Any thoughts on that build? Notice any points I could put elsewhere that would be more useful? I think it's pretty solid.
Also, anyone with a Priest buddy that they plan on grouping with a lot... Sean and I discovered once I hit 70 and geared up(those four Nexus quests, the one UK quest, and three pieces of cobalt armor will go a long way for new DKs trying to get a tanking set, if they blew through TBC in three days like I did), that Priests and Unholy DKs are completely and utterly broken right now. Bone Shield reduces the amount of damage that hits Power Word: Shield, because damage reduction is taken into effect before PW:S takes a hit, but it doesn't take one of the charges on bone shield. When we did Nexus for the first time with me tanking I tanked Ormorok and the only healing he did the entire fight was one renew on the other DK who stood on a spike and two Power Word: Shields to me.
HORRIBLE.
You want Ebon Plaguebringer. It's a HUGE raid buff. RoR is a flat 10% damage increase. Your frost damage is limited to icy touch and yet you're spending points to 7 points to increase it. You've only got 1 point in Vicious strikes which is going to really hurt your Death Strike's self healing. And you missed Dirge and Reaping, which you're really going to want. And you didn't take unholy blight either? How do you intend to hold agro on a big group? Unholy blight is like a sweet kiss from an angel.
Anyway, I'm not entirely sure Obliterate is better than Scourge strike, especially without the further down frost talents, but if you insist on Annihilation, then maybe something like this
quote:
Blindy. had this to say about Optimus Prime:
That build is horrible.HORRIBLE.
You want Ebon Plaguebringer. It's a HUGE raid buff. RoR is a flat 10% damage increase. Your frost damage is limited to icy touch and yet you're spending points to 7 points to increase it. You've only got 1 point in Vicious strikes which is going to really hurt your Death Strike's self healing. And you missed Dirge and Reaping, which you're really going to want. And you didn't take unholy blight either? How do you intend to hold agro on a big group? Unholy blight is like a sweet kiss from an angel.
Anyway, I'm not entirely sure Obliterate is better than Scourge strike, especially without the further down frost talents, but if you insist on Annihilation, then maybe something like this
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xZhg0zhZfMGI0bkgcoMssht
Most of the frost talents, with the exception of Toughness and Improved Icy Touch, were just a means to an end to get down to Frigid Dreadplate. 3% avoidance is huge, at first anyway. Your spec changes with gear, typically. I'm sure at some point I won't need it anymore and adjust my spec accordingly. And Obliterate is better than Scourge Strike across the board once it's talented. Cost the same runes and Obliterate does an average of 300-500 more per strike. The only downside to it is it removes the diseases, which is what Annihilation takes care of.
If a MT is using Death Strike to heal himself, fire the healers. Needs to be using Obliterate/Scourge Strike for max threat. Maybe an off tank could spam it so the healers don't need to worry about him so much, but it's a waste on a main tank who's fighting all the other DPS for threat.
I didn't miss Dirge and Reaping. I didn't notice that it still had two points of Unholy Aura. That was from earlier. I put them into Dirge on my final build. It just wouldn't update and keeps showing one that I played with like two hours ago. I skipped over Reaping because when trying to go so far down two trees for specific avoidance talents, sacrifices must be made. It was between Reaping and Impurity and I went with Impurity, which helps with AoE threat better than Reaping does.
Unholy Blight isn't as great as it seems. Unless your group sucks there's no reason for you to waste runic power on it. That's what Death and Decay and Pestilence are for. I always find myself low on RP so I rarely use UB in groups and I do just fine keeping aggro on everything. I only use it when I'm soloing a group of eight or nine mobs. You're very rarely going to encounter a big enough pack of mobs in an instance that make it worth using in that situation.
And you expect me to pass up Anti Magic Zone and Magic Supression? Those two and bone shield are the bread and butter of the Unholy tank.
Obliterate isn't worth it unless you give it 15% additional crit from rime and the crit 45% damage bonus from Gile of Gorefiend. It looks like it does more damage, but it doesn't, because it's physical and is mitigated, where Scourge Strike is shadow and is not mitigated by the vast majority of mobs, and you get 30% crit bonus built into the first two points you should always spend in unholy tree.
Yes, you won't be death striking all the time, but you will be death striking. if you're health is low or your target is enraged or whatever, that is when you will be using death strike instead of scourge strike. It's your duty to react to your health and the incoming damage situation every bit as much as it is the duty of your healers.
Unholy Blight is your multi-target RP dump. Death coil isn't multi target, and pestilence->blood boil and death and decay are both on cooldowns and require you to break out of your attack pattern due to rune usage, plus they use runes. Unholy Blight is easy to have 100% uptime and does a pretty significant amount of damage and threat, even (especially) on recently added targets who you haven't been able to disease yet.
Look if you absolutely insist on anti-magic zone (I'm not sold on it. Too long of a cool down to really make it worth while), and are looking more to max out avoidance than to max out aoe threat to allow your DPS to down stuff faster, try something like this http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xZhg0zZfghI00ogeoRcout
And I know all about how to tank and when to save yourself because the fight is getting out of control. But it's not worth wasting talent points. I only put the one there because the third and fourth tier of Unholy talents are pretty lacking and I had to find a way to spread around a few talents to move on.
And really? Death Coil isn't multi target? Why, I never would have guessed!
Your build is like you just found the talents that help you take more damage and made a bee line for them, without a consideration for how valuable they really are in a tanking situation. Everything around those talents is a complete mess, and your single and multi target TPS is going to be pretty bad with that build.
Your first build is very close to what I would do if I was more worried about threat than avoidance(I'd personally drop Virulence and Vicious Strikes and pick up Bladed Armor, which coupled with Impurity gives a significant boost to your spell TPS). But starting off as a fresh level 80 your main concern is to be able to take the damage that the mobs give out. The threat generation on DKs is good enough to handle itself while you're gearing up until you can drop some of the avoidance talents.
quote:
Blindy. probably says this to all the girls:
See you could have fooled me because you think obliterate does more damage than scourge strike, which pretty much means you're confused on how armor works.
Yes. I was mistaken about one ability that I didn't know did physical damage and not frost damage like Scourge Strike does unholy, so I must be confused about how armor works.
I was my guild's main tank on everything but Kil'jaden and Illidan(and AQ40 if you want to go back that far. The gates had just been opened and we had just finished AQ20 when I quit playing until TBC came out) on my Warrior that I quit playing about six months before WotLK.(I seem to take half a year off everytime there's a new expansion!)
Yeah.. Ok... Good.. good pick..
Look I'd make small changes to your build if I thought small changes would save it, but I don't. Yes, you'd be able to take a lot of damage in that spec, but no, the base threat a DK puts out is not going to be enough unless all your DPS is really, REALLY holding back. And what the heck were you going to do with all your RP? Death Coil? There's a reason every tree has an RP dump- death coil isn't all that good.
Any DK in tanking gear's crit will be so low(same reason nobody ever takes Wandering Plague in a serious tanking build even though on the surface it sounds like a pretty good AoE threat talent) that the steady, reliable damage of bladed armor/impurity far outweighs 3% extra crit and 30% bonus damage on those extremely rare crits. The only thing that has going for it is the 3% hit.
Thoughts on your build:
-Pull a point or two from Desecration. 80% proc rate is more than ehough.
-Outbreak really isn't worth it. Get On a Pale Horse for the Stun and Fear reduction or Virulence for spell hit (you have 17% chance to miss with spells on boss mobs).
-Why the fuck don't you have Gargoyle or Dirge?
-Get Master of Ghouls. It's one point and makes your ghoul less shitty. Will be even better when they give the ghoul AOE avoidance.
-what the fuck. Get Reaping.
-Ebon Plaguebringer and Wandering Plague: Part of the whole damn reason to go Unholy, and you don't even have these. What the hell
-Unholy Blight is optional, but it's a aoe runic power dump. It's not as good as Wandering Plague or Death and Decay (especially with Glyph), but it's still more aoe damage, and it lasts for 20 seconds so it's not like it's hard to keep up.
-I really think you're screwing up not getting Rage of Rivendare. It's easy expertise with a damage boost.
Also, I think you're giving up a lot by going that far into frost. Just get Lichborne and you're good (though honestly I'm thinking about going for more in Blood and skipping over more Frost stuff).
quote:
Willias wrote this then went back to looking for porn:
this be my unholy buildThoughts on your build:
-Pull a point or two from Desecration. 80% proc rate is more than ehough.
-Outbreak really isn't worth it. Get On a Pale Horse for the Stun and Fear reduction or Virulence for spell hit (you have 17% chance to miss with spells on boss mobs).
-Why the fuck don't you have Gargoyle or Dirge?
-Get Master of Ghouls. It's one point and makes your ghoul less shitty. Will be even better when they give the ghoul AOE avoidance.
-what the fuck. Get Reaping.
-Ebon Plaguebringer and Wandering Plague: Part of the whole damn reason to go Unholy, and you don't even have these. What the hell
-Unholy Blight is optional, but it's a aoe runic power dump. It's not as good as Wandering Plague or Death and Decay (especially with Glyph), but it's still more aoe damage, and it lasts for 20 seconds so it's not like it's hard to keep up.
-I really think you're screwing up not getting Rage of Rivendare. It's easy expertise with a damage boost.Also, I think you're giving up a lot by going that far into frost. Just get Lichborne and you're good (though honestly I'm thinking about going for more in Blood and skipping over more Frost stuff).
I meant to have Dirge but the stupid talent calculator linked an older build that I was checking out. It's much the same with no Unholy Aura and two into Dirge, as well as a few differences in Frost that I'm too lazy to double check on where it was wrong. And Gargoyle is nice and would probably be in a later, more finalized build once I'm not getting smeared by shit in heroic. Same thing with Reaping.
Wandering Plague isn't as good for a tank as it initially seems is the general consensus. It just doesn't go off a lot when you're tanking since your crit is so low unless you give up tons of tanking stats to boost it back up. I'm with you on Ebon Plaguebringer, though. That's another one I plan on getting when I can afford to drop some avoidance talents.
I passed up Master of Ghouls for tanking because the only time I ever find myself using it past the first time it dies in an instance is as an "oh shit" button with Death Pact. It's invaluable while soloing and questing, though, obviously. Blizzard just needs to stop worrying about their AoE avoidance and make Master of Ghouls(or Night of the Dead, even) remove the recast time on it and most DKs would be happy. Take away that stupid ten plague or scourge strike thing and just make it a flat 2.5/5 minute reduction on both. Making it instant recast with two points.
And you're definately right about giving up a lot to go that deep into Frost, but looking at the quest and crafted shit I'll have by the time I'm 80(I'm rushing there so I won't be doing a lot of instances until then unless it's completely neccesary) and it is highly lacking.
See, Blindy, this is how you help on a talent build. Not just toss around smarmy insults(which have no effect, by the way) and post a completely opposing build.
quote:
Bricktop stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
Wandering Plague isn't as good for a tank as it initially seems is the general consensus. It just doesn't go off a lot when you're tanking since your crit is so low unless you give up tons of tanking stats to boost it back up. I'm with you on Ebon Plaguebringer, though. That's another one I plan on getting when I can afford to drop some avoidance talents.
Reading about it on Elitist Jerks and that seems debatable.
With 10% crit, it still fires off pretty often against a single target, and it gets MUCH better against multiple targets. It's AoE threat, and that's all that matters.
Also, as I mentioned, I do wonder how a unholy/blood build would hold up: pow. Willias fucked around with this message on 12-06-2008 at 11:14 PM.
Maybe dropping a couple of points in Bladed Armor for Unholy Blight and Master of Ghouls(if they ever fix the problem of them dying on any pull with splash damage).
And black ice is interchangable with either glacier rot or icy reach. Just went with Black Ice because Icy Touch is usually my first spell on a mob since it can be used at ranged, so Glacier Rot wouldn't be any good, and I like 12% more damage from Icy Touch more than being able to cast it one second closer.
Is generally what I use when I'm going unholy tank spec. What's nice is some of the points are flexible, so you can dip into AMZ if you want. However you do lose threat in return, and from my experience at least unholy is lower in threat than frost. Honestly with the inevitable nerf to bone shield you might wanna take a look at frost tanking if you haven't yet.
Night of the Dead, by the way, is easily one of the best talents you can get as an unholy DPS death knight. Not every fight is Patchwerk, and being able to chain-ghoul people is pretty sweet. You lose only what, desecration? That talent is laughable at best and is probably meant more for pvp. Addy fucked around with this message on 12-06-2008 at 11:55 PM.
Instead, being Blizzard, they'll just nerf Bone Shield to oblivion so everyone respecs Frost for tanking.
Another thought on unholy/blood spec (I like that one better): Does Rune Tap give threat based on healing done? On top of that, does Glyph of Rune Tap further increase threat?
Edit: Okay, I looked it up and found out myself. Apparently Rune Tap causes zero threat. Willias fucked around with this message on 12-07-2008 at 01:49 AM.
None of the other classes interest me in the slightest.
quote:
Mortious had this to say about Knight Rider:
I have a friend who can make DK's, but he hates them. I wonder if I can get one sent to a new(ish) account.None of the other classes interest me in the slightest.
He has to buy another account in his name. Transfer the DK to it and then give access to you.
Edit: And he'd have to buy WoW and both expansions as well for it. nem-x is gay fucked around with this message on 12-07-2008 at 09:59 AM.
Hunter'll get you there pretty quick and painlessly.
I'm really liking the class as a whole (Complete 180 from my warlock) but it seems as though the interface community hasn't ... quite kept up.
quote:
Skaw said:
Just level a throw away character to 55. It'll take like four days.Hunter'll get you there pretty quick and painlessly.
That fast?! Is it really that easy now?! Jeez.
When I tried WoW it took for-fucking-ever to level, although I did try it shortly after launch and with a warrior so I guess I was in hard mode.
"Don't want to sound like a fanboy, but I am with you. I'll buy it for sure, it's just a matter of for how long I will be playing it..."
- Silvast, Battle.net forums
If you start up again, try a rogue. The death knight and rogue play styles are pretty similar, except there's a lot more management for a death knight.
Essentially, rogues just have energy that continuously builds up and you use moves over and over when you get the right amount of energy.
Death Knights have runes (2 frost, 2 blood, 2 unholy), each of which have a 10 second cooldown after you spend the rune on an ability. The runes continuously refill, and each rune spent builds Runic Power (think warrior rage) which allows you to use various spell/tanking abilities.
Then there's also diseases which you have to manage on your targets, each disease generally increases the damage on the bulk of your abilities.
Death Knights are like some kind of paladin/rogue/warrior/warlock crossbreed.
I think the best part of the class is that there's next to zero wasted abilities. I'm not sure if any other class has to keep track of as many spells and attacks as a death knight.
quote:
Willias stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
Warriors are pretty boring imo.If you start up again, try a rogue. The death knight and rogue play styles are pretty similar, except there's a lot more management for a death knight.
Essentially, rogues just have energy that continuously builds up and you use moves over and over when you get the right amount of energy.
Death Knights have runes (2 frost, 2 blood, 2 unholy), each of which have a 10 second cooldown after you spend the rune on an ability. The runes continuously refill, and each rune spent builds Runic Power (think warrior rage) which allows you to use various spell/tanking abilities.
Then there's also diseases which you have to manage on your targets, each disease generally increases the damage on the bulk of your abilities.
Death Knights are like some kind of paladin/rogue/warrior/warlock crossbreed.
I think the best part of the class is that there's next to zero wasted abilities. I'm not sure if any other class has to keep track of as many spells and attacks as a death knight.
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed in PvP as a warlock since I have something for nearly any situation in one way or another.
But my DK isn't even 60 yet. So. :3
quote:
The Hitchhikers Guide has this to say on Bricktop:
See, Blindy, this is how you help on a talent build. Not just toss around smarmy insults(which have no effect, by the way) and post a completely opposing build.
Oh, I'm sorry princess I didn't mean to hurt your wittle feely-weelings.
quote:
So quoth Blindy.:
Oh, I'm sorry princess I didn't mean to hurt your wittle feely-weelings.
Sorry to dissapoint, but you're incapable of hurting my feelings.
I essentially gave you the exact same advise as Willias, and you are telling me you're ignoring it because my tone is too hurtful. Blindy. fucked around with this message on 12-08-2008 at 09:38 AM.
I made this google spreadsheet to demonstrate. You can edit the melee crit chance cell with what you think you'll have in tanking gear to see how it scales with more than one mob. The percentage there is the percentage of at least one proc of Wandering plague from either blood plague or frost fever in every set of ticks.
The second set of chances is the possibility of a second proc. WP has a 1 second internal cooldown, but if you have a 1.5 second gap between PB and FF ticks, then you could easily have a double proc, but the chances are significantly lower, obviously.
http://spreadsheets0.google.com/ccc?key=pYnRSKf8cGcuPEQyIZ_wiIA Blindy. fucked around with this message on 12-08-2008 at 10:15 AM.
Tanking Builds
It is currently generally accepted that for raid-level main tanking Death Knights have a choice between creating a Frost build or an Unholy build. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but both are fully capable of main tanking. There has not been significant theorycrafting to decide if a similar Blood spec could be put together to perform on par for main tanking. That being said, due to the wonderfulness of Frost Presence nearly any Death Knight build should be able to off tank in emergencies and in 5-man instances (assuming they have tanking gear in their bags).
Of note, for all of these builds there are many variations that a player could make to better fit their play style, the needs of their raid, and other circumstances.
Frost
There are two primary Frost build variations. The first includes Imp Icy Talons, the second skips it. The idea being, if you are raiding you will have a Windfury totem, which Imp Icy Talons does not stack with.
With Imp Icy Talons
Without Imp Icy Talons
For the build w/o Imp Icy Talons there will be significant variation in the first half of the tree due to the lack of obvious replacement talents for Imp Icy Talons. Killing Machine is typically an increase in threat compared to Imp Icy Talons (assuming WF is present), but feels lackluster for 5 points. Other options are Icy Reach to help with pulling or Merciless Combat for increased threat/DPS at the end of fights. Another area of variation will be whether or not to get Acclimation, it can be good, but it is not clear if it will stack with resist totems/auras and it is not useful on non-caster bosses.
Frost aura's contribution is debatable and some argue "better" places to put the points.
Hungering cold is highly situational at best and is largely considered a PvP talent. In my personal tanking experience I would never use it, as I haven't encountered single (or multiple even) packs where the damage incoming was too high. I've always preferred AOE to just burn everything down, and I've had the threat to allow (encourage) this.
Unholy Tanking
Unholy tanking is often considered an equivalent to Frost tanking the moment your bone shield can stay up for 20 seconds on average. This is obviously highly dependent on avoidance gained from gear, and is sometimes considered inferior to frost tanking for heroic/early-Naxx tanking. Bone shield is least effective when taking smaller amounts of damage at frequent intervals, particularly magic damage, as the charges will diminish quickly. It is currently believed that Bone Shield has a hidden 3.5 seconds cool down on bone-loss.
Generalize builds forthcoming
Things to Avoid
In general, any talents that are chance on auto-attack should be avoided if better options are available. This is due to the fact that many white-hits end up being converted to Rune Strikes, which can not proc these talents. This is the reason Killing Machine is such a lackluster talent for tanking. There may be an exception to this generalization if Dual Wield tanking ever becomes viable (since it would include many more white-hits).
Glyphs
Available tanking glyphs:
Major Glyphs
* Glyph of Icy Touch The increased RP generated from this glyph is very useful. Rune strike, frost strike and death coil are all great abilities, and any extra RP is useful. Many other abilities require RP, including Anti-Magic Shield and Icebound Fortitude.
* Glyph of Bone Shield A must for Unholy tanks.
* Glyph of Dark Command A must for any tank. Having a taunt miss is obviously problematic and reducing eliminating this chance is essential.
* Glyph of Obliterate Obliterate is the bread-and-butter ability for Frost tanking and this glyph buffs it once a certain average weapon swing damage has been reached. The exact number is yet undefined.
* Glyph of Rune Strike Increases cost by 25% for a 20% increase in damage. Very useful if you find you have more RP than you know what to do with.
* Glyph of Death and Decay Decent glyph for reducing incoming damage while AOE tanking or PvP fun.
* Glyph of Icebound Fortitude Making shield wall free is never a bad idea.
* Glyph of Death Grip This one is largely a PvP glyph. It has very limited raiding use.
Minor Glyphs
* Glyph of Pestilence This is an amazing glyph for all DKs. Use this one.
* Glyph of Horn of Winter Not a bad glyph. It allows you to Death and Decay the use Horn of winter before entering combat (it is possible without this glyph).
* Glyph of Corpse Explosion gives you the chance at an extra explosion for each use of the spell. Not great, but there arent a lot of minor tanking glyphs, and I needed to add a third.
And that's my $.02 
The way I see it, frost tanking is about single target TPS, Unholy is about multi-target TPS. Both have lots of avoidance talents, Unholy seems to have the edge there thanks to bone shield, which scales very well with your avoidance, while unholy armor gives you less protection and has a flat 20 second duration.
Unholy also has the triggered magic avoidance of AMS and AMZ, but those are not something that can be up all the time (aside from the 5% avoidance built into improved AMS), while frost has passive magic avoidance with attunement, but either way you're going to have to gear for resistance on heavy magic fights if your healers can't cope.
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Skaw postedSo does that mean Blizzard welched on their statement about making Windfury Totem stack with other procing buffs, or is it just the Dark Knight ability specifically that it doesn't stack with for whatever reason?
It stacks with poisons and that's all I give a shit about!
(I'm pretty sure it's just the DK ability).
quote:
Skaw painfully thought these words up:
So does that mean Blizzard welched on their statement about making Windfury Totem stack with other procing buffs, or is it just the Dark Knight ability specifically that it doesn't stack with for whatever reason?
Windfury totem is just 16% melee haste now, so it stacks with buffs and effects you put on your weapons.
Talented, Windfury totem becomes 20% melee haste.
Improved Icy Talons does the exact same thing as fully talented Windfury totem, and the buffs do not stack. Willias fucked around with this message on 12-08-2008 at 02:08 PM.
