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[3.3] Intro to Death Knight Tanking
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Post by
Nystali
The glyphs you chose are fine but there is one glaring problem in your spec:
Do not spec Merciless Combat over Imp Frost Presence.
You want to take less damage during the last 35% of a fight (and the entire fight for that matter), not do more dps. At this point you should already have a big threat lead so Merciless Combat is wasted.
Post by
Zxian
I've got another quick question out there about a second tanking build (I have little/no interest in serious DPSing on my DK) for those fights where frost has a slight disadvantage (*cough* Sapph *cough*). The only connundrum - I really really
really
want to keep On a Pale Horse for gathering purposes.
As such, my gut instinct says Unholy would suit this best, but I'd really love to try out a Blood Tanking build as well, since I'm used to a Blood DPS rotation already. I came up with two builds that get me what I want, and (I think) would still generate sufficient threat on target.
Unholy - 10/8/53
Blood - 49/5/17
My main concern with the Blood Tank build is the lack of Blood Gorged. Is the lack of 10% ArP going to seriously gimp my TPS output? I'm only looking at this build for single-target fights, so AoE threat is not a concern. I'll also note that I have no experience playing anything but a Frost Tank, so please bear with me if I make any n00b errors.
Post by
Nystali
Both builds look ok to me.
Blood doesn't have to get Blood Gorged and you have all the key talents for a blood tank needed. For Sapph, blood would work fine, you don't have the spell mitigation from Magic Suppression and AMZ, but you do have a little extra stamina and you're the only always being healed anyways. Your strikes are less magical/disease/frost based so you got that bonus over frost as well so it'll do the job you want.
Post by
394421
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Post by
365566
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Post by
Nystali
Hopefully you only did normal HoL in your current gear. Otherwise your friend set you up for failure ;)
Focus on Wyrmrest accord for rep starting now. Yes Argent Crusade has some nice legs and the head enchant, but you are starting from basics equipment wise and the Chestpiece, Boots, and Cloak are all well worth it.
Any piece of gear that does not currently have defense on it, replace with Daunting/Tempered Saronite pieces from Blacksmithing.
Consider dumping the money into a Titansteel Destroyer, Tempered Titansteel Helm and Boots. They are well worth the cost in the long term (I have yet to find a suitable replacement for my Destroyer and Boots, I just can't get the drops). Actually since you are a Blacksmith, I would spend the next few days solely focusing on your professions so you can make all that yourself. It might be a little boring now, but it will make it loads easier in the end. Plus the Spiked Titansteel Helm is very very good for DPS if that is your primary role.
Once you have 530 defense skill, then start doing normal HoL again. Not only for rep but for the nice tanking trinket from Loken.
Once you get to uncrittable, start with easy heroics. VH is key as you get some very fine leggings from there. Nexus and UK are primarily badge runs so that you can ultimately pick up:
Tank Belt
Tank Neckpiece
Dodge Trinket
I think that order works the best.
As for your spec. If you are very new to tanking, I would suggest Morbidity over Scent of Blood as it is very easy for pulls and initial aggro and it allows room for a lot of error. After you get used to tanking and are ready for change of pace, then I would suggest into going with the build you currently have. However, its not necessary and might make for a faster learning curve if you go as is.
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166705
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Post by
375004
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375004
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Post by
Nystali
You should really take will of the necropolis. Hysteria is also good to have to place on a dps for extra nukeage. Sudden doom will also help out with single target aggro and its talent and forget.
Blood gorged is kinda iffy. I'd be more inclined for those talents I mentioned above over it.
Also, I don't think you need epidemic as a blood DK because you'll have so many blood runes with death rune mastery to be able to throw out a random pestilence anywhere in your rotation.
Post by
365566
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Post by
Nystali
The first boss there can cause some problems just because of his stance dancing. If the healer doesn't pay attention to him jumping into the more offensive stance, you can almost expect a wipe since his damage spikes quite a bit. So that can be understandable especially if you as the tank are a bit undergeared.
Post by
363678
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Post by
Nystali
I suppose I really should put a section with all the glyphs in it. When I had gone back to update for 3.1 the glyphs were still out of date and I meant to go back and do something like that explaining the glyphs but never got to it.
Lynri's guide might have them.
As for an unholy build:
Bone Shield is a given.
Death and Decay is a strong choice as well.
Scourge Strike, Pestilence, Unholy Blight, and Dark Command would all be the tossup for the last spot.
Dark Command might be more useful if you're not near melee hit cap of 8% but are raiding.
Unholy Blight is still useful as is, but since its changing come 3.2 you may want to get accustomed to not having it work as is.
Scourge Strike looks pretty good at first glance, but it would basically do what Pestilence would do but with a random chance attached. Yes, if attacking a single target, Scourge Strike would allow you to almost forget about refreshing diseases, but you would have to turn a blood rune into a death rune anyways at some point and pestilence does perform that task but you're sacrificing threat that an extra blood strike would cause. However, if you are tanking trash where Pestilence would be more useful, chances are most of it will die before the diseases run off anyways.
I think I lean more towards Scourge Strike.
Post by
Nystali
Went and fixed the glyph deficiencies. Its probably going to open myself to a whole lot of flames since I also put in small text my recommendations for each tree at the end.
Post by
363678
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Post by
GenXCub
@Nystali
Not that I'm advocating DW Tanking... but in your discussion, you're comparing 2 Red Swords of Courage to a Titansteel Destroyer with SSG Rune. You're not discussing the fact that you would have 2 Swordbreaker runes on the RSoC's. Again, not that it would convince me to tank that way, but I think that you at least need to mention the 4% parry (or at least the difference in avoidance between that and SSG) so that the discussion remains apples to apples.
Post by
Nystali
Sigil of Unfaltering Knight can be a decent upgrade for a while yes. And if you do use it, you do have to rely on IT as your disease applicator. I did pick it up as my first tanking sigil upgrade, but at this point I already had become uncrittable (540 defense) so whenever I activated the sigil, I received extra avoidance from the defense given.
You can use it to become uncrittable, you just have to be extremely careful to always have it up. I wouldn't really recommend this though. It was a lot easier to have this sigil before 3.1 when IT was really the only way to maintain Frost Fever on your current target.
I like threat production sigil instead from the valor emblem quartermaster. I've yet to see any sigil drops in any raids so thank goodness for emblem loot.
Post by
Nystali
I actually cancelled out the +4% parry with the +3% general avoidance in my mind, but you're right I should have put that in there. Thanks.
Post by
Nystali
Finally got around to updated the guide a bit. At first I thought wowhead's talent trees weren't updated but then I realized that firefox's new feature for saving history wanted to use old files without checking to see if there were new ones available.
I dunno if I like how the base unholy tree looks. Its quite bloated so if any of you unholy tanks out there can nitpick where I can take points out to still get higher in the tree and have more points leftover, that would be appreciated. Also, I don't have a high level scribe, and since I don't glyph for unholy, I didn't know the status of the unholy blight glyph. Did it get changed to modify the dot or removed (wowhead doesn't show any difference that I can tell)? So I removed it from the unholy glyphs section. If anyone can clarify that for me, I'd appreciate it.
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