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23 commentsBlood tanks have so many variations in spec. You can grab talents to emphasise raid buffs or single-target threat or AOE threat. There’s even Will of the Necropolis, which is like a Plan B talent I like, but some others don’t. I thought to help people understand the choices, I’d try a diagram.
If you take my 54-8-9 blood spec from my ‘3.2 tank specs’ post‘ as the starting point, you can shift a few talents about as shown in this picture.
Shows where talents can be moved to, or avoided
In pictures, it says you can drop Hysteria, Mark of Blood and maybe even Will of the Necropolis.
You can invest those points into Scent of Blood or Morbidity (big green circles), or as second-priority choices Spell Deflection or Sudden Doom (their green circles are thinner and smaller).
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feels a bit better if you can think at wow like...
I LOVE this spec. Have a few questions.
- I’m def capped / parry & dodge at 20% / expertise 16 (working to get it to 20) / 30k health
- I have no problem holding aggro or generating threat
- had a healer tell me I was the hardest tank he had ever healed in heroics (said it wasn’t bad – it wasn’t boring)
What am I missing? I know I have to heal myself sometimes, seems like I get hit by crits a lot. If I do die it’s on a mob that everyone crits me at the same time.
Twitter: gravitydk
Hi Sonic, firstly if you are at 535+ defence skill in a 5-man heroic you cannot get crit. So you’re probably not using the right term, maybe you mean something hits you hard?
In terms of being hard to heal, your stats are in the normal range for 5-mans, so I must conclude either it’s your technique or the healer being wrong. For technique, make sure you use all the tank cooldowns at your disposal and are not being hit in the back, etc.
could it be the when tanking a mob they are around me and I just need to position them in front of me? other than vamp blood what other CD’s should I be using? Is my expertise killing me? Again, I have NO problem on single Bosses – it’s AoE that seems I need some “over-healing”.
I’m thinking about dual-spec to frost tank for AOE and heroics? (no gear change just need to dual weapon right?) What frost spec would be the best to counter this (54-8-9) blood spec?
Twitter: gravitydk
Frost is easier for 5-man heroics, but perhaps you are not positioning the target AOE mobs in front of you adequately. It’s not expertise causing this problem. You can also use IBF on big pulls, AMS if you’ve got magic damage and mind freeze to interrupt casters too (to reduce the damage you take). If you do get a 5-man/AOE spec, go with any of the frost builds I’ve listed.
Great chart.
One minor criticism- I don’t know if I am seeing impaired or what, but your “green” is more like “off-yellow”- maybe yellow and blue, red, or really any color that isn’t almost yellow would be better.
Twitter: gravitydk
I agree, will get around to this eventually.