said originally was that thematically Unholy was originally more about DoTs and AoE than they were pets. It was you and Salty who wanted to make this more about personal opinions regarding what spec was better for what. The fact of the matter is, you could spec Unholy without pets, but you couldn't definitively be Unholy without being a DoT machine.

[LordVargK]

still is an option though....

Yeah, if you want to do less damage, you can call this an option...

[Th3Scourge]

So let me see if I'm following you.

You want a talent to sacrifice our pets... that makes up 50% of our damage...?

Play frost or tank as blood.

[notJoyful]

Yeah, if you want to do less damage, you can call this an option...

Mate, you do realize that was the entire thing I was putting down....

[LordVargK]

Mate, you do realize that was the entire thing I was putting down....

well, yeah. I know. But "option" is a very loose term here.

[Tojara]

Frost being the best tank was always a pipe dream. I was there, too. Alone in the Darkness. Sorry but UH had all the mitigation cooldowns frost had and had Bone Shield.

Most people get confused because frost was the 'tank' presence, and literally thought frost must just be the tank spec because of that.

The only fight that I'd play frost on in Ulduar was Hodir because you could take advantage of the elemental damage taken, and it was too good to pass up. For every other fight, it was literally unholy. The only good "tanking" talents in the frost tree was the increased armor in the first row, with acclimation being complete shit, and unbreakable armor being bad the for the majority of WoTLK (at the beginning if was a flat absorb from each attack for 'x' amount of seconds, before moving towards something that resembles PoF that we have today).

Was frost awful? No, but it certainly wasn't the best tanking spec. No matter what tank spec you played, you would generally sink some points into the early blood tree (they were very good), and then spend the rest in your tree of choice. In no world (at least for 3/4 of the expansion) were the other options from blood or frost better than unholy taking passively less magic damage, having access to AMZ and bone shield being the best of the 'tank' specific CDs in any tree.

Blood ended up being the best in ICC, but that had a lot to do with buffs to blood along the way, and the nature at which the spec started to scale towards the end of WoTLK. Unholy was still very good though.

TLDR; If you like frost, cool, but it was arguably the worst tanking spec of all the DK specs (which doesn't mean it's bad, because DKs were strong throughout WoTLK, with the exception of S7 in PvP).

[Ielenia]

I wish we had a talent/ability/whatever that we could sacrifice our pet (UH spec only obv) or not have one and then get that blanket X% damage bonus. Am I crazy that pet management is a little much for a melee class, especially in pvp?

Why would you want to play a pet-centric spec... without pets? Why not just... switch to Frost, then? Yeah, it's nowhere near as powerful as UH, but it doesn't have a pet.

I mean, demonology warlocks don't have the option to sacrifice their demons and go pet-less. Neither does the beastmaster hunter.

[Dundebuns]

Yeah, if anything unholy should get to learn to summon undead from out in the world rather than just have a ghoul. It’s the pet spec.

Well we can get a glyph to make it a geist (my personal fave) or a skeleteon.

[Absintheminded]

Yeah, if anything unholy should get to learn to summon undead from out in the world rather than just have a ghoul. It’s the pet spec.

Tbf this has been a pretty good expansion for Control Undead, just need to figure out which ones won't result in a net dps loss due to not being able to use DT.

[archelos91]

*looks at frost spec* *frost spec shrugs back*

[KOUNTERPARTS]

*looks at frost spec* *frost spec shrugs back*

Even Frost doesn't want to play itself at this point.

[Saltysquidoon]

People need to let go of the 'all specs can tank' meme. Blood was either inarguably the best spec to the only viable spec from ToC, through ICC and RS until cata dropped, that was most of wrath.

Unholy tank didn't take Gargoyle, you most likely didn't tank UH if you thought that. The rest of your post is not even argument. UH tanks were good for the entirety of Wrath, but because of a few bros trying to push their spec onto everybody else, people thought they weren't. There are even people who think that Frost was the best tanking spec, which was never even close.

I think you misread my post.
I was saying you couldn't not take the ghoul talents to get to garg for dps unholy without taking tanking talents that are obviously suboptimal. Given your first assertion was that the ghoul was optional for dps unholy.

[Absintheminded]

People need to let go of the 'all specs can tank' meme. Blood was either inarguably the best spec to the only viable spec from ToC, through ICC and RS until cata dropped, that was most of wrath.


I think you misread my post.
I was saying you couldn't not take the ghoul talents to get to garg for dps unholy without taking tanking talents that are obviously suboptimal. Given your first assertion was that the ghoul was optional for dps unholy.

Sorry but I never asserted that taking ghoul was optional for dps, I said that you had to spec for it. Wrath specs were not tank or dps until you got a few talents and chose a presence. Finally, it's clear we have completely different opinions about Blood and Unholy tanking. I'll say that in all cases preemptive shielding is superior to reactive healing, and given proper CD timing an Unholy tank was one of the best tanks in Wrath. Just like there were people who assumed Frost was best because of Frost presence alone, there were a lot of people who bought into Blood being the best because self healing.

[hasslehoof]

Frost being the best tank was always a pipe dream. I was there, too. Alone in the Darkness. Sorry but UH had all the mitigation cooldowns frost had and had Bone Shield.

you probably did it after they giga nuked frost presence and the accompying talents that increased armor in the frost tree, because you could easily hit the armor cap as Frost in early ulduar.

[kaintk]

I wish we had a talent/ability/whatever that we could sacrifice our pet (UH spec only obv) or not have one and then get that blanket X% damage bonus. Am I crazy that pet management is a little much for a melee class, especially in pvp?

what next, an unique big red button that will do all skill in once ?

so being in the top s tier dps is not enough ?