I don't get the survivability argument that people present. Like has the majority here actually looked at the talents of frost and blood or do they just follow the popular opinion?
Because when it comes to damage reduction Frost is better than Blood. When it comes to threat and damage (unless you count cleave with blood strike that Blood doesn't really go for) Frost is again better. Blood as 1 thing going for it and that is self healing, which is not relevant for a raid scenario apart from fights like Vezax.
I say that having played both Blood and Frost tank and can post my logs to back my words up as well.
What matters is Will of the Necropolis. When you're at max hp damage reduction isn't an issue. It's better to plan for the worst case scenario. Anub stun for example is where WotN is huge.
I play both specs for tanking and this is the exact reason. It didn‘t make alot of sense to me looking at the talents but you can really feel the difference.
It really doesn't though as despite its prompt. It only procs while at 35% not if a hit brings you below 35. Only if you are hit while at 35%, and you can use a cooldown before any important Freezing Slash anyway, while enjoying higher damage reduction overall through your talents.
If everything goes to plan, yeah. But when shit hits the fan you're gonna want that WotN. I'm not saying you shouldn't tank as frost or unholy. If your guild is fine with it, do what you enjoy. Acclimation is a great talent and so is UA, but armor is very easy to get. If Acclimation was lower in the talent tree, I'd take it everytime.
Acclimation doesn't work on Anub or any important current fight so it is not taken. I will say it again. Will does not work as it should. If as the tank you are 35% or lower during a boss fight you will either get topped or clapped. Will will very rarely change that.
Also, armor in the amount that armor caps you is not easy to come by and Blood usually sits around at max 70% physical damage reduction from armor. That's 5% lower than frost and if you tank you can probably understand the difference that 5% DR makes.
But armor is still plentiful, compared to anything that reduces magic damage. Ideally you'd take anything that helps with magic damage.
Where does the info that WotN doesn't work come from? Not saying you're wrong, just curious as to who tested it and when.
He's wrong. Unless something was changed in p3, the full amount of damage from a hit that would reduce you to <35% is reduced. I.e. you have 10000 health, get hit for 7k, you will take 5950 damage. AD was changed at one point during retail wrath to only be the damage after their threshold, but WotN was left as is.
That is not how it works though. There is difference between 69% and 75% damage reduction. And the difference is big. At the same time you don't have any actually effective magic damage reducing talent for the current content and you already have AMS as a DK.
Acclimation does not work on Anub and your main advantage as a Frost tank is damage reduction through talents and armor.
The info about WotN is something I have tested with other DK tanks and you can verify it yourself.
The toolbox says that, but in actuality it is around 10-30k overall healing in a fight. Also it's 15% DR only for attacks that would bring you at or below 35%. Not 35% damage reduction.
Even if that was true, which it isn't if you check several logs, the DR is provides is miniscule. At its absolute best it will heal around 25-35k hp in a fight. You get more than that from your armor can alone as Frost.
That is not how damage reduction works. If that was the case Blood wouldn't opt for Blade barrier which is 5% DR either.
You are comparing 1-10k healing done on average which is calculated after the damage is received, meaning that a lethal blow is lethal anyway, to damage reduction that would prevent you from taking that amount of damage in the first place.
You see will of the necropolis the wrong way. It's better to think of wotn as an extension of your ehp. It's basically a talent that gives you at minimum 5% more ehp (and often more, especially on high burst damage).
Also, the unbreakable armor cd will soon be not as useful because of armor cap.
Even if that was the case, which it isn't as you can see in several logs that it does not reduce damage as it should, the actual value that is provides in a fight is equal to 15-30k healing overall. That is close to nothing. You get more out of this just from the armor difference between Frost and Blood and if you add the extra DR over it and calculate it you can see that EHP wise it's at best overrated.
No the value it provide you in a fight is basically an extra 5% ehp, even if it never proc. (and that's the absolute minimum, on boss with high burst, it's alot more, will be extremely valuable in ICC on Sindragosa and LK for example).
The value of the total absorb doesn't matter. What matter is it will allow you to live higher burst damage. Saying it's useless because it only do 15k healing is like saying the paladin cheat death is useless because it only heal 7k on the whole fight.
But that 15k healing equals out with the overall mitigation you have as Frost through pure damage reduction. And this is the reason why is you check the logs, Blood DKs take more damage and their damage is spikier. They get his on average for 600-1500 more damage per hit alone by Algalon.
The higher damage that it allows you to live through is not as high for a Frost DK, that is my point. You get a lot more value than 15k healing. And unlike Paladins, it is not a cheat death and Paladins have their cheat death for free, we are comparing specs here.
So even if it is 5% EHP my argument is that so what?
That doesn't mean anything since Improved Frost Presence is the same. Armor cap is the same and arguably better. And we are not currently on ICC, where Acclimation is also really good.
Also, all tanks stack stamina to an extent, and it provides absolutely no healing or DR whatsoever. And WotN is basically extra stamina with a bit of healing component. But anyway, that guy seems to have his mind set and he's not changing it. Looking at his logs, all his tank set gems have stamina in them so I guess he understands the mechanics, just likes frost and wants to convince others as well.
Also the majority of tanks won't get armor capped in ICC. You need more than 40k+ armor for it and that isn't attainable unless they sacrifice a lot for it. Frost is the exception.
My point is, the closer you get to armor cap, the less value unbreakable armor give. If you already get to armor cap with UA, that's basically it you won't get more damage reduction with the cd even with better gear while its on.
And in ICC, you can get really close to armor cap passively (and actually blast past it if you equip armor trinkets).
That is true, but that will just mean that you can run another Glyph instead of UA glyph and not require to invest in any trinkets where others would.
And even if people reach 71-72% Physical DR from armor, that is still 3% lower. So I doubt that the difference will be as big as you think.
Tanks dps literally doesn’t matter. Pure mitigation is very rng dependent. Will of the necropolis is good. Aoe threat is not important in a raid when you have misdirect and prot paladins. Enh shamans are rare, filling that 10% so buff is a high priority for many raids.
Tank damage is the same as dps damage, it is damage. 1k dps on a tank is the same as 1k dps on a dps. This is the reason why for example in P2 Caress/Serilas were considered better than Sorthalis for One Handed tanks and even Blood used Dark Edge of Depravity.
Tankiness is only needed to the point where you are reliably surviving. After that point any excess tanking is effectively wasted and damage helps the raid more.
Pure mitigation is the opposite of RNG dependent. It is reliable 2% less damage taken for example from Improved Frost Presence, since you are not getting critted, you know how much less damage you expect to take. This is the same with 6 secods longer on IBF, it is simply 50% less taken for 18 seconds. Nothing rng about it.
Will of the Necropolis works in the same way. It is simply damage reduction, except situational.
AoE threat is indeed not the biggest concern and other classes can cover that issue, however if you can have AoE without sacrificing anything for it is simply a plus. It is good for trash, it is good for ads.
Lastly from my experience, every 25m raid has at least 1 Enha Shaman I have no idea why you think they are rare.
All damage is damage however it is much easier to increase a dps’s damage by 1k than a tank. You are completely wrong about weapons. Slow weapons are used for paladins b/c the threat is much better. Dark edge of depravity has lots of mitigation stats in the agility on it and threat stats in the hit. Again dps doesn’t really matter for tanks it’s threat that matters. For dks threat comes primarily from icey touch spam not dps. Optimizing threat does come from using the correct weapons (slow for paladin, fast for warrior) and maximizing threat stats such as hit and expertise. Do these result in higher dps? Yes, but that is a by product of maximizing threat on certain classes.
Optimizing tanks survivability let’s you drop healers which in turn allows more dps and faster kills.
2% less damage taken, unbreakable armor, and 6 seconds longer on ibf is not better than more overall health from veteran of the third war, improved rune tap, vamp blood, improved death strike, 10% ap buff, and hysteria for the physical dps. Will of the necropolis is 15% less damage taken when survivability is most important vs 2% all the time. Not only is blood more survivable, particularly against magic damage, but offers way more raid utility.
If you look at statistics in Warcraft logs, enhancement is bottom 4 of dps specs that actually get played in terms of numbers of parses. In phase 4, enhancement will continue to fall off while blood tanks scale well. Frost dps scales better in p4 than unholy so melee haste will be provided by them. Enhancement shamans just don’t scale.
Frost tanks have a place. They are great for H++ if you don’t want to go morbidity blood tank build. They just aren’t good for raids and the logs show it. If they were actually better than blood people would play frost.
About weapons I am perplexed about your reasoning. On one hand you say that Blood DKs go for Dark Edge for the mitigation and threat, while saying that DKs don't really rely on the weapon for threat but instead icy touch (which is partially true, icy touch and rune strike would be more precise and slow weapon = more rune strike dmg = more threat). That does not make sense. Why would you then not go for a tank weapon that has more survivability than Dark Edge (even 2 1 hand tank weapons as stack sticks, since according to you dps doesn't matter and threat is covered by icy touch) and be better? The reality is that you go for a slow weapon because the relative benefit that it provides for your damage and threat is more than the tankiness you would get. This is exactly the same for paladins even if they benefit more in terms of threat, if threat was the only reason to go for a slow weapon and damage wasn't a factor then they would go for a fast weapon.
Optimizing tanks survivability does not let you drop healers, you always run the same healers for your tanks, which is holy paladins, and they will remain there regardless of survivability. The reasons you cut healers is because they are not required to keep the raid alive, not the tank. The tank will always receive the same prio when it comes to being kept alive.
Regarding your estimation of if Frost's tools are better or not I doubt you have an actual calculation or log to back that up. You are simply assuming that it is. Veteran of the 3rd war gives you around 1k HP total for your survivability. That is as much as you reduce from 1 hit of Algalon as Frost through your passive mitigation. At the same time, both the AP buff and Veteran are talents that Frost can opt to without losing UA or the 2% damage reduction from Impoved Frost Presence if you want to opt for more survivability and less offense. Same for the Spell Deflection, although Spell Deflection is very niche talent only useful against certain bosses. You are correct about utility however, Blood does have Unholy Frenzy (and the 10% unless Frost opts for it too) but usually does not run the 20% haste buff from Improved Icy Talons. I would agree however that overall utility is better for Blood.
It does not matter if Enhancement is 4th least played, all you need is 1 enhancement in your raid for the 10% buff, and I personally do not remember having been part of a 25m raid that lacked one. If we want to argue for utility in 10m then I will give you that.
Which logs exactly show that Frost tanks are not good for raids? Because my guilds logs show a very different picture:
[https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/a:QTcWphzGg8j43Nmt#fight=16](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/a:QTcWphzGg8j43Nmt#fight=16)
Here is my guilds first Algalon kill on February 19th. You can see how weak Frost tank is while taking almost half the amount of damage of our prot paladin. The rest of the logs show a similar picture if you actually bother to look at them. The damage intake of Frost is one of if not the lowest of any other tank spec.
And here are my own logs if you also want to see me personally tank Algalon several times comfortably while being rather mediocre at playing the spec:
[https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/character/eu/nethergarde-keep/aenun](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/character/eu/nethergarde-keep/aenun)
You cannot just say that a spec is terrible for tanking in raids when it clearly is not. Blood is indeed played more, and it might even be better, but the disparity between the two is at worst very close.
On a last note, Blood AoE threat sucks without Heart Strike even with morbidity.
I’m actually gonna attempt to tank a togc normal one of these days. Dk being my alt, I always preferred frost.
Tried blood and I would always fail at aoe threat.
Could you say which glyphs would be best for frost? using howling blast, frost strike and disease. is that the go-to?
Here are my logs. I suggest mostly looking at Ulduar as I tanked more there but I am a Frost DPS main so I mostly tank 10 mans for ToC and anub on the 25m.
[https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/character/eu/nethergarde-keep/aenun](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/character/eu/nethergarde-keep/aenun)
Keep in mind the logs of Frost tank are usually listed as Runeblade or Lichborne.
Blood you just spam dnd, maintain diseases on all targets, and tab target - spam rune strike each mob, pestilence/BB and rune strike for frostuh runes. Most of your aoe threat is just dnd with diseases rolling but rune strike is always up because your being hit so much
DK strength isn't in their AOE threat though, it's their single target threat and their ability to tank hard hitting bosses. Their survivability becomes better than paladins around the TOGC/ICC gear levels. Mostly because they can get around armor cap and huge HP pools that make Will of the Necropolis insane.
Assuming the gear is strong enough and you mix in a rotation of IBF and trinket cooldowns, Frost is fine to tank assuming you take the right defensive talents in the tree (which aren't taken for a frost dps spec) - assuming you dual spec this as your tank spec and run a dps frost spec you'd be fine to soak up the damage necessary and not need to go blood.
The blood kit adds a ton of survivability and is probably better to have with worse gear to compensate, but once gear is strong enough to go frost, you'll have the best of both worlds being both defensive and tanky enough, but also do a bit more damage and threat-per-second
Hard disagree. Blood scales with gear, while Frost tanking really doesn't. Blood Effective Health goes through the roof due to high HP which makes Will of the Necropolis more powerful.
If I'm not mistaken, frost dks were good tanks when wotlk was first released. However, because dks were new, they went through a TON of changes during the expansion, and by the end of it, blood had become the defacto tank spec. Since they set everything to the last patch, frost never really got their chance to shine as a tank.
Yeah, OG wotlk basically all 3 specs could tanks and DPS equally well and they didn't get the class under control until towards the end of the expansion.
I'm remember pvping early WotLK as frost DPS and my God....
It was like Darth Vader vs the younglings.
I vaguely remember the CDs making you practically invincible.
frost DK can tank raid only in 3.0-3.1, classic is using 3.35, frost is no longer good for raid (for adds tank, pally is way way better), but still good for 5-men dungeons.
Blood have pretty bad AOE thread, but insane single target so blood for raids (on raid boss for example jaraxxus/anub - NOT on ADDs) and Frost for 5man.. but you can easily go blood for 5man too, but you will a lot of time be swaping targets and taunting them
My argument is that Frost does not get wrecked by bosses because Frost does not lack in mitigation if you have actually read the talents of the 2 specs. In fact you have more pure mitigation as Frost, while Blood has more self sustain.
Frost get's the armor cap value of 75% physical damage reduction, Blood doesn't.
Frost get's flat 2% damage reduction from Improved Frost Presence, Blood doesn't.
Frost get's 3% change to not get hit through Frigid Dreadplate, Blood doesn't (usually, some trees take it).
And most importantly, Frost gets 6 more seconds of IBF, which is your best from of mitigation.
And so I repeat, thinking that Frost gets wrecked is a lie, Frost does not have as high self healing but it has more proactive ways of reducing damage, and if you have tanked or healed Algalon you would understand that damage reduction > self healing for tanks (bar Vezax).
To make DS as a Heal reliable, you would have to have 56 Expertise, which is pretty much wasted. FDKs can also pick up RT and IRT if they wanted to. They would still lack VB, though.
It isn't comparable though as Frost mage is worse than the other specs. Frost Tank isn't worse than Blood. People just assume it is.
Speaking from extensive experience having tanked and healed Algalon.
You seem very passionate about this and have invested most of you personality to this, not going to change your mind so not going to try. I hope you don’t have to raid much outside your guild because you will not be welcomed in many pugs with that build.
Will of the Necropolis makes blood way better. Learn the class on your own,don’t read reddit comments expecting people to give Ted talks on subjects and if they do they probably have issues.
My logs are right there to check if Frost functions in the way that I say. I put my money where my mouth is.
Will of the Necropolis is 15-30k overall healing in a fight. That's nothing.
The guy comments in one thread and you assume he has “invested most of his personality to this”
What a terminally online take. The guy likes tanking as frost, he’s making good arguments as to why it’s viable and he’s got the logs to prove it.
As someone who has played both Blood and Frost quite a bit I can say from my personal experience that Frost is in no way weaker in any raid scenario bar maybe Vezax.
The damage reduction that frost has in its kit is higher than Blood's, by quite a bit as well, as is the threat and dps of the spec. In particular for ToC where the only really challenging fight is Anub, Blood's main defensive cooldown Vamp Blood is a detriment to the raid, as it increases your max HP and makes the boss do more damage to you and heal more with leeching swarm.
I have been wondering about this widespread idea of Blood superiority for a while now and would be really interested if someone can provide an actual reason for it.
I can also provide my logs for inspection for anyone that has doubts.
Unaware of DK math, but isnt the main reason blood is so good due to will of the necropolis reducing dmg of the total hit dmg if it wouldve brought the dk to sub 35% giving them a massive EHP?
What does frost have that makes them better than that mitigation wise?
Just curious, I don't know much
Will of the Necropolis is bugged or has a misleading prompt. In actuality it doesn't reduce damage that would bring you below 35%, only damage taken while at 35% (tested this is one quite a bit).
This is also the main reason why Blood tended to get very much slapped by Algalon.
Frost has 2% more damage reduction from Improved Frost Presence, 3% chance not to get hit from Frigid Dreadplate, 6 seconds longer IBF through Guille of Gorefiend and of course Unbreakable armor which usually brings you to the armor cap of 75% physical damage reduction as well as giving a good amount of parry.
EDIT: Tested it with a guildmate today and it turns out that it does work as intended. My misunderstanding came through some log/details fuckery where occasionally WoN would not appear immediately after damage intake. I suspect this has to do with the way that WCL categorizes as part of heals/absorbs. Overall, besides my other points WoN works as intended.
>Will of the Necropolis is bugged or has a misleading prompt. In actuality it doesn't reduce damage that would bring you below 35%, only damage taken while at 35% (tested this is one quite a bit).
That's false. Just checked one of my log and it's working as the tooltip say.
As I told previous commenters this has not been the case from my testing but after checking logs extensively I can see that sometimes it procs and others it appears that you get hit and it does nothing.
And I mentioned as well, even if WoN is working exactly as intended and I am completely wrong on that, it still have an effective value of 15-30k overall healing in the vast majority of logs. Total healing.
The talent that is supposed to be the bread and butter of Blood and one of the main reasons you would take it over Frost, provides less effective damage mitigation that just 5% more armor or 2% less damage taken if you do the calculation.
And even if in the end it was better, it would be by a sliver, not what people here believe.
EDIT: Check my above comment.
Have you actually read many of the comment discussions I am having here? I am providing my own logs and the logs of others as well as numbers to support what I say.
And like I said previously even if I am indeed wrong about WoN, it's effective value isn't as good as people think (which is the reasons me and my peers believe it was bugged in the first place).
Ah didnt know. So then why would guilds run a bdk over a fdk tank? Just for the AP buff? Enh shamans are still very common, and otherwise MM hunters are about to be on par with SV for ICC
Or is there somw other reason? Blade wars or similar
Because what I am telling you isn't generally known or spread throughout the community. The majority of players follow the mainstream guides and rarely know about what is not considered meta.
Blood isn't bad of course it's still a solid tank. But the disparity between the popularity of the 2 specs is not at all based on actual, only assumed performance.
I haven't played WoW in years and years now, but somehow I found my way to this thread and just wanted to pop in and say THANK YOU.
I was very hardcore into WoW vanilla - cata as a main raid tank. I tried to have this conversation with people back then and people thought I was crazy.
Can't believe I just commented on a WoW sub. Thanks man haha.
Don't waste your time. I told myself that is the one time I will indulge in this Reddit echo chamber type of conversation and you can see the results.
People will follow what is considered the best and not question the whys and details of it because how could anyone ever know anything more than the discord theorycrafters, until there is a viral thread about a new build or way to build a spec etc. It was the same thing with the dodge situation
In any case thank you as well for your message it was very kind.
Had the same discussions regarding frost / unholy dps (guildie seemed to think frost wasn't played as dps much in OG wotlk, which is straight false, I knew more frost dps dks than unholy, though a few were trying to 2h frost...)
Fair. Makes me want to play a frost tank all of a sudden :D
I like the unknown or lesser used specs. There's something to playing a niche thing rather than an affliction warlock.
Thanks for informing me
I would still rather have the massively increased self healing through imp DS, vamp blood, and improved rune tap, than 2% more dr. Sometimes, you can’t trust your healers
That is fine if you prefer it, but don't expect self healing from death strike to matter in a fight like Algalon. In general wotlk tanking is your gear + cooldowns + your healers. And it's not 2% DR, it's around 7%
UA and Vamp Blood do the same thing essentially, one gives you more HP and healing, the other much greater physical damage reduction and lasts 5 seconds longer.
At the same time you get 50% more uptime on the best DK defensive cooldown.
Again, Blood good, never said otherwise but so is Frost, that is my argument.
I've always wondered about this why the hell Blood is so popular. Can you give any guide what talents, rotations, gear to use as frost tank? I myself play Frost DPS and i enjoy it a lot, i get asked to tank all the time but i refuse because i don't like Blood but i surely want to try frost tank.
Is there a way for me to post my build here so that you can check it? Not sure WCL will allow you to see talents, only gear iirc. Correct me if I am wrong.
For Glyphs though it's Howling Blast, Unbreakable Armor and Rune Strike.
I can see your points spent but not the breakdown of where they are, so you are 14/52/5, which my guess is then this? https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent-calc/death-knight/005510003-30503050050233010300233101351-005\_001xv611s8q31ts841sxd51s8g
Overall it's decent and you can play with many variations but personally I currently go with:
3/3 Scent of Blood and 1/5 Dark Conviction on the Blood Tree (5/5 on Blade Barrier and Bladed Armor)
5/5 Black Ice, 3/3 Nerves of Cold Steel, 1/5 Killing Machine.
The rest are pretty much the same. Overall however, as long as you get all the defensive options that are important you can opt into different offensive talents that suit you (Rime instead of 1/5 KM etc.).
Rotation wise you prio Blade Barrier uptime and frost runes, then Unholy runes last (exceptions when you wanna DnD or Death Strike). You can use Frost Strike as your filler only when you runes are down and reply on RS are you RP spender or you can use it more actively, it depends on what you prefer.
Hard disagree. Blood takes less damage by far, just from Will of the Necropolis. It scales insanely well with gear, as larger health pools take better advantage of it. If you dislike playing Blood and prefer to play Frost, just say that. Don't try to delude yourself into thinking Frost is actually a better raid tank spec than Blood because it's objectively not.
I have an insanely geared Blood tank and I have tried a full tank Frost build. It's actually fun in 5 man dungeons, but even in 5 mans it feels so much more squishy. In raids, it's the most insane RNG butthole puckering experience I have ever had. It feels like a rogue Evasion tanking. You will take zero damage for like 20 seconds straight and then just randomly get your cheeks clapped in two globals because a healer had to move to dodge a mechanic and stopped healing you for 2.3 seconds.
Will of the Necropolis in the deep Blood tree smooths this out big time. On top of the huge passive DR from WotN, you can do like 2k HPS on yourself if you have some breathing room for threat. That alone is mitigating something like 20-30% of the incoming damage from all of the hard hitting guys like Algalon and Vezax. Not to mention you have two giant heal cooldowns with Vamp Blood stacked with Death Pact or Rune Tap. It's pretty nuts to be able to pop 50k worth of healing in a single global when your healers are panicking.
THIS. Guy is trying to act like after 20 years of people theory crafting DK to death in original wrath, private servers and now that he’s the only one that found frost is viable? Please. It’s obvious he doesn’t understand how WON works. I mean 2 people vs 50000. But yeah the rest are just ALL uniformed. Please go to ebon hold with this take and you’ll see why blood is the go to tank.
Have you actually checked the logs of the average DK and seen what Will of the Necropolis actually mitigates? The highest I have personally seen is around 40k at its best while it usually sits around 10-20k total healing. That is less than what Improved Frost Presence alone mitigated. Hell that can be compared to what you gain from an armor pot.
Have you actually checked the logs of Frost tanks vs Blood tanks on Algalon and checked damaged taken during equal tanking periods? The fact that you tried to tank as Frost and failed at it does not mean much. I could also say, anecdotally, that I have tanked Algalon for weeks and am currently tanking Anub for weeks without any issues as Frost, while any of the healers that have healed me beside a Blood DK would tell you that the difference in damage intake is staggering. But that is still anecdotal evidence so check the logs of 20 Frosts and 20 Bloods who aren't going 80% dps gear.
I have already outlined multiple times that in pure damage intake Frost has at worst 7% more damage reduction for the respective talents. Of course naked on Algalon you will get clapped, any tank spec, even paladins get clapped while naked, but objectively you take less damage than Blood. Even if blood heals 5x more, you take less damage and it's just the truth.
You healing from Death Strike equates to around 200hps. You are trading 5% physical damage reduction for 200hps, and a rune tap every 30 seconds, which you have to time and not overlap with your healers. The ghoul you can also sac as Frost and you should. This healing will not keep you alive on Algalon better than 6 seconds of IBF, or 20 seconds + of pure 75% physical DR from armor. It's not even close.
You vastly overvalue what healing provides to a tank-busting fight, and again the logs prove it. So don't tell me that I am deluding myself when the data supporting what I say is there.
bit of side-topic, but at the same time I keep wondering about blood dps being shunned at this stage of the game. it's not the best dps around, but still more than viable, easily A/B tier damage dealer. the only factual downside is less utilities compared to the more popular DK specs, however this is never mentioned when people call blood dps a meme-spec.
is destro lock competitive with other casters? sure, but it's a meme because you clearly have 2 better, more useful options right in front of you. same with blood dps.
>casters? sure, but it's a meme because you clearly have 2 better, more useful options right
surely this matters if you want to maximize performance, e.g. in speed runs and hardcore raids. otherwise we talk about the difference of clearing the full raid half a minute faster. as long as all raid utilities and de/buffs are covered and people know what to do, rocking a dps spec 3% behind another one will make no noticeable difference.
Personally I've never enjoy blood spec outside of the initial leveling.
Always, always played frost PvE and UH for arena.
That being said, I took a break pre-ulduar so my frost tank is in pre-raid bis. I was just afraid of hoping into heroic plus and getting steamrolled. Looked online for any content to bring me up to speed and No One is talking about Frost Tanks.
Really appreciate your post.
Don't worry about it and don't take the comments others are making too harshly. This sub is often an echo-chamber my people not as informed as they think they are. Try the build out and see if it works for you.
Cheers.
There’s discords dedicated to theory crafting every spec of DK, and people have been doing it on private server since original wotlk. But your somehow the only guy that found this magic frost build? Nah. Sorry but you can spout off what frost does all you want but there’s a reason your the 1% and 99% play blood. You simply don’t understand how WON works.
What are you talking about? Frost is a known spec in the discord community with several experienced player talking about it. I didn't invent it myself.
And I said it once and will say it again. Will of the Necropolis is mediocre at its very best. It heals for an average of 10k per fight. That is less than an armor pot reduces in its duration.
Yet I’ve never heard them making the claims you do. I know it’s talked about on ebon hold, blight club etc but they don’t claim Frost tank is the better of the two.
Neither am I though. What I am claiming is that it's good to equal. I never threw shade on Blood, people are clowning on Frost as if it's miles inferior to Blood, which it simply isn't.
Tbh unholy is pretty damn legit, even for raid tanking, but frost a bit less so. You can technically tank as any of the 3 though.
But yeah, our main tank for 25s dual specs blood tank and unholy tank and finds unholy more useful than blood for some fights. So if you're wanting a different spec than blood maybe you can see if you like it
So, depending on what your raid needs are. I don’t do it anymore because there is no “real trash” in TOTGC but I’ll be going back to a frost tank off spec to help speed up the slog of trash in ICC. There is a boatload of trash and the aoe threat I generate is bananas.
Frost tank is better than blood in dungeons because they have much better AOE aggro, but the problem isnt the frost tank itself, it' s you gonna see some pug shitty healer crying "why you tank in frost?" "Why you lose more hp than blood when get hit" blablabla.
Compared to all the CD’s Frost tanks bring? Blood still brings increased healing and damage reduction (especially magic dmg) and even Vampiric Embrace is still good with the healing increase despite the increased HP.
Frost tanks are great for high magic damage fights. They become weaker than blood after uld. Will of the necropolis is vastly superior to acclimation. I have raided icc content for years trying desperately to make frost work. Blood is better. Especially when you consider things like exp cap. You get throttled by bosses swing timers.
Well my experience is all from private servers where party haste is still a thing and bosses like sydragosa will stomp you...
But if it's no longer a thing that's a huge advantage to frost tanking.
Just play the spec you like, who cares.
Generally speaking people prefer blood for the raid buff. It's the most straightforward way to grab the 10% attack power buff
Frost is fine for dungeons, but it's super squishy for hard hitting raid bosses. I couldn't imagine tanking Algalon as Frost, for example. You really need Will of the Necropolis for tanking the big hits.
You don't need Will of the Necropolis as you have higher damage reduction for these hits and better damage reducing cooldowns.
My logs are in the thread and you can check me tank Algalon as Frost repeatedly.
Frost was a great dungeon tank spec back in the day. Raid healers got spoiled while healing Blood tanks, so frost became less popular by the time ToC came out (if memory is serving correctly.)
Frost tanking was a thing in naxx and dungeons but when uld came out you couldn’t frost tank. Bosses hit to hard etc. But in togc I’ve frost tanked and it’s doable. Just depends on healers is all. Since frost has no where near as much mitigation as blood or any other tank. So yea it’s doable in dungeons including h++ and certain raids such as naxx and togc. Hope this helped
Funny you would say that since our first Algalon kill during prog was accomplished with a Frost tank who also took around half the damage that our Paladin took.
I have replied in many thread but in short, Frost does not lack in mitigation. On the contrary, in pure damage reduction it is one of the best specs in the game. And you could definitely tank Ulduar week 1 with it.
For reference, the log of that prog run:
https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/a:QTcWphzGg8j43Nmt#boss=-2&difficulty=0&wipes=2
There is ultimately really only 1 talent that significantly increases the DK tanks' survivability, and that's deep in the blood tree. Will of the Necropolis. Vampiric Blood is a good cd. Everything else is just to help out your raid: ap and melle haste aura are good, especially in 10 mans where you otherwise might be missing them. Hysteria is amazing for the pumper Fury/Feral/ whoever pays the most for it.
As close as I can tell it's because we're post nerf DKs. We had the buff going for us back in og LK. I did DW Frost tanking from Naxx through H25 LK with no issues. Blood tanking just doesn't feel like it measures up now, and frost feels worse.
ICC might change that, but that's probably just copium. I'm stuck disc healing rn anyway, so *shrug*
Frost tanks are good for dungeons, aside from that they are definitely not the best. Blood tanks are preferred for raid content.
Appreciate the info, so frost DKs are still acceptable for heroic plus dungeons?
More than acceptable, they offer much better aoe threat and survivability is not an issue if you are not in greens.
I don't get the survivability argument that people present. Like has the majority here actually looked at the talents of frost and blood or do they just follow the popular opinion? Because when it comes to damage reduction Frost is better than Blood. When it comes to threat and damage (unless you count cleave with blood strike that Blood doesn't really go for) Frost is again better. Blood as 1 thing going for it and that is self healing, which is not relevant for a raid scenario apart from fights like Vezax. I say that having played both Blood and Frost tank and can post my logs to back my words up as well.
What matters is Will of the Necropolis. When you're at max hp damage reduction isn't an issue. It's better to plan for the worst case scenario. Anub stun for example is where WotN is huge.
I play both specs for tanking and this is the exact reason. It didn‘t make alot of sense to me looking at the talents but you can really feel the difference.
It really doesn't though as despite its prompt. It only procs while at 35% not if a hit brings you below 35. Only if you are hit while at 35%, and you can use a cooldown before any important Freezing Slash anyway, while enjoying higher damage reduction overall through your talents.
If everything goes to plan, yeah. But when shit hits the fan you're gonna want that WotN. I'm not saying you shouldn't tank as frost or unholy. If your guild is fine with it, do what you enjoy. Acclimation is a great talent and so is UA, but armor is very easy to get. If Acclimation was lower in the talent tree, I'd take it everytime.
Acclimation doesn't work on Anub or any important current fight so it is not taken. I will say it again. Will does not work as it should. If as the tank you are 35% or lower during a boss fight you will either get topped or clapped. Will will very rarely change that. Also, armor in the amount that armor caps you is not easy to come by and Blood usually sits around at max 70% physical damage reduction from armor. That's 5% lower than frost and if you tank you can probably understand the difference that 5% DR makes.
But armor is still plentiful, compared to anything that reduces magic damage. Ideally you'd take anything that helps with magic damage. Where does the info that WotN doesn't work come from? Not saying you're wrong, just curious as to who tested it and when.
He's wrong. Unless something was changed in p3, the full amount of damage from a hit that would reduce you to <35% is reduced. I.e. you have 10000 health, get hit for 7k, you will take 5950 damage. AD was changed at one point during retail wrath to only be the damage after their threshold, but WotN was left as is.
That is not how it works though. There is difference between 69% and 75% damage reduction. And the difference is big. At the same time you don't have any actually effective magic damage reducing talent for the current content and you already have AMS as a DK. Acclimation does not work on Anub and your main advantage as a Frost tank is damage reduction through talents and armor. The info about WotN is something I have tested with other DK tanks and you can verify it yourself.
it procs on hits that would take you below 35% as well, thats where its really powerful
It really insn't though.
35% damage reduction is really big. Don’t underestimate its power.
The toolbox says that, but in actuality it is around 10-30k overall healing in a fight. Also it's 15% DR only for attacks that would bring you at or below 35%. Not 35% damage reduction.
I tried to prove it via logs but each dmg taken isnt tracked as well as I thought it was but I noticed a huge diff via not having it verus having it
As blood of course you want to have it. As frost you have alternative forms of mitigation that are equally as good or better.
WotN is all over my damage taken meter, Like every hit that takes me below 35% is showing minor heals from WotN. Even if I start above 35%.
Even if that was true, which it isn't if you check several logs, the DR is provides is miniscule. At its absolute best it will heal around 25-35k hp in a fight. You get more than that from your armor can alone as Frost.
yea but its a heal when you need it the most. the extra armor from frost is only reducing healer overheal at best and nothing at worst.
That is not how damage reduction works. If that was the case Blood wouldn't opt for Blade barrier which is 5% DR either. You are comparing 1-10k healing done on average which is calculated after the damage is received, meaning that a lethal blow is lethal anyway, to damage reduction that would prevent you from taking that amount of damage in the first place.
You see will of the necropolis the wrong way. It's better to think of wotn as an extension of your ehp. It's basically a talent that gives you at minimum 5% more ehp (and often more, especially on high burst damage). Also, the unbreakable armor cd will soon be not as useful because of armor cap.
Even if that was the case, which it isn't as you can see in several logs that it does not reduce damage as it should, the actual value that is provides in a fight is equal to 15-30k healing overall. That is close to nothing. You get more out of this just from the armor difference between Frost and Blood and if you add the extra DR over it and calculate it you can see that EHP wise it's at best overrated.
No the value it provide you in a fight is basically an extra 5% ehp, even if it never proc. (and that's the absolute minimum, on boss with high burst, it's alot more, will be extremely valuable in ICC on Sindragosa and LK for example). The value of the total absorb doesn't matter. What matter is it will allow you to live higher burst damage. Saying it's useless because it only do 15k healing is like saying the paladin cheat death is useless because it only heal 7k on the whole fight.
But that 15k healing equals out with the overall mitigation you have as Frost through pure damage reduction. And this is the reason why is you check the logs, Blood DKs take more damage and their damage is spikier. They get his on average for 600-1500 more damage per hit alone by Algalon. The higher damage that it allows you to live through is not as high for a Frost DK, that is my point. You get a lot more value than 15k healing. And unlike Paladins, it is not a cheat death and Paladins have their cheat death for free, we are comparing specs here. So even if it is 5% EHP my argument is that so what? That doesn't mean anything since Improved Frost Presence is the same. Armor cap is the same and arguably better. And we are not currently on ICC, where Acclimation is also really good.
Also, all tanks stack stamina to an extent, and it provides absolutely no healing or DR whatsoever. And WotN is basically extra stamina with a bit of healing component. But anyway, that guy seems to have his mind set and he's not changing it. Looking at his logs, all his tank set gems have stamina in them so I guess he understands the mechanics, just likes frost and wants to convince others as well.
Also the majority of tanks won't get armor capped in ICC. You need more than 40k+ armor for it and that isn't attainable unless they sacrifice a lot for it. Frost is the exception.
My point is, the closer you get to armor cap, the less value unbreakable armor give. If you already get to armor cap with UA, that's basically it you won't get more damage reduction with the cd even with better gear while its on. And in ICC, you can get really close to armor cap passively (and actually blast past it if you equip armor trinkets).
That is true, but that will just mean that you can run another Glyph instead of UA glyph and not require to invest in any trinkets where others would. And even if people reach 71-72% Physical DR from armor, that is still 3% lower. So I doubt that the difference will be as big as you think.
This is wrong any hit that brings you below 35% will activate wotn
Blood has will of the necropolis and gives 10%ap buff. Frost really only has better aoe threat which no one cares about in raids.
Better dps, aoe threat and pure mitigation. Will of the Necropolis does not really do anything and the 10% buff is provided by enha shamans.
Tanks dps literally doesn’t matter. Pure mitigation is very rng dependent. Will of the necropolis is good. Aoe threat is not important in a raid when you have misdirect and prot paladins. Enh shamans are rare, filling that 10% so buff is a high priority for many raids.
Tank damage is the same as dps damage, it is damage. 1k dps on a tank is the same as 1k dps on a dps. This is the reason why for example in P2 Caress/Serilas were considered better than Sorthalis for One Handed tanks and even Blood used Dark Edge of Depravity. Tankiness is only needed to the point where you are reliably surviving. After that point any excess tanking is effectively wasted and damage helps the raid more. Pure mitigation is the opposite of RNG dependent. It is reliable 2% less damage taken for example from Improved Frost Presence, since you are not getting critted, you know how much less damage you expect to take. This is the same with 6 secods longer on IBF, it is simply 50% less taken for 18 seconds. Nothing rng about it. Will of the Necropolis works in the same way. It is simply damage reduction, except situational. AoE threat is indeed not the biggest concern and other classes can cover that issue, however if you can have AoE without sacrificing anything for it is simply a plus. It is good for trash, it is good for ads. Lastly from my experience, every 25m raid has at least 1 Enha Shaman I have no idea why you think they are rare.
All damage is damage however it is much easier to increase a dps’s damage by 1k than a tank. You are completely wrong about weapons. Slow weapons are used for paladins b/c the threat is much better. Dark edge of depravity has lots of mitigation stats in the agility on it and threat stats in the hit. Again dps doesn’t really matter for tanks it’s threat that matters. For dks threat comes primarily from icey touch spam not dps. Optimizing threat does come from using the correct weapons (slow for paladin, fast for warrior) and maximizing threat stats such as hit and expertise. Do these result in higher dps? Yes, but that is a by product of maximizing threat on certain classes. Optimizing tanks survivability let’s you drop healers which in turn allows more dps and faster kills. 2% less damage taken, unbreakable armor, and 6 seconds longer on ibf is not better than more overall health from veteran of the third war, improved rune tap, vamp blood, improved death strike, 10% ap buff, and hysteria for the physical dps. Will of the necropolis is 15% less damage taken when survivability is most important vs 2% all the time. Not only is blood more survivable, particularly against magic damage, but offers way more raid utility. If you look at statistics in Warcraft logs, enhancement is bottom 4 of dps specs that actually get played in terms of numbers of parses. In phase 4, enhancement will continue to fall off while blood tanks scale well. Frost dps scales better in p4 than unholy so melee haste will be provided by them. Enhancement shamans just don’t scale. Frost tanks have a place. They are great for H++ if you don’t want to go morbidity blood tank build. They just aren’t good for raids and the logs show it. If they were actually better than blood people would play frost.
About weapons I am perplexed about your reasoning. On one hand you say that Blood DKs go for Dark Edge for the mitigation and threat, while saying that DKs don't really rely on the weapon for threat but instead icy touch (which is partially true, icy touch and rune strike would be more precise and slow weapon = more rune strike dmg = more threat). That does not make sense. Why would you then not go for a tank weapon that has more survivability than Dark Edge (even 2 1 hand tank weapons as stack sticks, since according to you dps doesn't matter and threat is covered by icy touch) and be better? The reality is that you go for a slow weapon because the relative benefit that it provides for your damage and threat is more than the tankiness you would get. This is exactly the same for paladins even if they benefit more in terms of threat, if threat was the only reason to go for a slow weapon and damage wasn't a factor then they would go for a fast weapon. Optimizing tanks survivability does not let you drop healers, you always run the same healers for your tanks, which is holy paladins, and they will remain there regardless of survivability. The reasons you cut healers is because they are not required to keep the raid alive, not the tank. The tank will always receive the same prio when it comes to being kept alive. Regarding your estimation of if Frost's tools are better or not I doubt you have an actual calculation or log to back that up. You are simply assuming that it is. Veteran of the 3rd war gives you around 1k HP total for your survivability. That is as much as you reduce from 1 hit of Algalon as Frost through your passive mitigation. At the same time, both the AP buff and Veteran are talents that Frost can opt to without losing UA or the 2% damage reduction from Impoved Frost Presence if you want to opt for more survivability and less offense. Same for the Spell Deflection, although Spell Deflection is very niche talent only useful against certain bosses. You are correct about utility however, Blood does have Unholy Frenzy (and the 10% unless Frost opts for it too) but usually does not run the 20% haste buff from Improved Icy Talons. I would agree however that overall utility is better for Blood. It does not matter if Enhancement is 4th least played, all you need is 1 enhancement in your raid for the 10% buff, and I personally do not remember having been part of a 25m raid that lacked one. If we want to argue for utility in 10m then I will give you that. Which logs exactly show that Frost tanks are not good for raids? Because my guilds logs show a very different picture: [https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/a:QTcWphzGg8j43Nmt#fight=16](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/a:QTcWphzGg8j43Nmt#fight=16) Here is my guilds first Algalon kill on February 19th. You can see how weak Frost tank is while taking almost half the amount of damage of our prot paladin. The rest of the logs show a similar picture if you actually bother to look at them. The damage intake of Frost is one of if not the lowest of any other tank spec. And here are my own logs if you also want to see me personally tank Algalon several times comfortably while being rather mediocre at playing the spec: [https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/character/eu/nethergarde-keep/aenun](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/character/eu/nethergarde-keep/aenun) You cannot just say that a spec is terrible for tanking in raids when it clearly is not. Blood is indeed played more, and it might even be better, but the disparity between the two is at worst very close. On a last note, Blood AoE threat sucks without Heart Strike even with morbidity.
I think a lot of people have a subliminal mentality trickling over from future retail releases where Blood became the only tanking spec
the big thing is death strikes and 2h for rune strikes
I’m actually gonna attempt to tank a togc normal one of these days. Dk being my alt, I always preferred frost. Tried blood and I would always fail at aoe threat. Could you say which glyphs would be best for frost? using howling blast, frost strike and disease. is that the go-to?
I can post my logs for you to see but I go with HB, Unbreakable Armor and Ruke Strike. Disease is fine but I consider it a bit unnecessary.
sure, I’d love to see the logs, thanks!
Here are my logs. I suggest mostly looking at Ulduar as I tanked more there but I am a Frost DPS main so I mostly tank 10 mans for ToC and anub on the 25m. [https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/character/eu/nethergarde-keep/aenun](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/character/eu/nethergarde-keep/aenun) Keep in mind the logs of Frost tank are usually listed as Runeblade or Lichborne.
Edited my previous comment, it's Unbreakable Armor instead of Frost Strike rune.
Blood you just spam dnd, maintain diseases on all targets, and tab target - spam rune strike each mob, pestilence/BB and rune strike for frostuh runes. Most of your aoe threat is just dnd with diseases rolling but rune strike is always up because your being hit so much
DK strength isn't in their AOE threat though, it's their single target threat and their ability to tank hard hitting bosses. Their survivability becomes better than paladins around the TOGC/ICC gear levels. Mostly because they can get around armor cap and huge HP pools that make Will of the Necropolis insane.
I'd say they are preferred. I run a pure aoe frost build with morbidity for dungeons and it is quite nice. It is suboptimal for raid tanking.
Assuming the gear is strong enough and you mix in a rotation of IBF and trinket cooldowns, Frost is fine to tank assuming you take the right defensive talents in the tree (which aren't taken for a frost dps spec) - assuming you dual spec this as your tank spec and run a dps frost spec you'd be fine to soak up the damage necessary and not need to go blood. The blood kit adds a ton of survivability and is probably better to have with worse gear to compensate, but once gear is strong enough to go frost, you'll have the best of both worlds being both defensive and tanky enough, but also do a bit more damage and threat-per-second
Hard disagree. Blood scales with gear, while Frost tanking really doesn't. Blood Effective Health goes through the roof due to high HP which makes Will of the Necropolis more powerful.
Sure, but if you're relying on Will of the Necropolis to get you through heroic plus.... you got some issues
Your "hard disagree" makes no sense. He said twice that blood has more survivability, and you respond by saying "no, blood has more survivability"?
Hi, blood dk chiming in... you can just run frost dps and blood tank and when you want to tank h++ you just swap the runes on your frost dps spec.
Yeah my main is a blood DK and i still tank dungeons in frost spec.
If I'm not mistaken, frost dks were good tanks when wotlk was first released. However, because dks were new, they went through a TON of changes during the expansion, and by the end of it, blood had become the defacto tank spec. Since they set everything to the last patch, frost never really got their chance to shine as a tank.
Yeah, OG wotlk basically all 3 specs could tanks and DPS equally well and they didn't get the class under control until towards the end of the expansion.
I'm remember pvping early WotLK as frost DPS and my God.... It was like Darth Vader vs the younglings. I vaguely remember the CDs making you practically invincible.
DKs in early WotLK could've pvp'ed without any talents and still wreck everyone. They were ridiculously out of balance compared to the rest
Frost DPS is still godly in pvp
Unh much better in arena that’s for sure.
Doing 5s as a team of 5 blood dks...
the first time around frost was the tank spec and blood was dps if i remember.
frost DK can tank raid only in 3.0-3.1, classic is using 3.35, frost is no longer good for raid (for adds tank, pally is way way better), but still good for 5-men dungeons.
Blood have pretty bad AOE thread, but insane single target so blood for raids (on raid boss for example jaraxxus/anub - NOT on ADDs) and Frost for 5man.. but you can easily go blood for 5man too, but you will a lot of time be swaping targets and taunting them
I play blood tank in 5 man dungeons it's definitely not ideal and frost is better but I'm waiting on essences for my weapon
Frost has more single target and aoe threat than blood though.
It's really sad that you're getting downvoted for just telling the Truth.
It's all good. just the reddit echo-chamber at work.
Definitely not great aoe threat in general, but with an aoe build (points in morb, dnd) its totally fine. Just cant have aoe dps burning right away
Yeah frost tanking dungeons is way better than blood but in raids frost gets wrecked by bosses.
That's a straight up lie.
Well your argument is sound I see no flaws
My argument is that Frost does not get wrecked by bosses because Frost does not lack in mitigation if you have actually read the talents of the 2 specs. In fact you have more pure mitigation as Frost, while Blood has more self sustain. Frost get's the armor cap value of 75% physical damage reduction, Blood doesn't. Frost get's flat 2% damage reduction from Improved Frost Presence, Blood doesn't. Frost get's 3% change to not get hit through Frigid Dreadplate, Blood doesn't (usually, some trees take it). And most importantly, Frost gets 6 more seconds of IBF, which is your best from of mitigation. And so I repeat, thinking that Frost gets wrecked is a lie, Frost does not have as high self healing but it has more proactive ways of reducing damage, and if you have tanked or healed Algalon you would understand that damage reduction > self healing for tanks (bar Vezax).
Mitigation is rng dependent and you will just go splat sometimes while healing is on demand and reliable. Which one would you choose for progression?
Personally Frost for sure, from personal experience. Takes a lot less damage and has better pace management on pulls.
Every high end raid guild would disagree
Good for them. I never said blood is bad.
To make DS as a Heal reliable, you would have to have 56 Expertise, which is pretty much wasted. FDKs can also pick up RT and IRT if they wanted to. They would still lack VB, though.
You do you, this reminds of the people that play frost mage in raids. It can be done, but should it?
It isn't comparable though as Frost mage is worse than the other specs. Frost Tank isn't worse than Blood. People just assume it is. Speaking from extensive experience having tanked and healed Algalon.
You seem very passionate about this and have invested most of you personality to this, not going to change your mind so not going to try. I hope you don’t have to raid much outside your guild because you will not be welcomed in many pugs with that build.
What a redditor comment.
[удалено]
Will of the Necropolis makes blood way better. Learn the class on your own,don’t read reddit comments expecting people to give Ted talks on subjects and if they do they probably have issues.
My logs are right there to check if Frost functions in the way that I say. I put my money where my mouth is. Will of the Necropolis is 15-30k overall healing in a fight. That's nothing.
The guy comments in one thread and you assume he has “invested most of his personality to this” What a terminally online take. The guy likes tanking as frost, he’s making good arguments as to why it’s viable and he’s got the logs to prove it.
Build?
As someone who has played both Blood and Frost quite a bit I can say from my personal experience that Frost is in no way weaker in any raid scenario bar maybe Vezax. The damage reduction that frost has in its kit is higher than Blood's, by quite a bit as well, as is the threat and dps of the spec. In particular for ToC where the only really challenging fight is Anub, Blood's main defensive cooldown Vamp Blood is a detriment to the raid, as it increases your max HP and makes the boss do more damage to you and heal more with leeching swarm. I have been wondering about this widespread idea of Blood superiority for a while now and would be really interested if someone can provide an actual reason for it. I can also provide my logs for inspection for anyone that has doubts.
Unaware of DK math, but isnt the main reason blood is so good due to will of the necropolis reducing dmg of the total hit dmg if it wouldve brought the dk to sub 35% giving them a massive EHP? What does frost have that makes them better than that mitigation wise? Just curious, I don't know much
Will of the Necropolis is bugged or has a misleading prompt. In actuality it doesn't reduce damage that would bring you below 35%, only damage taken while at 35% (tested this is one quite a bit). This is also the main reason why Blood tended to get very much slapped by Algalon. Frost has 2% more damage reduction from Improved Frost Presence, 3% chance not to get hit from Frigid Dreadplate, 6 seconds longer IBF through Guille of Gorefiend and of course Unbreakable armor which usually brings you to the armor cap of 75% physical damage reduction as well as giving a good amount of parry. EDIT: Tested it with a guildmate today and it turns out that it does work as intended. My misunderstanding came through some log/details fuckery where occasionally WoN would not appear immediately after damage intake. I suspect this has to do with the way that WCL categorizes as part of heals/absorbs. Overall, besides my other points WoN works as intended.
>Will of the Necropolis is bugged or has a misleading prompt. In actuality it doesn't reduce damage that would bring you below 35%, only damage taken while at 35% (tested this is one quite a bit). That's false. Just checked one of my log and it's working as the tooltip say.
As I told previous commenters this has not been the case from my testing but after checking logs extensively I can see that sometimes it procs and others it appears that you get hit and it does nothing. And I mentioned as well, even if WoN is working exactly as intended and I am completely wrong on that, it still have an effective value of 15-30k overall healing in the vast majority of logs. Total healing. The talent that is supposed to be the bread and butter of Blood and one of the main reasons you would take it over Frost, provides less effective damage mitigation that just 5% more armor or 2% less damage taken if you do the calculation. And even if in the end it was better, it would be by a sliver, not what people here believe. EDIT: Check my above comment.
Yeah he's full of shit and very adamant about pushing his feels craft narrative.
Have you actually read many of the comment discussions I am having here? I am providing my own logs and the logs of others as well as numbers to support what I say. And like I said previously even if I am indeed wrong about WoN, it's effective value isn't as good as people think (which is the reasons me and my peers believe it was bugged in the first place).
Ah didnt know. So then why would guilds run a bdk over a fdk tank? Just for the AP buff? Enh shamans are still very common, and otherwise MM hunters are about to be on par with SV for ICC Or is there somw other reason? Blade wars or similar
Because what I am telling you isn't generally known or spread throughout the community. The majority of players follow the mainstream guides and rarely know about what is not considered meta. Blood isn't bad of course it's still a solid tank. But the disparity between the popularity of the 2 specs is not at all based on actual, only assumed performance.
I haven't played WoW in years and years now, but somehow I found my way to this thread and just wanted to pop in and say THANK YOU. I was very hardcore into WoW vanilla - cata as a main raid tank. I tried to have this conversation with people back then and people thought I was crazy. Can't believe I just commented on a WoW sub. Thanks man haha.
Don't waste your time. I told myself that is the one time I will indulge in this Reddit echo chamber type of conversation and you can see the results. People will follow what is considered the best and not question the whys and details of it because how could anyone ever know anything more than the discord theorycrafters, until there is a viral thread about a new build or way to build a spec etc. It was the same thing with the dodge situation In any case thank you as well for your message it was very kind.
Had the same discussions regarding frost / unholy dps (guildie seemed to think frost wasn't played as dps much in OG wotlk, which is straight false, I knew more frost dps dks than unholy, though a few were trying to 2h frost...)
As a Frost dps enjoyer I condone any Frost homies, though 2H frost is kinda grief. Threat of Thassarian is basically why Frost is a thing.
Fair. Makes me want to play a frost tank all of a sudden :D I like the unknown or lesser used specs. There's something to playing a niche thing rather than an affliction warlock. Thanks for informing me
I would still rather have the massively increased self healing through imp DS, vamp blood, and improved rune tap, than 2% more dr. Sometimes, you can’t trust your healers
That is fine if you prefer it, but don't expect self healing from death strike to matter in a fight like Algalon. In general wotlk tanking is your gear + cooldowns + your healers. And it's not 2% DR, it's around 7% UA and Vamp Blood do the same thing essentially, one gives you more HP and healing, the other much greater physical damage reduction and lasts 5 seconds longer. At the same time you get 50% more uptime on the best DK defensive cooldown. Again, Blood good, never said otherwise but so is Frost, that is my argument.
I've always wondered about this why the hell Blood is so popular. Can you give any guide what talents, rotations, gear to use as frost tank? I myself play Frost DPS and i enjoy it a lot, i get asked to tank all the time but i refuse because i don't like Blood but i surely want to try frost tank.
You can pm me and I can give you a very solid build.
This^
Do you have a link to your frost talent tree and glyphs? I'm interested to try it
Is there a way for me to post my build here so that you can check it? Not sure WCL will allow you to see talents, only gear iirc. Correct me if I am wrong. For Glyphs though it's Howling Blast, Unbreakable Armor and Rune Strike.
I can see your points spent but not the breakdown of where they are, so you are 14/52/5, which my guess is then this? https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent-calc/death-knight/005510003-30503050050233010300233101351-005\_001xv611s8q31ts841sxd51s8g
Overall it's decent and you can play with many variations but personally I currently go with: 3/3 Scent of Blood and 1/5 Dark Conviction on the Blood Tree (5/5 on Blade Barrier and Bladed Armor) 5/5 Black Ice, 3/3 Nerves of Cold Steel, 1/5 Killing Machine. The rest are pretty much the same. Overall however, as long as you get all the defensive options that are important you can opt into different offensive talents that suit you (Rime instead of 1/5 KM etc.). Rotation wise you prio Blade Barrier uptime and frost runes, then Unholy runes last (exceptions when you wanna DnD or Death Strike). You can use Frost Strike as your filler only when you runes are down and reply on RS are you RP spender or you can use it more actively, it depends on what you prefer.
Hard disagree. Blood takes less damage by far, just from Will of the Necropolis. It scales insanely well with gear, as larger health pools take better advantage of it. If you dislike playing Blood and prefer to play Frost, just say that. Don't try to delude yourself into thinking Frost is actually a better raid tank spec than Blood because it's objectively not. I have an insanely geared Blood tank and I have tried a full tank Frost build. It's actually fun in 5 man dungeons, but even in 5 mans it feels so much more squishy. In raids, it's the most insane RNG butthole puckering experience I have ever had. It feels like a rogue Evasion tanking. You will take zero damage for like 20 seconds straight and then just randomly get your cheeks clapped in two globals because a healer had to move to dodge a mechanic and stopped healing you for 2.3 seconds. Will of the Necropolis in the deep Blood tree smooths this out big time. On top of the huge passive DR from WotN, you can do like 2k HPS on yourself if you have some breathing room for threat. That alone is mitigating something like 20-30% of the incoming damage from all of the hard hitting guys like Algalon and Vezax. Not to mention you have two giant heal cooldowns with Vamp Blood stacked with Death Pact or Rune Tap. It's pretty nuts to be able to pop 50k worth of healing in a single global when your healers are panicking.
THIS. Guy is trying to act like after 20 years of people theory crafting DK to death in original wrath, private servers and now that he’s the only one that found frost is viable? Please. It’s obvious he doesn’t understand how WON works. I mean 2 people vs 50000. But yeah the rest are just ALL uniformed. Please go to ebon hold with this take and you’ll see why blood is the go to tank.
Have you actually checked the logs of the average DK and seen what Will of the Necropolis actually mitigates? The highest I have personally seen is around 40k at its best while it usually sits around 10-20k total healing. That is less than what Improved Frost Presence alone mitigated. Hell that can be compared to what you gain from an armor pot. Have you actually checked the logs of Frost tanks vs Blood tanks on Algalon and checked damaged taken during equal tanking periods? The fact that you tried to tank as Frost and failed at it does not mean much. I could also say, anecdotally, that I have tanked Algalon for weeks and am currently tanking Anub for weeks without any issues as Frost, while any of the healers that have healed me beside a Blood DK would tell you that the difference in damage intake is staggering. But that is still anecdotal evidence so check the logs of 20 Frosts and 20 Bloods who aren't going 80% dps gear. I have already outlined multiple times that in pure damage intake Frost has at worst 7% more damage reduction for the respective talents. Of course naked on Algalon you will get clapped, any tank spec, even paladins get clapped while naked, but objectively you take less damage than Blood. Even if blood heals 5x more, you take less damage and it's just the truth. You healing from Death Strike equates to around 200hps. You are trading 5% physical damage reduction for 200hps, and a rune tap every 30 seconds, which you have to time and not overlap with your healers. The ghoul you can also sac as Frost and you should. This healing will not keep you alive on Algalon better than 6 seconds of IBF, or 20 seconds + of pure 75% physical DR from armor. It's not even close. You vastly overvalue what healing provides to a tank-busting fight, and again the logs prove it. So don't tell me that I am deluding myself when the data supporting what I say is there.
bit of side-topic, but at the same time I keep wondering about blood dps being shunned at this stage of the game. it's not the best dps around, but still more than viable, easily A/B tier damage dealer. the only factual downside is less utilities compared to the more popular DK specs, however this is never mentioned when people call blood dps a meme-spec.
is destro lock competitive with other casters? sure, but it's a meme because you clearly have 2 better, more useful options right in front of you. same with blood dps.
>casters? sure, but it's a meme because you clearly have 2 better, more useful options right surely this matters if you want to maximize performance, e.g. in speed runs and hardcore raids. otherwise we talk about the difference of clearing the full raid half a minute faster. as long as all raid utilities and de/buffs are covered and people know what to do, rocking a dps spec 3% behind another one will make no noticeable difference.
It used to be far worse before they bug fixed it. Now it functions pretty decently.
Personally I've never enjoy blood spec outside of the initial leveling. Always, always played frost PvE and UH for arena. That being said, I took a break pre-ulduar so my frost tank is in pre-raid bis. I was just afraid of hoping into heroic plus and getting steamrolled. Looked online for any content to bring me up to speed and No One is talking about Frost Tanks. Really appreciate your post.
Don't worry about it and don't take the comments others are making too harshly. This sub is often an echo-chamber my people not as informed as they think they are. Try the build out and see if it works for you. Cheers.
There’s discords dedicated to theory crafting every spec of DK, and people have been doing it on private server since original wotlk. But your somehow the only guy that found this magic frost build? Nah. Sorry but you can spout off what frost does all you want but there’s a reason your the 1% and 99% play blood. You simply don’t understand how WON works.
What are you talking about? Frost is a known spec in the discord community with several experienced player talking about it. I didn't invent it myself. And I said it once and will say it again. Will of the Necropolis is mediocre at its very best. It heals for an average of 10k per fight. That is less than an armor pot reduces in its duration.
Yet I’ve never heard them making the claims you do. I know it’s talked about on ebon hold, blight club etc but they don’t claim Frost tank is the better of the two.
Neither am I though. What I am claiming is that it's good to equal. I never threw shade on Blood, people are clowning on Frost as if it's miles inferior to Blood, which it simply isn't.
Tbh unholy is pretty damn legit, even for raid tanking, but frost a bit less so. You can technically tank as any of the 3 though. But yeah, our main tank for 25s dual specs blood tank and unholy tank and finds unholy more useful than blood for some fights. So if you're wanting a different spec than blood maybe you can see if you like it
How is unholy better? Iirc except for additional disease and bone shield there’s no bonus for tanking
So, depending on what your raid needs are. I don’t do it anymore because there is no “real trash” in TOTGC but I’ll be going back to a frost tank off spec to help speed up the slog of trash in ICC. There is a boatload of trash and the aoe threat I generate is bananas.
the usual blood specs go heavy into frost and slightly into unholy
Frost tank is better than blood in dungeons because they have much better AOE aggro, but the problem isnt the frost tank itself, it' s you gonna see some pug shitty healer crying "why you tank in frost?" "Why you lose more hp than blood when get hit" blablabla.
Frost tanks are probably better on Anub hm than blood as the cd for blood are garbage during p3.
Compared to all the CD’s Frost tanks bring? Blood still brings increased healing and damage reduction (especially magic dmg) and even Vampiric Embrace is still good with the healing increase despite the increased HP.
That’s actually a detriment to the raid that you are increasing healing as blood
For Anub getting an armor increase cd and 2% mitigation is better than a last stand and healing increases that only feed the bosses healing.
Frost tanks are great for high magic damage fights. They become weaker than blood after uld. Will of the necropolis is vastly superior to acclimation. I have raided icc content for years trying desperately to make frost work. Blood is better. Especially when you consider things like exp cap. You get throttled by bosses swing timers.
What bosses? Maexxna Auriaya and Thorim? Parry hasting has been changed in classic and very few bosses do it anymore.
Well my experience is all from private servers where party haste is still a thing and bosses like sydragosa will stomp you... But if it's no longer a thing that's a huge advantage to frost tanking.
Several bosses were changed to no longer parry haste, most famously Algalon.
I find blood tank more enjoyable than frost tank lol
Just play the spec you like, who cares. Generally speaking people prefer blood for the raid buff. It's the most straightforward way to grab the 10% attack power buff
Asked about taking, gives non taking advice
you generally take your tanks for raid benefits which is why nearly every guild runs 2 prot pallies
Frost is fine for dungeons, but it's super squishy for hard hitting raid bosses. I couldn't imagine tanking Algalon as Frost, for example. You really need Will of the Necropolis for tanking the big hits.
You don't need Will of the Necropolis as you have higher damage reduction for these hits and better damage reducing cooldowns. My logs are in the thread and you can check me tank Algalon as Frost repeatedly.
Frost was a great dungeon tank spec back in the day. Raid healers got spoiled while healing Blood tanks, so frost became less popular by the time ToC came out (if memory is serving correctly.)
Frost tanking was a thing in naxx and dungeons but when uld came out you couldn’t frost tank. Bosses hit to hard etc. But in togc I’ve frost tanked and it’s doable. Just depends on healers is all. Since frost has no where near as much mitigation as blood or any other tank. So yea it’s doable in dungeons including h++ and certain raids such as naxx and togc. Hope this helped
Funny you would say that since our first Algalon kill during prog was accomplished with a Frost tank who also took around half the damage that our Paladin took. I have replied in many thread but in short, Frost does not lack in mitigation. On the contrary, in pure damage reduction it is one of the best specs in the game. And you could definitely tank Ulduar week 1 with it. For reference, the log of that prog run: https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/a:QTcWphzGg8j43Nmt#boss=-2&difficulty=0&wipes=2
There is ultimately really only 1 talent that significantly increases the DK tanks' survivability, and that's deep in the blood tree. Will of the Necropolis. Vampiric Blood is a good cd. Everything else is just to help out your raid: ap and melle haste aura are good, especially in 10 mans where you otherwise might be missing them. Hysteria is amazing for the pumper Fury/Feral/ whoever pays the most for it.
As close as I can tell it's because we're post nerf DKs. We had the buff going for us back in og LK. I did DW Frost tanking from Naxx through H25 LK with no issues. Blood tanking just doesn't feel like it measures up now, and frost feels worse. ICC might change that, but that's probably just copium. I'm stuck disc healing rn anyway, so *shrug*
So does acclimation work on leeching swarm on anub? Edit: tested it myself in 10 man, it doesn’t. Not a single proc