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.

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