Post by Rankkor
well, we gotta break this down.
He said he liked leveling as blood because of the survivability rate u have no downtime
To put it bluntly, leveling as blood you are
IMMORTAL. Honestly, unless you pull half a zone at the same time, I just don't see how you could die as blood while leveling. They were sorta defeatable before (WOTLK) but post-cata the spec is a BEAST soloing (Specially after 80 when you gain the blood-shield). Having said that, its not the fastest spec, sure you never have any downtime, but you kill things slower, as frost you have a faster killing speed, and thanks to the glyph of dark succor (which makes your next Death Strike free, and heal 20% of your life after you kill a mob that gives exp) you will level up faster and also with no downtime.
now i know frost is dps end game and i wana be dps but later. I love dual wielding. I know that blood uses 2 handers for tanking.
No, they use 2handers for everything, not just tanking. They just suck with one handed weapons. (I'll elaborate later)
But if i specced into blood and wanted to dual wield for leveling would that be viable or should i just be frost and DW and level?
You should just be frost and DW as frost for leveling. Trust me, blood dualwielding just sucks. Its still viable, after all blood is
IMMORTAL but you'll take even longer to kill stuff.
Also this i always wondered why do tanks use 2 handers? they dont offer any armor to my knowledge
Not just tanks, ALL Dks use 2handers unless you are frost. Why? simple.
Skills.
80% of your damage comes from skills, not your auto-attacks, and those skills will completely ignore your off-hand weapon. Unless you are frost and dip 3 points into
This spell as you can read in its description makes most of your skills to also take in consideration your offhand weapon.
So, what happens if you are blood or unholy, and are dual-wielding? what do you gain and what do you lose?
Well, you gain the fact that dualwielding looks cooler, and that when auto-attacking (that is just attacking the mob without using any skills just right click it, and watch your character smack the thing) you will hit twice, rather than once.
What do you lose? Almost all of your skills deal a % of your weapon damage. Obliterate for example deals 150% weapon damage. If you have a 2handed weapon, like this
Cataclysmic Gladiator's Greatsword that's 150% of a weapon that hits for 2887 - 4331 damage. However, if you are dualwielding these:
Cataclysmic Gladiator's Quickblade that's 150% of a weapon that hits for 1198 - 2227, and no, it will not count the other weapon, it will be ignored, just your main hand will be used.
So basically all your skills hit for 50% less damage. Dang, that's a lot of damage loss. And THIS is why neither tanks, nor DPS EVER dualwield, unless they are frost and they get
THEN AND ONLY THEN you are allowed to dual-wield. And before someone says "but tanks aren't meant to do damage, they're meant to tank stuff" that's just not right. Tank DPS matters as much as everyone else's, if anything because damage equals threath, and trust me, at lower levels with all the twinked out toons out there you want to have as much threath as possible. Specially when you haven't gotten D&D ( Death&Decay) yet.
it was only ramparts and mana tombs, but i did tank DW and seemed fine with it.
Ya but those are ramparts and Mana tombs, fairly easy dungeons that pose no danger at all. Try that trick at harder dungeons or heaven's forbid, a raid, and you will find a very different outcome.
TL;DR: Blood and Unholy are meant to use 2handers, only frost can DW, as to what spec is the best for leveling, Frost kills things faster, and with the glyph of dark succor has zero downtime, blood is stil a good spec to get as secondary to solo those hard elites (of which almost none remain, most group quests have been eliminated) but otherwise, if you like to dualwield and want to level up fast, killing everything in a flash and seeing big crits, Dual-wield Frost is your friend.