By Gravity
79 commentsDec 9th, correct for patch 3.3.
Can and should a DK dual-wield as a tank? Patch 3.22 made it possible, with rune strike now being effected by Threat of Thassarian. Patch 3.3 now lets you DW tank with DPS weapons. DW for DPSers in Frost is very strong.
Sure a tank can do it too, but is it wise? What should the lead tank say about it to their corps?
Important update: Feb 9 2010, it appears almost none of the Icecrown bosses have parry-haste turned on. Therefore, parrygib is irrelevant on most bosses.
Original post continues:
The questions relate to survival and threat. To work it threat, I used my simulator.
Threat
- impressively, the threat on dual-wield (“DW”) tanking is the same or slightly higher than a two-hander, based on a like-for-like simulation I did.
- for the stat values for threat (to help choose gear or weapons), I provide a complete equivalence table here.
Survival: incoming damage
- if a DK tank has two fast tank weapons and 30+ expertise skill, they will receive about as many parry-hasted attacks as a warrior with one fast weapon and 26 expertise
- this is because warrior’s attacks can nearly all be parried, but some of a DK’s cannot (icy touch and howling blast)
- because of their itemisation (dodge/parry/defence), you should end up with up to 2% higher avoidance from two tanking weapons; a lot relatively if you’re already around 60%
- note you no longer lose the 2% stamina from Gargoyle runeforge, but gain net 1% avoidance from swordshattering runeforge, because of the new 3.3 runeforge.
Gear and expertise stats
- ideally you would get two slow tank weapons, but they don’t exist except for the now old Broken Promise. With two slow weapons you only need 21+ expertise skill, 26 is preferred.
- you could get two Peacekeepers, for example
- try to get Quel’Serrar from Onyxia, it’s lovely
- in the new 3.3 content, tank one-handers are Bonebreaker Scepter, Rimefang’s Claw, and Lucky Old Sun. The latter two from 5-mans.
- now in patch 3.3, you can dual-wield two slow DPS weapons (as opposed to tank-itemised one handers) and runeforge them with the new one-handed version of Gargoyle, called Nerubian
- slow one-handers give significantly more threat, and lower parrygib risk, so I’d suggest that’s a good path to go
- expertise: you should bias your gear selection towards expertise
- you could use two expertise/stam gems, I’d say (that’s not scientific, but based on a notion of minimal compromise on the primary tank stat). Otherwise, like in any tank spec, gems should tend to be all-stamina.
- if you need more than two gems to reach this expertise target, you should consider not DW tanking at all. Go get a two-hander instead.
- your gear is going to still need 540 defence with the Nerubian runeforge’s 25 included towards that total.
To help choose betweeen weapons, read my longer post on survival vs threat.
Spec
- there is not much variation, this is the main spec.
- alternatively, for 1.5% more single-target threat you can move 2 points from KM into [Scent of Blood] for this spec but note the KM procs are useful in AOE situations for howling blast, so you lose that edge
- for [Improved Icy Talons], it is more difficult to spec well, best to read my full discussion with specs
You cannot DW tank as Unholy or Blood, not enough threat. Frost is it.
Simulation
I have run several tests at i213, i219, i226 and i245 gear levels. I’ve compared DW to 2H, and cross-compared Frost DW to Blood and Unholy. The general theme of results is this: dual-wield frost generates slightly more threat than 2H, and more of it is physical (less frost), with a much higher proportion of damage from Howling Blast (because it procs Rime on offhand).
Patch 3.3: Two fast tank weapons -vs- two slow DPS weapons: two slow weapons are notably more threat and less parry-haste risk. Read my complete analysis of threat from weapon speed.
So, should I do it?
Only spec dual-wield tanking if there is a benefit. Some people like the animation (I have to admit, looking like a rogue in plate, and tanking, is pretty wicked).
Don’t spec into it if you’re going to lose large amounts of HP.
Use the table below to determine your safe expertise level.
If you’re raid tanking, I would not do it unless you have the requisite expertise skill. For heroics, meh, do whatever.
Example scenario of why you would do it: some tanks get two one-hander tank weapons of a higher iLevel before they are lucky enough to get a new two-hander; so in this case, if the tank also has 540 def and 30 expertise skill, without much loss of HP, they could go DW tanking for the threat gain.
Maths on parry-gibs
Expertise is the antidote to a boss getting parry-hasted.
Jan 13th 2010: I have analysed again the relationship between weapon speed, expertise and parry-haste. The summary of that is this:
| per min | Parries | |||
| Tank | Attacks | zero exp | 26 exp | 30 exp |
| Warrior | 72.5 | 10.33 | 5.61 | |
| DK slow/fast | 76.0 | 10.83 | 5.89 | |
| DK fast/fast | 103.0 | 14.67 | 7.77 | 6.95 |
| DK two-handed | 47.1 | 6.71 | 3.65 |
If you take a slow/fast combination, you will have basically as much parry-haste risk as a warrior with the same level of expertise. Fast/fast increases that risk by about 1.4 parries per minute.
Further geeky reading
On other sites:
- on DW tanking elitistjerks | deathknight.info
- on DW DPS elitistjerks
- on parry haste, page 19, midway there are formulas and definition maintankadin
Expertise reduces the chance the boss can parry you.
Bosses have a 14.25% parry chance and reducing that to 1% would take 467 expertise rating (= 57 expertise). That’s massive and it’s not sensible to even try to achieve that when stacking stamina would be more effective instead.
For level 83 the soft cap is 6.5% dodge or 26 expertise (214 rating), and the hard cap is 14.25% parry or 57 expertise (468 rating). Source.
Expertise rating:skill conversions:
* 1 Expertise Skill reduces the chance your attacks will be dodged/parried by 0.25%
* 32.79 Rating is equal to 1% less chance your attacks will be dodged/parried.
* 8.20 Rating is equal to 0.25% less chance your attacks will be dodged/parried and thus is equal to 1 Expertise Skill.
To-hit
Spell Hit and Melee Hit scale differently with Hit Rating. You need 26.2 hit rating for 1% chance to hit with spells and 32.7 hit rating for 1% hit to melee attacks.
Dual-wielding, the offhand has a 24% chance to miss rather than the usual 8% for two-handed weapons. Note, your special attacks (eg. frost strike) disregard the offhand miss rate, your special melee attacks are 8% and spells are 17% even if you are DW tanking. To-hit does not effect your survivability, just your TPS.
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But if you could make a...
Suvivability : More Parry then Dodge
Threart : Hit cap and Expertise so your hits never miss out
Survivability as stamina should never pass 35k unbuffed
Spec it doesn’t have to be frost spec unless your gear is low or if your healer is so bad to heal you as blood, if your gear is good enough use blood as your DW tanking spec.
Blood spec generates more threat and you cant never loose threat with the right gear and gems.
Frost spec= easy mode tanking; for noob tanks or to help noob healers.
No offence Frost tankers, but Frost tanking is too easy tanks and boring.
Dun stack stamina as blue gem ever.. either purple or green gem. To healers yeah you have very nice hp, but you take big hit that you reach death Before a proper avoidance Dk with your healer out of mana or silenced mainly in icc.
ICC depends on aviodance(parry)= Survivablity in DW deathknight & depends on aviodance(Dodge)= Survivablity in Twohander deathknight.
here is blood spec for the tanking experts:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jMEhVh0IcbofssLhxMZ0gb:iopVMm
I can live without 2% stam when im sat at 43.7k unbuffed really, Would barely take me up much. As 2 handed blood i’ll jump 1.8k health. and you are counting razorice only on its 2% frost damage benefit or do you count the large damage bonus once we hit 10 stacks? and yes, Hard modes when your DPS are having Tricks of the trade put on them to put out as much raw damage as possible, Razorice is a higher base threat I find the spell hit to be much more an effective coefficent than anything else, and its also a nice bonus in irritating encounters like ToGC to have the extra hit. Cant have your taunts missing and a tank dying to impale can we
, Frost damage seems to come up as most of my damage in heroics at least, and in raids, it does depend on the fight, but howling blast and/or frost strike are always in the top 3, so the 3% hit, in addition to a moonkin or spriest buff (god i love them) 10% more frost damage once its stacked up = win for a Frost dk 
First off, for Sam…. What? I believe the English Language was just beaten with a rather large bat by you.
I run a frost DW tank and, I must say, and far as threat goes I can take it away from blood tanks with just 2 simple moves. The real expert tank isn’t a spec, it’s how well you play the spec you have.
Twitter: gravitydk
Yeah I ignored Sam’s post too, it didn’t pass my IQ test.
I must say a good DK tank should be able to tank in all three spec
& Frost isn’t easier to play as compared to blood, Frost doesn’t have fix rotation and uses proc which in my view is more fun than blood.
Sam you’re a noob, first of all it has been proven that frost puts out the most tps out of all dk specs. Second of all blood is one of the easiest dk specs for a healer to keep up due to obviouse reasons. Third of all aoe tanks are for noob tanks and pro tanks who enjoy it alike, Single target tanks however are generally not for noob tanks.
Frost is the strongest single target tanking specs for a dk, the only aoe threat it puts out is burst aoe, sort of like a warrior’s thunder clap although Im pretty sure it can put out more threat, all the same unholy is the only tank spec that puts out good sustained aoe threat, it is also the most squishy by far, bone armor fails in comparison to unbreakable armor and blood’s healing talents.
Ok I have been here so often and read these boards enough to say 1 thing with 100% certainty.Sam might be the worst DK tank that the world will EVER see.And Sam, either go back to school or make sure you finish your remedial english class before posting again…
Aren–(sorry, reply seems to be broken), I’m not convinced about blood’s single-target threat not being king. If by proof you mean the sims, they don’t take healing into account. If you do your best to avoid overheals (without wasting GCDs waiting to use death strike that is), I am guessing (but have no proof for you) that blood’s single target threat is going to jump ahead of frost’s. If you are referring to some other proof, please let me know, as I’d like to go look at it.
That said, yes, Sam is being silly, I don’t know wtf he meant by ‘use DW Blood as your tanking spec’. Any DW blood spec is going to be horrible.
Frost tanking beeing for newb tanks and healers?
Say what? Since when did beeing able to lower the incomming damage end up as beeing for noobs?
And for the beeing easy part, then Blood is the by far easiest tankspec to play…