is DW Dk tanking viable anymore?

[Lucífir]

topic

[fabian]

It is currently viable in End Game gear because of the amount of expertise on ToC gear, so you're not actively looking for enough expertise for 30 Expertise. It is possible to get the gear set in Ulduar and Naxx, but you're going have to actively look for it.

In 3.3, the viability will jump up because of the rune. You won't need to sacrifice threat to become def capped.

[Nangz]

^^^^^^

if they remove parry hasting itll work though

[fabian]

^^^^^^

if they remove parry hasting itll work though

Parry Haste is disabled from bosses with the ability to parry-gib you.

[Offhand]

It's more viable then before with the rune strike changes. Still not quite on par with 2h tanking.

In order for that to be the case, you'll need"
-To wait for 3.3 with the new 1h rune
-Have some sort of fix for the weapon speed issue.

[hammiedinns]

i am curently raiding as DW frost tank, it seems ok, has both advantages and disadvantages.

threat
i use 25man ony sword and heartbreaker mace which are both kinda fast but i still do easily enough tps

avoidance
i have 29% dodge, 26% parry and 10% mis so, as 2h blood i had 31% dodge, 22% parry, 7.5% miss

health
only have 35k health in normal gear and 29k in stam gear, lost about 2k from changing from 2h blood to dw frost

as it stands its close to 2h tanking, with the new rune it will have the edge since you ca dw tanking weapons and also get def/stam rune... kinda OP

[fabian]

You lose health in your "stam gear"??? But comparing 2h Blood to DW Frost is not the way to go since Blood has more effective health than DW Frost.

[Daez]

^^^^^^

if they remove parry hasting itll work though

They already did remove parry hasting from the vast majority of raid bosses leaving it only on trash where it barley matters at all.

[jimbo_red13]

They already did remove parry hasting from the vast majority of raid bosses leaving it only on trash where it barley matters at all.

Can you confirm that? (maybe with a link from a blue post or something) Cause I've heard a lot of different thing from a lot of different people. My guild says kind of what you have said while on different forums (and this forum) people have told me that only a few bosses have it removed.

[mhp]

A DW DK will get parried less than a warrior tank. If warrior tanks are fine, so are DW DK tanks. End of story, regardless wether parry-haste is enabled on a boss or not.

(That is, if the DK uses two slowish weapons, which they should :P)

[fabian]

Can you confirm that? (maybe with a link from a blue post or something) Cause I've heard a lot of different thing from a lot of different people. My guild says kind of what you have said while on different forums (and this forum) people have told me that only a few bosses have it removed.

It does depend on the boss, but the general rule is that if the boss can Parry-gib you, parry-haste is turned off for that encounter. That is not to say fights where you can't be parry-gibbed will have parry-haste, because a fight can have parry-haste turned off but not do loads of damage to the tank.

[Yuron]

It has been said countless times.

Parry-hasting is not and have never been a problem.

[eint]

Honestly with the current gear and runes available for one-handed weapons I would say that while viable, it is definitely not optimal. It should be a completely different discussion though once Patch 3.3 hits with the ability to get the same stats by using the new tanking one-handed weapon rune enchants.

If you are interested in doing something like that I would start trying to get the 245 one-handed axes off Anub in TotC so that you have the solid STR and STAM. The other thing that I have been doing to get prepared to test a DW Frost Tank in Patch 3.3 is to get the lvl 232 and 245 quelserrars and use those. Would be interesting to see if they share the same internal cooldown, but if they don't then that would probably be around a 100% uptime on the proc. I also highly doubt that with the changes to Threat of Thaussian generating TPS will be any issue at all in a DW Frost build.

Until Patch 3.3 I would recommend sticking to your bread and butter Blood, Frost, and Unholy two-hander tank builds.

[eflow]

39.3k hp unbuffed
28.86% dodge
20.88% parry
546 defense
48 expertise
using 2 dps weapons in my tps set. (blackhorn bludgeon x2)

40k hp unbuffed
31.00% dodge
23.50% parry
551 defense
51 expertise
using 2 tank weapons in my avoidance set.

tanked all hard modes in toc25 with both of them.

245 and 258 gear have SO MUCH def/exp that you dont even need the new rune weapons to reach the def cap...

the only tank in the guild that have a less "death ratio" than me is the paladin MT, because he has better gear, and pally tanks are the flavour of this current patch (ardent defender cheating death maybe).

so yeh its viable.

[Lasian]

Eflow, can you link your armor? I'm curious what gear and spec you have

[Azyoulike]

It has been said countless times.

Just because something is said countless times doesn't make it true.

Parry-hasting is not and have never been a problem.

Is not? You may be right. Never has been? Demonstrably false.

Vezax at least used to parry-haste, though perhaps that's been nerfed by now, and given the mechanics of that fight it certainly was an issue. The old parry-gibbing that used to occur when a slow hitting boss would queue up multiple hastes got removed back at the end of TBC I believe, but parry haste is alive, well and increasing damage inputs on tanks near you.

It certainly is turned off on some bosses, and time will tell whether it will be an important mechanic in ICC.

[mhp]

Thing is, a DK with slow/slow weapons will get parried less than a warrior with fast 1h + shield. Since 1h+shield tanks rarely get parry gibbed, DW DKs get gibbed even less.

As such, parry-gib is a non-issue. Unless you use two fast weapons, which you really shouldn't on bosses that might parry-gib you, unless you have silly amounts of expertise.

[Carkel426]

I am switching from 2handed blood tank to dw frost, (when the patch comes) it will make dk tanks "MTs" again

[Offhand]

Thing is, a DK with slow/slow weapons will get parried less than a warrior with fast 1h + shield. Since 1h+shield tanks rarely get parry gibbed, DW DKs get gibbed even less.

Why fanbois insist on citing dated info, I'll never know.

DW require at least 30 expertise skill to get parried as often as a warrior.

[eflow]

Eflow, can you link your armor? I'm curious what gear and spec you have

im not logging on my tank gear, but every slot is at least 245 (except the trinkets) and 3 are 258 (legs, chest, cloak). Basically grab all toc 25 gear and some of them the heroic version.

in avoidance set i use 2x the sword from anub10 (ilvl232) ... in threat set i use 2x blackhorn blundgeon (245mace from anub10 heroic)

thats my build: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...dAHj,IMa,10676

armory is http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...rusher&n=Eflow ... my build is different there because of 25Heroic Faction Champs (had to get imp DG / HC).