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Death Knight 3.3 Tanking Guide
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Post by
sunwukung
Hungering Cold is a pvp talent and a horrible use of RP in PvE. As a frost tank if you want to apply frost fever to all your targets with one button, then glyph HB.
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Post by
dervasavred
First of all, Unholy Blight.
I agree with the UB assessment made. Talenting for it in a tank spec is a near-wash. Glyphing for it is absolute garbage.
Ravenous Dead is a Meh talent for tank. In dps spec its a filler.
In Unholy DPS, the talent is not "filler". It's mandatory. 3% Strength + Ghoul buffs that scale with raid buffs? Yes, please. It's a somewhat strong talent for Blood as well due to the other Strength multiplier in their tree.
On top of this, the talent is multiplicative and not additive, nor is it summated prior to multiplication (like Haste rating is), meaning it stacks even better with Kings.
As far as Strength is concerned, in my ToC 25-ish level of gear, I'm sitting at 1993 Strength with HoW active. That's 59.79 Strength which rounds up to 60 (the game rounds some stats like this; Strength is one of them). 60 Strength and the Ghoul bonuses make this extremely strong for Unholy DPS.
For tanking though? I would skip it, definitely.
Bladed Armor is cool, but there is a better talent point per point for threat: Black Ice. It affects all your disease damage, most of the strike damage (excluding blood strike, rune strike and half of the new scourge strike), death coils and death and decay.
If Black Ice cannot affect Rune Strike, why bother with it? If you're Unholy, you've already got EP and RoR going on your mobs, far surpassing BI's usefulness already. It's a waste of points to be worrying about BI as a tank.
BI does not affect PS's strike damage, nor does it affect Necrosis (assuming you picked it up). So the only thing that you use that can be affected by BI is DnD and diseases and the latter half of SS (which is based on the physical portion of SS, which BI does not affect and I am not even sure that SS can still use BI after the nerf), which, let's be honest, is not going to be hitting nearly as hard as it would if you were a DPS.
BI _does_ scale better than Bladed Armor (BA); I will grant you that. However, since tanks cannot use over half of the talent effectively for threat, you're kind of wasting your time on it.
BA on the other hand affects everything you do: every disease, DnD, RS, BB, everything. It scales with your armor (Unbreakable Armor, assuming you have it), Frost Presence and even Toughness. Remember, Toughness is percentage-based: the more armor you get, the better Toughness gets. The better Toughness gets, the more AP you get through BA.
On top of all of this, even if you were to consider it, most raid tanks do not pick up Morbidity as they don't DnD more than once per fight unless they're handling a multitude of adds on a regular basis (Onyxia Whelps or adds on Deathwhisper, for instance). You're losing out on more uses from BI there as well. Plus, since you're not DCing, you lose the benefit of half of Morbidity and further possible synergy with BI (15% DC damage and 10% magic damage).
BI DOES help Frost tanks out, however, since HB is a large part of their AoE threat. Very strong synergy there. Blood? No way. Unholy? You are already somewhat strapped for points for AoE threat or mitigation.
I find a reneved Bone Shield glyph pretty meh. 1 additional charge of Bone Shield per major slot? No thanks.
Agreed. Bone Shield is a strong talent choice for UH tanking (mandatory, basically), but the Glyph is worthless. Bone Shield has a 3 second window between charge consumptions, I believe. Glyphing for another 3 seconds is a little ridiculous.
Whats the basic reason you spec Unholy instead of Frost or Blood?
Whats mine? Its simple and provides nice AoE threat.
Why scourge strike glyph? It simplifies the rotation, especially on AoE packs, where you dont need to reaply Diseases once you change target and its diseases are almost finished.
Since you specifically mentioned AoE threat, I am going to address your SS Glyph from that context. It's garbage for AoE. There's a reason UH DPS AoE specs take GoDisease: you are going to be Pestilencing anyway to keep your diseases up for Wandering Plague and max damage through DnD, BB, etc.
So, glyphing to have a chance to randomly refresh the diseases on one target only to have to Pestilence anyway to keep diseases active is a little silly to me. Just glyph Disease and be done with it. It's more controllable and superior on AoE and you really can't get much simpler than it.
Finally, the last problem with the SS Glyph is that it was nerfed in 3.3. Whereas it would refresh diseases to full duration randomly with SS, now it can only refresh UP TO 9 seconds, 3 seconds per SS, then you will have normal timers on diseases and have to refresh with PS/IT anyway. Glyph of Disease does not have this problem. GoD will always refresh to full duration no matter what. It's available for one GCD for an ability you are already doing in an AoE situation and it scales with your current AP (another plus for Bladed Armor!).
=======================================
@Alcotraz:
You have to expect a little criticism. This is a community and you did post a guide trying to help others. The thought is appreciated and we are glad for the contribution. It's contributions and discussion that fuels a forum like this.
However, expect to be corrected and for changes to be suggested. Since you took the time to post it, you have to be a little thick-skinned when it comes to snarky comments that may be made, whether or not they are intended as "flames".
That being said, I will have to agree that your knowledge of Unholy is either weak or unfounded. Your tanking spec is not optimal and your Glyph choices are poor.
GoSS's nerf makes it nigh-worthless. GoUB is so laughably bad that it's sad.
GoD, GoRS, GoDnD and GoIT are all relatively strong choices and a tank cannot be faulted too heavily for choosing any of those, but that can depend on the content you are tanking. Good job on mentioning these.
Unholy relies heavily on diseases, with a unique Survival method.
This sentence is unnecessary.
EVERY DK spec is heavily dependent on diseases.
There is no "Diseaseless Blood" spec that's topping meters or tanking Heroic raids anymore.
Further, UH's "survival method" is actually the weakest of the three trees. It has literally three mitigation talents deep in the tree and two of them involve magic damage. The third is an activated buff with three charges that will last nine seconds. After that, you're left with just your trainer-taught CDs and survival methods.
UH lacks a Frigid Dreadplate or Will of the Necropolis. Its Imp. Aura talent is for movement speed: it doesn't increase your health or decrease damage like Imp. FP does, nor does it increase your incoming healing like Imp. BP. There is no Acclimation talent in UH nor is the 51 point talent worth anything to a tank. Finally, the tanking talent that is your survival method in UH does not even compare to Frost's UBA.
You can argue the 2% threat for Bone Shield, but it's active for nine seconds once a fight starts. That's right, nine seconds. Sure, it's the most important nine seconds, but it's nine seconds nonetheless.
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495174
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Post by
dervasavred
Nice job on the changes, Alco. I was not trying to be inflammatory if I came across that way. I try to remain as neutral-toned as possible.
I'll check again later with any changes that need to be made.
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495174
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Post by
Nelfshane
My only statement about the basic DW build is that killing machine isn't really that worth it. It's terrific from a DPS standpoint, but I'd recommend putting those two points elsewhere. Scent of blood is a great option for it as it keeps your runic power up nicely. I'm currently running with
12/52/7
as my DW build. Epidemic and morbidity in my opinion are just a matter of preference. I find I can tend to refresh the duration of my diseases fast enough for morbidity not to matter as much, but that's just me. I also personally enjoy being able to drop D&D faster since I tend to off tank stuff and add grabbing is my chore.
The Improved Icy Talons build I can't stand but that's just me. I've never seen the point in spending into those talents on a tank build (Though I'm not going to deny having been a tab of a noob at the start of DK tanking and specced a crap ton into frost for a touch of everything... Thankfully I wizened up). Same goes for hungering cold. D&D, Glyph of Howling Blast for using said skill, couple of blood boils, and an obliterate to try and proc rime. That tends to be my rotation for AoE. Haven't had any issues with threat except when DPS decides to be "smart" and runs off attacking things that I haven't built enough threat on yet since the fight just started.
Despite the hype about the new 1h
Rune of the Nerubian Carapace
, I haven't really been using it at all. I'm finding the 4% parry to be a bit more enjoyable to the maybe 1k HP that is all I've seen that rune apply. But for people trying to get to the uncritable status I can see it working better. Just saying you may want to link those runes just in case.
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495174
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146010
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Post by
Bonurmum
Just noticed you had human as the best alliance DPS, which is only true if you're set as a DW frost dps.
Draenei would be better as a well rounded DPS since they have 1% extra hit, allowing you to better itemize other stats you need w/o worrying about staying hit capped.
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495174
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Post by
neomasterc
Me? I do. I use Blood and Unholy for Tanking, I just haven't been to ICC Lately so I haven't found the need to re-spec to Frost.
I tanked ICC 25 in blood tank spec recently. I would think that blood and frost would be the best tanking specs for ICC 25. I personally dont see a reason for unholy in ICC because there really isnt that much magic damage that needs mitigation. its not like ur tanking sarth 3d back in the day it one shot u (Even then u had to go a hybrid spec).
blood is definitely still superior in single target MT tanking due to the 20% decrease in dodge. Blood's higher health pool, constant healing from DS, and strong vamp blood CD makes it really good for MTing.
frost is just for trash/add aggro, nuff said. less single target aggro and weaker CD (UA does not increase health pool nor contribute to mitigating magic dmg).
unholy is... pretty good, but loses to frost in aoe and blood in single target.
bone shield is a good CD but usually 15% more HP + 35% more healing > 20% mitigation.
plus vamp blood +hp trinkets=extra HP. single target threat is just not as good as blood.
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495174
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Post by
neomasterc
Idk, ive always been frost for heroics. the instant snap aoe aggro from HB and the relatively short fights make frost pretty good.
but yeah, blood seems to be the spec of choice for MT for a long time.
we'll see. blood spec is just OP for tanking tho, ive tanked ony 10/25 toc10/25 icc 10/25 in blood dps spec lol
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495174
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474779
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495174
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