Rawr, the multi-faceted simulation tool, has had a developer working on the DK tank module for a while now. It has just been updated to reflect the 3.22 changes also.
Rawr also works for tankadins, bears and prot warriors.
This is a fairly big tool, so I can’t say for sure which features to trust yet, but it has been improving a lot with each patch. You can search for known issues, by filtering for ‘tankDK’. You’ll see its
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A poster on dk.info was wondering about this hybrid spec, probably best called Dreadplate Blood, 21/41/5.
It takes a lot of Frost talents, but then goes into blood for some nice survival options (rune tap and Vot3W). I was curious to see how it stacked up in threat, because in theory it should be fairly weak.
Simulation confirms Dreadplate Blood is low in threat:
Blood 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
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Plate tank gear you can get from emblems, BoEs from the AH or professions. Useful to plan gearing up a new or alt tank without having to actually raid. Helps you decide which items to buy with gold or emblems.
Exclusions: the gear which requires tokens you can only get in a raid, such as from TotC-25 for tier 9.5, and excludes most Emblem of Heroism items (i200) since they’re out-dated.
For 3.3 BOP items, I have another list.
Where do I get emblems?
With patch 3.3, all Emblem of Triumph (EoT) gear will be attainable from 5-man heroics. In live 3.22, you get Emblem of Conquest (EoC) in 5-mans and EoT from the Coliseum raid. The legacy badge Emblem of Valour no longer drops anywhere, and is only available by trading-down from another emblem.
What’s an emblem worth?
There is an opportunity cost to Emblems, since they can all be traded-in for a valuable item you could auction:
Obviously, runed orbs are not a good return per emblem, you’re better to trading-down and sell a BOE i213 wrist guard.
Crusader Orbs value will change as 3.3 gets closer, and then very distinctly once its live. I don’t know where their price will end up. But because EoT will be freely available in 5-mans, you would expect the supply to far outstrip demand and we’d find a lower value on crusader orbs and therefore a lower opportunity cost on buying gear with those emblems.
Do I use emblems or gold to buy gear?
In patch 3.22, on strictly this basis, Wapach’s i200 for 2000g is not great value compared to Thassarian’s Pauldrons i232 for 30 EoT (=2790g equivalent).
However, you need to factor in (a) the value of your time to get 30 EoT plus (b) what alternative tank items those 30 EoT could buy you. You may be better buying Wapach for 2Kg, then saving the 30 EoT towards leggings since you can’t buy any legs with gold.
Gear list
Head
Neck
Found some great addons too, but first a snippet on levelling:
I ran the no-epidemic unholy dps specs in the simulator for L68, to see how it scales at low gear levels. Result is it checks out at the same dps as traditional. I updated my Death Knight levelling specs page with builds.
Having just got my new DK to L75 in blood, I’m going to try unholy for some variety and to get a feel for this short
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Oct 9th: patch 3.3 will change unholy again, back to a spec with reaping, epidemic and a traditional deep unholy build. For Unholy in patch 3.3: read my full analysis.
The below is accurate for patch 3.22
If you’ve been reading Elitist Jerks unholy dps thread, you’ll know this, but many people can’t bear reading those threads so this will be important news. In either case, what I’m bringing is a tank build based on the changes in unholy.
What’s changed is that a few talents which used to be sacrosanct in all unholy builds are no longer:
- epidemic (longer diseases) and reaping (death runes) are not used
- for tanks, epidemic is optional, but reaping is definitely out
- the new rotation is only 10 seconds long.
I have found that a tank build based on this new model generates higher threat than the best I could get out of a traditional unholy build. The analysis of a no-epidemic build has been done by those clever chaps at EJ, and I do not take credit for it, I just offer my adaption for tanking. Probably, for tanks it’ll be no-reaping and deeps will also drop epidemic, but both will do this new short rotation.
Another factor is that in the current endgame, many DK tanks do not value AMS or AMZ. Personally I like to have them for flexibility in all situations, but if you drop them that gives another 4 points you can put into threat talents. The guys at EJ have mixed opinions on it but the weight tends toward dropping them for endgame tanking in return for more threat.
So what is the highest threat 3.22 unholy tank build?
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March 23 2010: checked for 3.3.3.
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?
No parry-haste, Feb 9 2010, almost none of the Icecrown bosses have parry-haste turned on. Therefore, parrygib is irrelevant on most bosses. Therefore, don’t worry about expertise anymore!
3.3.3
For the highest threat dual-wield frost spec in 3.3.3, see this forum post. I do not recommend Icy Touch spam builds.
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.
More about expertise and hit»
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
- 3.33 changed the stacking for IIT, my full analysis is here.
You cannot DW tank as Unholy or Blood, not enough threat. Frost is it.
Rotation / priority
Read the full post here.
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?
Remember most ICC bosses basically don’t have parry-haste turned on! This post was written before that was known. » continue reading
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.
Powered by Hackadelic Sliding Notes 1.6.4
I have downloaded the patch 3.2.2 now. Here are the notes for your interest while servers are being maintained and until MMO or someone produces a nicely formatted version.
Boubou wins, here’s his version with all changes.
Related to DKs, the patch notes are detailed below: » continue reading
I’ve updated all key posts (including my main post) on the three DK tank talents for 3.2.2.
You can refer to my 3.22 index post to find them all.
In 3.22, glyphed bone shield will have eight charges over two minutes, whereas in 3.2 it has six. I really like that change.
Update: patch 3.22 is downloading for me for USA server now.
Currently, PTR 3.22 unbreakable armour gives +25% armour and the glyph takes it to +30% (tooltip on glyph is a bit confusing).
If you compare that to bone shield at 15 seconds, giving a flat 20% reduction on top of your normal tank armour, I find that bone shield is ahead on total damage reduction. I modelled this in a google spreadsheet.
I used example armour of 25123 unbuffed and 27858 buffed.
Unbuffed, UA leaves you taking 32.66% of the
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This index post helps readers find my posts on the 3.22 changes for DK tanking. I had it stickied to front page for a while.
Death knight tank builds for unholy, frost and blood
new: highest threat no-epidemic Unholy DK tank build
dual-wield tanking in 3.22 (DW DK tanking)
initial commentary on the 3.22 changes. Patch notes 3.22 from the downloader.
Find everything else on pwnwear through my new index
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For Unholy in patch 3.3: read my full analysis.
Sept 28: In 3.22 the below spec is no longer the highest threat unholy build, it’s now with no-epidemic.
October 1st: the below analysis has a major error in the character sheet I used, overweighting attack power. Look at the no-epidemic page for the latest on unholy.
Original post continues:
I did a few simulations of a Death Knight deep Unholy tank build to see how useful the new Subversion and Scourge Strike glyph are. This is using patch 3.22 changes. I also wanted to check the relative values of wandering plague, blood-caked blade, ravenous dead, and epidemic.
Read my conclusion for the highest tps DK unholy spec I could find.
These tests are using Kahorie’s simulator v1.1.1 which knows about the PTR changes. My usual caveats apply and baseline stats used (they’re at the bottom of this post).
Results:
- 2 points in wandering plague are worth the same DPS as 2 in blood-cake blade
- wandering plague is better, however, since it scales with raid buffs, hits AOE, and doesn’t increase boss-parry risk. I didn’t expect it to have been as good as BCB though, that’s good news
- 2 points in subversion is a tiny bit slightly less DPS (~0.9%) than two in wandering plague or BCB, so basically you can consider them equal for tanking purposes
- 2 points in epidemic, when you also have the new SS glyph, is worth less than two in those other talents mentioned; ie. 2.2% less dps when spec’d into epidemic instead of subversion
- I double-checked, plague strike glyph is pathetic. You can’t use it instead of SS glyph and think epidemic is enough.
Can you just use the new SS glyph and have zero in epidemic? They both work to extend disease duration, so do you need both? Here’s what I found:
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3.22 is now live, check my index post.
My tank builds and levelling specs have been updated.
These changes mean:
- Unholy dps will go back to using Scourge Strike (instead of Unholy Obliterate, because of the glyph, subversion and dirge changing).
- Frost tanks will be awesome again, with Unbreakable Armour actually being worth using (the new glyph only gives 5% of your base armour, so that’s around 1200)
- Blood will not be the overarching dominant tank spec it is now because its vampiric blood has been balanced to 15s glyphed, bone shield is back to one minute and frost is fixed
- heart strike’s cleave got nerfed but it’s still good, and not changed on a single-target
- plus… dual-wield tanking is back on the agenda with RS threat fixed in DW specs. Basically, you just need 30 expertise to use two fast tank weapons and you’re only going to be parrygibbed as much as a warrior (ie. if they’re ok, you’re ok). Read the whole article.
- But to make up for it the T9 set bonus will be 10s not 20s reduction.
Sept 12 update:
- unholy bone shield reduced to 3 charges, and its glyph to +1. This is them completing the change from 2min to 1 min; vampiric blood was tweaked in one patch to 1 min with 15s uptime. Blizzard push patches in bits, so this is their complete patch for the talent now (as opposed to an afterthought).
- My paladin colleagues will be sad about this “Ardent Defender: This talent now reduces damage taken below 35% health by 7/13/20% instead of 10/20/30%.”
- Warrior tanks might like this odd buff “Critical Block: This talent now grants a 20/40/60% chance to block double the normal amount instead of 10/20/30%.” Source.
» continue reading
Verified for 3.22 plus commentary on no-epidemic unholy.
What are the specs and talent options for levelling up a Death Knight? Fortunately, they’re all good. Here are some templates to help you decide between unholy, frost and blood levelling specs.
I have had the (un)fortunate pleasure of levelling two DKs. As of writing, I’m L68. My previous main Gravity tanked Ulduar 25 in England but because of a move back to Australia, I decided to reroll. (You can’t transfer EU to Oceanic servers).
You can get to L68 in about 1 day and 12 hours played (I did) by using a flying mount at L60 (costs 620g with no faction discount).
I’ve included L68 and L79 versions of the specs so you can see how you build out the spec as you go. I even did some dps sims.
 A good quest for tankspot readers The specs
First a few explanatory notes.
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Dec 18th: updated for 3.3, using latest calculations from the simulator, and adjusted for ICC avoidance aura. Jan 4th: dual-wield frost updated.
DPS Death Knights are really into Equivalance Points (“EP”) to help them decide between one piece of gear and another.
Since I’m a tank, DPS is TPS and it’s not the most important thing. I usually have enough threat. That said, it can be useful to understand which stats are going to contribute more to threat if
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Verified for 3.22 and 3.3.
See my 3.3 Blood spec page.
There are so many possible and valid variations on a Blood maintank spec, I thought it’d be useful for me to outline a few choices. Choosing a blood spec can give you an anxiety disorder.
My previous post on tank specs gave this one spec as a maintank template for 25-mans. Here are some alternatives:
- Survival-oriented: loses raid-utility of Abomination’s Might (10% AP buff) and Hysteria, to gain Spell Deflection and Mark of Blood. Works if you have enhancement shaman reliably in the raid. Will require more careful RP-management since there is no Scent of Blood, so that you always have RP for IBF and RS.
- Threat-oriented: no raid utility, also loses Rune Tap (self-healing) to gain Sudden Doom and Subversion. Requires someone else in the 25-man raid is buffing 10% Attack Power. Can swap will of the necropolis for rune tap if you prefer a more proactive tanking style, like this.
- Heroic 5-man bias: good spec to choose if you’re 2nd spec is for dps. No will of the necropolis, but has Abom Might and Corpse Explosion for 5-mans along with glyph of DnD so your AOE works.
- Single target tweaks: if desired, you can swap Rune Tap for Sudden Doom to gain single-target threat, or glyph of DnD for glyph of Rune Strike
- Raid tanking tweaks: you could drop Abominations Might if someone else brings it.
- 1/3 Scent of Blood to give that bit more RP for corpse explosion, RS and DCs.
I also have a diagram showing where talents can be moved. Attack speed reduction
The specs keep Improved Icy Touch (giving 20% melee and ranged attack speed reduction) since it can be applied so easily by a DK. I put it even on a ‘threat oriented’ spec, becauses it reduces incoming damage and that’s more important than tps.
Read on why this is important, plus about corpse explosion in heroics.
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From: Death Knight tanking specifically, choose equipment | 
Tags: 3.22, rawr, Simulation, tank 
