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
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April 9th, 2010 | Leave a comment |
 From: Death Knight tanking specifically |  Tags: 3.33, aoe, blood, Cataclysm, choices, gravity's grid, single target, spec, st, threat TankadinTPS is the mis-named addon which gives you fantastic in-game threat analysis, by ability. It knows DK threat. Tiima posted results of some testing whilst discussing [Glyph of Disease]. Tiima makes the point the glyph of disease gives more choice to the tank: do I need more threat or self-healing? Kuren gives the change required to the addon to correct Icy Touch is to paste this into the ttpsDeathknight.lua file around line 54: -- Icy Touch [49909] = 7, April 6th, 2010 | One comment |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically | Tags: addon, icy touch, tankadintps, threat 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 March 31st, 2010 | 9 comments |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically | Tags: 3.3.3, 3.33, frost, icy touch, it, it spam, tank, threat I am guilty of focusing on threat a lot in my analysis. I do value survival more highly, though, but perhaps it takes up less of my theorycrafting because there aren’t so many variables to consider. Threat and survival are usually disparate goals, and you need to choose a mix of tank talents which lands you somewhere on the spectrum between them. If you think graphically, the choices are often like this: If you want more survival talents, those March 25th, 2010 | 2 comments |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically, choose spec | Tags: 3.33, lego, spec, survival, tank, threat, utility Blizzard, in the developer chat, has asked the tank community for some discussion and feedback on whether threat is fun. Q. You talk a lot about changing how we heal tanks, but will aggro ever come back as a challenging part of the game? A. Not sure. This is something we discuss a lot. I even had a meeting on it this week! On the one hand, some tanks really felt like the way to 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. January 13th, 2010 | 18 comments |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically | Tags: dual wield, dw, frost, gear, main hand, off hand, runeforge, stats, tank, threat, weapon speed, weapons Just wanted you to know, I checked Unholy vs Frost and Blood in Kahorie’s sim, and the TPS gap I’d seen in earlier simulations has been closed somewhat. This is because of improvement in the sim’s accuracy of Unholy. Full spec and details on Unholy are in my original 3.3 post. I updated my test comparisons in i245 gear, assuming ICC aura:
January 7th, 2010 | 14 comments |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically, choose spec | Tags: 3.3, comparison, threat, unholy I came across this today, TidyPlates, and it’s a great replacement to the periodically maintained, hard-to-configure Aloft. Note the version on Curse is older, so install it via wowinterface, not the Curse client. Name plate mods help you know up who you have threat on, and who you’ve lost, and should be designed to reduce visual clutter. TidyPlates has modes which are tuned to tank, dps or pvp usage, and I found the tank settings ideal. It’s also lightweight, January 7th, 2010 | 8 comments |
From: Addons | Tags: addon, name plates, review, threat, tidyplates 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 | 22 comments |
From: Tanking in general | Tags: aoe, blood, frost, halls of reflection, maintankadin, paladin, threat For Frost tanks, what threat values do some of these talents provide?
I like taking the [Icy Reach] talent, January 1st, 2010 | 11 comments |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically, choose spec | Tags: acclimation, chilblains, chill of the grave, comparison, frost, frost series, kahorie, runic power mastery, scent of blood, sim, talents, tank, threat, tps Blood is so flexible. You can spec into survival, single or AOE threat. What’s the threat you gain from a heavy threat build compared to one for survival? Survival Here’s a really survival-heavy tank build for 25-mans. Regarding spell damage: Some tanks might poo-poo the spec since it has [Spell Deflection] (which is fairly weak, as not many fights actually include direct damage magic attacks) but put that aside for the purpose of this discussion. If you really hate January 1st, 2010 | 16 comments |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically, choose spec | Tags: 3.3, blood, comparison, kahorie, minmax, sim, spec, survival, tank, threat 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 December 24th, 2009 | 20 comments |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically, Tanking, choose spec | Tags: 3.3, blood, comparison, frost, spec, talents, tank, threat, tps, unholy Hopefully your hunters know this. They can misdirect a volley. Thanks QQ for the tip. Tanks, note this change: you won’t see the misdirect buff until your hunter starts shooting. Have you hunter verify on /p or /ra he has misdirected. December 22nd, 2009 | 5 comments |
From: Tanking in general | Tags: 3.3, hunter, misdirect, tank, threat Blood remains the best single-target raid tank spec. April 8th, 2010: I have just posted a grid showing the specs against dimensions of threat, survival and utility. You may find it an easier way to choose a spec or understand them. Patch 3.3.3 buffed WotN, and also Dancing Rune Weapon now gives threat, so consider dropping 1 from Necrosis and move it to DRW. This is a raid-tanking damage talent, not so useful for 5-mans. Raid specMain raid spec: Blood 54-8-10
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 additional specs. Choosing a blood spec can give you an anxiety disorder. April 2010: I put a grid together across survival and threat, putting specs into it for context, see Gravity’s Grid. December 9th, 2009 | 32 comments |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically, choose spec | Tags: 3.3, blood, heroic, raid, spec, tank, threat |
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