Is threat fun?

Blizzard, in the developer chat, has asked the tank community for some discussion and feedback on whether threat is fun.

Q. You talk a lot about changing how we [ more...]

The taunt game

Tanks do a lot of taunting off one another. Last week I was reflecting on a post from Chev about taunting. He has tabulated the number of debuffs your fellow [ more...]

Notes on killing Lich King, for DK tanks

Splug has offered a few tips on tanking the Lich King, which are worth noting. Interesting question there about Unholy possibly being useful, and on death drip the phase 1 [ more...]

Upgrades for tanking you might not have considered

Wintergrasp.

If you’re a tank on i232 or worse gear, you might have some options not considered before, using PvP gear for stamina. If you’ve run out of Frost Emblems for [ more...]

4-piece in Rawr

A quick note to advise that Rawr Tank DK module doesn’t (yet) account for the 4-piece set bonus of T10 gear. This means you can’t use its survival/mitigation points to [ more...]

Tier-gear or not, for strict 10-man tanks

Choosing how to spend your Emblems of Frost is also a decision on whether you get the 4-piece set bonus, which is particularly complicated if you’re a strict 10-man tank.

For [ more...]

Parry-haste confirmed to be mostly off in Icecrown Citadel

Posting here on parry-haste, the proc nerf and following me on Twitter.

The other day I posted about preliminary findings which show ICC has parry-haste mostly turned off for the raid [ more...]

Parry-haste doesn't seem to exist in ICC

1. A clever nerd wrote an addon which checks if the boss you’re fighting has been parry-hasted.

2. Another clever geek wrote a script which parses logs to determine if parry-haste [ more...]

Bone shield has 2s cooldown

A writer on EJ did enough tests to confirm the length of [Bone Shield] internal cooldown, for each charge to be used up: 2 seconds. It might be slightly lower [ more...]

PvP weapons for tanking

The new season PvP weapons are awesome. If you can get into an arena team for points and enough rating, man the rewards are sweet.

If you’re only a 10-man raider [ more...]

Interaction of rune strike with melee haste

I wanted to share a snippet on this finding I made whilst trying to verify the value of [Improved Icy Talons] in my previous analysis.

I thought at first Kahorie’s had [ more...]

Unbreakable armour, damage reduction

I put together a quick spreadsheet to work out what damage reduction you get from [Unbreakable Armor]. In my gear, approximately, I’d take 13.5% less damage when it’s up than [ more...]

Tanking weapons in 3.3

I thought it might be useful to review the tank weapon choices for Death Knights, and provide a rank order.

Officers distributing loot could consider this a priority table: I would suggest [ more...]

Best gems for tanking, socket bonus considered

What gems do you use for tanking? This should be fairly well-known, but it might be an interesting discussion if we have any avoidance advocates out there who don’t like [ more...]

Tanking to be less squishy

DK tanks can feel squishy compared to block-tanks in 5-mans. You can offset a lot of this through skill. We have a pretty impressive arsenal to use.

Here are some important [ more...]

Weapon speed effect on dual-wield tanking

Dual-wield frost tanking threat is effected by the weapon speed.

My weapons. I have two: Black Icicle, and I also have two Rimefang’s Claw. They’re not hard to get, just takes [ more...]

Dual-wield, weapon speed and expertise

Frost dual-wield tanking is very popular now. Six months ago, many people were violently against the idea. A year ago, it was so bad I put up a sticky on [ more...]

Unholy, not so bad?

Just wanted you to know, I checked Unholy vs Frost and Blood in Kahorie’s sim, and the TPS gap I’d seen in earlier simulations has been closed somewhat. This is [ more...]

Why I'm jealous of maintankadins

In order:

[Consecration]
[Hammer of the Righteous]
[Holy Shield]
[Holy Wrath]

I used to be a pally tank too, so I know what I’m missing when I do Halls of Reflection: no gaps in the [ more...]

Collection of good reading

I read a number of blogs. You can download a file containing them all from my sidebar, which can import to Google Reader. I sometimes read on the train, or [ more...]

New TankTotals includes new effective health

Progression tanks, before the next wing is opened:

I recommend you get this new version of TankTotals, get familiar with it, give the author some feedback and then use it when [ more...]

On Improved Icy Talons: melee haste buff

Improved Icy Talons

This is a really important buff, providing melee haste like a talented windfury totem. Either you provide it or a shaman does. In a 25-man raid, you should [ more...]

Frost talents by the point

For Frost tanks, what threat values do some of these talents provide?

chill of the grave: +1.6% with Icecrown dodge-nerf radiance, 1.8% outside it (tested by going from 1 to 2 points)
scent [ more...]

Two blood tank extremes

Blood is so flexible. You can spec into survival, single or AOE threat. What’s the threat you gain from a heavy threat build compared to one for survival?

Survival

Here’s a really [ more...]

Frost is intended to dual-wield

Blizzard have given a unequivocal statement that Frost is designed for dual-wielding. That two-handed Frost will not, and is not intended to, give the same DPS (for raiding) as dual-wield [ more...]