 Every attempt I did on the Lich King fight I played as offtank. This was my choice because I wanted to be really good at that role, and in reverse for the other two tanks in our corp to be really good MTs. By focusing on a role, I didn’t have to learn a different tanking rhythm or positioning. If I was rostered off on a night, then obviously one of the other tanks (Garant warrior or Ishkar DK) would need to play offtank, but I’m fairly sure it was always Ishkar OT and Garant MT.
I have absolutely no ego issue about whether I am tanking the named boss, or if I’m handling the off-tank duties. I am man enough to know I matter, whether I was MT or OT.
Anyhow, the point is not which class is optimal (since a DK has an easier time as MT with both [Anti-Magic Shell] and [Will of the Necropolis], optimal would be a DK MT) but that I have had enough experience as OT to write about how to spec for that role. Secondly, with the 20% buff, “optimal” on non-heroic is not a logical concept, since a warrior’s health pool is so huge plus he can use his glyphed cooldowns to solo-tank 3/4 soul reapers anyhow, then just call out for an external cooldown on the fourth. It’s not that hard. Garant used a single-target warrior spec I mentioned the other day.
Bear in mind, this is all from the perspective of a 10-man raider. I’ve not seen him on 25-man, so you might need to make some consideration for that. » continue reading
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
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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
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Sure, Unholy’s fairly weak for tanking, but does it matter?
The usual argument I hear, a flawed one at that, is “you pay your $15, you choose your spec”. That is true in a solo game. In a raid, no, you should pick a good spec that works, or you impact the other 9 or 24 people’s ability to progress. If you want to pick a useless spec, go play solo.
That said, Unholy tank is not useless. It
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A writer on EJ did enough tests to confirm the length of [Bone Shield] internal cooldown, for each charge to be used up: 2 seconds. It might be slightly lower than that, in fact, but its certainly no longer. He got 40 mobs to attack him and looked at the time between bone shield activation and it fading.
Bone shield is not 2.5 or 3 seconds, as often quoted around the internet. It’s a measly 2 seconds, maybe slightly
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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:
- 2H Frost did ~3.7% more threat than the Unholy spec,
- Blood did between 1.6% and 3.4%
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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
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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
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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
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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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:
Unholy has gone back and forth so much.
- Recently, its threat sucked.
- Then it was Unholy Obliterate spec for deeps
- That got nerfed away.
- Today it’s no-reaping Unholy with no-epidemic
- and on 3.3 that’s being changed again.
- plus bone shield’s duration in patch 3.3 is now 5 minutes (for DPSers) but cooldown is 1 min (tanks). Nice.
On live, SS is a shadow-damage attack so it has scaled with different raid buffs.
Scourge Strike on the PTR has
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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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I’ve updated all key posts (including my main post) on the three DK tank talents for 3.2.2.
You can refer to my 3.22 index post to find them all.
In 3.22, glyphed bone shield will have eight charges over two minutes, whereas in 3.2 it has six. I really like that change.
Update: patch 3.22 is downloading for me for USA server now.
Currently, PTR 3.22 unbreakable armour gives +25% armour and the glyph takes it to +30% (tooltip on glyph is a bit confusing).
If you compare that to bone shield at 15 seconds, giving a flat 20% reduction on top of your normal tank armour, I find that bone shield is ahead on total damage reduction. I modelled this in a google spreadsheet.
I used example armour of 25123 unbuffed and 27858 buffed.
Unbuffed, UA leaves you taking 32.66% of the
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This index post helps readers find my posts on the 3.22 changes for DK tanking. I had it stickied to front page for a while.
Death knight tank builds for unholy, frost and blood
new: highest threat no-epidemic Unholy DK tank build
dual-wield tanking in 3.22 (DW DK tanking)
initial commentary on the 3.22 changes. Patch notes 3.22 from the downloader.
Find everything else on pwnwear through my new index
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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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3.22 is now live, check my index post.
My tank builds and levelling specs have been updated.
These changes mean:
- Unholy dps will go back to using Scourge Strike (instead of Unholy Obliterate, because of the glyph, subversion and dirge changing).
- Frost tanks will be awesome again, with Unbreakable Armour actually being worth using (the new glyph only gives 5% of your base armour, so that’s around 1200)
- Blood will not be the overarching dominant tank spec it is now because its vampiric blood has been balanced to 15s glyphed, bone shield is back to one minute and frost is fixed
- heart strike’s cleave got nerfed but it’s still good, and not changed on a single-target
- plus… dual-wield tanking is back on the agenda with RS threat fixed in DW specs. Basically, you just need 30 expertise to use two fast tank weapons and you’re only going to be parrygibbed as much as a warrior (ie. if they’re ok, you’re ok). Read the whole article.
- But to make up for it the T9 set bonus will be 10s not 20s reduction.
Sept 12 update:
- unholy bone shield reduced to 3 charges, and its glyph to +1. This is them completing the change from 2min to 1 min; vampiric blood was tweaked in one patch to 1 min with 15s uptime. Blizzard push patches in bits, so this is their complete patch for the talent now (as opposed to an afterthought).
- My paladin colleagues will be sad about this “Ardent Defender: This talent now reduces damage taken below 35% health by 7/13/20% instead of 10/20/30%.”
- Warrior tanks might like this odd buff “Critical Block: This talent now grants a 20/40/60% chance to block double the normal amount instead of 10/20/30%.” Source.
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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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Overview of blood, unholy and frost recommended tank specs.
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