respec to tanking @ 71 adviseFollow

A. You can tank any regular in your DpS spec and Frost Presence. So I'd advise you wait until 80 to respec to tank, as leveling will go faster.

B. That spec is all over the place. Instead of just giving you one, I'm gonna try and teach you:

1. You want to tank, right? Then you need to look at the spec from that dimension. First things first, identify the support talents in the tree you want (in this case blood). What are they (hint, there's a lot of them). Now, you *won't* take all these talents in any tree. That's a waste of points. Your job is to figure out A. which are best and B. which will go best together.

2. Think about the talents you are currently taking. What do they boost? Is there an easy-to-get talent that would have a greater return? Specifically, I want you to look at and think about Unholy Command, Black Ice, Improved Blood Presence, Bloodworms, Rune Tap (and the imp. points), Hysteria and Mark of Blood. I'm NOT saying these are bad talents (some of them are QUITE good). But you have to remember that a good talent doesn't always fit into your build.

For example, Black Ice buffs (in your case) Ice and Shadow damage by 6%. That means Blood Boil, Icy Touch, diseases and Death Coil will get 6% additional damage.

Now, let's think about this. The abilities you will use most are Heart Strike and Death Strike (and maybe Blood Boil), followed by Death Coil/Death and Decay and then Plague Strike/Icytouch/Pestilence, in that order.

Now, seeing that you will use Heart Strike a lot, look at the talent you didn't take--Bloody Strikes, which would boost HS's damage by 45%, and Blood Boil's by 30%. For 3 points. Even considering the loss of DC/IT's 6%, doesn't it seem like Bloody Strikes is a much better choice for 3 points than Black Ice?

Do this for every talent. Look at it, think about it. You haven't taken any of the tree's most important support talents for tanking--that's a hint.

3. After you've considered everything, make sure you are balancing threat-generation with support. A tree that takes no support talents will fail. A tree that takes all of them will also fail.

Remember, also, regarding your ability talents. They take a Blood Rune to use. And you will always have a healer. Think about how much effect you're likely to get from them (and remember that you CAN over-heal and get little to nothing from them).

I have a tree I can give you, but I want you to try and make a better one on your own. Because that's an important thing to learn about the class.

It's better, but you are still missing the major talents you'd want at least one point in.

For one thing, Rune Strike is a major threat tool, and it costs 20 RP a hit. So you'll want to be generating as much as possible. That makes Scent of Blood Desirable.

Spell Deflection is pretty good for most instances, as Wrath has a good amount of spell casting. Though, it doesn't get worth it until you have a higher Parry skill (I don't know what yours is right now).

You definitely want points in Will of the Necropolis. Its a life saver when your healer gets stunned or something and just needs a second more to get off their heal.

Blood is also a highly physical spec, so Blood Gorged is pretty great, even as a tank.

I would get rid of Unholy Command, though. DG is a useful tool, but we already have two taunts. Its better just to learn how to position yourself better than waste two points in it.

I also wouldn't bother improving Rune Tap. More often than not, that 10% will just turn into overhealing. You are already going to be getting a lot of self-heals from DS (15% of your max health every 10 seconds, in the long run). You don't really need more.

PERSONALLY, I'd also move the point from Rune Tap to Hysteria, to use on a DpS. But that's really a matter of personal choice.

This is what I would go with (note the glyphs as well).

You could switch out the VB and/or DS glyph for the Rune Strike/Dark Death glyph if you want.

What are you planning to drop to get Rune Tap?

I'd suggest Hysteria. Because, if your healer fails hard enough to make you need it, then they won't be able to heal the DpS you put it on anyway.

NOTE: If you keep Hysteria, put it on a melee class. It boosts physical, not magic, damage. Ideally, if poisons are physical, this will be a Rogue. Avoid putting it on Arms Warriors--their threat is already going to be a pain in the *** for you to handle. Hunters are an okay choice.

If you only have one melee DpS, put it on them unless its the War. They WILL pull aggro on most things until you are geared and they are skilled.

You want to make that /cast !Rune Strike. Or else, every time you hit an ability, you will toggle it on and off. That will DRASTICALLY decrease your number of RSs.

And, about MoB, it's actually not a great talent at all.

A. No boss will ever hit you 20 times in 20 seconds, even if you take EVERY hit. Generally, bosses have about a 2 second attack speed (may actually be 3). That means, if you take EVERY hit, it'll be a 36% heal over 20 seconds--you won't be able to get 10 hits in due to system delays.

B. As a DK, you have high avoidance. Unbuffed, I'm sitting at [edit]about[/edit] 50%. So, I'd expect (again, unbuffed) to take half those hits, which is an expected return of 16%.

C. As a blood tank, you are going to receive a lot of over-healing from VB and DS. Honestly, all this talent does is increase the overheal. It won't really do much to lessen a healer's load. Why? Because 4% is a joke. For a 40K health DK, that's a 1.6K heal. The last boss of Heroic Pit of Saron hits me (with Mitigation abilities active) for 7-9K on a normal hit, and up to 16K on a harder hit (don't remember the attack). That 1.4K can't save my life, as damage is applied first. And those attacks hit HARD, so it is heal or die for the healer anyway.

D. The higher your avoidance gets, be it from gear, procs, or trinkets, the less effective this talent is.

E. Due to the over-healing and expected return of only 16-20% or so, I'd expect a well-timed Rune Tap to perform much better.

MoB is an... okay... talent for the instances where bosses don't hit hard. And it's good for PvP against DWers. But it's pretty mediocre as far as tanking talents go. It isn't worth a point. Neither is RT for that matter, but some like to have it for a safety-blanket.

[EDIT]

Actually, I'd say RT is far better. Why? Because MoB will never save your life. When you see your health dip down to 5K, you can use RS for a 4K heal (5.4 with VB up). That might be enough (with WotN of CD, especially) to save your life. MoB will almost never do that. You'd have to use it before you get low, and hope that the heal is high enough to stop the next attack if your healer is still midcast. I still wouldn't take either though.



Death Strike's damage is irrelevant as far as healing is concerned. It's a flat 15% of max heath, with two diseases, for Blood per hit. The glyph is taken for threat, and that's all.



I wouldn't take Subversion. 9% crit on DS/HS is nice, but there are many superior options. For one, you want to improve your Icy Touch. That 6% reduction to boss swing/casting speed is actually pretty huge on longer fights (and it makes MoB less attractive). And it's massive in AoE situations. If a fight lasts 1 minute, you will have been swung at 2 times less. If you have 2 mobs, that's 4 times. 3 mobs is 6 times. The average estimate for a boss fight is 5 minutes, which seems to be fairly true in the new instances (actually longer for a group that isn't raid geared). So, that's 10 less swings. Which is an overall reduction of 70K+ damage. Not huge, no, but it's passive, which is great, and it is more reliable than avoidance, because they WILL swing less.

And losing Scent of Blood is a huge DpS drop, which will still be an issue with Blood when playing with geared players. It isn't really all that far ahead in the single-target department at all now. Not taking this will probably cause you to fall behind Unholy/Frost specs that do in terms of TpS.

Edited, Dec 14th 2009 1:58am by idiggory

Edited, Dec 14th 2009 2:03am by idiggory

MoB makes me feel nice and fuzzy too. I like thinking that it saved my guild from becoming bunch of broken toys to be donated to Ulduar's Goodwill thanks to XT's handiwork.


He's not going to be tanking the big instances. He's doing normals. We're not talking about a full on raid build here. Due to the lack of tanks he mentioned, he's probably going to be using LFG a lot.




Which he will not get until he's doing heroics.

Well, first of all, you need Defense. And A LOT of it.

Even in regs, crits hurt.

And try hitting the AH to get some real tanking items. They shouldn't be that expensive.

[EDIT]

LOL, don't mind me. I've been studying too much. Didn't even look at the level. XD

Edited, Dec 16th 2009 2:52pm by idiggory

Got myself the cobalt plate set which gives me 5% crit immunity, best I can do at the level. Tried another Nexus and had basically no real issues apart from asshat dps impatiently pulling mobs with me out of position and healer on mb:-P
I'll do another run or two and then quest the rest to 72 to take advantage of the new rune.