[Guide] Active Mitigation Hipsters - 5.4 DK Tanking

[Eanes]

I recently started tanking not too long ago, because my guild needed a tank. So when I started out, I was only pulling like 30K single target in around 480 item level. I can push 45K on bosses in the Throne of Thunder with them, but I've seen another Blood DK pull well over 100K (he out-geared me by a lot though) on the same bosses. I feel as though I should be able to pull better damage than what I'm pulling now.

Is it my gear and stats or am I just doing everything wrong?

I cannot post links yet, so if you would look: Heckran - Fizzcrank US

[Sacul]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ckran/advanced

Are you MT or OT? Vengeance is going to cause a huge disparity in Tank's DPS if looking at logs and not knowing the full situation. Without logs of your runs, I couldn't say if your disease uptime is low, you're not pressing buttons fast enough, etc. etc. Not 100% sure why you have some of the enchants and items you do. Also, are you going for an avoidance build? If so, why? (Just curious).

[Deleted]

As has been stated in multiple threads previously, tank dps should not be something you're concerned with. There are far too many ways to cheese your dps if you don't care about personal survivability and force your healers to deal with more healing than they need to.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Wow-logs-issue is the most recent thread I can think of with a decent enough explanation.

[Omertocracy]

Heckran - Fizzcrank US

Wrote all this up as the other thread was being deleted.

All your reforging is wrong. Every single piece should have Mastery on it somehow. You should decide if you are going for Avoidance or Accuracy after that. Avoidance is about 4% more survivability, accuracy is about 10-15% more damage.

If a piece has a stat of both on it, reforge out of the one you don't want. If a piece has dodge and parry, reforge out of dodge. If a piece has hit and expertise, reforge out of expertise. HOWEVER, if a stat is more than ~150 higher, always reforge out of that one.

If the piece already has Mastery on it and you go avoidance, Parry is slightly more beneficial because of the crapton of dodge. You want about 2.2x the Parry% as Dodge%.
If the piece already has Mastery on it and you go accuracy, hit is significantly more beneficial because Expertise only affects your white hits and Blood runes. Rune Strike cannot be parried/dodged and Death Strike gives its heal even if it misses and cannot be parried anyway.

Enchants:
Wrists: There is a Mastery one. Get it.
Hands: There is a Mastery one. Get it.

Gems:
Every single gem should be Mastery + Socket color.
If yellow, pure Mastery.
If blue, Mastery + Stamina.
If Red, Mastery + Parry/Expertise depending on if you go avoid vs accuracy.

Glyphs:
Glyph of Outbreak is terrible except for a few niche situations. It is a survivability loss. It is a dps loss. The only time to take it is when you absolutely need to use Outbreak more often than every minute. For 95% of all situations, IT/PS will be better.
Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon is a dps loss, but gives extra threat. It is not recommended unless your other tank is absolutely ripping threat off you every swap.
Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell is not particularly recommended because it can make AMS break earlier than you want, and it's better for how we tank to take 25% over longer than 0% for shorter.
Personally, I cannot pimp out my Glyph of Path of Frost enough. You can fall farther before dying. And for those of us with multiple deaths to Elevator Boss, that means the world.

Talents:
56: Roiling Blood is indeed the standard go-to except for specific fights.
57: AMZ is the raid cooldown, and not suggested unless you need its one-tick resistance more than Purgatory. I personally use Lichborne but that is also not suggested so...
58: Death's Advance is indeed the standard go-to except for specific fights.
60: Death Pact is the best for this tier because it's direct spike, which is what we have the most trouble with.
75: Runic Corruption is a good choice here. Blood Tap is better for survival if you practice enough with it to work it properly. As I am lazy, I too have RC.
90: Gorefiend's is a good choice. I personally use Remorseless Winter as my baseline pick, but that's because a 6sec AoE stun seems like a tanking mitigation cooldown to me.

Professions:
Herb/Alch is a fairly poor combo for tanking, but if it's coming down to your professions, something else more important isn't right.
If you do change your professions, which I do not suggest, Blacksmithing is the biggest survivability up, followed by Leatherworking.

Rotation:
Make sure you are using your Death Strike when you get the biggest heal from it. With RC, you should be spamming HS when you can't and RS unless you need to pool your RP for something specific. Don't cap both sets of FU, other than that, you can bank a set, nearly two, with RC if needed. Keep both diseases up 100% of the time. Apply diseases 1sec after DRW is cast, and again right as it expires. That will give you ~45% uptime on 4 diseases instead of two.

DK survivability is all about rotating our cooldowns. Make sure something is always up. No Blood Shield? Vamp it. No Vamp? DRW. No DRW? AMS or a trinket. None of those? IBF is the big boy. Use it for any period of heavy damage (Horridon 5+ stacks, etc). As a Blood DK you have 15 defensive cooldowns (Including trinkets, Healthstone, potion, Symbiosis) plus Death Strike. Also, your Bone Shield fell off while you were reading about the Enchants. Put it back up!

[Nillo]

As has been stated in multiple threads previously, tank dps should not be something you're concerned with.

Wat?
/10char

[matthias9742]

Wat?
/10char

totally wrong Damyou. Tank DPS is very important. using rough numbers an accuracy build provides roughly 4% less mitigation and a DPS increase of 15%(taken from above post on the matter by Omertocracy). Even using these number on my last Tortos (I tank the turtle) fight my damage taken would have only dropped by 1.6 mil over 8 minutes(8 melee swings avoided or 3.33k DPS taken), but i would have lost nearly 12 mil damage on the boss(25k DPS), which is about 6.7% of his total health.

[Nyanmaru]

Wat?
/10char

Eh, if you are a fresh tank you should first take care about surviving and once you got the drift how much you can shape off your defensive preparations to invest into offense you should maximize the offense while being "nicely healable" (which varries depending on your healers skills).

Dead tanks do less DpS than living tanks

[Nillo]

Eh, if you are a fresh tank you should first take care about surviving and once you got the drift how much you can shape off your defensive preparations to invest into offense you should maximize the offense while being "nicely healable" (which varries depending on your healers skills).

Dead tanks do less DpS than living tanks

Sure but he made it sound like it was common knowledge that tanks shouldn't concern themselves with dps, which is ... completely wrong for 10m and questionable in 25m as well >_>

[Omertocracy]

using rough numbers an accuracy build provides roughly 4% less mitigation and a DPS increase of 15%(taken from above post on the matter by Omertocracy).

I listened to the roundtable, and those numbers stuck with me. That thing was awesome except for the pvp section, which was still awesome with its hilarity.

[Kiqjaq]

Since we're on the topic of tank dps, just out of curiosity (and maybe I'll learn a new trick) how much are you guys abusing vengeance?

Light stuff like standing in crap on purpose (jumping into the Durumu maze, sometimes with AMS up) is almost a given once a fight is on farm, or you understand a progress fight well enough to know when you're safe, but I'm having a lot of fun abusing a bit heavier.

Quite frequently, and with my co-tank's blessings, I'll taunt the boss off of him for 2-3 swings to abuse how fast vengeance ramps up. Very often I'll "burn" through a saved up Blood Shield by spam sitting until it falls off, and if I know a fight well enough I'll use IBF when I know I won't need it soon and spam sit again. Usually I'll do both: taunt, spam sit, and call out for the other tank to taunt back.
My co-tank has a dps mindset so he does a lot of the same; it never causes aggro issues since we're so often neck and neck.

The only downside is that while I was experimenting with it, I would far too often get a panicked Guardian Angel popped on me, which is why I mostly do it with IBF up now, or when I have far more Blood Shield than I need.

[matthias9742]

Since we're on the topic of tank dps, just out of curiosity (and maybe I'll learn a new trick) how much are you guys abusing vengeance?

Light stuff like standing in crap on purpose (jumping into the Durumu maze, sometimes with AMS up) is almost a given once a fight is on farm, or you understand a progress fight well enough to know when you're safe, but I'm having a lot of fun abusing a bit heavier.

Quite frequently, and with my co-tank's blessings, I'll taunt the boss off of him for 2-3 swings to abuse how fast vengeance ramps up. Very often I'll "burn" through a saved up Blood Shield by spam sitting until it falls off, and if I know a fight well enough I'll use IBF when I know I won't need it soon and spam sit again. Usually I'll do both: taunt, spam sit, and call out for the other tank to taunt back.
My co-tank has a dps mindset so he does a lot of the same; it never causes aggro issues since we're so often neck and neck.

The only downside is that while I was experimenting with it, I would far too often get a panicked Guardian Angel popped on me, which is why I mostly do it with IBF up now, or when I have far more Blood Shield than I need.

AMS glyphed + Rockfall were a match made in heaven and is what helped me nail 161k DPS on Tortos. Also If I know it will be a bit before I am tanking again I will use extra bone shield stacks to take hits from "The bad" for some extra boom-boom-pow.

[Nillo]

Light stuff like standing in crap on purpose (jumping into the Durumu maze, sometimes with AMS up) is almost a given once a fight is on farm, or you understand a progress fight well enough to know when you're safe, but I'm having a lot of fun abusing a bit heavier.

Stuff like the durumu maze is something I always did since it doesn't have any bad side effects.
And well the most efficient way to gain more vengeance is to solo tank bosses, but let's see:
Tortos: 1-2 rockfalls comes pretty much with no risk - with IBF up I try to eat 4-5 and to get the best out of army I try to find a place where I can eat as many rockfalls as possible.
Ji-Kun : Soak up pools (not doing it on heroic though since they deal way too much damage)
Iron Qon: Solo tank and stack it up as high as possible before asking for HoP
Twins: Solo tank - you'll probably die though if you don't reset the fire debuff once or twice.
Lei Shen: Eat the execute head on (procs purgatory even with IBF up but gives a few 10k vengeance) and/or tank the boss with the debuff up.

[Kiqjaq]

Stuff like the durumu maze is something I always did since it doesn't have any bad side effects.
And well the most efficient way to gain more vengeance is to solo tank bosses, but let's see:

That's exactly what I was getting at though. Jumping into stuff is a given nowadays, the real moneymaker is bosstanking vengeance.

If you taunt the boss and sit down, you'll take a crit melee to the face which will instantly bring you up to the level of vengeance that you would have if you were "normal" tanking the boss for an extended period of time. If you don't take any other damage that would cause your vengeance to be recalculated then you'll keep that "normal" level of vengeance for 20 seconds.
You can keep that AP rolling on your diseases for a good while afterwards as well.

[Noxina]

Hey guys, I need a advice for blood tanking...
So this tier is the first tier I've ever decided to go tanking (because the guild I just joined needed a tank, and I do realy enjoy DK tanking)
Done some searching and figured out I'd try a full mastery build. Is this the way to go? Or should I stack some other stat

Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...1mael/advanced (havent enchanted the cloak yet, just got it)

[matthias9742]

Hey guys, I need a advice for blood tanking...
So this tier is the first tier I've ever decided to go tanking (because the guild I just joined needed a tank, and I do realy enjoy DK tanking)
Done some searching and figured out I'd try a full mastery build. Is this the way to go? Or should I stack some other stat

Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...1mael/advanced (havent enchanted the cloak yet, just got it)

Mastery is your strongest stat and will provide you with the most effective health. Just make sure you are not neglecting stam completely as it plays a strong part in our Active mitigation. If you want to branch out on stats getting some hit/exp is a nice way to boost your personal damage 15%~ at a cost of 4%~ overall damage taken increase. You also might drop the feather for the shado-pan valor trinket. Large chunk of mastery and 14% dodge on demand and much better than the tiny heal feather will give.

[Omertocracy]

Hey guys, I need a advice for blood tanking...
So this tier is the first tier I've ever decided to go tanking (because the guild I just joined needed a tank, and I do realy enjoy DK tanking)
Done some searching and figured out I'd try a full mastery build. Is this the way to go? Or should I stack some other stat

Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...1mael/advanced (havent enchanted the cloak yet, just got it)

Some of your reforges are a little off. I see you are going for avoidance > accuracy. That is good and fine. But even so, if the piece has no Mastery, and one stat is ludicrously higher than the other (glaring at your helm here), you reforge the high one to Mastery. That's an extra 250 Mastery just on your helm. I think it was said somewhere that a difference of about 200 is a good cutoff to swap to the higher one.

[Noxina]

Mastery is your strongest stat and will provide you with the most effective health. Just make sure you are not neglecting stam completely as it plays a strong part in our Active mitigation. If you want to branch out on stats getting some hit/exp is a nice way to boost your personal damage 15%~ at a cost of 4%~ overall damage taken increase. You also might drop the feather for the shado-pan valor trinket. Large chunk of mastery and 14% dodge on demand and much better than the tiny heal feather will give.

Yeah, I think that trinket will be my next item I buy from Valor, bought the cape this week (Had a crappy HC dungeon cape)

Thanks for the tips, both of you

[Deleted]

Hello guys new to MMO.
I am playing my dk cap in hit expertise 7.5% and then i go full mastery and a bit haste it seams nice so far.
Any suggestions..?
I cant post my link to the armomy because I am new hear.

Thank you.
Have a good day.

[Omertocracy]

Hello guys new to MMO.
I am playing my dk cap in hit expertise 7.5% and then i go full mastery and a bit haste it seams nice so far.
Any suggestions..?
I cant post my link to the armomy because I am new hear.

Thank you.
Have a good day.

Focus Mastery over Hit/Exp cap. That's about all you can be told with current information. And even though you cant link you can still drop the address and we can copypaste it, or even a character name and realm works. We are resourceful and only 60% lazy.

[Deleted]

Focus Mastery over Hit/Exp cap. That's about all you can be told with current information. And even though you cant link you can still drop the address and we can copypaste it, or even a character name and realm works. We are resourceful and only 60% lazy.

I am now at 200% mastery unbuffed with one stamina trinket. If i use both with mastery I am about at 220% unbuffed.
I whent for expertise an hit cap because my dps was a bit low.
An other thing I want to ask. Do you know if the 2 set of the dps works in blood spec..? Because I am thinking to play like this. 2 set of tanking and 2 set dps.
Character name is Supay and releam Genjuros EU Guild You are not prepaid.

Thank you for your fast replay.