At Long Last, Deathknight Tank Buffs

Long awaited buffs put us back in line with other tanks as far as effective health. And the buff to IBF is a very nice plus.

Reading the original post, I do belive that the changes are effective immediately although the spell tool-tips will not be updated right away.

3.3.2 - No Deathknight buffs

While DKs are saved from beeing in patch notes this time, for better or for worse. We did find ourselves with a hidden buff, well if your a DK tank in T10.

All tank T10 sets found an armor increase of about 1000 on the chest and gloves. Like I said not a direct DK buff, but we'll take what we can get. The entire Scourgelord's Plate set now has 10,261 armor its name.

For entire patch notes you can go here. See the Item section for details on armor increase.

Happy tanking.

pwnwear.com?

Hey I would just like to bring http://pwnwear.com/ to everyone attention. This is a great site where you can find almost everything DK related. The site contains analysis log and multiple other informative tools and posts all summed up by Gravity in a way that you don't need to analyse/read them for hours.

The site is definitely worth checking out and participating in. Pwnwear.com has earned a place in my Sites section at the bottom left hand side of the Home page.

3.3 - Fall of the Lich King

A litle late but here it is. The death knight patch new for 3.3. Make sure you check out the killer patch trailer.

While not much has changed as far as are class goes, the increas threat on RS should prouve to be a nice buff for us DK tanks. Also with the addition of 1 hander version of  "Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle" called "Rune of the Nerubian Carapace" will we see the rise of the dual-wield Death Knight? Here are the DK specific patch notes for more detailed changes and the youTube version of the patch trailer.

WoW auction tool

Not really related to DKs. I was reading WoWRaid.com's new as I do every morning and came across their post about a new out of game auction tool. You can find this new tool at http://www.wowoah.com/.

I played with the tool for a bit and found it very powerful. Definitely worth checking it out.

Patch 3.2.2 - Buffs?

First thing first, Onyxia is back! Now on to Death Knight news. As far as I can tell we seam to have a pretty nice patch, as far as DKs go, this time around. We see some buffing on the tanking side of things and a small nerf in arenas.

Patch notes:

• Frost Presence: The damage reduction granted by this ability has been increased from 5% to 8%.
• Pets
• Gnaw: This death knight ghoul ability now has a 1-minute cooldown.
• Talents
• Blood
• Heart Strike: Secondary targets of Heart Strike now take half as much damage.
• Subversion: Now also increases the critical strike chance of Scourge Strike by 3/6/9%.
• Vampiric Blood: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute and duration reduced to 10 seconds.
• Frost
• Threat of Thassarian now also causes Rune Strike to use both weapons when dual-wielding.
• Unbreakable Armor: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute and changed back to granting 25% additional armor while active instead of flat damage reduction based on armor. The amount of strength granted has been reduced to 10%.
• Unholy
• Bone Shield: This ability now has 3 charges instead of 4. Cooldown reduced to 1 minute.
• Dirge: This talent no longer grants additional runic power from using Obliterate.

So what do you guys think of these changes? Let us know in the comment section.

3.2 Unholy Tank Spec

Finding topics to blog about is alot harder then I first realized.

I started a thread on my guild's forums a few days back for an unholy tank spec. While I got some good feedback from a friend there I wanted to get some more public feedback. I'm going to make a copy of the discussion here feel free to comment on it.

Tusam:
Here is the spec I'm thinking of. Please make sure to also look over at the glyph section.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight#3hvS-up33B9svc,3I-3eO,10192
The only point I'm not too sure about so far is the 1 on UB. But I'm sure some of you here will break this spec down and offer valuable advice :D .

Atrophos:
Oh Tusam... When will you learn that Unholy is just not as good as either of the other two trees for tanking? lol


With that being said I've made a few modifications to your spec if you're dead set on Unholy. Explanations first, than my take on the spec.


Scent of blood: Unholy is generally more an AoE tank spec than single target, and even with single target tanking you will find that Scent of blood procs constantly and even with only two points, you'll be generating more runic power than you have time to dump in a proper rotation.


Ravenous Dead: It's a good threat talent that scales with your gear, The 3 points here can come out of BCB very easily, as BCB is pretty terrible while using a 2h. A 30% chance once every 2.5 seconds to deal 50% weapon damage? Not worth it at all imo.


Blood Caked Blade: See above.


Night of the Dead/Master of Ghouls: Reducing the cooldown on your pet to 30 seconds isn't really necessary, unfortunately you have to have it maxed in order to get permanent ghoul. Either way, this allows you to have an extra cooldown by saccing your pet every minute for a big heal. (You can argue that you can summon and sac your pet in an emergency situation even without it being permanent, however that's a full GCD to summon it before you can sac for the heal. In most emergency situations, the delay will kill you anyway) Plus who doesn't like having a permanent pet?!


Anti Magic Zone: I see no reason not to get this with the abundance of magical AoE damage in the current raiding environments. Even if you are the only one getting the absorption it's a 75% magical reduction for 10 seconds. The idea here is that Unholy is already short on automatic tools/cooldowns imo, such as Vampiric Blood or Unbreakable Armor, this gives you one more tool to fill that spot or cycle a cooldown on hard mode encounters.


Desolation: I'm not terribly sold on this, as when AoE tanking you are generally going to be using your blood runes on pestilence/blood boil, however it does provide you a little extra threat versus single target encounters, and there aren't any talents that are significantly better than it at this point in the tree.


Wandering Plague: I don't know about you, but raid buffed in tank gear I have somewhere around 16% crit chance which makes this talent practically useless on single target, and I suspect that even while AoE tanking you'd need to have 4+ mobs on you nonstop for it to actually be worthwhile.


Glyphs:


Bone Shield: no brainer


Disease: A glyph that isn't terrible for AoE tanking, but absolutely useless for single target situations. Glyph of Scourge Strike gives your SS a 25% chance to refresh your diseases, so while AoE tanking, you can get the same benefit by rotating SS, Pest, Blood boil without the need for IT or PS and On single target allows you to go SS, blood strike, blood strike, DC, DC, repeat for a max threat rotation.


Anti Magic Shell: Again not a terrible glyph, but with AMZ now in the picture you can replace this with a great threat increasing glyph in Glyph of Rune Strike, or if you aren't at the spell hit cap, possibly consider a Glyph of Dark Command as a missed taunt can be an auto wipe.


With all that considered, here is what I believe to be the best overall Unholy tanking spec:


http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight#3hv99DmUEXGFea,36Y3eO,10192


Now get back to work!

Tusam:
No... I will never learn. I love they way unholy DK plays.


I like the spec atro, you brought up some good points.

Atrophos wrote:
Ravenous Dead: It's a good threat talent that scales with your gear, The 3 points here can come out of BCB very easily, as BCB is pretty terrible while using a 2h. A 30% chance once every 2.5 seconds to deal 50% weapon damage? Not worth it at all imo.

I never though of this as a scaling TPS talent.


The only "real" change from my spec to this is Desolation. Once set into my rotation I generate 5k avg TPS(by omen) my snap aggro isn't very good. I'll see what changes Desolation brings to my TPS.


Even as an AoE tank if someone chooses a different target then mine to focus on they rip aggro. Its always been like this for tanks. I was wondering if anyone had pointers on how to address this issue. The only way I can think of is using a marking macro, and mark the focus target. Raid assist is needed for this though.

Atrophos:
On Aoe pulls, get your diseases on main target, pestilence, then blood boil like there's no tomorrow while tab targeting for scourge strikes on individual targets in between.


If you DnD, pull, Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, you're one blood rune short for blood boil, i ALWAYS use Blood Tap for the extra rune in that situation. Blood boil on pestilenced targets will give you aggro long enough to start tabbing between them.


I left Desolation in, the changes were:


-3 points Wandering Plague
-1 point Scent of Blood
-3 points Blood Caked Blade


+3 points Ravenous Dead
+3 points Night of the Dead/Master of Ghouls
+1 point Anti Magic Zone

Tusam:
Sorry, when I said this...

Tusam wrote:The only "real" change from my spec to this is Desolation.

I meant my in game spec.


As far as AoE goes I guess tabbing through targets would work... still a pain in the ass if a bunch of different people are on different targets.