I’m really delighted to have this guest post! Enjoy. – Gravity
Rawr.TankDK
Hello, I’m Shazear the current contributing developer for the Tank DK module in Rawr. For those who don’t know, Rawr is a 3rd party tool to help evaluate gear for your PvE endgame WoW character. It does not have a direct in-game corresponding addon, but rather can import characters from the Character Profiler addon or via WoW Armory. Each module does its own evaluation of your character appropriate by class/role, so most gear-evaluation bugs are unique for the module, e.g.: between DPS and Tank DK.
What TankDK Does Poorly
Blood. This tree tanks differently than any of the more classic models of Survival and Mitigation. The talents don’t model very well in the current structure of evaluating only what the Tank itself can bring and possibly what additional buffs may be provided by the raid. There are key +health temp buffs as well as +incoming healing bonuses, be it through damage done or through healing buffs to take the raw healing burden off your healers.
My initial implementation of key blood talents: Vampiric Blood and Mark of Blood caused problems with the model, either through completely tearing apart the results in the case of VB, or causing a weird loop/hang with Mark of Blood. After getting some Rawr3 implementation taken care of, getting the Blood talents integrated more reliably is next up on my list of work to do.
The other challenge is dealing with the variety of bosses. Each boss mechanic in the current raid scene are different enough that tanks are swapping out some pieces of gear to better tackle whichever boss they may be looking at any time. Some raid teams swap out different types of tanks for some fights, and just look at that as being the normal way of dealing with leading content. In the coming versions of Rawr, we’re working to implement the ability for any character to tune their gear for a specific boss encounter. This is not just for tanks, but it will be generic so all classes can have good expectations for the bosses they have to deal with. I see this really helping the tanking modules so that we are no longer just trying to guestimate the type of boss in very vague terms.
Accuracy and Comparisons
Within Rawr, there are many stats and evaluations. Something most users need to remember is that it doesn’t just model the static values of what’s equipped like Pawn or most of the other evaluators out there. Most of the stats include the procs of the trinkets and such, and are relayed in the context of the boss level for the current raid content. So for example Dodge/Parry values will be lower than you see in the Armory or in-game because the level difference decreases your effective avoidance.
I don’t use other addons or simulators to compare to the results of Rawr. I rather would work to ensure the accuracy of the model. Because Rawr has the full power of a compiled application, I can, given enough time, make the model exceptionally accurate. Right now, however, I still feel like I’m just getting the model to stand on its own. A key point that contrasts Rawr with other addons/simulation tools out there is the active modeling of procs and buffs. Most addons simply can’t do the work to make those evaluations very accurately. Even the accuracy within Rawr can vary depending on the situation. As we integrate better boss-modeling we should see some of the tanking procs and such come into their own even more.
What TankDK Does Well
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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 3.3
Firstly, 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 spec
The 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:
- rune tap (self-healing),
- corpse explosion (AOE and entertainment),
- wandering plague (AOE and 0.7% more ST threat)
- scent of blood (ST threat, about 1% but not sure)
- necrosis (ST threat with 1.1% per talent point).
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).
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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:
Runeforge Gossip have a good short article on how to use Rawr as a DPS DK. It can be a fairly confusing tool at first with all its options even though on the surface it appears simple. There are also optimisation and gear-search features which are worth understanding.
The DK tank module within Rawr is still being developed, but one thing I do like about it is their model for comparing weapons lets you weight threat or survival. It
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I’m going to have a single post which lets people download the XML settings files I’ve been using for Kahorie’s DK simulator, which might save some time or let you double-check how I’ve done it (in case of errors).
Settings
- Character xml
- i213 – i226 tank Gravity spec
- Bluedragon’s i245 spec and armour rebaselined
- Unholy no-reaping rotation with one death coil
- Unholy DnD rotation without epidemic (short) against single-target
- Unholy DnD rotation with epidemic (long)
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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
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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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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(For Unholy in patch 3.3: read my full analysis.)
Updated to patch 3.22.
Sept 28: note that no-epidemic is now the highest threat tank build. This below post relates to traditional unholy spec.
October 1st: the below analysis had a error in the character sheet I used, overweighting attack power. Look at the no-epidemic or 3.3 posts for the latest on unholy. I have deleted the data that was below and take the below recommendations with caution.
In this simulation I wanted to work out:
- does the Unholy Obliterate tank build beat deep Unholy for tanks? Answer no, but it doesn’t suck as much as I’d expected
- how does an Unholy build compare on single-target to Frost build?
- is Desolation or Bladed Armour better for an Unholy tank?
- how does Unholy-Vot3W stack up now?
Also for 3.22, the highest threat Unholy tanks spec is in this simulation.
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Nov 17th 09: Please see my 3.3 Frost DK tank post for latest answers.
There is a DK simulator which I’ve been using to test the various DK tank specs. But it’s a DPS tool, so it has some limitations for my purposes.
Nevertheless it helps answer questions like, “how much does your rotation TPS drop if you use a single-disease with howling blast rather than two-disease with obliterate?” The answer is below.
Other tank classes’ simulation tools
My
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Overview of blood, unholy and frost recommended tank specs.
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Probably warriors know about this tanking spreadsheet at EJ. However as a DK tank, and a former maintankadin, I didn’t. I looked over it, thinking… hmmm I’m a geek maybe I could engineer it for DKs… but the task is too daunting.
The spreadsheet accurately ranks gear by calculating your “time-to-live, burst time-to-live, threat-per-second, and other stats”. It’s quite remarkable.
Oct 27 update: see Kahorie for threat analysis. My simulation posts have been using it for a while now.
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