dk aggro, death strike, healaggro?Follow

Going back to OP, if you want to use DS for it's AoE aggro it may be easier for you to just blow the horn in those situations.

It's good for when you're running with mobs behind you and you don't want the mobs to be attacking your teammates while you're all running to the spot where you will fight them, I do this in CoS, which I always run timed.

There is ABSOLUTELY no reason to be using DnD on a boss. If you cannot maintain single-target aggro, you should learn how to play your class. DnD has a 1.9% Threat modifier on damage (lower than Rune Strike). At 2000 AP, your DnD will tick at something like 145 damage.

So, you just wasted 3 runes for about 2.4K in threat. My Oblits alone do more than that, without even bothering to factor in BS. And with DnD, I don't get a Death Rune for another one the next time around (it costs TWO Oblits, not one).

NEVER use it with single target tanking unless, for some reason, you cannot get into range for Oblit. And, even then, HB does more than 3K+ for me in crappy gear and a KM proc.

And, like you said, DnD only works in the AoE. Good luck explaining to your healers that you couldn't save them because you decided you only wanted to have hate in that little circle, rather than hitting the boss hard with two abilities, so you couldn't get snap aggro back because he resisted your Dark Command (are you hit capped as a tank? Probably not)?

[EDIT]


Fair, but RS takes priority regardless in Frost. You don't HAVE to work in FS--you do it if you don't have a RS proc, are at that point in your rotation, and have the RP. (If you have 60 RP at that point, you generally still do it).

It is the same thing with DC. You don't HAVE to use it, but you might as well if you are working up a lot of extra RP. Your DCs should do around 900 damage (which isn't nearly as good as FS, undoubtedly), but is only meant for those times you have the ability as Blood. And, with Sudden Death, you will often have a crit proc here.

FS IS better, no argument. But that doesn't mean DC SHOULDN'T be in your rotation. If you don't want it, you don't want it. But, you sound like you are the person that would take Morbidity, so that is 15% damage to it...

Just saying.

Edited, Apr 13th 2009 9:18am by idiggory

Element, can I see what your AP is? The formula I have for DnD seems to be borked. Tank Spot says it is 62+(AP*.0475)=DnD Damage per tick.

But I am getting numbers that are 30 off, with 2K AP. Assuming the same formula, with a different coefficient, that is about 7% AP.

Do you know if there is a different formula?

You said your DnD ticks for 400-500. I just wanted to see if that was also 7% of your AP, or if the formula was off overall. I have never really tested DnD, because the other AoE methods for Frost/Unholy were more than enough for me. So, I just assumed the formula was valid.

I don't know how Oblit scales with AP, so I cannot comment on it in any form other than my own. And, for me right now, Oblit's threat is equal to or greater than DnD, with a bigger threat return on Crits (where DnD has crits per tic, not overall). All this comes with the higher DpS with Oblit and a BS, or HB with a BB, for higher threat as well.

But, if DnD scales better with AP, I can see it becoming a valid boss ability. I still don't think I would use it unless I desperately needed that extra oomph, because of the lower DpS. But, I can see how it would work, if it can scale that high.

Then again, you have gear that is far above average, I would assume, so I don't know at what point it would become viable for the normal tank.

[NOTE] I just looked at AP levels for Ensidia's DK tanks. They are all in the 3.5K area. By my borked formula, that would
make their DnD tic for 62+(3500*.0475)=230 damage per tic. So, 2300 damage per 3 runes. So, about 4.3K in threat per three runes. So, 1.4K in threat per rune. I'll have to see how this changes with any new formulas that arise. From some napkin math, Oblit should be right around there, too, per rune. Though, BS could, potentially, bring this down until you get a really nice wep.

[EDIT]

You don't have to link your armory if you don't want to. I just need to check the actual number to see if it is consitent with 7% AP.

Edited, Apr 17th 2009 1:07pm by idiggory

Armory doesn't take in account buffs (self or otherwise), I am sitting at 3183 unbuffed. Since I am unholy now, I have morbidity (I did as frost also), and impurity (only recently), and the new Black Ice increases Shadow damage as well now too. Your formula is right, just forgetting multipliers from talents, raid buffs, etc.


Just pulling a random WWS report, http://wowwebstats.com/fhhlcvq14jvei?a=x24fa906, shows that DnD ticks for 593 for someone in similar gear level as mine (probably better since I rarely sit in a pure TPS set). Then using Tankspot's parser (no idea how valid this is): http://rehfeld.us/wow/tps/report/19360, you see DnD doing 8k+ Threat per cast. Gemming for Stam though will drop your DnD considerably to somewhere around your numbers, probably in the higher 200s, lower-mid 300s.

And with beginning raid content so easy (even easier now), there is no reason a semi-casual guild shouldn't have Naxx level gear and gear from 25 mans with pugs, unless you are on one of those dead/unbalanced servers in which case, you are probably screwed anyway you cut it.

I can tell you that my TPS only peaks when DnD is ticking though, that has remained true every fight, enough to chase the mt Paladin and pull if I chain crit.

It's not as good as the standard opening, but if your rotation gets FUBAR-ed for whatever reason and you have 3 free runes (BS+Oblit is 2 GCDs), DnD is a very good candidate for buying time to re-establish your rotation, AoE or not.

Remember what I said, DnD is the best multi-rune threat generator we have.

Just to close on this, just from cursory glances at WWS and some napkin math, I would guess that DnD outstrips Oblit for threat sometime during Naxx25, since the top weapons for threat (and tanking in general) for DKs lies at the end of the raid dungeons (Betrayer/Death's/Armageddon/etc.), so it is unlikely you'll considerably upgrade your weapon (remember Obliterate is heavily-based on weapon damage) before the rest of your gear (DnD doesn't require a weapon strike).