Death Strike and You: An Advanced Guide to Death Knight Tanking

Post by Orranis

Death Strike and You: An Advanced Guide to the Blood Death Knight

Now in guide format! I'll keep this here for, I don't know, whatever, but this is what's going to be updated, and plus, it has stuff like, pictures, and is better! Yeah!

Recently, I've seen many posters who want to get into Blood Tanking, and are asking questions about its specifics. While questions about gear are easy to answer, the questions about rotations and such are obscenely complicated, to the point that it's literally impossible to go over in the course of any single reply post. So I've decided to create this guide to try and explain exactly how it works, and why some activities that seem counter-intuitive work. It is directed mostly to raid-tanking, so don't take it as such for heroic instances. Similarly, I'd ask you not to bring anecdotal evidence from your 5-mans or Baradin Hold to the table, as it's rather irrelevant to the topic being discussed. This is directed towards progression raiders trying to min/max their tanking potential.

What this guide mainly focuses on, is something the DK Community has taken to calling 'Rune Tetris.' Basically, how to use your abilities to min/max your effectiveness. This is a lot like tetris, in that you have to line up up your abilities in order to make sure you reduce the maximum amount of blocks stacked, or damage taken, and the pieces (runes) seem to 'fall' into place.

'Rune Tetris' is a combination of several things which I will be addressing.

1. Optimizing your Death Strike.

Contrary to popular belief, Blood is not about Death Strike spammage. Besides for all the other complexities I'm mentioning, even just concerning Death Strike 'spamming' it is wrong. Basically, you shouldn't be hitting it as soon as you have the Runes for it. The way the Death Strike heal is calculated, is that it totals the sum of the damage you've taken in the past five seconds, and takes 29% (talented) of the damage and heals you for it.

Your average raid boss, with Frost Fever (20% attack speed debuff) applied, has a 1.8 second attack speed. I've seen a misconception that the Death Strike heal is based off of intervals of 5 seconds, which is quite simply not true. It's calculated on each individual Death Strike, taking the five seconds before that Death Strike for the heal.

Because of this, not including gimmick fight-specific spells (Nefarian's Shadowflame is unmitigated by physical damage and adds to damage taken, leaves you in a bad position where you could die easily, and all his next attacks are melee so best used after this. This can also extend to special abilities like Chimaeron's Massacre), the optimal time to Death Strike is after you've received three melee hits from the boss. This would be one hit at 0.0 seconds in, second hit at 1.8, third at 3.6, which gives you some leeway if it starts at say, 0.5-1 seconds. Save your Death Strikes for this point. This will give you maximum healing and Blood Shields.

Don't worry too much about overhealing, as while getting the maximum amount of healing is preferred, seeing as you're Death-Striking right after a hit, you will usually receive it no matter what you do, and using an optimal Death Strike at full health for the Blood Shield has more value then a non-optimal when the healing will be more effective.

Another important thing to note is avoidance. If you completely avoid an attack, the it adds nothing to the damage you've taken in the last five seconds. This means that if you have an avoidance streak of three, with no other damage coming into play, there is no reason for you to Death Strike. If you avoid two, I'd still recommend saving the Death Runes until you take at least one more unmitigated hit, but you're probably safer to Death Strike if you've only avoided one hit.

So, because between avoidance and general RNG variance, completely optimizing Death Strike's is impossible, there comes an idea of 'shot-gunning' it. This is basically that optimizing Death Strikes falls behind because of avoidance, and will drastically decrease the amount of Death Strikes done, it's much better to simply hit them as they come up. It's a bit more complicated, as you generally don't want to accept minimum heals, which shouldn't happen that much anyways. If you're about to get hit, you can wait a second for the strike before Death Striking, but generally you should just blow it (assuming it's not minimum) instead of waiting, as waiting for three hits will make you take a lot of spike damage, which can potentially kill you, and with 30% avoidance it's unlikely you'll take three unavoided hits. Also, because this playstyle is all about minimizing burst damage taken, you want to avoid stacking Blood Shields as much as possible, as if you already have a Blood Shield up your unlikely to die to the next attack, though if you're near death and need the healing it's still worth it. However, if there's mechanics like Shadowflame, you should wait 'til after these as they cannot be avoided, and do a lot of damage that the resulting melee attack may kill you (which you would absorb), unless, again, you desperately need the healing before you take the damage. You can game anywhere from 9-12 Death Strikes per minute using this method, and it seems to range from equal to less damage taken than an optimization 6 DS per minute setup. Due to it's reliability and smoother damage intake, this is the preferred method of Heroic or 25-man raid Tanks.

Important things to note about Death Strike:

First of all, the Blood Shield and heal are calculated separately. While the healing portion of Death Strike is affected by + and - healing buffs/debuffs, (e.g. Vampiric Blood and Malevolent Strikes respectively), the blood shield portion is not. If you have 100% mastery as a Blood Shield, and have a glyphed Vampiric Blood popped, and heal for 10k without the bonus, your Death Strike will heal for 14k, and have a 10k Blood Shield.

Blood Shields stacks, so if because of Empower Rune Weapon, Blood Tap, and Runic Empowerment, you can Death Strike twice in the same window, and you've just received a heavy amount of burst, there's no drawback to hitting the button twice except that your hurting the amounts of hits you mitigate, though you mitigate individual hits much more.

2. and optimizing your Runic Empowerment.
Blade Barrier is a further complication of Blood Tanking. Basically, whenever, no matter for how long (this is very key), both blood runes are on cooldown, you get a buff applied to you that gives you 6% reduced damage from all sources, lasting for ten seconds. The idea is now to get maximum uptime of Blade Barrier while getting almost no Runic Empowerments on Blood Runes. Namely, because, Blood Runes don't give you Death Strikes.

In order to do this, you have to ensure that at least one of your Blood Runes is always on cooldown, while the other is off cooldown. When the one rune is on it's last two or so seconds before coming up, Heart Strike/Blood Boil the rune that's up, so you'll only have two runes down for a fraction of a second. Heart Strike will give you more threat, but because of Vengeance basically making single-target sustained threat auto-pilot, Blood Boil is preferred because it will always consume the rune no matter what and you won't end up missing twice and sitting on dual blood runes, which means you have to lose your maximum efficiency by putting them both on cooldown.

What to use your Blood Rune on:
(Note - This is not in any priority, the priority itself would depend on the fight.)
1. - Anytime it's off cooldown, you're at or under 90% health, and are having no threat problems. There is no point in saving this because of Will of the Necropolis, and should be used as often as possible.
2. Blood Boil - Anytime it will apply debuffs to another non-CC'd target, and the debuffs are about to wear off/not currently on (regardless of whether or not it is or should attacking you, unless all it's attacks are magical and you don't need to worry about threat on them.)
3. - If there's only 1-2 seconds left and neither of the top two options are optimal/available.
4. - If you're cleaving a target that will be attacked at some point, or sustain some sort of damage, that you need to hold threat on. Avoid if you don't want to pull threat on something, or if you have only 1-2 seconds left at which point you might miss and then be left with two blood runes, screwing up the whole game. Similarly, if you think that additional DPS would contribute to the fight, you should use this over Blood Boil, but when the blood rune already up has about three-four seconds left, and just try to hold rune-strikes until there's only one down. This is to cover misses.

However, there's one more much more minor thing to remember. RE only procs on fully depleted runes, which means that if you have no fully depleted Frost or Unholy runes, you should not Rune Strike even if you are waiting for an optimized Death Strike. If a bold letter is a rune that's up, this is what your actions shall look like:

BBFFUU - Everything minus one blood rune is on cooldown. Rune Strike like no tomorrow.

BBFFUU - Put both blood runes on cooldown to gain Blade Barrier, by try to keep only one on cooldown at a time using the methods posted earlier.

BBFFUU or BBFFUU or BBFFUU or BBFFUU - DO NOT RUNE STRIKE! Rune Strikes will have no affect right here.

BBFFUU - Get both blood runes on cooldown while you wait for an optimizable Death Strike, and after that try to keep at least one set of the F/U runes rolling at all times. This should never happen except for the very beginning of a fight (BBFFUU if you pulled with IT+PS).

and what it does for Blood:
This is assuming you have Improved Blood Tap and glyphed Blood Tap, which you should under any spec

Blood tap is a key ability for Blood Death Knight maximization, with zero cost, and a thirty second cooldown. It will immediately activate one of your blood runes, and convert it into a death rune. If you have two runes that are depleted, it will take the one that is not currently counting down and activate it. If you have one rune on cooldown, it will active the already ready one (it sounds counter-intuitive, but is ironically much more useful for Blood as it means you don't have to wait for the other Blood rune to come off cooldown and be used so you can game Runic Empowerment procs).

This changes the entire runic empowerment game. It instantly activates one of your Blood Runes as a Death Rune, and it will remain a Death Rune for 20 seconds, giving you 66% uptime. The first Death Rune can be used in line with another rune for a Death Strike, or on its own for a Bone Shield or Death and Decay.

Furthermore, the rune remains a death rune. This means that you can keep it fully depleted to try and get it some Runic Empowerment procs, but still have to avoid the Blood rune proccing. Make sure the Blood Rune always goes on cooldown first. This fifth death-rune is essential to the Blood spec, as it can be used to force Death Strikes more quickly and in case you would've lost an optimal strike time, as well as use it for your numerous other defensive and offensive abilities that require an Unholy rune. (Bone Shield is a personal favorite).

DO NOT use Death Runes on Rune Tap, unless you're risking Death, and even then a Death Strike would probably heal more after all the damage you've taken, not to mention Will of the Necropolis should make the Rune Tap free anyways. Rune Tap is to be used on one Blood, not Death, rune every time it's up and you can get a full heal from it.

However, this further complicated RE proc fishing. At this point, you CAN game RE procs to make sure it will only activate the Death Rune, but this requires that the blood rune always be on cooldown first. While this makes no difference to the actual amount of RE procs gained, unless you're sitting on two sets of runes. It does, however, give you the ability to use this Death Rune whenever you so please (assuming the Blood Rune is already on cooldown), which gives a huge benefit in real-time raid situations.

Mostly what to take off from this is that you can not worry about having both runes that occupy where Blood usually is, but only if the first Blood rune is already on cooldown (And, of course, in the case of emergency, or if you just took a boat load of damage and Death Striking would be awesome, Blood Shield stacks, et cetera).

Unless you know there's a specific part you want to keep Bone Shield for, as there is in many raid encounters, you should generally try to use it every time it's off cooldown and you have one lonely Unholy/Death rune up with no other rune coming up for the next few seconds, as this will allow for many more Death Strikes/minute with maximum up time.

Diseases (, +):
The most annoying freaking things in the game, keeping up your debuffs. Obviously ignore them if you have Outbreak up, simply hitting that does everything for you.Other then that, it's best to hit them when they're in the last three or so seconds of their duration. Try to do it when you have a minimum heal, or a blood shield up, even if it means you get a few seconds of overlap, as it lets you time your DS's for more opportune moments.

While diseaseless was once a viable priority, it's now been covered over tons of logs that the loss of the 10% physical damage reduction as well as, depending on the fight and your groups composition, the 20% attack speed debuff, is a far greater loss then the loss of a single Death Strike per minute. Just make sure you're not in danger of dying when you do put them up, as at that point Death Strike is your best option.

The only time you should ever have diseases off, excluding maybe Chimaeron, would be if you're in dire need of the healing of if someone else is providing the debuffs on afflicted targets (i.e. if you have the 20% speed reduction from a DPS DK, you only have to worry about Blood Plague, if you have a prot paladin on the same target, you don't have to worry about diseases).

Post by Orranis

AoE Tanking:

This is simply a brief discussion of tanking as AoE.

Tanking multiple mobs also means multiple complications.

First of all, there's Death Strike complications. When tanking bosses by themselves, you can time Death Strike after a nice three melee hits. However, when there's a ton of melee hits, this becomes significantly more difficult, as they usually have different attack speeds to bosses as well as the fact that you'll be takign so many hits it'll be impossible to time when to Death Strike. There's no optimal solution to this, but you're just going to have to watch your Blood Shield Tracker. When your taking so many hits, you should never have to swallow a minimum heal, as you won't avoid all of them. As you Death Strike the first few times, wait and see the largest heal you're Blood Shield Tracker goes up to, and then on further Death Strikes wait until you're nearing that number (but not at) before Death Striking.

Then, there's of course threat. You should never have to trade off runes that could go to Death Strike for threat if you're doing it right, unless it's a gimmick where you have no survivability to worry about but threat is a deal. I want to make the distinction between tanking 'multiple targets' and a 'mob.' For example, tanking two drakes on Haflus is 'multiple targets,' tanking the, what, ten whelps, is a 'mob.'

On multiple targets, even when more than three is concerned, Heart Strike is still much more useful then Blood Boil, simply make sure you're alternating targets occasionally, if there's a marked target for the DPS, or often if there isn't. Remember to use your Heart Strike on the Blood Rune that's off the cooldown 3-4 seconds before the other one comes off, in the case of a miss, and save your Rune Strikes until neither Blood Rune is fully depleted (not cooling down). Our Multiple Add tanking is not bad, another tank might still be able to pull off you, but DPS shouldn't. Remember to Pestilence.

Our Mob tanking, of the other hand, is piss poor. This stems from DnD being on a thirty second cooldown, costing an Unholy rune, Blood Boil requiring diseases to max it's potential (snap threat being made much more difficult), and the fact that Crimson Scourge is generally not taken due it messing with RE procs. Blood Boil outweighs Heart Strike, keep Pestilence up, drop DnD in a combination with Blood Tap.

If you ever find yourself losing aggro on something, target it and Runestrike, or if you've already lost it then Taunt+Rune Strike, build threat, then switch back to whatever seems to be taking the most damage. I can't provide you with any arbitrary priority as it will depend on how much survivability you need, and the threat of your DPS, and the risk of what happens if you pull. That's best left for individual boss explanations.

Useful Addons and Macros:

Addons:

BigWigs/Deadly Boss Mods:

Duh. I'm not going to go into the ethical crap about "I think it makes the game too easy," there is no reason not to have one of these boss mods. Sure, you could probably compete without it, but when it comes to min/maxing, which is what this guide is all about, knowing the exact cooldown on every boss move is extremely important.

Blood Shield Tracker:

I actually need to do/have some research done on how exactly this works, as I fear it may not be congruent to Death Strike's actual mechanics, but regardless, it's incredibly useful. It tells you roughly what your Death Strike will heal you for, to really help maximize your ability. Furthermore, it tells you exactly how big a stack your Blood Shield is, and gives you a timer for it before it falls off (if you're stacking it).

Power Auras:

Not strictly necessary, but still very useful, I use these for PvP, Tanking, and DPSing. Not that hard to navigate if you understand the terminology either, and especially helpful if you have trouble with things like keeping track of cooldowns or diseases.

Yury's Rune Display/DocsDebugRunes+Shadowed Unit Frames:

Yury's Rune Display allows you move the default UI Rune's to different places on the screen, allowing you to centralize it along with the rest of your bars (Bartender4 helps too!). DocsDebugRunes is similar, except that is displays the Rune's differently to the default UI, and shows Diseases uptime and Runic Power as well (I use Yury's Rune Display, use Power Aura's to track diseases/do it the old fashioned way, and Shadowed Unit Frames to track Runic Power). Shadowed Unit Frames changes the way you see the unit frames in game, making them much more simply and less cluttered, as well as moveable. This is very useful for a tank because it allows you to have a non-intrusive non-cluttered way to watch your health (and runic power, and, if enabled, runes) without having to look all the way to the top left of your screen.

Macros:

Lichborne + Death Coil on self without switching targets macro: #showtooltip Lichborne
/cast Lichborne
/cast Death Coil

Mouseover Taunt/Death Grip macro./cast And

/cast

Also, if the requirements are not met, it will simply cast Dark Command/Death Grip regularly.

#showtooltip Raise Ally
/castsequence reset=90 Raise Dead, Death Pact

Raises a Ghoul then sacks it for health. Be aware of Death Pacts runic power cost when you cast it. Alternatively can be #showtooltip Death Pact, which will make it display when you have the RP, however the cooldowns do not match up and I prefer Raise Ally because it shows the longer cooldown.

Further addons for Boss-Specific fights may be added on later, but will be listed under the actual boss ecnounter not the addons list.

Talent Specialization:

Blood:

Tier one:

- While more RP for more Rune Strikes and thus theoretically more Runic Empowerment procs is nice, the RP gain from Butchery is minimal at best, and then you have to understand that Blood is often just sitting on Runic Power because you have only one or no sets of Frost/Unholy runes up, and such can be almost GCD capped in a roundabout way. 7/10..

- A no brainer, I've dedicated an entire section to this talent, I mean, 6% damage decrease. 10/10, mandatory.

- While you might think this a worthless talent for tanking, especially with the recent 150% increase to the amount of threat we do, it's actually quite useful. First of all, especially for tanks, this talent just gives an insane amount of attack power, especially for tanks. It is a huge DPS increase, and contrary to popular belief, especially with all the enrage-timer fights going around, an extra 1k Tank DPS is no different on most fights to an extra 1k DPS DPS, and even better in some cases (Alysrazor, for one.) Furthermore, the heal portion of your Death Coil is based on attack power, so this is also a significant boost to the Lichborne talent. 7/10, advisable.

Tier two:

- You want as much out of your Blood Taps as possible, this is a very obvious choice. 10/10, mandatory.

- A huge runic power boost for Blood, and seeing how much you need it for (Death Pact, Lichborne, Dancing Rune Weapon, interrupts, and Rune Strikes), you're going to need to pick it up or become very badly resource starved. However, 2 points, rather than 3, is optimal, as the third point is a significantly lower gain, because you're rarely going to go three attacks without proccing this ability once more. 9/10, very strongly advised.

- Pretty obvious, adds a straight 10% physical damage debuff to victims of your Blood Plague, making it worthwhile to put on. While not strictly necessary for every fight, as several fights the other tank will be able to provide debuffs without such a high cost, on the ones where they cannot it is mandatory. 10/10 (7/10 if another tank can provide debuffs and you can respec.)

- Not necessarily useless, but with a 10 second unable to miss interrupt Strangulate is really just a bonus. Furthermore, the only time in which tanks have to interrupt to my knowledge in Firelands is Alysrazor in the burnout phase, in which Druid's of the Flame will channel a spell that must be interrupted. However, at least on normal mode, they only cast if twice and you should be able to get both between Strangulate and Mind Freeze every time. 2/10.

Tier three:

- Pretty terrible. The DPS increase is pathetic, especially considering the three points it takes. 3/10.

- One of the best abilities in your arsenal, when used correctly it is more than worth the Unholy Rune. 10/10, mandatory.

- Yeah, armor is good. 10/10 mandatory.

- This depends on your groups composition. If you do not have a Paladin, or you have a single Paladin is providing King's instead of Might because you don't have a Druid, or a Marksmanship Hunter or an Enhancement Shaman, then this brings an incredibly valuable buff to the physical DPS of the range and should definitely be taken. However, if you have even one of these things, the Strength buff is not nearly as powerful as it would be on a DPS and it can be avoided, giving tiny amounts of strength and less parry. 9/10 if comp. needs it, 3/10 if not.

Tier Four:

- Turns Icebound Fortitude into your most powerful overall cooldown, your shield wall, and makes it free to cost, able to be popped at any time it's off cooldown. 10/10 mandatory.

- Unlike it's terrible Wrath counterpart, this ability actually gives a very generous amount of healing, and can be especially good when it pops at the right time. 7/10, suggested.

- Crit immunity, more Death Strikes, probably the most mandatory here. 10/10, mandatory.

Tier Five:

- Huge DPS increase, giant increase to the amount of healing done (note, while most healing modifiers do not affect Blood Shield, this one does, 10/10 mandatory.

Crimson Scourge - Situational at best. I've gone over how it messes up your Blade Barrier gaming, and it is less of a DPS increase then Blood-Caked Blade for single target. Even buffed 40% Blood Boil still hits around the general area of a wet-noodle. Even on tanking three or four targets it's lackluster, it only really becomes viable when tanking large mobs of adds, like the little ones on Rhyo'lith, something DK's are bad at anyways, and which do not come into play to often. 5/10.

Dancing Rune Weapon - Great DPS and defensive cooldown, 10/10 mandatory.

Frost:

Tier one:

- A very nice utility piece, allowing you to pool RP past original one hundred, especially for when you use Empower Rune Weapon or are saving for Lichborne. 10/10 if you're going for Licborne, 6/10 if not.

- Not particularly powerful, though it's nice to be able to get aggro on things further away, or perhaps chain them in certain boss fights (Riplimb chaining). However, it is better than Nerves of Cold Steel if you're going for Lichborne. 10/10 if you're going for Lichborne, 2/10 if not.

Tier two:

- Useless. There is no reason to use Obliterate any more, ever, Death Strike even does more damage for Blood. 0/10.

Lichborne - Despite it's not-so-recent nerf, Lichborne remains an incredibly powerful cooldown, especially if you've already put all these points into Frost. The ability to heal yourself up at the worst of times, and continue to do so as you have the effect on you, is extremely powerful, and the heals are pretty generous as well. 9/10, strongly advised, especially if you've already gone so far into frost.

On a Pale Horse - Mount speed is nice, I'll admit that, and so is the reduction to CC, unfortunately, neither is going to help you much in a progression or farm raid setting. 1/10.

- While once this was a nearly mandatory tanking talent, with all the RP you save as well as the ability to use interrupts at any time, it's much less valuable in firelands content, as tank interrupts are rare and when they're not, predictable. You'd get a higher RP bonus from Butchery. 5/10.

Unholy:

Tier One:

- While it seems like a nice tanking ability, Death Grip is really only a secondary taunt and does not need to be used all that often, really just not necessary. 2/10.

- A small DPS increase, I wouldn't consider it worth the points. 4/10.

- While you only need two points in it to get maximum disease uptime, which is pretty much mandatory, I would also suggest taking a third over other options in the case you're getting burst down when the diseases would normally end their duration and need to coverage. 10/10

Tier Two:

- While it would be useful for kiting, the inability to turn it off and overall lack of use in raid encounters makes it unattractive. 1/10.

- When do diseases get dispelled in raid combat? 0/10.

- Probably your most powerful AoE talent, especially with glyphed Death and Decay, it's great for add-tanking. Other then that, and even sometimes while add tanking, I'd still take Licborne over this spec.

Sample specializations:

General specialization, best for single target tanking, may exchange one of the glyphs for Glyph of Heart Strike depending on your play-style.

AoE Tanking specialization, for damage and threat on multiple targets. May exchange Glyph of Heart Strike for Glyph of Rune Strike depending on whether or not you're Heart Striking or Blood Boiling with your Blood Runes. It does lose some survivability to the above spec, simply due to losing Lichborne.

Abom's Might specialization, for if you have that strange raid comp.

Post your own specs so that I can include them!

Post by Orranis

General Notes:

Pulling: I've seen many people pull with Outbreak. This stems from the DPS philosophy of using cooldowns at the start of the fight to maximize the amount of uses you'll get with them in a raid setting. However, in every raid encounter I've completed so far, opening with an Icy Touch and Plague Strike combo works much better.

This is for a plethora of reasons. First of all, threat. Even with Hunters and Rogues, especially if they're saving such cooldowns for other occasions, snap threat is the most difficult thing to deal with right now. While Icy Touch is no longer Frozen-Nuclear Bomb of Threat, it's still infinitely greater (and that's not even hyperbole) then Outbreaks zero threat. Outbreak pulling assumes you have no DPS on the boss, or you'll have to taunt and pray your first few attacks don't miss.

The second reason is actually damage reduction. First of all, you want at least one set of your Frost/Unholy runes on cooldown at all times, and second of all, you want to maximize your Death strikes. By pulling with Outbreak, then Death Striking for threat, your going to have missed an optimal Death Strike. If you have Misdirects, and you BB twice for blade barrier, while you will get an optimal Death Strike, you will still have wasted at least four seconds of charge-time your runes could be getting. Opening with Icy Touch and Plague Strike will automatically put one set of you runes on cooldown. This means that by the time you Death Strike, you should be able to make it an optimal Death Strike, as well as the fact that Vengeance will have stacked making the Death Strike more effective threat-wise as well.

Another thing to realize, is, that this is freaking complicated. It's pretty complicated just on paper, but when you're trying to do this in real-time, with y'know, the actual fight going on around you, from Interrupts to Corrupted Blood to positioning, it's incredibly difficult to pull off. The learning curve is also incredibly steep. I'd recommend taking it one step at a time, learning to time Death Strikes, then Blade Barrier + Blood Tap, etc. Furthermore, on some high-awareness fights, you may just want to dispense with it completely (well, not completely, but don't sacrifice alertness for it). Try and do what you can, but this is ridiculously hard to perfect on a fight like Cho'gall.

Anything to add? Any disagreements, or frothing mad flames? Put it in the comments! Must adhere to ground rules. Minor discussion of talents may be permitted, if it concerns one of the ideas on the list. I may update this with individual boss fights, which would include an overview of the fight from a tank PoV, helpful tips and tricks, and cooldown management

Post by Orranis

Yeah!

Post by Orranis

And this one.

Post by 724197

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Orranis

My question to you is:
Since Runic Empowerment is so potent for our tanking, we shouldn't expect to have much RP, so is Lichborne not really worth taking? I never took it because I already have a mind boggling amount of selfheal/survivability CDs.

When you say 'worth taking,' it's worth the question of what alternatives you have, because honestly, for Blood, there aren't many. Crimson Scourge messes with gaming Blood Barrier, but is nice for AoE tanking, and you can dodge around how it messes it with excellent timing. Similarly, Endless Winter will net an RP gain on fights where interrupts are necessary. However, for high tank damage fights, it can really save your life.

The key is to use it as an Oh Shi- button. Right now I'm running with this, (may change the glyph of death coil to Death Strike if threat matters) as the only time I have to interrupt is for Feludius and Nefarian phase two (where you don't need to Death Strike). I find that the extra point in Scent of Blood far out produces the cost of blowing all your rune power for burst heals for situational purposes overall. However, I run with a Marksmanship Hunter and an Enhancement Shaman, something other players may not have the luxury of, at which case Abominations Might is necessary, I'd run something like this.

And actually, considering how I like to pool Runic Power by making sure I have both sets of Unholy/Frost runes on cooldown so RE will actually effect them, it seems to sort of 'spike' for me and you can Lichborne during one of the spikes of high RP.

Tl;dr:

Not worth it if it gimps you have anything else you consider important, but otherwise why the hell not? I may consider dropping it for Crimson Scourge, until I see what Heroic Raids are like.

Edit: Also, you really don't need to have full RP for Lichborne to be effective. From what I've seen, though I can't test this until Friday, each Death Coil gives upward of 15k healing, so having 40-80 is still very significant.

Post by 724197

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Monday

Deleted. I noticed that as I was reading through, then came across your post.

Post by Orranis

Yay :D. Danke.

Post by Gnub

Hi Orranis,

Sadly, we cannot move posts, but I guess the best thing you could do is making a duplicate post of your reply to ithme, and I'll delete the post up there, and you can use the post you did there as another placeholder too.(##RESPBREAK##)12##DELIM##Gnub##DELIM##

Post by 149504

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Orranis

Deleted my post for your eternal pleasure and character limit. I agree with your assessment (below). And your aoe tanking section did answer my question, to the degree that is possible (it's new right?). Yes, special for you :D.

Thanks Gnub.

Post by Gnub

Thanks Gnub.
I did... erh, nothing, actually - but you're welcome! :P

Post by apocalypsa

Nice work, we really needed an up-to-date tanking guide; one little thing: "Another thing to realize, is, that this is freaking complicated." Remove the second comma, it makes my OCD brain hurt.

As you appear to actually proofread your own work and deliver a finished package(unlike a certain other guidewriter - aka me), I cant really find anything else. Is that good or bad?

Post by 724197

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by 168916

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Orranis

Oh, no it's fine. I mean, no need to critique the guide for the grammar, but if you find something it never hurts. Considering how bad I am, you're probably not looking hard enough if you can't find anything.

I'll see what I can fix.

Post by Fulgorater

Thank you very much I had been desperately looking for one... but all I could find are those saying go disease-less and that never felt right to me...

Post by Jaspirac

Thanks for this guide, very thought out and covers some awesome stuff. I do feel as though there are times when I don't use my runes as effective as I should.
I especially like what you say about pulling with IT/Pest rather than Outbreak and I'll be giving that one a go. I would ask now when Outbreak is best thrown in? Likely after you've built agro and need to refresh your diseases?

Death Strike and You: An Advanced Guide to Death Knight Tanking

Post Reply