By Gravity
18 commentsSure, Unholy’s fairly weak for tanking, but does it matter?
The usual argument I hear, a flawed one at that, is “you pay your $15, you choose your spec”. That is true in a solo game. In a raid, no, you should pick a good spec that works, or you impact the other 9 or 24 people’s ability to progress. If you want to pick a useless spec, go play solo.
That said, Unholy tank is not useless. It isn’t a fail-tank spec. It is not as good as Blood or Frost, but it is good enough for many raiders outside hard-modes. (I still wouldn’t use it.)
However Vigan and CSPenn like Unholy tanking. They’re not retards. In fact, Chris is a Professor.
If they were in guilds doing hard-modes, they’d have to respec into Blood or Frost. If their raid was wiping on normal modes because of tank-death events or healer throughput/mana issues (ie. not enough damage reduction talents), they’d have to respec. I think those kinds of signs would be in your face pretty fast, and a smart person would consider a respec.
I’ve long hoped that Unholy would be viable, I like it, but I’m letting go of that attachment because now I cannot see it as good enough for me. My guild really does our best, in our limited raid time, to progress as best we can. I do not want to give any edge to Blizzard’s AI if I can tilt the game in my favour instead.
Fail specs are:
- melee hunter wtf
- tanking without the 5/5/5 baseline DK talents
- tanking without other tree’s mandatory avoidance/armour buffing/stamina inducing talents
You can fail in other ways that are more catastrophic, like allowing mobs to hit you up the ass (you should always face the enemy), or tanking in unholy presence (oops, most of us have done that once after a wipe run). You could raid with dps who cannot target switch quickly enough, etc.
Point is, if you personally love Unholy, why not use it? Whilst I’d not recommend Unholy in ICC, there is a question of finding the balance between enjoying yourself and success. Sometimes you have to make personal compromises in order to succeed. If Unholy is not causing failure conditions, and you love it, then keep that bone shield spinning.
For others like me, who optimise just for the sake of optimisation: Frost or Blood.
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Twitter: cspenn
Yeah, my guild is still working on Naxx. Unholy tanking in iLvl 251 gear works just fine in Naxx! ICC10/25 – no, but as a guild, we won’t be there before we’re all decked out in iLvl 450 Cata greens anyway
Christopher S. Penn´s last blog ..The danger of the dabbler
We’ve just gotten to Putricide 10-man and so far it’s working dandy. Guess future will tell. But then again I have until now always had a blood backup. Stupid character migrations.
I wish I could make frost sing like I can unholy though, I really want to like it.
I’ve been really trying to make Frost work for me, but I absolutely love my current Unholy spec. Might go for Frost PVP with my dual spec… it’s a complete mess right now.
Anyway, I love the mentality that “I can’t make it work… so it doesn’t work.”
There aren’t many viable pre-made specs or rotations for Unholy tanks, so you’re pretty much on your own figuring it out. It’s not a DPS oriented spec, so if you want to tank and do 5k DPS you’re out of luck. You really need to think more like a caster, and if you’re wasting points in raw DPS talents you’re doing it wrong. Glyphed and geared though… the survivability and AOE threat control are unmatched in either Blood or Frost spec IMO, and damage mitigation is on par (and in many cases better) if you know your class and your gear inside and out.
But hey, by all means don’t listen to me, I just googled my way here trying to find constructive criticism on Unholy tanking. Go find that pre-made Frost or Blood rotation, and wipe your group so I can try to defend myself to more people who complain that they don’t want to run anything with a DK tank.
Twitter: gravitydk
hi Stray, perhaps when you look further around the site you’ll find I’ve been one of the most supportive and thorough commentators on unholy tanking for a long time. I have those pre-made specs and rotations too
.
Longer-term readers will understand this and my earlier post on 2s bone shield are me finally giving up.
Wow, you made a separate post about the topic.
You’re right, though. If we were doing hardmodes and tank death was a common problem, I’d respec.
There might be a slight reasoning for staying unholy even then. Since you got two tanks, you can mostly be off-tank, but switch to main-tank on magic damage heavy fights. It sure was handy on my first attempt at Toravon.
Fun fact: if you time Anti-Magic Shell very good on the fight, you can reset the debuff stack. Either that, or it’s a bug. It happened to me mid-fight, making tank damage much more manageable for the healers. I didn’t die, but a lot of the dps and healers did.
With all that said and done, you’re right in not recommending Unholy. If someone loves it so much they’ll stick with it no matter what, they’ll mostly ignore what you say. And if they don’t, they should have all the facts on the table when making the decision.
Vigan´s last blog ..Hear my plea: Will a paladin suit me?
I think as a progression guild you spec what is needed and on offraids or when you do 5 mans or so then do what you want why is this you say …
Well to start. A tank is the most important person of the raid as if he dies it is over DPS and healers can die and it will still be possible. If the tank eats the dirt it is game over.
Also spec towards your healers. When I’m in a raid and I don’t I have a holy or disp priest I tend to go to Blood as they don’t have fast or any hots.
For Druids and Paladin I tend to go Imba frost. They have always a heal or a becon on me and druids well they have a constant wave of hots going for me
So I guess the nicer I make it for my healers the less chance I have of dieing horribly.
Twitter: shieldbreakr
As one of the first Deathknights on Deathwing, I came up in the school of frost tanking. For ages (almost a year now), Frost has been the exclusive tree of endgame DK tanking. Go frost or go home, as it were. However, posts like this make rethink my x/51/x-ness. Probably not for raiding anytime soon, but definitely something to try out when I get back on the tanking horse for Naxx drunk pugs or equally silly outings.
Either way, keep bringing it up, Gravity. More people talking unholy tanking might make a dev think about it and maybe Cata will have a “hawtness boneshield tanking spec” in it somewhere. We’ll see.
btw, I still believe in “I pay the $15, I choose the spec”, but equally I believe that the guild has the right to bench me for showing up to ICC runs with spinning bones flying around me. Actions, reactions, and open communication in all things.
i’m still attached to my unholy tank spec too, knowedly weaker as it is.
re: death and decay not being a benefit to unholy threat so much as a makeup for blood… have you considered that the blood tank spec you recommend has 2/3 morbidity, frost 0/3 morbidity, while an unholy tanking spec would likely have 3/3?
i’m trying to get used to frost, but even with it’s better “snap aggro” somehow i feel less able to react to an additional set of mobs pulling at an untimely situation, more than just the difference between 0/3 and 3/3 morbidity. as i wrote this i struggled to come up with a good reason why, since both specs would have the same availability of blood runes to pestilence and bloodboil, and frost strike has range aoe unholy doesn’t have =p
Twitter: gravitydk
Unholy’s AOE is unquestionably awesome, just not snappy like Frost, but definitely stronger for long AOE fights. My point is that the 2-piece has led some people to think “it saves Unholy”, when it doesn’t. If you want an overpowered AOE tank spec, then glyphed Unholy with 2-piece bonus is it… but the catch is that’s still not a boss-tanking spec.
I said viable Gravity, and I don’t doubt you put alot of time into your spec. But you yourself are saying it isn’t viable.
This is pretty much what I’m using…
http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=6&tal=0050320000000000000000000000325200010000000000000000000002052303300200152233001003133100
Still not to ICC with the guild, but so far this has proved to be incredibly versatile for me. Desecration IMO is a necessity if you’re going to tank Unholy, for added threat and to keep everything in front of you on trash. It’s all of 2 points. Unholy blight is a cheap single target DOT for 1 whole point. AMZ comes in handy all the time in random heroics. And with extra diseases, 5% per disease adds up every time you proc a death strike. Say what you will about On a Pale Horse, but 2 points to a faster recovery from a stun or fear is priceless to me. I have DND and Bone Shield glyphed, and would kill for the set bonus but… not quite there yet.
Not saying it’s perfect, but if you’re willing to drop the mentality that DPS = threat you can do some amazing things as an Unholy tank. If it doesn’t work in ICC, so be it. But I’ve been hearing that it won’t work here, there, or everywhere since I started tanking at lvl 60, and so far I’m still watching those bones spin.
Twitter: gravitydk
I’ll be blunt: my unholy tank spec pwns yours on so many levels. You could get pale horse if you wanted, but … man there are so many other talents in your build that are not just ’suboptimal’ but actually bad choices for tanking. I think it’s fine to stick with unholy if you love it, but you really could do a better tank spec than the one you’re using.
@Stray
I’m stunned if you have used that spec successfully to hold threat.
1.) No Bladed Armor, already the single strongest tank threat buff, bar none.
2.) No Rage of Rivendare, pivotal central threat buff for Unholy.
3.) No Necrosis, no Blood-caked Blades, no Desolation
4.) You climb all the way to Lichborne without putting a single point in Black Ice (but instead in RPM and Icy Reach?!)
Your spec is STUFFED full of utility, but is severely lacking in almost every quality threat talent you could reach. Your spec reads like a PvP spec, not a tanking spec. (FYI Desecration does not buff your threat it just keeps things slowed which is a nice utility but is only meaningful *really* if things are running past you or pulling off you, perhaps with your spec it buys you more time to keep reining targets back in with taunts?)
I’m all for anti-fear mechanics, but tell me the last time you got feared in a raid? (Let me save you the trouble, Auriaya in Ulduar was the last time was feared…)
Tanking requires a balance of two elements: threat and survival. You have to hold the targets’ attention and survive the beating they dish out.
As DKs the only moves we use that have bonus threat functions are DnD and RS. Beyond that DPS *does* equal TPS with a multiplier. You can say what you will about threat being easier in Wrath with decent gear but that doesn’t mean you can trade almost every single threat buff and still hope to hold a candle to skilled DPS putting out their best. I have what you would probably describe as “DPS spec with tanking talents” and I still have to work for threat sometimes against my dps. When they pop cooldowns I’ve watched them sustain over 13-15k dps for as long as 15-30 sec. If you can’t hold your target’s attention you are no longer a tank.
I’ll be the first person to say, “do it your way” but I wouldn’t come here and claim that your way is the best.
Twitter: Cimegs5088
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#j0EZ0xZbghcxczgchx0usq:MrLVMm
This is the built im testing on.
No offense but that looks like an Unholy DPS spec with 5/5/5 at the top and no ghoul. “Bad” is relative, and personally I don’t see why a tank needs a ton of points in base DPS talents like Necrosis, Rage of Rivendare, Blood Caked Blade, Impurity, and Desolation (23 points total) unless you’re trying to compensate for really bad single target threat control problems (unsuccessfully it would appear) or you want to be a DPS-tank which is just bad form IMO. Meanwhile you’re skipping a valuable cooldown in AMZ and Desecration entirely.
For what it’s worth though the site has convinced me to put 5 points into Bladed Armor.
Twitter: gravitydk
No offence taken. I’m pleased you’re still talking to me after I was rude.
You’re right, my spec is threat oriented. Here’s a tanking-oriented version instead. The only talent difference really are AMS/AMZ because I do not rate any of the others as useful for raid tanking.
In 5-mans, I rate improved death grip more highly. I like slowing-talents (you like desecration) but don’t think they make enough of a difference really. Note that Desecration doesn’t give you any threat (you thought it did).
Also, you have Ravenous Dead. You’ll get more value from Necrosis or BCB. The extra STR is weak for us. You probably don’t need Icy Reach because you have death coils which have the long-range. You don’t really need RPM (but I guess you wanted it because you had 3/3 SoB) but you realise now that Bladed Armour is in fact better than those alternatives, and when you get 5/5 there, you’ll need to take points out of RPM and Icy Reach; there’s a net gain.
You took Lichborne, but I think it’s a complete waste for an Unholy build (Frosties could take it, but even then I still think it’s a waste) because there aren’t any ICC or ToC raid bosses who kill you with fear and in 5-mans… well, it’s a 5-man, the damage isn’t high enough.
Hope that helps you see where I’m coming from.
Twitter: Cimegs5088
It’s a built im testing on to see if there’s any chance of Unholy being viable and at least close to the other specs in terms of TPS.
Survivability wise there isnt a lot of physical damage mitigation cooldowns that we have access to for a deep unholy spec.
Tanking is just not about “survivabilit”, if that’s the case, i’ve another spec that is so called “heavy-survivability”, which Gravity knew and rated it minus 2 billion. LoL. (yea it was a significant fall behind in terms of TPS)
I like Ravenous Dead far too much to get rid of… the extra str is nice considering how much we have to spec for stam, and if you want to look at it as an additional cooldown you could even spec 2 or 3 points for a short cooldown on raise dead or a perma-pet for when you’re taking heavy damage (I did, it works). So that gives you Bone Shield every minute, 40% health from Death Pact every 2 minutes, Icebound Fortitude every 2 minutes, more health every time you land a Death Strike… and… let’s go balls to the wall and say you’re on the verge of a wipe… Army of the Dead (with Ravenous Dead for a 60% boost in your army’s str+sta) can be ANOTHER (high DPS… but potentially messy) cooldown… and this is above and beyond AMZ, and anti magic shell. yet a guaranteed 20 seconds once a minute makes Unholy not viable for the sake of bosses hitting too fast? It’s even more ironic that Blood is supposedly the “self healing” spec.
Threat simulators are never going to show the intangibles you’re going to see or can come up with in the real world. If and when I have single target aggro problems I’ll check the numbers and move some more points around… for now tho I’m pretty happy with what I’ve ended up with. If it doesn’t work in ICC10 or 25… so be it. Seems to work like a champ in ICC 5-mans, so I’ll just be happy with that.
Hello All,
Just wanted to say how good the website is and how interesting following the comments here has been. I am surprised since the norm is finding a couple gems in the logs and mainly cat’s litter elsewhere.
I usually raid as a DPS range character. I used to raid as a healer. Truth is I was always afraid of tanking. When TBC came and I finally got my Drood up I decided to try tanking. I was always soooo scared of it. Now I can say tanking is the best experience in the game for me, when not raiding or PUGing. I have raided now as a BearTank, as Tankadin but also I have done heroic runs as a Warrior Tin Man.
I obviously levelled a DK … and then funnily enough I tried to DPS with him … and got bored. I then started taking a look around tanking websites and read a little. I tried … don’t ask me why … Unholy. It took me just a couple of days to fall in love with it. My specc is virtually the same threat oriented specc Gravity has.
My DK is currently a Primordial Saronite farmer for my main dps range dude but I can say that for a 5th alt I am loving the experience with him. True, I still have a softer spot for my Orc Warr Tank but right now the Unholy heroic tanking beats my Tankadin experience.
Thank you all for reading and for your posting!