Some tanking advice please.

[Quickpocket]

Greetings;

My guild has recently lost a tank, which means I will sometimes have to tank in Firelands. I've not really been needed to tank since Nefarian, and am not too confident about how my gear is set up for these bosses. My guild is currently 2/7HC so i'll mainly be tanking on farm normals but occasionally whichever HC boss were working on. Heres Armory link:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...imlocke/simple

My main concern is that, because ive only picked up tank gear as off spec, maybe some of the slots arent ideal. Given the gear I have would I be better to go for avoidance gemming over the mastery stacking I've got right now?

Stats (with HoW up and 90Mastery food):

HP: 161k
Mastery: 25.58
Dodge: 15.66% (2151 rating)
Parry: 20.43% (2338 rating)
Exp: 16
Hit: 1.52%

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

(I'm working on embers for crafted boots, and have most trinkets, outside of FL drop)

[Zahgurim]

In my opinion mastery dk's are the best kind, yes as an avoidance dk you will get hit less but you also wont absorb as much dmg with blood shield whereas a mastery tank will heal themselves more and absorb more dmg with blood shield. Really it all comes down to your own personal play style. Either way they are both viable.

[Darsithis]

That's the trouble with asking for this kind of advice . I look at it the other way than Zahgurim - I prefer avoidance (being an avoidance tank) over mastery. But in the end, both are viable. The key things are this:

- Mastery has no effect on CTC
- Avoidance directly increases your CTC
- Mastery has no effect on the size of your heal
- Avoidance has no effect on the size of your heal

Mastery shines on specific fights in Firelands, such as Shannox, Beth'tilac, and Domo. Avoidance really comes in handy during Decimation Blade phases of Baleroc since you cannot mitigate that effect and Alysrazor hatchlings during tantrums. Some DK's will carry around mostly mastery gear with a couple of good avoidance trinkets and bring those out for specific fights.

Since you do seem to be going for mastery, I might think switching out the Swordshattering for Stoneskin would be a good choice. The reason behind this is that you're sitting at 35% avoidance, which is really going to start fighting your mastery; I'm at 43% myself AS an avoidance tank.

[hyperionx]

If we could easily swap between mastery and avoidance that would be nice.

Whichever way you choose, one thing has annoyed me lately and that's people who stack mastery while ignoring socket bonuses. That made sense back in wrath when stam was king, even a tank that can be fully ctc covered has an excuse if he has to choose between full ctc or a stam bonus. However DK's have no cap to aim for and this is especially critical when your a mastery tank.

Your gloves for example, instead of a puissant dream emerald in your blue socket, you have a mastery gem. So your basically trading 20 mastery for 45 stam.

Even as a mastery tank, you should be using swordshattering. Use stoneskin on fights with a lot of magic damage like Rag. As a mastery tank, it's not the attacks that I avoid that reduce the amount I get shielded, it's usually my shield absorbs that nerf the next shield I put on.

So yea, don't ignore socket bonuses especially if your a mastery tank. That's why fine ember topaz, and puissant dream emeralds are your friend.

You probably don't need the free interrupts with 2 points in endless winter. You can move those to something else. The only time as a tank that you interrupt in firelands is aly adds on ignition, and you should be able to pull 20 RP for each interrupt pretty easily.

If you struggle on a fight, play with your talents and gear. The thing about DK's is that because there aren't any easy caps there are never any easy answers, you have to approach every fight with basically a blank slate.

[Quickpocket]

Thanks for the replies,

I pretty much understood the differences between mastery and avoidance stacking, and didnt mean to bring that debate up again :-D though you have made it clearer for me.

Ive always preffered mastery because I only really tank LFD grps (to cap VP) and it puts my survivability in my hands, not the luck of the draw on if I get a good healer. My question was more: considering alot of my gear has no mastery, would I be better going avoidance?

Now that I'll be tanking for guild and I know the healers I'll be running with are good. I'm not going to be able to get over 26 mastery and I didnt know if that was enough for absorbing the FL bosses hits. Having said that, if there is no clear winner over the two methods for FL I will stick with mastery and regem accordingly for socket bonuses, to improve my heals alongside my absorbs.

Thanks again,

/Grim

[kaelleria]

161k HP seems a teeny bit low... Raid buffed that only puts you at around 188k HP. While certainly doable, you're probably going to have some issues on fights like Alysrazor during tantrums and Ragnaros if you get that far. Also, if you haven't already, reforge out of your expertise.

[Quickpocket]

161 is with a mastery and a dodge trinket equipped, I do have Stam trinks available for if my HP is an issue. I have reforged out of much Exp as I can, 3 comes from my Human racial (Mace) iirc only 2 items have more exp on them.

Ive regemmed on Hyperionx's advice and do have more HP than before, armory should be updated soon.

/Grim

[brown]

Riggnaros from Blood Legion has a very nice blood guide on EJ.

[hyperionx]

I think 20 mastery was all I had going into firelands. Though I didn't have much heroic content down in teir 11. Like I said, there are no caps, which means there is not really a min as well. An avoidance tank will have like 15 or less mastery, while a mastery tank will be between 20+. Currently, with my "default" setup, i have 27.57 but I actually dropped some for aly hatchlings, reforged into 6% hit, and watched them melt.

Your HP is fine. Though, you want to use one stam trinket. Either scales or heroic symbiotic worm or even regular worm. Before I got the trinket off beth, i think I was using double stam trinkets with scales and the molten front 365.

[Muldour]

That's the trouble with asking for this kind of advice . I look at it the other way than Zahgurim - I prefer avoidance (being an avoidance tank) over mastery. But in the end, both are viable. The key things are this:

- Mastery has no effect on CTC
- Avoidance directly increases your CTC
- Mastery has no effect on the size of your heal
- Avoidance has no effect on the size of your heal

Mastery shines on specific fights in Firelands, such as Shannox, Beth'tilac, and Domo. Avoidance really comes in handy during Decimation Blade phases of Baleroc since you cannot mitigate that effect and Alysrazor hatchlings during tantrums. Some DK's will carry around mostly mastery gear with a couple of good avoidance trinkets and bring those out for specific fights.

Since you do seem to be going for mastery, I might think switching out the Swordshattering for Stoneskin would be a good choice. The reason behind this is that you're sitting at 35% avoidance, which is really going to start fighting your mastery; I'm at 43% myself AS an avoidance tank.

I take the mastery approach to DK tanking but with the avoidance trinkets in the bag. I recommend the Brawler's Trophy (Brewfest drop) or the Moonwell Phial (fireland daily vendor unlocked required - "Filling the Moonwell"), combined with the stay of execution for the Baelroc fight for the extra dodge. I haven't had any issues with avoidance on the Alysrazor fight. when the birds go into tantrum...i just pop vampiric blood and hit a deathstrike. its all about positioning yourself properly so you can minimize the time that you have to take that extra damage.

Granted, i don't know your raid makeup, but you shouldn't have to worry about interupts too much in FL, so i would place those 2 points you have in endless winter into either 1 more in epidemic and 1 virulence or both into virulence. this is pobably more for the general DK forum, but i dont' believe in the elitest jerks tank spec. in my experience, they're spec is more a situation spec (or pvp oriented). I can't link anything yet, but you can look me up in armory. i derived my spec purely on numbers for threat generation, damage output, play preference and laziness lol. I like to use DnD all the time while tanking bc its adds a nice immediate damage and extra DoT to get that threat pumping. People greatly underestimate crimson scourage imo. its procs often and make the AoE pulls far more simple in firelands. at this point in the patch...my guild is just pulling mobs by the group and just AoEing it all down. having crimson scourage allows you to hold aggro that much better and gives you a free blood/death rune to use towards something else when it procs. thats more of just a play style bit for me tho. For my spec...look up Muldour - Lightning's Blade - US

back OT: you've probably already changed most of it since this post orginated, but your reforges and gems look pretty solid. the only bit of advice i could give is the spec change that i stated above. Good luck, have fun, and faceroll!

[SSHA778]

The key things are this:

- Mastery has no effect on CTC
- Avoidance directly increases your CTC
- Mastery has no effect on the size of your heal
- Avoidance has no effect on the size of your heal

What you have in the rest of your post is fine, but this particular part I disagree with based on my math (not avoidance increasing CTC--that's a given). Mainly it's just realistically useless nit picks.

Mastery does increase your CTC, but it's more of a step-wise kind of deal. It will only start increasing CTC when your shield size is greater than the hit you are taking so your shield spills over into the next hit. Ignoring magical damage, you can calculate those bounds where mastery's value is going to jump. Magical damage will just make the rating less.

You'll want to solve for the times when absorb = damage
.29*#swings*damage*mastery = damage
Canceling damage, .29*#swings*mastery = 1
Solving for the mastery%, mastery = 1/(.29*#swings)
Converting to ratings and accounting for base mastery of 8, ((mastery/.0625)-8)*179.28004 = rating

Finding those values for various swings in windows,
3 hits in window: ~1862
2: ~3511
1: ~8457

From 0-1862, you'll see no CTC increase. From 1862-3511, you'll see a small, linear increase in CTC (spill comes from 3x hits in window). After that, the rate should increase further (spill comes from 3x or 2x). If the boss hit for exactly the same amount every time, you wouldn't see the linear increase--it would just be steps.

There's some noise from the RNG (swing damage variability+avoidance), but it looks something like this at 8 Death Strikes per minute on fights that take half a day:


Both avoidance and mastery will decrease your heal size by decreasing the total amount of damage you're taking. Avoidance's penalty will be higher than mastery's.

edit: Woops, wrong graph. Fixed.

[hyperionx]

Yea, trinkets, talents and glyphs are all things that should be optimized for every fight. Your probably never going to regem for a fight unless your swapping to avoidance permanently or vice versa, you probably also will never change your reforges unless it's something special like Aly hatchling killing on heroic.

I've never had a problem doing aoe pulls unless it's something like H halfus back when it was content when you needed your dps to go balls to the wall in order to get it down in time.

It looks like H aly or H rhyo is next up for you on progression. I won't talk about H domo since if your guild is smart, you won't be tanking it and will be DPS'ing it since that's your old main and i'm assuming your good with it.

I just downed H aly after 2 nights of attempts and my impressions of the fight post nerf are that the faster you can kill the bird, the easier things are. I actually had problems leaving worms up because my bird would die so fast. Get blood caked blade, reforge a few points of mastery to hit to get around 6%, use the avengers on-use str trinket, use rune of the fallen crusader and you can just eat worms every 15 seconds and rarely see a tantrum. Wednesday I had done everything but reforge, and while it wasn't that bad, there was also lots of stuff to watch and my birds were dying right before things like firestorm or tornados. I did the reforging thursday night and I probably had a good 10 seconds of downtime before each mechanic. I didn't investigate much, but it also feels like you have less time to kill hatchlings after the first burn phase.

[nemadin]

161k HP seems a teeny bit low... Raid buffed that only puts you at around 188k HP. While certainly doable, you're probably going to have some issues on fights like Alysrazor during tantrums and Ragnaros if you get that far. Also, if you haven't already, reforge out of your expertise.

just more curios than anything, my pally had 164k ub when we killed rag prepatch and my allysrazor hatchling set, significantly less due to soem dps gear being swapped in, is it different for a dk? admitedly i was close to block capped at the time and i know that is a non issue for dks (no block) but unless there is a higher need for health as a dk tank 161k will do you fine untill you get more gear