4.3 Death Knight Tanking Guide and Discussion

[Pope]

Ok, well like SSHA778 said, you're losing not too much.
Anyway, try to reforge pieces with parry/mastery to dodge. Or look for dodge/mastery-pieces.

[drockrock]

I'm having a problem. I keep getting crit in Dragon Soul. I have all the necessary talents, notably Improved Blood Presence. I've gotten crit by the corruption on Madness and the amalgamation on spine. Is there anything I can do to fix this?

[Pope]

I'm having a problem. I keep getting crit in Dragon Soul. I have all the necessary talents, notably Improved Blood Presence. I've gotten crit by the corruption on Madness and the amalgamation on spine. Is there anything I can do to fix this?

Well, this is obviously a bug and you should report it to a gm.

I think this is a rarely occuring bug that has something to do with switching specs and/or stances. I dunno.

[Nillo]

I'm having a problem. I keep getting crit in Dragon Soul. I have all the necessary talents, notably Improved Blood Presence. I've gotten crit by the corruption on Madness and the amalgamation on spine. Is there anything I can do to fix this?

There's already like a bazillion threads about it.
Switching presence and/or spec fixes it.

[Sygil]

Are there still any Avoidance DKs out there? I recently switched from Mastery to Avoidance and noticed a noticeable decrease in damage taken, however only when I have a healer that can shield me, i.e priest. I don't notice any difference when receiving heals any other healers though.

Does the value of mastery change depending on the raid's healer set up? At the moment I'm running with almost 50% avoidance raid buffed and around 16 mastery (100% blood shield).

[SSHA778]

I don't notice any difference when receiving heals any other healers though.

The overall damage taken is comparable enough that you shouldn't be seeing a noticeable difference regardless of healers.

Does the value of mastery change depending on the raid's healer set up? At the moment I'm running with almost 50% avoidance raid buffed and around 16 mastery (100% blood shield).

Yes. In the presence of paladins/discipline priests (external absorbs), the value of mastery is lower, but not enough to be concerned about.

[flashur]

Can someone explain to me the outright advantages of stam stacking that some are doing?

I've been considering it myself, but I'm not sure whether it's worth it. Currently I'm sitting at 202.9k with SSG unbuffed and 4097 mastery. I tried to use askmrrobot to determine my hp if I were to stack stam but I've never been a fan of that site and it seems to think I have 206k hp unbuffed when I know I have 202.9k.

Is it worth going full stamina? Or even purple/blue/green stamina gems? Anyone on here tried it? Anyone know of a site other than askmrrobot which I can use to determine how much stamina and mastery I'd have with going stamina instead?

[SSHA778]

Can someone explain to me the outright advantages of stam stacking that some are doing?

The only advantage is that you have more health, which gives your healers a larger buffer.

Is it worth going full stamina?

Not in my opinion, no. The only time you absolutely need stamina is if you're being two-shot. When you're not in danger of dying abruptly, having extra health is of much less value than mitigation stats.

Anyone know of a site other than askmrrobot which I can use to determine how much stamina and mastery I'd have with going stamina instead?

chardev.org, although you would have to set up your gear manually.

[Kiramaren]

Is it worth going full stamina? Or even purple/blue/green stamina gems? Anyone on here tried it? Anyone know of a site other than askmrrobot which I can use to determine how much stamina and mastery I'd have with going stamina instead?

Wowrefoge.com and then you just set the value of stam higher. I normally use that and Sim Craft to get my values on current stats.

[Kamiyomi]

I have 2 questions that i cant really seem to find the answer to anywhere so i was wondering if people could explain.

A) Absolutely nowhere do i see mention of the 81 stam/reduced magic damage meta, which with the exception of few fights, seems to be the best to me due to armor DR and the relatively low mastery of the Fleet meta. Why is this meta overlooked so much, or is it simply that bad and im missing something? I interpret magic damage as the most dangerous factor considering that its un avoidable, and unmitigated by other effects (outside of CDs).

B) My second question is why do people value SSG so highly. i see people using it but every bit of math ive done seems to say that SSG isnt very good especially when compared to other runeforges like Sword Shattering except in very specific cases (Madness Impales, granted i'd prefer SS for the long term avoidance over low mitigation as impales arent very deadly). I mainly want to see the math that makes SSG good enough to be considered viable.

[SSHA778]

A) Absolutely nowhere do i see mention of the 81 stam/reduced magic damage meta, which with the exception of few fights, seems to be the best to me due to armor DR and the relatively low mastery of the Fleet meta. Why is this meta overlooked so much, or is it simply that bad and im missing something? I interpret magic damage as the most dangerous factor considering that its un avoidable, and unmitigated by other effects (outside of CDs).

The armor meta is superior to the spell meta in every situation except Yor'sahj. The bulk of the damage that you take on any given encounter is physical, and the damage reduction from that armor is greater than the damage reduction from the additional mastery of the Fleet meta. I don't exactly remember offhand, but I'll halve the bonus from SSG (not the best approximation) and say that the armor meta is a 1% relative DR, and adding +1 mastery is somewhere around ~.80% in the absence of magical damage if I remember correctly, but you're only getting 1/3rd of that (roughly).

In Wrath, the Effulgent meta, instead of decreasing your spell damage taken by 2%, increased your resistances by 2%, which is way worse. I don't know if that's still the same behavior, but if you take 70% physical and 30% magical, and both of them reduce those by 2%, 2% of 70% is greater than 2% of 30%.

B) My second question is why do people value SSG so highly. i see people using it but every bit of math ive done seems to say that SSG isnt very good especially when compared to other runeforges like Sword Shattering except in very specific cases (Madness Impales, granted i'd prefer SS for the long term avoidance over low mitigation as impales arent very deadly). I mainly want to see the math that makes SSG good enough to be considered viable.

Consistency is their quoted argument, which, depending on the content you're doing and your viewpoint, is arguably valid. The stamina bonus is pretty small, and the relative %DR from armor is also pretty small. On an overall scale, SS is 2-3x better than SSG and that math can be found here:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post13973648

The summary there should explain it fairly well (keep in mind that the post was made before the 30%->55% armor buff). Differences in damage taken by up to ~5% or more won't be noticed by your healers, so you have to ask yourself just what is killing you.

Is your EH the source of your deaths? SSG directly addresses that (albeit minimally).
Is the overall damage taken the source of your deaths (ie. running healers OOM)? SS directly addresses that.
Neither? Use SS and tell your healers to pay attention (you, the tank, did use that cooldown you should have used there, right?).

However, I'd say that since the discrepancy in relatively mitigation is quite large, switching to SSG should be your absolute last resort, as although overall damage reduction is not as important as it was previously, it still is important. Fixing your rotation, using your cooldowns properly and timely, etc., should all be done first. The runeforge on your weapon isn't going to make a night-and-day difference. Only how you play can.

[Nillo]

A) Absolutely nowhere do i see mention of the 81 stam/reduced magic damage meta, which with the exception of few fights, seems to be the best to me due to armor DR and the relatively low mastery of the Fleet meta. Why is this meta overlooked so much, or is it simply that bad and im missing something? I interpret magic damage as the most dangerous factor considering that its un avoidable, and unmitigated by other effects (outside of CDs).

There's no DR on armor.... actually the gem gets even better the more armor you have.
And yeah as SSHA said - outside of Yor'Sahj there is no boss that would make the meta worthwhile. Besides the only other boss with dangerous magical damage would be Zon'ozz and AMS takes care of that.

[Firebert]

There's no DR on armor.... actually the gem gets even better the more armor you have.

The gem might get better with more armor, but I'm pretty sure Armor has DR. See the following link.
http://www.wowpedia.org/Armor

[Nillo]

The gem might get better with more armor, but I'm pretty sure Armor has DR. See the following link.
http://www.wowpedia.org/Armor

Yeah for the uneducated eye all you see that the damage reduction per armor decreases and thus you think it has "diminishing returns". While actually the Damage reduction of armor is just the opposite function to (base+armor)/(base) or in other words armor is a linear increase to survivability.

[SSHA778]

Armor itself has a DR, but that doesn't make each point worse than the previous point. It depends on what you're measuring.

You can figure that out by just looking at the armor function and doing some basic calculus:

x = Armor_Rating for all cases:

%DR(x) = x / (x +2167.5*88 - 158167.5)

Take the derivative with respect to armor rating (x). This function is positive everywhere [1], which tells you that increasing your armor rating will always increase your %DR (duh). Now, take the derivative of that derivative. This function is negative everywhere for all positive armor values [2]. This tells you that the rate of change in the %DR gain from adding +1 armor rating is decreasing. In layman's terms, this means that while the %DR from adding +1 armor is always positive, it is increasing at a decreasing rate. Thus, %DR with respect to armor rating experiences diminishing returns.

But that's not what matters when you're looking at armor. What matters is your time-to-live (TTL), or essentially the effect of that armor on your ability to survive.

TTL(x) = 1 / (1 - %DR(x) )

You can perform a similar analysis on your TTL to find that +1 armor rating linearly increases your TTL by the exact same amount [3] (ie. constant increase) everywhere (either substitute the %DR function to begin with, or don't forget the chain rule!). The second derivative of TTL is simply zero [4]. This would imply that armor rating shows neither increasing nor decreasing returns on TTL. 1 armor rating is just as effective as the previous 1 armor rating. This is the classical way to measure how effective armor is, because what TTL shows is how long you can live without external healing.

This is what matters. This is why armor doesn't have a DR with respect to your ability to live.

edit: and for those that can't do calculus as you may not have taken it, but you do know how read a graph,
[1]: d(%DR) / dx = 32572.5 / ( (x + 32572.5)^2 )

[2]: d^2(%DR) / dx^2 = second derivative = -65145 / ( (x + 32572.5)^3 )

[3]: d(TTL) / dx = ( d(TTL) / d(%DR) ) * ( d(%DR) / dx )

==> d(TTL) / dx = ( 1 / ( (%DR(x) - 1)^2 ) ) * ( 32572.5 / ( (x + 32572.5)^2 ) ); substitute %DR(x) = x/(x+2167.5*88-158167.5)

==> d(TTL) / dx = 3.07 * 10^(-5)

[4]: d^2(TTL) / dx^2 = 0

[Deleted]

How viable is it not taking any points in Frost if you have a rogue and retri paladin in your 10 man raid (for interrupting)? I understand the use for lichborn, although I see it to be situatinal, where you need to blow 80+ runic power on your macro, which you would have used on rune strike, giving runic empowerment and thus giving a chance on another deathstrike and larger shield.

[Omertocracy]

WALL OF MATH

Translation for us dum-dums: Moar Armor makes you take Less Damage.

How viable is it not taking any points in Frost if you have a rogue and retri paladin in your 10 man raid (for interrupting)? I understand the use for lichborn, although I see it to be situatinal, where you need to blow 80+ runic power on your macro, which you would have used on rune strike, giving runic empowerment and thus giving a chance on another deathstrike and larger shield.

If you are not taking Lichborn, there really isn't a significant reason to take Frost. Yeah free interrupts are the bees knees, but is it worth 7 talent points? Lichborn on the other hand, is basically DK LoH. What's that Mr. Raidboss? 5% and the healers are busy talking about whatever it is healers do (something about lace doilies)? Bam. 160 RP and one DS later, not only am I full, but i just got hilarious overheal and a 90k bubble.

(For those of you wondering at the 160 math: 130 full bar + 1 DS = 150 + 1 SoB tick = 160 = 4 DC)

[Deleted]

Yes, I can see the use, but how often does it happen you get a full bar (130)? Just curious, since I'm new to DK tanking.

I'm also asking because I was checking some logs from a DK tank with lichborn who didn't use it once to heal himself during a whole raidnight. Making me think that if the healers are good, you don't really need it and wasting a lot of points. I'll probably get 2 specs, one with and one without lichborn, to see what works best for me.

[Deleted]

I'm also asking because I was checking some logs from a DK tank with lichborn who didn't use it once to heal himself during a whole raidnight. Making me think that if the healers are good, you don't really need it and wasting a lot of points. I'll probably get 2 specs, one with and one without lichborn, to see what works best for me.

How often you find yourself at full RP depends on how much RP you blow on rune strikes. If you WANT to it's not hard to get to full RP.
Making good use of LB is not the easist of things, but if used well it can very much make the difference between dying and surviving. It's hard to use well, but if used well, it kicks ass. I wouldn't really call it a DK's LoH, primarely due to the many GCD's it takes to have equal effect, but it's still crazy powerfull if used properly.
The only alternative you have for these points are marginally useless DPS increase talents.
Survivability > dps increase

[SSHA778]

Translation for us dum-dums: Moar Armor makes you take Less Damage.

That would be the obvious conclusion which wouldn't require math, but that's not helpful when you're weighing choices. You always want to look at one stat in relation to the big picture.

The not-so-obvious conclusion is that each point of armor is just as effective at keeping you alive as the previous point. This is the key, and the reason I posted the math that I did, because this defeats the entire "armor gets less effective with the more you have" argument.