
I took a short video, pausing on the tooltips, of a Frost two-handed DPS spec.
![]() I took a short video, pausing on the tooltips, of a Frost two-handed DPS spec. ![]() We’ve got Lich King tomorrow. I’ve just changed my spec to suit my role as off-tank. I handle the dredge ghouls and shambler, then taunt for soul reaper, and try to get chains of ice onto the Valkyrie. For that specific role, I’ve changed my spec slightly from what I was using to this. The new features are:
I have two tank specs, and most tanks who will never dps can do the same. It’s a nice situation. When I first joined my guild, on trial, I sometimes played as a dps before securing my spot in our tank corp. At another time in the past, I had a tank spec and pvp dps spec. This post is written for those tanks who can carry two tank specs. I’m not talking to those top 300 tanks who Quite a few tanks really don’t like the idea of an Icy Touch spam build. At its most extreme, this kind of spec involves skipping any talent which helps you do strikes like [Obliterate] in favour of those which help you slam Icy Touch. The playstyle is then use death runes for icy touch. Many tanks do not like it out of principle, and strongly argue against using it, because Blizzard have said they will nerf it if they Just a quick note to point out a spec worth investigating further, no epidemic Frost, both DW and 2H. Read my post and discuss in forums over here. By the way, on the website blog you’ll see “(Comments are closed)” on some blog posts, when it’s not actually true, most comments are open. It’s a bug I’m trying to fix. We’ll probably see 3.33 this week. There are a few important changes we all know about: [Icy Touch] gives loads of threat, [Will of the Necropolis] is always available and [Improved Icy Talons] stacks with itself (45% melee haste); the last being confirmed by Ghostcrawler. Other Frost changes to talents in 3.33 are not so tank-oriented but will help give us a small threat boost. Icy Slam Icy Touch will hit like shield slam. In Frost Presence, it will 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 time. Using my own gear (i232 average), the simulated difference is that those two slow dps weapons (always both with [Rune Of The Nerubian Carapace], for stamina), do ~13% more threat than fast/fast. A slow/fast combo is 8% more threat than fast/fast. Runeforges With slow/slow, if you go fallen crusader main-hand and razorice on off-hand to max out threat, it’s a 6% threat gain over two Nerubians. Quite a lot. Fast/fast with FC and RI, is 6% more than fast/fast Nerubian. Presumes you’re still over 540 (or 535 defence for 5-mans) without Nerubian. I value stamina highly, so wouldn’t recommend DPS runeforges in a raid (unless it was Ulduar or something below your gear level). Tabulated answersUsing i232 gear levels, for a 5-man tank. I include the absolute threat values from Kahorie’s sim (v1.202), then I indexed them to a baseline of the fast/fast, and put that index in brackets (it’s a percentage). Obviously, the damage difference is because of strike damage being higher with two slow weapons. 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 deathknight.info and policed all discussion into it, because it came up all the time. Now, it seems to be a debate of the past. I barely ever see questions about parrygib or complaints that DW Frost tanks are dying because they’re pretending to be rogues, or whatever. A few things changed, notably the Nerubian runeforge and the Thassarian talent, but I also think people just realised parrygib risk is negligible now because they didn’t see DW tanks dying like the naysayers had suggested. Some of the bosses also have parry-hasted turned off by Blizzard. Here, I’m going to revisit the relationship between expertise and weapon speed for tanks, and weapon speed and threat. I’m not going to cover the basics here, that’s in my main dual-wield tank post. I’ll compare DKs with Warriors for baseline purposes. Warrior parry-haste riskI need to the number of parryable attacks per minute. Special attacks All of a warrior’s tanking attacks can be parried except for shockwave, thunderclap, demo shout and conc blow. Even revenge and heroic strike can be parried. Those unparryable attacks are lower in the priority system used by tanks in a typical fight. A warrior’s threat priority has two parallel streams: (1) shield slam > revenge > devastate > shockwave | concussion blow; and (2) heroic strike, when it doesn’t conflict with the first stream. See readers’ comments below for elaboration. Let’s assume in every minute a warrior uses: thunderclap once, demo shout twice and conc blow once. Those five attacks can’t be parried. Let’s also assume a fight where the warrior is not rage starved, and can just keep going at it. There are 40 GCDs in a minute. Five are used on non-parryable specials, leaving 35. Auto-attack There’s also auto-attack, at weapon speed, the whole time. Many of them should be replaced by heroic strike, but since that can be parried too, for this analysis it nets neutral. Let’s use Rimefang, 1.6 speed. Lovely tanking weapon and readily accessible. Auto-attack at 1.6 speed is another 37.5 attacks per minute. Total Grand total of 72.5 parryable attacks per minute, based on specials + auto attack. Side note: When first writing this analysis, had thought the best way to work it out was to look at a log parse, and take the proportions of attacks used. After feedback from readers, it appears that was unnecessary since the proportions of attacks would only matter if a good number of them cannot be parried. I have included the logs I did look at in ‘further reading’ below, in case you’d like some verification of what happens in Saurfang. Death KnightIt’s more difficult to model the interaction of a DKs abilities such as Rime, so I’ve used the simulator to get an ideal case. Special attacks A two-disease DK priority will be: icy touch > plague strike > rime howling blast> obliterate > blood strike > frost strike. A Frost DK played appropriately will use Howling Blast on every Rime proc, which is not parryable. A single-disease DK will not use plague strike, but for modelling I’ll base it on two diseases since it’s a worst-case for the boss gaining parry-haste. Read more… » continue reading 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 For Frost tanks, what threat values do some of these talents provide?
I like taking the [Icy Reach] talent, 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 will. In tanking, it’s the same: you get higher TPS in dual-wield. Just remember, you should have more expertise to tank dual-wield than two-handed. What’s refreshing is a black and white statement about their design intent, from blue poster Zarhym. Q u o t e: Just curious….are we ever I have verified some of the threat comparisons using the latest version of Kahorie’s sim. It’s had a few tweaks so I wanted to see if that refinement had led to much change in the comparative threat of DK tank specs. I have also itemised the threat per talent of various blood alternatives. Blood vs Unholy I tested a mainstream Blood tank, with a survival bias in its spec, against an Unholy high-threat tank spec. Blood was 6.4% more For raids, I’d go with blood or frost. Here are my posts with much more detail. Patch Blood Frost Unholy 3.33 blood 3.3 Gravity’s Grid of Blood specs 3.3.3 Interactive talent tree to explain each talent Frost 3.3 spec here or dual-wield Unholy tanking 3.3 March 23, 2010 update: 3.33 does not change your spec much, if at all. Read my full analysis, or visit the forums to see what others have to say. Unholy should not be used Frost tanking has always been and will remain in 3.3 a very solid choice. You can tank with either dual-wield or a two-handed weapon and both are viable. DW is slightly higher threat at the moment yet is best suited to a character with 30+ expertise skill. For dual-wield frost, I have a full post you should read. 3.3.3 For 3.3.3 highest-threat 2H spec, see this forum post here. It shows that whilst the Icy Touch buff, predictably makes [Black Ice] talent more valuable than before, 5/5 Killing Machine is better plus that you should spec into IIT. Original post continues: Here I’ll talk about two-handed frost tanking. Frost tank spec templates:
A very balanced tree. Has the best snap-agro for AOE, excellent single-target threat and a mix of damage reduction talents. Formidable in Heroics and can MT raids too with the same spec, so deserves to be a very popular tree. I like warrior tanks, they have so many abilities really they deserve to be called the swiss army knife of tanks. Warriors can intercept and charge, interrupt/silence many ways, cancel fear, actively protect raid members, and more. That left me wondering, what’s the analogy for a DK? We’re pretty flexible too. Lego! ![]() the Death Knight tank We can build up a DK tank to suit a variety of tank scenarios, but unlike the swiss army knife which can use its variety of tools any old time, the DK needs to be rebuilt from lego into different shapes. Death Knight tanks are like lego. You can spec into three different tank types, and within each tree there’s a further bit of construction. Tank leaders or officers should be aware of the various construction their lego tanks can take. A good DK tank should be humble and flexible enough to do what’s best for the raid, too. I’ll chat a bit about the tree trees. » continue reading I get a lot of questions like “what’s the rotation for that spec?” Rotation is like Death Knight basics, and since I write on more advanced tanking questions, it’s not content I usually include. Besides, a DK should think in terms of priorities and not rotations. More on that distinction later. But then I started writing this, and realised… there’s some of subtlety here. I’ve played a DK since they WotLK was released, so it’s second-nature, but if you are new to the class there might be some crucial info in this post. So, here are the answers which I can then refer people to for what’s the frost/unholy/blood rotation or priority. Important context on being a DKParry/dodge: As a DPS, you attack the boss from behind and have enough hit and expertise so you do not miss. Tanks face the boss, so generally can be parried. This difference alone means a tank rotation has to be flexible because you will re-do a strike once in a while after being parried. DPS DKs, when well-geared, do not have this problem and can use a very tight rotation. Priority/rotation: Tanks need to think in terms of a priority system. Rotations are a stepping stones towards achieving those priorities. The best DKs do not stick to a rigid rotation, they stick to a priority system. If you have to run away from a boss to avoid his Big AOE thing, then run back in, your rotation will be meaningless if the diseases have fallen off. DK damage requires diseases, so your first priority is to put them back up. Unholy presence: some DPS specs use unholy presence to they can stuff more attacks into the 20 second rune recharge cycle. If you’re using such a spec, you must know the rotation too, since they’re intimately connected, or you’re ruining your own dps. I will not cover any of those rotations here. Frost or blood presence: the rotation/priority are the same for dps and tanks, you just use different presences. The below details will work for both. Tank specs: use my tank specs launch page to find frost, unholy and blood tank specs. Blood runes and blade barrier: a tank needs to always have blood runes used up or recharging. Even if they’ve become death runes, spend them asap. You need that for blade barrier. A DPS DK does not have that priority. The priority systems written below have an overriding principle of keeping blade barrier up, but there isn’t a hard and convenient rule I can give you. I do whatever I can to keep blade barrier up. I have it as a watched buff. I’ll notice its remaining duration. Even if the boss has no diseases but barrier is about to expire, I’ll spend blood runes on blood strike/ pestilence/ blood tap /rune tap / obliterate (whatever) to get barrier back up. Exception is if you’re just starting the fight, you’d open by running in with an icy touch, plague strike in melee range, then use blood strike twice. Runic power dump: frosties use frost strike, the others death coil. Tanks keep 20 RP at all times; save that much for rune strike or IBF. Don’t use it on a dump. If you have a spare GCD and nothing to do, hit horn of winter for some free RP. » continue readingA 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:
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
Survival: incoming damage
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