Lichborne: More blood tanking questions answered
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Apr 12th 2011 at 6:00PM
With the new patch 4.1 Call to Arms feature likely to be stuck near permanently on tanking, death knights are going to find themselves with a pretty nice little incentive to stay in their blood spec a bit more often. With that in mind, it's pretty lucky that we just finished going over the basics of blood tanking and gear tweaks for blood tanks. Considering that's still the hot topic, though, and that we're likely to see a surge in death knight tanks looking for that Call to Arms bonus in patch 4.1, I want to take one more week to keep on this whole tank thing and answer some of the questions I've seen floating around, both here and elsewhere.
Agility gear is not for you
A lot of people pointed out that I did not list agility as a desirable tank stat in my Blood Tanking 101 article. To be blunt, this is because it isn't. Now, to be fair, agility isn't completely worthless, as it does give a small bit of dodge. That said, it isn't enough to be useful.
First of all, there's not going to be much agility on plate gear anymore these days, and certainly not on top-tier tanking pieces. Second of all, while agility offers dodge, strength offers parry and attack power, which essentially means you're not gaining as much avoidance as you think you are when you choose an agility item, and you are giving up potential threat and DPS.
Now, the question here is what about jewelry or weapons that have agility on them, and, say, mastery and expertise or hit rating as secondary stats? Are they passable for death knight tanking? In theory, yes, none of those stats are 100% useless for a death knight tank. The issue is, though, that the alternatives that have strength on them are better and won't get a hunter or feral druid mad at you for stealing them. Agility items should only be taken if they are many ilevels higher than what you currently have equipped and it is understood that you will be replacing them with strength-bearing items as soon as possible.
In other words, no, you do not want to waste your Tol Barad Commendations on the Spear of Trailing Shadows.
Hit and Expertise: How much is enough?
While I did talk a bit about these two threat stats in the Blood Tanking 101 guide, there is still some confusion among some people as to how much you should take. The answer is, as with many tanking questions, a little flexible, but here's the gist of it: Take as much as you need, but never more than 8% hit and 26 expertise.
If that's not enough for you, here's the common wisdom for the current blood tank raider: Don't worry about it. Essentially, these stats do two things for you: They help you keep threat, and they can help your mitigation by making sure you don't miss a Death Strike. This brings up two questions. Can you keep threat without these stats, and will you die if you miss a Death Strike? For most raiding tanks, the answers, in order, are yes and no.
Threat is not a horrible problem after you've gotten to the epic gear level. There's still a chance that someone can steal it, don't get me wrong, but as long as your DPS is being smart and you're being smart, it probably won't happen that much. If you miss a Death Strike, you will be able to try it again in 1.5 seconds, and you won't consume any runes from the failed try. This means that as long as you can stay alive for those 1.5 seconds, you probably won't lose too much from missing that Death Strike.
In short, if you want to run with the big boys, feel free to mostly ignore hit rating and expertise. As long as you can keep threat and stay alive, it's a perfectly valid way to gear.
Glyphing for Death Strike
A few people noticed that I didn't include Glyph of Death Strike as a recommended or alternate glyph on my recommended blood tank build. At first, that may seem like a bit of an oversight. After all, Death Strike is one of our most important strikes, and making it damage for more seems like a good idea, right? There are a few problems with the actual function of the glyph that make it undesirable for tanking, though.
The first issue is that it only increases the damage done by Death Strike. The damage Death Strike does is no longer connected to its healing factor. Instead, it heals you for a fraction of the damage dealt to you. Therefore, making Death Strike hit harder doesn't do much for your actual survivability.
Now, of course, a harder-hitting Death Strike does help a bit in that you get better threat, but the method the glyph uses makes even that threat gain a wash at best. It increases damage based on how much runic power you have, but you should be spending your runic power. With Rune Strike freely usable in Blood Presence and Sanguine Fortitude making Icebound Fortitude free, you should essentially be dumping your runic power into Rune Strikes (or Death Coils for Lichborne) as fast you get it. In short, if you're playing your rotation as tightly as you should be, Glyph of Death Strike doesn't offer as significant enough threat buff to be worth using over the other prime glyphs we mentioned two weeks ago.
Dual wielding is dead
There have been a few questions from people about dual wield tanking, and since I didn't really explicitly state anything about it in the past two columns, I thought I should take this time to say it here: Dual wield tanking is dead. It's not worth it.
While you can easily purchase Nerves of Cold Steel, the threat and DPS drop from the lack of Threat of Thassarian is incredibly noticeable given relatively equal stat and gear levels. In return for that threat drop, you are getting only about the same levels of survivability, or at the least, a statistically insignificant boost from dual wielding. Do not underestimate the loss of DPS and threat potential for a tank, especially at higher level raiding, where every bit of damage counts.
I know it's difficult to accept for a lot of people, but dual wield tanking is dead. Even if you or a person you know has "made it work," be assured that it is only making you and your raid group work harder than they need to.
Learn the ropes of endgame play with WoW Insider's DK 101 guide. Make yourself invaluable to your raid group with Mind Freeze and other interrupts, gear up with pre-heroic DPS gear or pre-heroic tank gear, and plot your path to tier 11/valor point DPS gear.Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Musashi Blaker Apr 12th 2011 6:04PM
Thank you for posting things that 95% of all DKs fail to realize. The same 95% that are all fail. Suffer Well.
burntpizza Apr 12th 2011 6:13PM
I've been waiting for the next lichborne column since I read the last word on the previous one. Shame that it was wasted on answering questions that only a player who has never tanked or even cared what stats are beneficial to tanking would ask. It's a simple matter of equipping some trash agi plate gear and LOOKING at the Defense tab and not the Melee tab in the character window.
/qq
Ccsdeck Apr 12th 2011 9:38PM
So, to those of us who know this, is there any in depth things we should know as Blood Tanks? maybe a little insight as to this tight rotation you speak of?
burntpizza Apr 13th 2011 10:50AM
Not much for a rotation, its all priority based. To me, only dps have a solid rotation. Heals n tank have a too many variables to go by a strict skill/spell set.
shatto.a Apr 12th 2011 6:20PM
I would like to point out a possible exception to the "Don't Glyph Death Strike" rule. For single-target tanking, if your raid needs you to interrupt and you end up dropping Lichborne for Endless Winter, glyphing Death Strike may be more useful to you than glyphing Death and Decay as a replacement for glyphing Death Coil.
burntpizza Apr 12th 2011 6:29PM
A tank's job is to hold threat and survive. Not dps, there's a spot in the group for the "gogogo" ppl
shatto.a Apr 12th 2011 6:51PM
@burntpizza There really isn't a Prime survival glyph available for DK's, so our Prime glyphs are all about threat. Rune Strike and Heart Strike are no-brainers, but if we don't take Lichborne, there really isn't anything particularly useful we can do with that third glyph slot. I find it helps me keep an edge on our stupid awesome enhancement shaman.
burntpizza Apr 12th 2011 7:06PM
We get dark command and death grip. I know how those enhancers can be, I keep dark command on its short cd. Lichborne is mandatory for me when things start going south. Also summoning ghoul and then using death pact saved the day many times.
genericcommie Apr 12th 2011 7:17PM
However you can have an interrupt build and still have Lichborne.
Something such as:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jcGr0sMruszG0obZ0b:so0zk
I'm not sure why you would drop Lichborne anyhow. Least of all for interrupts. You can have both.
shatto.a Apr 12th 2011 8:04PM
@genericcommie I don't have the points to take Lichborne, mostly because of our group makeup. No Marks Hunter, one Paladin, no Druids, so we really need the buff from Abomination's Might. I'm also a designated interrupter on fights like Maloriak, and I can't afford to be worrying about saving Runic Power, lest my DPSers catch up to me. In almost any other case, taking Lichborne is probably preferrable, but in my particular group, my build just works out better.
Bulbasaur Apr 13th 2011 5:45AM
Why is burntpizza so downrated?
If you play in a very tight 10man raid and you're force to interrupt, before 4.1 you have to waste reforging into hit instead of avoidance or mastery. Ok. But if you don't, and you are still reforging and aiming to a hit cap, then you're doing it wrong. There are very little dps spec or classes that don't aim to a hit cap, so it's clearly THEIR job to interrupt. And YOURS, to survive.
Threat is not a problem for a dk, people is still complaining about our stupid threat generation. With the DS healing aggro nerf in the next patch, maybe we should be force to be more carefull about that, but again, if you are in a raid with a hunter and/or a rogue (and not brain-dead dps), threat is never a problem.
burntpizza Apr 13th 2011 11:12AM
@Bulbasaur thx, glad to see atleast one other DK has his reanimated head on the correct end of his rotten spine :)
Adam Apr 12th 2011 6:26PM
Re: Agility, you're right it should not be something we actively seek out on items by and large, but there is still something to be said for having an agility 2-hander instead of a strength weapon, as long as it has mastery on it, but it depends on what kind of gear build you're working on.
For threat, a strength weapon will give you a bit of an edge over an agility weapon for that added attack power, but consider that for the same ilevel, an agility weapon's DPS is the same as a strength weapon, so you're only missing out on ~600 AP.
Avoidance wise, agility packs a stronger punch than strength does
The caveat to the agility weapon discussion should be: PRE-RAID. Once you start running raids, get your grubby hands on Akirus as fast as you can (or another epic 2-hander)
So, bottom line, get the best 2-hander you can, preferably with mastery on it for avoidance or hit for threat. If you want a threat weapon, get a strength mace (or axe or sword). If you want an avoidance weapon, get an agility axe (or polearm).
Nyold Apr 12th 2011 6:30PM
Question:
For heroics level, if I have a 2H weapon at level 333, and a 333 1H and 346 1H, is it worth using those as dual-wield for now? since the difference in stamina is pretty big? You mentioned that the loss of threat is significant at a comparable gear level, but what about where the gear level is actually improved by taking dual wield?
Bleedout Apr 12th 2011 6:40PM
I understand the thought here...but no, no, no. The threat lost is simply put way to great. Just wait it out until you get a drop, or grind out the tol barad dailies (sword is nice).
Sterb Apr 12th 2011 6:46PM
Look at the weapon damage values even when comparing a 346 to a 333 and look at how Rune Strike scales with weapon damage.
Also, look at the stamina values again. A 1h 346 weapon has 194 stamina. A 2h 333 has 401. Even with two 346 1h weapons, you still have less stam than a single 333 2h weapon. DW is dead. Let it go.
Chairman Kaga Apr 12th 2011 7:38PM
When we say the threat loss is "significant" we mean "so outrageously high that you shouldn't even have to think about the correct decision here, it's so blatantly obvious".
You cannot hold threat as a dual-wield tank anymore, except maybe over completely incompetent DPS -- the kind that wouldn't be able to get past the first boss of a heroic anyway, much less clear it. Dual-wield tanking is dead and buried. Deal with it. *dog with sunglasses*
Mike bare Apr 15th 2011 8:56PM
Actually, in my experience there is a small loss of Stamina on two, 1Hers, compared to that of a 2H.
Mal Apr 12th 2011 6:38PM
I've noticed sometimes on my DK that even when I have Blood Shield up, I still take some damage. Isn't the buff supposed to break once the shield has already absorbed all the damage it could?
KPB Apr 12th 2011 6:42PM
Two possibilities.
1) It isn't physical damage. Maybe it's actually nature or fire or some other form of damage even tho it's coming from a melee attack.
2) Lag. The server knows your bubble has been used up but the messages are ending up a little out of order when getting to your client. There was a recent blue post about this issue making it appear like bloodshield/savage were bugged when they actually weren't.