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[3.3] Intro to Death Knight Tanking
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Post by
Nystali
You only want Death Rune Mastery in the blood tree if you are deep blood and are going to use all the created death runes to spam Heart Strikes.
Some people swear by Rune Tap, and Blood Tanks live by it and other self healing abilities, but I really don't like it for frost. When you are going through an instance/raid, let the healers heal, you tank and use those blood runes to spread diseases or do damage for threat.
I know you went down the Blood Tree to get Veteran of the Third War, but as frost I've never found my HP lacking. You at least get some expertise from it (which is going away in 3.1) to make up for not getting Tundra Stalker.
I really don't like a frost spec that doesn't have frost strike as a runic dump.
Post by
134258
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Post by
Nystali
Well, the build looks fine, the only thing that I would spec out of are Unholy Command.
If I'm understanding correctly, you want to take the point out of Master of Ghouls as well? If you do that and then maybe take one point out of Blood Caked Blade you then have 4 points that you can either put into Black Ice for improved shadow damage or Bladed Armor for increased AP. I'm not up to date on the current state of Blood Caked Blade, but you could even potentially put that last point into corpse explosion for some snap aoe threat.
Post by
331979
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Post by
Nystali
-looks around for the April Fool's joke-
You should be in frost presence, you don't need to be specced into frost (except for 5 or 8 points).
Post by
134258
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Post by
Visha
This is my current tanking spec:
51/11/10
It will change a bit when 3.1 hits due to the Lichborne nerf, but not by much.
So far I have main tanked every heroic, all of Naxx 10 and 3 wings of Naxx 25, and it basically rocks.
I do occasionally struggle with holding trash when AoE tanking is required, but with my regular Paladin OT it doesn't really matter.
Looking forward to the Blood tree changes in 3.1.
Post by
21836
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Post by
334662
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Post by
Nystali
So obviously 3.1 hit and I need to fix up a lot of this info to reflect changes.
My "expertise" is in frost and so that is where I am most comfortable making comments on builds and such. I would appreciate people (and I do mean a wide range of people) to comment on the unholy and blood builds they plan to use and the rotation they support.
Additionally, we have the new glyph tool with the talent calculators so please add those glyphs that best compliment your class. If I get a wide ranging group of builds, I could put a "Recommended builds:" list for each of the tree sections.
It is of course my goal to make base builds out of all the comments I find for each of the trees so that newcomers can see what generally considered the starting point for each tree.
Thanks in advance.
Post by
Nystali
I've gone through and made all the obvious changes that I can think of.
I've also added a rune strike macro in the last section from the comments on rune strike. I'm not the strongest with macros, but I think there may be a few extraneous lines there that aren't needed. I have a similar macro for my paladin with divine favor+holy shock, but I can't log in right now to check how I did that and I can't find the comment/post where I originally got it from here.
Any comments would be appreciated and I would definitely like to see a lot of recommended builds I can add to Unholy and Blood.
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205531
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334662
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324508
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Post by
yzerman
#showtooltip Icy Touch
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Icy Touch
/cast !Rune Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()
One of my major problems is working Rune Strike into my rotation. With the macro you provided above, I can now work it into my rotation without worrying about triggering it seperatally from my other talents. Thx a bunch.
Post by
Nystali
0/3 Morbidity - DnD is just about the only AoE, apart from Heart Strike which is only a cleave, that Blood has. In addition, Death Coil is a very nice part of Blood's damage.
Actually, because of the changes to Blood Boil this is no longer the case. This is why I put my comment in the opening of the blood tanking section. Frost and Unholy can use blood boil, but unfortunately, they cannot spam it to the extent that blood can since BB does not turn the blood rune into a death rune where as death rune mastery provides blood with a potential of 4 extra blood runes and there is no penalty for not using pestilence or blood strike instead like there is with BotN and Reaping.
Of course, this is based on a recent topic here asking if anyone else has noticed how much blood boil got buffed. It was for lower level mobs in Strat, but it might still hold true. On the other hand, it might just be a fluke, or it might get hotfixed if it really is as powerful as I think it might be.
On a different topic, my goal with the base builds is to get everything that is required for tanking in each build with as little extra stuff as possible. Sometimes I do have to take talents that just improve dps/threat to get higher in the tree. Your build misses out on Blood Tap which I think is needed to help the blood tree's unique form of mitigation. Same with imp blood presence.
Post by
Overcome
So you can use
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=61434
with
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=55226
?
I didn't pick it up in my frost tank spec because I thought the death runes would cancel the effect of blade barrier.
Post by
Nystali
Yes, when the Blood Runes get turned into Death Runes, they are still consider blood runes for the Blade Barrier buff. The great thing about turning them into Death Runes for frost is that you are doing so to hit a 3rd multi-rune ability in the second half of your rotation.
So:
It->PS->Pest->OB->BS gives you the Blade Barrier buff and 2 Death Runes (which are cooling down)
Then:
OB->OB->OB then uses up both of those blood-turned-death runes at the same time which refreshes the Blade Barrier buff.
Post by
267310
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Post by
Nystali
I'm not an expert with blood, but I would venture to say that blood might get the least benefit from epidemic. Because you're turning all those frost and unholy runes into death runes on a regular basis, it would be very easy for you to insert a pestilence at any point in your rotation. So I'd be more inclined to put those points in epidemic into morbidity for more frequent availability of DnD.
Now, if my thinking is right in how the change of blood boil has totally changed the equation when it comes to blood aoe, you might even be able to get by like frost can without regular use of DnD and so Morbidity isn't even really needed and you can find someplace else to stick those two points like maybe blood vengeance.
Aside from that rather trivial conjecture, the build looks completely find and should be successful if you can get a proper rotation down.
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