Learn 2 tankFollow

I would argue that Blood is HARDER due to the 1 rune thing, as optimum threat requires you to use runes as soon as you can. So, on your SHORTEST rotation, you need to use 5 abilities. Unholy and Frost only have to use 3.

On a group of 3 or 4 mobs, you need to be using HS on the proper mob. That means you need to pay much more attention to which mob you are hitting. Frost and Unholy can basically tab without thinking about it. A build that takes the Pestilence glyph will use 6 abilities per rotation. That cuts things VERY short comparatively. If you have to run to a mob, you may very easily lose threat. And not finishing your rotation in the 10 seconds isn't just delaying damage--you risk your last HS doing 25% less on top of the delay.

Blood's margin of error is FAR smaller than the other two. You ***** up your HSs or BBs, and you probably will lose hate. If I don't BB once as Unholy, I have no worries because my diseases and DnD are already putting out way more threat.

Oh, and Blood's BB is only going to do 17% more than Unholy's in most Heroic scenarios.



You are making a big oversight here. The OP, as a new tank, will be running with highly geared players. Even WITH the optimal rotation, he may be losing aggro. So there certainly IS a big probability that the 200-400 TpS that you lose from using BB instead of HS can defintely result in a DpS getting hate. I can put out 5.5K-6K TpS in Unholy, without worrying about it. And I still occasionally have to worry (especially if running with an Arms Warrior).

I'm not saying that Blood is bad (I wouldn't argue that). I'm just saying that Blood requires you to know what you are doing, and it is going to punish someone who doesn't very harshly. Blood and Unholy get quite a bit more passive Threat due to their diseases, and HB makes it up for Frost. Plus Unholy gets more damage from DnD. That makes it much more forgiven, so you can focus on learning to tank instead of learning the perfect rotation. Someone who is trying to learn to tank as Blood just has much more to worry about.

Edited, Jan 12th 2010 10:00pm by idiggory

My point about Blood being more difficult was NEVER about Blood as a rotation. It IS harder to learn how to gauge when you need to HS and when to BB, yes. But my point was always that lower AoE threat meant you would be losing more mobs. And that can be really stressful to deal with as a new tank. The least complicated, highest threat spec is going to have a much easier learning curve than one where you have to work hard for the threat, and still lose more mobs.

Furthermore, don't forget that all of this is specifically geared to the OP. His threat, once Def capped, is going to be MUCH lower. I am in an average of 225 gear, have a Quel'Delar and a GS of 2500+. Using the optimal rotation, I usually land around 5.5K TpS in Unholy. When your GS is going to be 1500 or lower, such as when you first start tanking, you will not get anywhere near that threat.

This means that even the lower DpS are going to be pulling threat. So it isn't necessarily 5/6K DpSers that are pulling hate, but could go as low as 2-2.5K DpSers for the starting tank. Especially if your group composition works against you. And the OP will be working with fewer RSs, due to lower avoidance, as well as lower DpS stats. And he'll be working in a build which occasionally gets hit harder than Frost/Unholy due to its physical nature. Even in a DpS sense, it is rarely recommended at the lowest gear levels.

And I disagree greatly that Blood has a superior ability to react to situations. Frost can more easily pick up adds. Both Frost and Unholy have to worry less about using their taunts, as they are less-likely to need them during combat. And it isn't like Rune Tap doesn't have partners in other trees. Unholy has Anti-Magic Zone, which is a godsend when there's a lot of magic damage. Lichborne can be incredibly useful, since fear is used a lot in heroics. Deathchill guarantees a crit, which helps steal aggro back when you need it most.

Blood has NO tools for getting threat back quickly, of for setting firm threat on an add. A bad tank in Frost will result in far fewer group deaths than a bad tank in Blood, simply because a Healer can carry the group as long as the tank is the only one getting hit.

Yes, but that makes NO difference. It may use 1 rune, but it is the same rune that ALL of your emergency abilities use. SS and Oblit use 2 runes, yes, but they only use 1 rune of the type their defensive abilities need. So they are the same as HS. If I'm Frost, the only thing I can do with an Unholy rune is Plague Strike, unless I'm going to combine them. If I'm Unholy, the only thing I can really do with a Frost rune is Icy Touch. If I'm BLood, the only thing I can do with a Frost or Unholy rune is PS/IT.

So, when it comes down to it, unless we have to apply a disease it doesn't matter any more than Blood if we use our FU ability (compared to their B ability). And if the Frost DK uses the HB glyph, it doesn't matter at all then.



I JUST said that my argument for why Blood is harder to learn as has nothing to do with rotations. The comments about HS/BB were a specific response to a false claim about it having an easier rotation. You trying to ignore my actual argument isn't helping anything. My point is that Blood will lose more mobs (ESPECIALLY when at low gear levels, like we are talking about), so they will have to stress much more over every action. They have to worry about using which taunt, and when, as well as their interrupts. A wrong action is much less forgiving than with Frost or Unholy. I don't care about the rotation.

And the idea that Blood's is easier (or that it is press-3-over-and-over kind of rotation) is bull. They are not easier than Unholy at all (and for reasons I pointed out in an above post, it is much less forgiving to any kind of stun or if you have to run.

DnD>PS>IT>Pest
SS>SS>BB>BB

Is Unholy's rune rotation for AoE.

DnD>PS>IT>Pest
DS>DS>BB>BB

Is Blood's rune rotation for AoE.

Oh, wait...

Single Target?

Unholy w/ Reaping:
PS>IT>SS>BS>BS
SS>SS>SS

Blood:
PS>IT>DS>HS>HS
DS>HS>HS>HS>HS

The second is, actually, more complicated. Unholy hits the same button 3 times. Blood hits 1 button once, and 1 button 4 times. If you ***** up and hit DS twice, you are losing threat.

You are trying to make arguments with rotations without even considering how it actually compares. Blood has fewer tools to react to situations, and the exact same disadvantage due to runes that Frost and Unholy have. It may take a different form, sure, but that doesn't mean they don't suffer it.

But, again, my argument was never about rotations. It was purely about threat output. Without even considering what you have to do for your basic rotation, Blood's lower threat output gives them a larger work load and puts more *importance* on the optimal rotation. I don't care how hard that is (and it IS harder than Frost or Unholy once you factor in targeting as well).

My point is that Blood's threat WON'T be enough when you are first STARTING heroics. I don't give a damn about how they compare later on. But Blood is the most gear-dependent spec we have. And Unholy does, like, 30 less damage with their BBs than Blood does. Seriously. They get a 23% bonus to the damage, where you get 40%, but also get a 14% AP coefficient instead of a 9.5% one. As a result, at low gear levels, you will barely beat out theirs. And your DnD and Diseases do QUITE a bit less. Plus, the Icy Touch glyph is far better for Unholy than for Blood. SS isn't even much of a threat tool, it's just icing on the cake.

When you first start tanking, threat is your number one concern. You need to grab mobs and keep them. A new Unholy or Frost tank has WAY more tools to do this.

At higher gear levels, I don't care. Eventually you won't need to worry about threat in heroics anymore, for any of the specs. But, in the beginning, it is the MOST important part of tanking.

I don't care what the state is at a 2500 GS. The OP isn't anywhere close to that--he needs every last bit of threat he can get right now. If he can just focus on learning to tank, instead of fighting against his spec, he will have a much easiser time. Once he is used to grabbing mobs he loses, and learns how to place his DnD effectively (and is used to the basic DK disease-placing rotation), then he will be able to change to Blood much easier.

I have a 3k+ gearscore on my DPS set, and barely over 2k..last I checked...on my tank set, I've run Heroics with people who have the same gear as my tank and I grab threat from them all the time in Heroics.

I have almost the same health pool in my T9 DPS set as these tanks just starting to do Heroics, I'm pulling 4k+ DPS and always have to back off so that I don't pull the mob from the tank, which is makes it harder to kill stuff for the group and heal the tank because he's going to be taking more damage because stuff stays alive longer.

The point about threat being the primary concern when first starting is valid, but also having to watch your health and using your Defensive CD's, since you'll have to be using them more often to stay alive due to the lower effective health.

Blood AoE snap threat generation is inferior to Frost AoE snap threat generation. Blood can produce more, but only if given time to do so, and most of the time fights don't last that long and it doesn't take long for someone to be given a new a-hole by a Heroic mob when the tank loses threat because he's ridiculously outgeared by the DPS.

If you are geared well enough that the AoE threat you produce as Blood is enough to keep the trash on you all the time, awesome, but Frost and Unholy can do that at lower gear levels....which is what this whole thread is about, a FRESH tank.

Very well. You're right, and I'm just so awesome that I've never had threat problems as blood before during all the time I've spend on my Death Knight.

Are you happy now?

Hey it's possible we're all just retarded and Dilbrt and Mozared are awesomazing and everyone they grouped with sucks at DPS so they would never have any problems Tanking.... /shrug.....what was all this about again, I went to the Druid forums because I found the joy of healing and something different to do in WoW.

Which was going to be my next comment.

With the advent of T9 pieces of gear being acquired like candy on Halloween, the Average DPS can reach the 3k+ DPS really quickly. The argument can be said of course that tanks can get it just as fast though, but the problem comes in the fact that with 10000000000000000 DPS on a realm and 10000 Tanks, if you're one of those tanks who just started, you're obviously going to get at LEAST 1 uber geared DPS who will make Tanking difficult for you, if not 3 on top of the fact that Healers are almost as in short supply as tanks, and some of them suck or are undergeared, you might be having a tough time as a new Tank...just maybe.

Why are you assuming ALL the DpS are doing that much? If he's in a group with 2 2K DpS and 1 4K DpS, stuff is going to die plenty slowly, and he will still (at his gear levels in Blood) lose mobs to the one 4K member. I have parties ALL THE TIME with people doing exactly this. It's a perfectly fair assumption. It's nice to use a single scenario (which is fairly unlikely, since the number of lower DpS is larger than the population of high DpS) to support your side. But that doesn't mean it is realistic. And to make a claim that Blood is superior in learning to tank (or hell, even equal), you need to think about what the person will ACTUALLY experience.

A. If you are pumping out 1K DpS, and only have 30% Dodge+Parry, your threat is going to be under 3K per mob. That's easily hit by many DpS. And a group doing 3K is still enough to make fights take a while. And I've seen 80 Mages go down in under 2 seconds to heroic Nexus mobs. It doesn't matter if they die just after they die, if they still die.

Your job as a tank is to keep them from dying.

B. You can't guarantee that your DpS will be giving you time on every pull to ramp up your threat. Yeah, maybe they should. But it doesn't matter what we think they should be doing. What matters is what they WILL do. You can't just say "Well, a DpS is always going to give me time to establish hate, so clearly this is fine." We are talking about what would ACTUALLY be easier for the OP to learn to tank in. Many groups are going to bash him if he asks them to hold on for even 5 seconds. And if just *one* pulls 4K DpS, he's still going to lose the mobs to that one person (and, if the DpS is something like a Mage, where all mobs get damaged somewhat evenly, he's going to lose them all).

I said specifically in an above post, that this wouldn't matter if groups gave him time to gain threat. But because that's not something we can guarantee, and will earn him some public bashing, I wouldn't use that as a standard.

And god forbid someone accidentally pulls a group, and starts DpSing since most will. Or an add wanders into a Mage's Blizz cast.

C.


I have no clue why you are talking about button spamming. I really don't. No spec is just "spam this ability." If that's the way you play it, you aren't putting out nearly as much threat as you could be.

But if you are talking about using BB... the situation CERTAINLY exists where a DpS is going to steal hate from you... I don't get what you are talking about.

Diggory, do you actually tank, or just like to work in theoretics? Or is it just that you don't like being argued with?

You can't plan for every scenario, there's always going to be someone who does something stupid and makes life harder on you and themselves. But assuming things go well (which is even what we're doing when we theorycraft!), Blood is no more complicated than either of the other specs and has better survival options baked in for cases where the healer is a little slack or something DOES go wrong.

People have to learn sometime and learning to tank using a rhythm that you likely won't ever see again when you get into raids and NEED those blood talents for the tight moments is, in a word, dumb. Practice is part of learning, and if it means losing a few trash groups while you get into the practice of what is (arguably) currently the most well-rounded tanking spec for the class, then I really fail to see the harm in it. Eventually it'll become second nature and won't be a problem.

And ArPen for tanking? Seriously?

I don't mean to sound rude. It's just puzzling why you're arguing based on points regarding other people doing dumb things, rather than simply sticking to a modus operandi and letting the rest sort itself out.

Edited, Jan 15th 2010 9:22am by Norellicus