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Ghostcrawler has given an update, very important one at that, on maintankadin changes. They allude to a design for the damage debuff which I hope will be applied to DK tanks, too. Here is how Prot paladins are working in our current beta build. You might not see these changes in the next beta build, but in the one after that. Things are still in a high degree of flux however. Shield of the Righteous August 3rd, 2010 | 4 comments |
 From: Mechanics and systems beta |  Tags: aoe, Cataclysm Beta, paladin Here is an useful way to show various talent spec choices against a matrix of survival, threat and utility indicated as a third factor. I thought I’d call it Gravity’s Grid! This can help you understand the purpose of a spec. » continue reading April 9th, 2010 | Leave a comment |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically | Tags: 3.33, aoe, blood, Cataclysm speculation before Beta, choices, gravity's grid, single target, spec, st, threat 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 pointers which are often overlooked by new DK tanks. It’s a good checklist. Tank tree cooldownsUse your tree’s big cooldown a lot: [Vampiric Blood], [Unbreakable Armor] or [Bone Shield]. They’ve got short cooldowns. Use them on trash. I use UA on trash very happily, it’s ideal for that purpose. BS is just awesomeness and AMZ can be very nice but most Unholy DKs will have spec’d into threat instead of that talent. Many padawans tanks save all their cooldowns for bad moments then end up struggling on trash. On a boss fight, of course, you should save them for the damage spikes you know about. On trash though, use them on the pull to reduce initial damage or if you get to 50% health during the pull. Don’t do 10 minutes of trash and never use your cooldowns. VB isn’t so great in 5-mans, as its more a throughput talent that’s for raiding, so in 5-mans its better suited to oh-shit moments than the other two trees. That said, blood has Rune Tap which can be used liberally. Icebound FortitudeThink ahead, and don’t waste [Icebound Fortitude] if you are going to need it on the boss who’s coming up, or a huge pull of AOE adds, but otherwise use it liberally. January 14th, 2010 | 13 comments - (Visit our forum to comment) |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically, Playing better, new to tanking | Tags: ams, aoe, heroics, ibf, tank, training In order:
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 AOE threat and reflective AOE threat. Rhidach enjoyed himself in Plagueworks last night, with a sidenote on the AOE awesomeness that is Paladin. Over the last week, I ran the Blood tank spec for 5-mans (includes death and decay glyph and corpse January 7th, 2010 | 23 comments |
From: Tanking in general | Tags: aoe, blood, frost, halls of reflection, maintankadin, paladin, threat A lot has been written about why you should not keyboard turn (it’s too slow), and that you should keybind. I wrote about how PvP improves your raiding too. I’m going to skip that preamble and just talk briefly about keybinds.
Yesterday the little survey I did on myself included a snippet which Perditio commented on, saying he had the same binds! Spooky because they’re not the most obvious ones. Movement I move with ESDF. If you are still on WASD I recommend you spend the next month getting your muscle memory into ESDF instead; you gain QAZ as keybind options. Take your time with keybind changes, you need muscle memory to set in before you move onto the next change. Do one thing at a time; this could take months. Movement keys particularly took me ages to get used to. Rebind non-combat actions set by the default UI to shift or alt equivalents (alt is better since it’s usually an awkward key to use in an action binding). So you’d change ‘reply’ to be shift or alt R. Rebind ‘open all bags’ to alt-B, ‘open character panel’ to alt-c, ‘pvp panel’ to alt-h and so on. Bindings
Emergencies: Blood tap and ERW should be easy to get to, since you will use them for an emergency tank cooldown or a snap DnD. I have shift-1 is blood tap, shift-2 is ERW (all rune reset). November 6th, 2009 | 26 comments - (Visit our forum to comment) |
From: Tanking in general, new to tanking | Tags: aoe, keybinding, macro, pvp, tank What is the best Death Knight Unholy tank spec in 3.3? I set out to simulate the various talent choices to find the highest threat unholy DK tank build. Below is a comprehensive analysis. Updated Jan 11, 2010. In patch 3.33, there are no changes which significantly effect Unholy, so the below remains correct. Changes in 3.3Firstly, some background on the 3.3 changes. The writer Consider of EJ has a very well structured OP on Unholy DPS, with notes on 3.3. Scourge strike will change to a 50/50 physical and magical attack, from its current 100% shadow damage in 3.22. This means unholy scales with physical raid buffs in the same way as warriors and the other DK tank trees; the net effect is it scales much better in 3.3 than 3.22. Hits about 60% harder. Update: Reaping (to create death runes) is great for flexibility but, at an i245 gear level, is a slight loss of threat because those 3 points could be spent elsewhere. You gain about 1.8% threat by using no-reaping. Differences between DPS and Tank One thing I found is the tank spec has different weightings on the talents, to a greater degree than usual. Most notably, in the 3.3 DPS spec you skip Necrosis, but for tanks it is still the best choice for that talent tier. We use different glyphs too. Changes from 3.22 Epidemic is definitely back; for tanks basically we’re going to the traditional deep unholy spec. Reaping is optional. The 3.3 Unholy tank specThe best yet balanced threat spec I found, after pretty extensive testing is 12/8/50, with one point free. Alternatively, with no reaping, you spec like this 13/8/50. It’s about 1.8% more threat. I put the last point into SoB. This linked spec already has one point in wandering plague for AOE, which for ST threat isn’t as good as one in Necrosis; move it if you’re solely emphasising ST threat. Necrosis, for ST threat is better than Desolation, for a tank, but since Desolation also helps you in AOE too, I weight it more highly. You can put that final point into a few spots:
I tested the spec in two gear levels, and it won in both, and talents scaled about linear in both too. My Kahorie download page has those character xml files; one’s Coliseum level (Bluedragon), the other Ulduar 10/25 (Gravity). November 2nd, 2009 | 44 comments - (Visit our forum to comment) |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically, choose spec | Tags: 3.3, aoe, bone shield, glyph, kahorie, Simulation, spec, tank, tps, unholy 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:
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?September 28th, 2009 | 28 comments - (Visit our forum to comment) |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically, Out of date posts | Tags: 3.22, aoe, buffs, epidemic, kahorie, Rune Strike, Simulation, tank, tps, unholy Other related posts
Spec bias I wonder if the new no-trash bosses and encounter design in the Coliseum will give a bias to any particular tank class or sub-spec. Personally if I don’t have to worry about spawns or AOE, then I’d spec a blood DK. I know we won’t have trash in there, at least. On the other hand, I need to farm heroics, so will want serious July 17th, 2009 | Leave a comment |
From: News discussion, Tanking in general | Tags: 3.2, aoe, heroics, spec, tank |
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