4.3 Death Knight Tanking Guide and Discussion

[Deleted]

My point is that with 1.7K HP you give Healers a window. Yes, its a small window, its still a window. Its a window for your Off Tank to react. Its a window for anything to happen. Its a window between the Breath and the next Meele Swing/Ability the Dragon is going to use. If you're dead, there's no window at all.

Where did you get 1.7K HP from anyway? There's various different Gems, 81 and 83 Greens, 85 Blues. They all have different Stats. The more you gear up the more Sockets your Gear gains as well. I doubt you're also taking into account Raid Buffs. BoK - +5% Stamina. That 1.7K as you dismiss it is buffed up by Raid Buffs, and can turn into much more than 1.7K.

[Nyanmaru]

Mastery and Stamina are like Haste and Strength for Unholy DKs. There is a point where one outscales the other in terms of "Effective Health" or "How long does it take you to die-Time".

You can argue your head off without even clearly understanding what the other was talking about.
Alcotraz point that all Mastery stacking is not desirable is just as true as that pure stamina is bad.
The "Golden Rule" for 99% of tanking encounters will be: Blue = Stam, Red = Dodge/Stam or Parry/Stam, Yellow = Mastery/Stam

There always will be specific encounters where X-stacking or Y-stacking will be the best approach but in general you will want to have a good amount of every tanking stat.

[Deleted]

Good "Golden Rule," except that Dodge is Yellow now

[Putress]

Your "Golden Rule" is just stacking stamina while going for the socket bonus. How dissapointing.

[Deleted]

Your "Golden Rule" would be stack full Mastery, buff your Physical Mitigation and to hell with Magical Damage. How genius.

[Putress]

Your "Golden Rule" would be stack full Mastery, buff your Physical Mitigation and to hell with Magical Damage. How genius.

I never said I had a golden rule. The only thing that doesn't work against Magical Damage is parry/dodge and I have as much of those as you have. Besides AMS can cover magical damage well. And there's always a trinket a la Sindragosa's Flawless Fang and Mirror of Broken Images.

I'm just buffing my shield which I find superior to stamina and gem accordingly.

[Deleted]

Armor doesn't work on Magic. Blood Shield doesn't work on Magic. Ups.

[Putress]

Armor doesn't work on Magic. Blood Shield doesn't work on Magic. Ups.

We can't gem for armor can we. Besides AMS and IBF work fine for magic. Keep on stacking stamina. I'll be content doing it my way.

[Panzzer]

I have to agree with Putress on this one, after this massive spell damage what is the liklihood of the boss doing another massive spell? none they usually have a big CD or a timer so you can use your AMS, if your not prepared for these CDs then you fail, no amount of stamina will save you if your not prepared for these big hits, if i get reduced down to 1700hp and then i DS for bloodshield the extra 3% of physical damage will absorb will help out the healers dramatically. After a big spell the boss is still wailing on you.

Agree to disagree, but not stacking stam is definitely the way to go, DKs need to prove this expansion that we are the preferred tank and i think we are in a great spot atm

[Ikkatsu]

Alcotraz, i'd have to also agree with Putress on this one.

First of all, he never EVER mentioned that its best to stack full Mastery... you were just trying to disprove his arguement by putting words into his mouth. He said that when possible, it would be best to use Stamina/Mastery Gems in sockets that allow it.

Secondly, you keep saying that "IF YOU DONT HAVE STAMINA, YOU WILL DIE FROM MAGIC". Not True.

How often do bosses do an OH SHIT MAGIC ATTACK? Maybe once every 30-45 seconds? Say hello to Anti-Magic Shell and Icebound Fortitude. Both reduce ALL incoming damage by 75% and 50% (talented) with a 45 Second and 3 Minute Cooldown, respectively.

Sure, there may be a time where we might not have either of those Cooldowns available... OH WAIT, VAMPIRIC BLOOD! An extra 15% Maximum Health for free on a 1 Minute Cooldown!

And when you've recieved the damage, if they have brought you down to below 30% you will also gain Will of the Necroplis, further reducing ALL incoming damage by an additional 25% (which is also on a 45 Second Cooldown).

If you are popping your cooldowns whenever they are available because you keep dropping low on health, then you need to have a word with your Healers.

You are just trying to argue for the sake of arguing.

TLDR; We have cooldowns to reduce/take the Magic Damage, which will do a lot more than just stacking Stamina.

[Sufferings]

Gemming is a touchy subject. Right now I am gemming mostly stam and mastery, just because my mastery was low and with the content we are clearing, I needed to boost my stam with bosses hitting me for 50k. Now that I am sitting at around 175k with buffs and 111% mastery, I am going to start working in a little avoidance gemming to go with it (around 25% avoidance right now).

We really do need a balance of all tank stats, and Nye is 100% spot on when he said that at one point, one will outweigh the other. The same holds true for many classes (good example is fury warriors, str was king until ARP got high enough it crested beyond str until you were capped). As we get more geared, we will eventually balance out our stats.

My initial take on it is get to around 150k hp unbuffed, first. Then, start increasing your mastery. Then start increasing your avoidance. Since I have just gotten to around 150k hp, my next big upgrades I will be gemming more for mastery and avoidance, while trying to keep my hit and exp at a suitable level to avoid miss streaks on death strikes. This is just what I have found in the progression zerg my guild is making, and I have to say, the most shocking thing I have seen so far is the increased importance of hit/exp to be able to place timely death strikes, not wishing I had more stam, mastery or avoidance (not that I wouldn't take them )

[Ikkatsu]

What Sufferings says is also true. At the moment i've been stacking a combination of Stamina and Mastery but after having my Death Strike parried FOUR times in a row on Tron Council... i've decided to aim for Hit Cap and Expertise Soft Cap as a priority.

[Nyanmaru]

You can also use the cooldowns to help with the "wailing" after the big magic attack.
If stamina nets more % HP than avoidance nets % avoidance on the same gem, while mastery is at about the same level of avoidance, you would want to go for stamina eh?

In the end, we are more or less arguing with effective health vs. situational effects. While all of the stats are this close to each other, it is more likely to be based on RNG which approach is the better.

[Putress]

I've decided not to reforge for hit and expertise anymore and even reforge it away on my gear in favor of avoidance and mastery. I'm still holding aggro in fine in raids and I haven't seen a big increase in parry's or dodges. One or two death strike parries in one fight maybe.

Even if I reforge to hit and expertise I can barely reach the expertise soft cap and I can only only manage 6% hit. I lose a lot of avoidance if I do that. Nearly 300 rating of parry and dodge.

[Ikkatsu]

You can also use the cooldowns to help with the "wailing" after the big magic attack.

Of course, but since the cooldowns are % based and therefore scale a lot better when the damage hitting you is higher, surely you would want to use the cooldown on the big magic attack instead of the pitiful melee hits?

For example (numbers are made up btw!):

1) Big bad boss is about to do a magic breath attack on me for 100k damage, so i pop IBF and only take 50k damage allowing healers to do what they do best and heal the 50k damage without much problem (and IBF would still be active for another 3-5 seconds AFTER the breath to soak up the additional melee hits).

2) Big bad boss is about to do a magic breath on me for 100k damage, i allow myself to take all 100k damage and then pop IBF so that the incoming 15k melee hits are reduced to 7.5k each. Healers still have spend a ton of extra mana to heal back the entire 100k i took from the magic breath attack and therefore they are now at a disadvantage. Also, most healers would panic in that situation and start using their most expensive heals to heal the damage faster.

---------- Post added 2010-12-15 at 02:37 PM ----------

I've decided not to reforge for hit and expertise anymore and even reforge it away on my gear in favor of avoidance and mastery. I'm still holding aggro in fine in raids and I haven't seen a big increase in parry's or dodges. One or two death strike parries in one fight maybe.

Even if I reforge to hit and expertise I can barely reach the expertise soft cap and I can only only manage 6% hit. I lose a lot of avoidance if I do that. Nearly 300 rating of parry and dodge.

I wish the RNG gods favoured me as much as you, but i got four parries in a row and that was enough to scare me into grabbing some Hit/Expertise.

[Putress]

You can also use the cooldowns to help with the "wailing" after the big magic attack.
If stamina nets more % HP than avoidance nets % avoidance on the same gem, while mastery is at about the same level of avoidance, you would want to go for stamina eh?

In the end, we are more or less arguing with effective health vs. situational effects. While all of the stats are this close to each other, it is more likely to be based on RNG which approach is the better.

One mastery/stamina gem will increase your shield with 0,50%
One mastery gem will increase your shield with 1%
One parry/stamina gem will increase your avoidance with 0,09% avoidance.
One parry gem will increase your avoidance with 0,18% avoidance

Mastery is not at the same level of avoidance.

[Deleted]

Cooldowns are there to negate a big amount of the incoming Dragon Breath. The rest however, is up to you. IBF is 50% DR, WotN is 25%. the rest is up to you to negate. If you don't have enough Stamina to negate the rest, then you're still dead. What I'm saying is this: You need X Amount of Stamina to Survive the big-boom moments. There's no point in worrying about what happens after a breath if you can't survive the Breath.

Like someone else said on a different Forum (different subject): The larger your health pool, the easier it is to trigger WotN safely. Sure, the counter argument would be more health, less WoTN uptime. Plus, there's no real reason to trigger WotN. Your Healers will probably spend more Healing you back up after the WotN proc than you saved from the actual WotN proc and free RT. Sure, situational, there's lots of things to consider. Different argument however.

I still haven't heard where this "1.7K HP" is coming from, even I can pull numbers out of my ass and claim "SEE HEAR, I GO DIS LOW. DEN I'M DAI."

Besides, if you're down to 1.7K, (using this number which I have no idea where people got it from) post-Dragon Breath, as I already said, you're at least giving your Healers a window of opportunity for an external cooldown or something. If you die during the Breath, you're dead. No window, no opportunity, nothing. Just a corpse run.

DKs need to prove this expansion that we are the preferred tank and i think we are in a great spot atm

Classes shouldn't need to "prove" anything if Devs do their jobs right.

If you are popping your cooldowns whenever they are available because you keep dropping low on health, then you need to have a word with your Healers.

Odd, I thought that was the intent in Heroic Dungeons? /Confused.

Like Sufferings said however, and like Nye said in another Thread, even Mastery has a "Soft-Cap." Blood Shield lasts 10 seconds. If you can keep it up for 10 seconds, you hit the Soft-Cap. (Paraphrased for shortness) After that, the only thing left to go for is Avoidance, which is the hardest thing (IMO) to Cap, with Dodge and Parry both capping at 60% respectively.

One mastery/stamina gem will increase your shield with 0,50%
One mastery gem will increase your shield with 1%
One parry/stamina gem will increase your avoidance with 0,09% avoidance.
One parry gem will increase your avoidance with 0,18% avoidance

What color Gems are you using to get these Numbers? There's also Diminishing Return to consider. Avoidance gain/loss will be greater and lesser for each individual depending on Gear and Stats. There's Green 81 Gems, Green 83 Gems, Blue 85 Gems, 2 Tiers down we'll have Purple 85 Gems which will just about double our Stats probably.

[Nyanmaru]

1% blood shield increase works of 20% incoming damage over 5s. With 8.13s rune CD this means 20% of 5s/8.13s
The "uptime" of the 5s rule is 61.5% so you get 20% of 61.5% --> 12.3% of all incoming damage as DS heal, add 45% from imp. DS talent and you get 17.83% as heal base for blood shield. 1% of 17.83% is 0.1783%

0.18% avoidance from a parry gem is roughly the same as 0.1783% from a mastery gem.

[Ikkatsu]

Odd, I thought that was the intent in Heroic Dungeons? /Confused.

I've farmed enough heroics now with and without guild members.

With Guild Members, people i know i can trust, our healers constantly keep me above 75% without them dropping below 60% mana... i very rarely use cooldowns unless im about to take a big hit of damage from a boss (which is what they SHOULD be for).

When playing in a PUG, i have to spam my cooldowns on, well, cooldown because the healers are garbage as they go oom on every trash pack and barely keep me above 30% the entire way through.

So then i go back to my original statement: If you do have to spam your cooldowns, then you need to speak to your healers.

---------- Post added 2010-12-15 at 03:47 PM ----------

1% blood shield increase works of 20% incoming damage over 5s. With 8.13s rune CD this means 20% of 5s/8.13s
The "uptime" of the 5s rule is 61.5% so you get 20% of 61.5% --> 12.3% of all incoming damage as DS heal, add 45% from imp. DS talent and you get 17.83% as heal base for blood shield. 1% of 17.83% is 0.1783%

0.18% avoidance from a parry gem is roughly the same as 0.1783% from a mastery gem.

That math confuses me, where are you getting these numbers (ie, 61.5% for the 5 second rule)?

---------- Post added 2010-12-15 at 03:52 PM ----------

I have a new, unrelated question:

Regarding Avoidance... people are saying they are already at "20% Avoidance".

How do i calculate my Avoidance from my Parry and Dodge? They are both low at 11%

[Putress]

Cooldowns are there to negate a big amount of the incoming Dragon Breath. The rest however, is up to you. IBF is 50% DR, WotN is 25%. the rest is up to you to negate. If you don't have enough Stamina to negate the rest, then you're still dead. What I'm saying is this: You need X Amount of Stamina to Survive the big-boom moments. There's no point in worrying about what happens after a breath if you can't survive the Breath.

Will you please realise what we are talking about. We're not talking about stacking pure mastery or pure stamina. Of course you need a base health pool to survive raids. If you can't survive encounters you're not ready to raid. We're talking about tanks who are ready for raiding and are filling in their gem slots. You prefer stamina, while going for socket bonusses. I prefer mastery while going for socket bonusses. The difference between mastery and stamina will not have an impact wether you are ready for raids or when you are not. It's for encounters where the difference makes it easier for healers to keep us topped up.

If you keep rambling on about dying from a breath attack then why even bother tanking the encounter if you die every time anyway.

I still haven't heard where this "1.7K HP" is coming from, even I can pull numbers out of my ass and claim "SEE HEAR, I GO DIS LOW. DEN I'M DAI."

I came up with the 1.7k to put a number to the difference between stamina in blue slots or mastery/stamina in blue slots because you were attacking me on that front. With an average of 4 blue sockets, solid gems will give you 240 stamina and puissant gems will give you 80 mastery and 120 stamina. A 120 stamina difference. Convert it to HP means it will be 1680HP. Sure raidbuffs will increase that number to maybe 2k. The point was that it's not a lot when you got 170k HP

I overlooked Chimera's eyes because I use them for mastery and you for stamina. They will balance each other out relativly.

Besides, if you're down to 1.7K, (using this number which I have no idea where people got it from) post-Dragon Breath, as I already said, you're at least giving your Healers a window of opportunity for an external cooldown or something. If you die during the Breath, you're dead. No window, no opportunity, nothing. Just a corpse run.

As soon as you get hit by the breath you death strike, healing you and giving you a blood shield. The point of our debate is wether you should count on that 1.7k hp to make sure you survive after your shield is down or wether you should increase your shield so that you don't take an extra 1.7k hp damage.

Classes shouldn't need to "prove" anything if Devs do their jobs right.

Of course they do. If you gem faulty and don't optimise your priority you're not going to stand apart as tank. If you make sure you do everything right people might notice that you and your class are a better choice for certain encounters. If you just wait for Devs to buff your class so you can be the best you're not helping anyone.

Odd, I thought that was the intent in Heroic Dungeons? /Confused.

The intent of using cooldowns in heroics is to make things easier for the healer. If you're forced to use a cd because you've fallen below 25% and WoTN is on CD, repeatadly. Then that's not the intention of the heroic, that's a healer not performing high enough to heal the encounter.

Like Sufferings said however, and like Nye said in another Thread, even Mastery has a "Soft-Cap." Blood Shield lasts 10 seconds. If you can keep it up for 10 seconds, you hit the Soft-Cap. (Paraphrased for shortness) After that, the only thing left to go for is Avoidance, which is the hardest thing (IMO) to Cap, with Dodge and Parry both capping at 60% respectively.

Tell me the day you can keep your shield up for 10 seconds in a raid enviroment when the boss is beating on you. With the avoidance levels in cataclysm I doubt you'll see a 10 second window with 0 or only 1 hit.

What color Gems are you using to get these Numbers? There's also Diminishing Return to consider. Avoidance gain/loss will be greater and lesser for each individual depending on Gear and Stats. There's Green 81 Gems, Green 83 Gems, Blue 85 Gems, 2 Tiers down we'll have Purple 85 Gems which will just about double our Stats probably.

We're talking about tanking in raid enviroments, of course you use blue gems. I don't care how our gemming now will work in 2 tiers time, that's not important.

That math confuses me, where are you getting these numbers (ie, 61.5% for the 5 second rule)?

Same here, could you give some clarification. However assuming the math is correct. I can't imagine someone gemming 40parry in red sockets at the moment. Whereas you can gem 40 mastery in yellow sockets.