Post new topic   Reply to topic    FORSAKEN ENLIGHTENMENT Forum Index -> Class Discussion
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Semisonic.



Joined: 12 Jul 2009
Posts:

Send private message
Reply with quote

re: DK Tanking guide

0
dispite what all the under 14's will tell u yes DK's can tank and heres how.

MITIGATION AND DEFENSE

Defense cap

The defense cap is actually misnomer. Its not really a cap at all, merely the amount of defense you need to push boss crits off the table. There is no “cap” to defense, but the defense “cap” commonly refers to this number that makes you uncrittable.

There are two numbers that are important, Defense Skill and Defense Rating:
•Defense Rating is what you will commonly find on gear. 4.91850 defense rating equals one point of defense skill.
•Defense Skill is the number found on your character sheet. A level 80 character without any additional Defense Rating has 400 Defense Skill.

The number you’re shooting for to become uncrittable is 540 defense SKILL.

Note that’s 540 skill, not rating. You need about 690 rating (at level 80) to hit that from the 400 defense skill a level 80 character will have.

However you get your skill is up to you. Gear is easily obtainable between instances and crafting. If you got some spare sockets, use [Thick Autumn's Glow] to help obtain the cap. If you only need a few more points, there are several good gems that add 8 defense and another stat. Refer to the Gem section below.

Defense will also add to avoidance. See the Avoidance section below.

Armor

Death Knights can wear plate, so they naturally will have a high amount of armor. When tanking, Death Knights use Frost Presence. Frost Presence does four very important things for tanking.

•Increases heath by 10%
•Decreases all damage taken by 5%
•Increases threat for each attack done
•Increases armor value of items worn by 60%. (Important Note: This multiplier does not affect extra armor on rings, trinkets, amulets or any items with bonus armor.)
Frost tanks have an ability called Improved Frost Presence. While keeping the health modifier in the other stances does you nothing as a tank, each point (2 max) will decrease damage taken by 1%.

Mitigation Abilities

•Icebound Fortitude (IBF) – IBF reduces all incoming damage by 20%. This percentage is modified by the amount of defense skill the DK has. It increases at an amount equal to approximately 0.143 to 0.15% per point of defense. This means at 540 Defense Skill it will increase to approximately 41%. A DK tank at 600 Defense Skill will increase IBF to approximately 50%. IBF lasts 12 seconds, more if talented. It has a 1 minute cooldown. Glyph is used for PVP.

•Bone Shield (BnS, BS) – Bone Shield reduces all incoming damage by 20%. It lasts for as long as the DK can keep the bones up. When cast you have 4 charges (glyph provides 6 total). Each time the DK is hit 1 charge is taken away. When all the charges are gone (or five minutes passes, whatever first) the spell expires. An Unholy tank that relies on BS usually prizes avoidance as it helps the spell last longer. BS costs 1 unholy rune and is often preloaded prior to pull. It has a 2 minute cooldown like IBF.

•Unbreakable Armor (UA) – This ability reduces damage from all attacks (both physical and magical) by .05 times the tank's armor. It will also increase the tank's strength by 25%. When glyphed, the armor multiplier increases to .06. This ability lasts for 20 seconds and has a 2 minute cooldown. In layman's terms, its basically the DK equivalent of a shield with the exception that it prevents magic damage as well. This ability is strong against multiple, weak hitting mobs or fast, weak attacks by bosses. Against the longer swinging, harder hitting bosses, the mitigation this ability provides is weak at best.

•Will of the Necropolis (WotN) – This ability will decrease incoming hits by 15%, provided the following is satisfied (assuming 3 points):
1.If the DK is hit when his health is below 35% -OR-
2.If the hit (pre-reduction in damage) would take the DK below 35%
WotN has a 15 second "cooldown" so the effect can't be triggered on every hit. Blizzard also changed it so it will not trigger on a hit that does less than 5% of the tank's health. Which is useful so the 15 second counter doesn't start on something weak just to take a strong hit in the face. However, its not so useful when your at 3% health.

AVOIDANCE

Avoidance Caps

Without getting into too much detail, Dodge cap is 88%, Parry cap is 47% and Miss cap is 16%. All three are affected by diminishing returns, which means it is virtually impossible to max even one out to the cap. For gearing, all you need to know is Dodge > Parry > Miss.

Defense and Avoidance

Most tanks will stack defense to get to 540 then be done. From that point, they are busy gearing for stamina and threat (hit and expertise). However, sometimes you get a piece of gear that will put you over that cap and for comparison sakes, can't figure out what is better. In this matter, it is generally agreed upon that the following holds true for avoidance stats:

Dodge > Defense > Parry > Miss

They break down further based on diminishing returns, but this is a rough outline. Ideally, stacking one far over the other doesn't work as well as a tank that is balanced (ratio-wise) to the formula above.

Basically it breaks down like this at level 80:

39.34799 dodge rating = 1% dodge chance
49.18499 parry rating = 1% parry chance

As you can see, dodge is far better then parry, as it takes 10 less rating for a full % of avoidance. Use this to appraise gear appropriately.

For a breakdown of defense at level 80:

4.91850 defense rating = 1 defense skill
122.9625 defense rating = 25 def skill = 1% miss/dodge/parry chance = 3% avoidance
122.9625/3 = 40.9875 defense rating hence equals 1% avoidance
40.9875 defense rating = 8.333 skill (as a comparison)

For gearing purposes, it looks like this at level 80:

39.34799 dodge rating = 1% dodge chance
40.9875 defense rating = 1% avoidance (broken up into .333% dodge, parry and miss, respectively)
49.18499 parry rating = 1% parry chance

You can find this and more in excellent post by Whitetooth. I also found this post at DK Info that breaks it down into an easy to read, by level comparison. Be warned, however, as I cannot vouch for how updated that information is due to no date on it. It looked okay when I was scanning through it though.

DIMINISHING RETURNS (DR)

What is diminishing returns?

The basic idea is something that you get less and less out of over time. An easy example is the DR on a spell like fear. The first time you cast it on someone, it lasts for 10 secs or so. The next time, 6 seconds. Then 4 then 2 then eventually it doesn't work anymore. Dodge and Parry don't exactly work like this, but the idea is the same. The more you stack, the less each is worth. It works on a curve, so you have to stack a TON of each to even get CLOSE to the cap.

However, it is a well know fact that you can stack dodge higher then you can stack parry. So if you have two pieces of gear that are similar and one has dodge and the other has parry, the one with dodge is worth more then the one with parry. This is because Dodge caps out at 88%, where as Parry is 47%. This means the curve is more aggressive on Parry then Dodge.

See this post from tankspot. It will help explain what diminishing returns are if you really want to get that technical. Bring cookies and a math degree.

THREAT

Threat Basics

Threat (for the tanking newbies) is what keeps the mobs on you and off your healer. Healers don’t like being beat on, and they don’t really have a sense of humor about it. Neither, for that fact, do the DPS which are going to ride your threat for maximum damage.

Threat is created by a couple of things.

1. Damage. Easy enough here, the more damage you do, the more threat you create.

2. Healing. If you heal yourself, you create threat split among all the mobs your tanking at about half per point. Not as good as damage but threat is threat.

3. Abilities. A few abilities create more threat. The first is Frost Presence which increases the threat of ALL your attacks. I shouldn’t have to say that, but you’d be surprised. The second is Death and Decay, which is an AOE attack that creates damage at an increased threat multiplier. The third is rune strike, which does increased damage and threat instead of your normal white swing. A real bargain at 20 rp.

The idea is to do more threat then the rest of the party/raid. Again, seems simple.

Increasing Threat

Threat can be increased a couple of ways. Getting Hit capped, expertise soft capped, using more increased threat attacks (DnD, RS), and getting a better weapon.

Hit cap

The “Hit cap” is the percent needed for your attacks to not “miss”. It only functions to push boss “miss” off the table. Even when your hit capped you can still be dodged and parried. Hit effects ALL of your attacks as a death knight and is generally capped first due to this.

The hit cap is 8%. At 8%, you will avoid any “miss” result for any melee attack. This is for all 2 handed weapons.

The hit cap is broken down by a 5% base chance to miss, then an additional 1% for each level above 80 the mob is. Thus, 8% is the amount you need to hit level 83 mobs.

However, as a Death Knight we also have abilities that function of spell hit. This is a bit hard for some people to wrap their brains around, as the same about of +hit applies to both melee and spell hit yet they are worth different amounts. Examples of DK attacks that function off of spell hit are Icy Touch, Howling Blast, and Death Coil. The percentage you need to be spell hit capped is 17%. Most don’t cap this high, as the 10 to 11% or so that being at 8% melee gives you usually does the job.

For Dual Wield, the percentage to avoid melee miss is something ridiculous like 27%. But DW guy loves his twin weapons because after all, looking cool is what’s important when you’re staring at boss crotch.

Expertise

Expertise reduces your chance to be dodged or parried. This is important as each % of expertise essential pushes both off at the same time. However, expertise only affects a few attacks (see list below). Generally the consensus is if you get most of your DPS from those attacks then gearing Expertise is a bit better then hit. However, it is mostly a wash and you’ll want to cap both hit and expertise to get the most threat.

Expertise affects:
•Blood Strike
•Heart Strike
•Obliterate
•Scourge Strike
•Plague Strike
•Auto Attack

Each point of Expertise gives you .25% to avoid being dodged or parried. The number you’re shooting for here is 6.5%, which is the number that pushes boss dodge off the table. In expertise terms, this is around 26 Expertise (found on your character sheet). So if you got a racial bonus of 5, then you only need 21 more. Frost and Unholy give 5 each if you spec that deeply into each tree, and Blood's VotTW gives 6.

If you’re hoping that 6.5% will push boss parry off the table, keep dreaming. Bosses have a lot of parry if they can parry at all, so it’s just not worth gimping everything else to avoid it. But just for reference, boss parry is around 15%.

Other Suggestions for Increasing Threat

•Tighten up your rotations. If you’re just spamming IT that’s most likely your problem. Good rotations will use different skills and more then one attack for the max amount of damage/threat you can squeeze out of BBFFUU every 10 seconds.

•If you’re DWing, stop. Try a 2 hand weapon and see if that helps.

•If you’re not using DnD in your rotations, start. If you already are, try speccing in Morbidity (Unholy), which lets you use DnD every 15 seconds. Some people have a FPS issue with morbidity on certain fights, if your one this may not work for you. But it’s at least worth a shot. DnD is one of our largest threat producers at a 1.9 multiplier (in addition to what we get from Frost Presence).

•Macro RS into all of your attacks so you can use it as much as (inhumanly) possible. With the changes to this ability to increase threat (patch 3.0.8) this is going to be a huge boost for any single target tanking.

•If you are unholy, spec out to something else. It’s generally agreed by the community that unholy kicks out less single target threat due to the fact they have a perma-ghoul and gargoyle that adds damage to the tree that doesn’t actually translate into threat for the tank.

If none of those solutions work for you, then time to get a new weapon. Cause otherwise there just isn’t a solution in the game right now.

DUAL WIELD VS TWO HANDED TANKING

The problems of Dual Wield

Increased Hit to be effective
Dual Wield requires more hit (27%). Dual Wield is broken down by the base chance to miss (5%), plus the level difference (3% for level 83), plus 19% additional (considered the two hand penalty) for a total of 27%. Without that hit, all of your attacks will miss more and you will lose threat. Because 2 Handed Tanking requires only 8% (base miss chance + level difference) it is more manageable with the current gear, allowing the tank to focus on defense and avoidance.
Damage on weapon strike abilities not as powerful as 2 hand weapons.
All of our weapon related strikes (like Obliterate, Frost Strike, Plague Strike, Blood Strike, Heart Strike, etc) will do damage based on the weapon. The damage range on a one handed weapon is not as good as a 2 handed weapon. This is because Two handed weapons do more damage per swing compared to One Handed Weapons. Because of this, each time one of those strikes is used with a one handed weapon it does less damage (thus less threat) compared to a DK using a two handed weapon.
Increases Boss Parry Haste
Each time a boss parries (or a DK for that matter) there is a chance that the swing timer resets thus decreasing the time between attacks. Not all bosses have Parry Haste (Patchwerk is a good example of one that has Parry Haste disabled), but most will. Although it is not considered as big a problem in current content, it is considered a larger problem for raiding guilds doing progression kills. This is because parry haste can increase the DKs incoming damage which makes problems for healers. A couple of these unfortunate Parry Haste attacks can spike damage on the tank. This could have unfortunate consequences that could wipe the raid if the tank goes down.
Dual Wielding Advice

DW's fire has all but extinguished from the galaxy. For DPS that is. It is still somewhat viable for tanks, especially for those tanks just starting to gear up and need the use of twin tanking one handers to reach 540 defense. It is generally agreed that for tougher content, a 2 handed weapon is the way to go. However, if you would like more information, go to the DW thread and read it in its entirety. They will have specs and advice for Dual Wielding.

TANKING SPECS

Specs

Keep in mind that these are basic specs, and can easily be switched about. Specs strike me a bit like snowflakes, everyone's going be different. But these are good places to start.

Deep Frost AOE Build 15/51/5

This build uses HB and BB for AOE tanking and can hold threat on Single Target using OB. I've added the HB glyph, as in my opinion the extra GCD you get by not having to apply FF then use a rune for no damage but to just spread the disease (Pest) is priceless. For single target you can set up as HB>OB>BS>BS||OB>OB>OB||OB>OB>BS>BS (repeat) and rely on the rime procs to keep FF up, while using FS to dump when you need to. For AOE tanking, HB>BB>BB should cement the mobs on you. If you need a bit more, drop the last BB in that rotation and put up DnD instead.

Although it doesn't have the pure Effective Heath as Blood does, it makes up for such a lack by taking less damage and having more avoidance. In all, a very effective spec.

Blood 53/13/5

This is mainly a single target build, but will do just fine in AOE with ample use of BB. The focus of this build is on the main strikes that do the majority of damage, HS and OB. Because of the reliance on weapon strikes, a hit cap of 8% is more then enough. Its vitally important to be at expertise soft cap however, as failure to do so will have you missing strikes. I included the build with 5 in Anticipation, but if you want to gear for more threat, you can easily lose three points from that to fill out Subversion. Those 3 points could come from Sudden Doom instead of Anticipation if you want to trade threat for threat. I highly recommend it, as Subversion affects the heavy hitters in this spec. This build has very high effective health due to Vampiric Blood and VotTW. I did not include Rune Tap as I could not justify the points. Feel free to change the build as you see fit.

Rotations will mainly be HS for the blood runes, and OB for F/U runes except for the first round. Just apply diseases with IT and PS then use one blood rune in later rotations for pest to keep them up. The lack of DRM doesn't allow for HS spam, but it does free up GCDs so a missed strike isn't so painful.

Blood AOE Build 56/5/10

This build makes ample use of HS, DnD, BB and DS. It should be very effective in AOE tanking while not being a total slouch in single target tanking. DRM allows for HS spam and DS should help keep health up. The pest glyph will negate having to reapply diseases, allowing the tank to focus more on DS or HS.

Unholy Build 13/5/53

This should be a great AOE build. Unholy just has way too many good AOE talents. Its single target threat may be lacking a bit but stuff should stick to you like glue in AOE situations.

Rotations and Priorities

Each build has an optimal rotation. Usually with a post of a build the poster will include what kind of rotation he uses. Ideally, the rotations would maximize damage and threat for that particular build. However, even hit/expertise capped you will never push off boss parry of the table, so chances of hitting with every attack and never losing time in a rotation is slim.

Basically, DK tanking requires that you pay attention to what is going on around you and adapt when necessary. This is not an easy task. Thus, there really is no perfect rotation.

Most of the time it will run on priorities.

Priorities will be things like, keeping diseases up, DnD down, diseases spread to all mobs, top aoe or single target damage when it is up, rune strikes when they are up and a runic power dump when all of those other things are satisfied.

Remember, rotations are easy when you don't miss. The closer you are to hit cap and expertise soft cap, the easier it becomes.

Improved Icy Talons vs Windfury

Improved Icy Talons will increase the melee haste of your raid by 20%. However, it is generally agreed upon that this is a waste of 6 points in the frost tree. Why? Because Shaman's totems affect everyone in the raid and thus, it is a complete waste of points when a raid can bring one shaman who drops the one windfury totem. And no, Icy Talons and Windfury do not stack. Haste has been improved for DK's but it is still not a stat you should actively go after until you get threat capped.

GEAR

Tanking Runes

Ideally, Rune of Swordshattering is the best avoidance wise. Its 4% to parry is the best avoidance you can get in a single rune.

Rune of Stoneskin Gargoyle gives you 25 defense skill and 2% health. 25 Defense equals 1% dodge, 1% parry and 1% miss. This rune, like swordshattering, is NOT effected by Diminishing Returns. Let me repeat that. BOTH SG AND SWORDSHATTERING ARE NOT EFFECTED BY DIMINISHING RETURNS.

However, remember that if you use SG you’ll only get "extra" avoidance over and above what you would normally have at 540 defense if you stay above 540 defense. Ie, if you use the SG just to hit 540, you would have the same avoidance as anyone else at 540 without a rune on their weapon. Someone with 540 defense and rune of swordshattering would have 4% more parry then you, thus they would have more avoidance. However, if you have SG and can keep your defense at 565, then you would have only 1% less avoidance then the former.

Other points to remember: Swordshattering is parry, so it works only when your facing the mob, where as SG gives you miss, which function in all directions. Dodge does not function in all directions, it only does so for Mobs. Some use SG to regem for threat. If you want to go in that direction, remember you have to keep your defense at 565 if you want to be as close in avoidance as 540 with swordshattering.

Rune of Stoneskin Gargoyle is good if you want to swap out some pieces of gear. Its also helpful for new tanks trying to reach the def cap. SG is only as good as what you put with it to regear or regem. The comparison most people make is that it is 1% avoidance vs 2% stamina. However, what they don't tell you is this comparison is made at two different defense levels. Its actually 1% avoidance at 540 defense vs 2% stamina at 565 defense. The rune does free up some gear so if you can make up the difference and it works for you, go with it.

Rune of Spellshattering is not an option just yet as the content has not warranted its use yet. It is situational at best, and if a DK needs it all a raid needs is a soul shard to summon him back from his Death Gate.

Stat Priorities

Defense to at least 540 should be the priority of any tank.

After that, Tanks should gear for avoidance and threat, all while trying to increase effective health.

Stamina is the name of the game for effective health. In your quest to hit def cap, then respective hit and expertise caps, you should constantly be trying to find more stamina when you can. Because all the avoidance and mitigation in the world isn't going to help you if you can't take a few hits.

Other then that, Strength is also important. For Death Knights, it's important for a couple of reasons. The first being it will increase your damage. Remember, more damage equals more threat. The second is that it will increase your chance to parry through deflection.

Maxing those should keep you busy. I guess if your looking for something else it would be agility, which ups dodge and crit, but it should not be a priority in any way.

Stamina vs Avoidance

One of the arguments in the tanking circles that rages back and forth is stamina vs avoidance. Specifically, is stuffing all available gem slots with 41 stam gems and enchanting for stam better then using avoidance gems?

There are a few things to keep in mind here when considering gearing choices such as this.

More Stamina does not make you a better tank. The only thing more stamina does is provide you with more hit points which gives healers more room for error and the time to get those larger heals off. A tank that values stamina over avoidance also would take more damage which can test healers mana reserves.

Avoidance (or hit/expertise, depending on how you gem) does make you a better tank. Avoidance decreases the amount of damage you take in the form of missed attacks. Hit and expertise increases threat so DPS can hit harder. However, without enough stamina, a bad string of avoidance or a few lucky hits can wipe the raid. Not to mention you shrink that margin of error so healers may be using shorter, less mana efficient heals and run the risk of OOM from sheer volume.

My point here is one is not better then the other. Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong. There is no way to quantify (for a numerical comparison) stamina other then the max hit points a DK has. The best geared tanks will be ones that strive for balance over one side or the other.

Gearing before Naxx
This is a good list to help new DK tanks compile a gear set before trying to tank Naxx.

Glyph Selection

Minor Glyphs
[Glyph of Blood Tap] - Useful to the extreme, especially for tanking. Being able to call on a blood rune without penalty is very nice. For dps this is less of a concern.
[Glyph of Horn of Winter] - Extra 60 seconds means less refreshing. Used to be (one of the) mandatory glyphs. Since the revision of HoW however, it is less so.
[Glyph of Pestilence] - Easily the most useful minor glyph. 5 extra yards on Pest is a godsend for AOE tanking or dps.

[Glyph of Raise Dead] - Generally not useful for tanking.
[Glyph of Death's Embrace] - Not extremely useful. Unless you have an elaborate macro where you cast Lichborne then Death Coil on yourself.... at that point I think its just reaching. But if its something you do often, have at it.
[Glyph of Corpse Explosion] - Becoming more useful for dps. Also helpful for AOE tanking that uses CE.

Major Glyphs
General
[Glyph of Dark Command] - Generally considered a waste of a glyph. If you aren't hit capped it is useful, but once at the hit cap, this glyph does essentially nothing
[Glyph of Rune Strike] - Good if your looking for a bit of extra threat. Problem is tanks have low crit rates (in general) and dps don't usually RS. Blood tanking finds the most use, and some Unholy.
[Glyph of Death and Decay] - Extremely useful tanking glyph. 20% more damage on an ability that already has a 1.9 threat modifier means more threat for free. Less useful for DPS as there are better glyphs for more damage.
[Glyph of Disease] - Use of this glyph saves the DK from having to reapply disease every 15 secs. Useful for shaving GCD when multi-mob tanking.

Frost Tanking Specific
[Glyph of Frost Strike] - Great for Frost tanking (additional threat) and DPS. Less RP used translates to more of these strikes, RS or whathaveyou.
[Glyph of Icy Touch] - Great glyph for increasing your RP pool. More RP means more dumps, more RS and more damage. Good for any build that makes ample use of IT.
[Glyph of Obliterate] - Any build (not just frost) that relies heavily on Obliterate will find this glyph useful. Great for tanks and DPS.
[Glyph of Unbreakable Armor] - Increases the multiplier from .05 to .06. Helps reduce more damage but not so much that it makes this middle-of-the-road mitigation ability better then what it is currently.
[Glyph of Howling Blast] - Similar to glyph of disease as this will shave GCD's by not having to apply FF then spread it with pest.
[Glyph of Icebound Fortitude] - Not really just Frost tanking specific, but frost sees the most benefit. Currently, the tooltip must be badly worded as it adds 10%. As of 4.20.09 it currently adds 10%, as you can see from the numbers here. I suspect this is either a bug or incorrectly worded tooltip. Here's hoping its the latter. EDIT: Turns out I was right initially, it is a bug. Blizzard is going to hotfix this soon (if they haven't already) and this glyph will no longer provide at flat 10% increase. It has fallen back to a pure PVP glyph and is now useless for tanking.

Blood Tanking Specific
[Glyph of Death Strike] - 2% more damage based on runic power up to 25%. Since the buffs to DS, this is a good glyph if your build relies on DS over OB.
[Glyph of Rune Tap] - Extra healing is never bad. Extra healing on the entire group means more threat for the tank, divided among the mobs of course.
[Glyph of Vampiric Blood] - 10 seconds helps keep this active longer. Less useful then glyphs that bump threat but still viable. This helps make Vamp Blood a bit less painful now that the cooldown is 2 mins.

Unholy Tanking Specific
[Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell] - Increased AMS by 2 seconds. If you need it alot (Sarth3D) this one can be useful.
[Glyph of Bone Shield] - Hands down the best glyph in slot for any Unholy Tank.
[Glyph of Plague Strike] - Good for unholy tanks and unholy dps that actually use PS. Now that PS hits harder, this makes appying the disease more desirable.
[Glyph of Scourge Strike] - Extremely useful for unholy tanks and DPS, as Unholy builds generally revolve around keeping diseases up.
[Glyph of Dark Death] - Good for not just Unholy DPS, but tanking as well. Heavy Unholy builds use Death Coil as a rune power dump, so increasing damage will also increase threat.
[Glyph of Unholy Blight] - Increasing the duration of UB just makes Unholy crazy good with AOE threat.

DPS/PVP
[Glyph of Blood Strike] - Not often will you find this useful outside of a PVP setting
[Glyph of Chains of Ice] - Again, mainly a PVP glyph
[Glyph of Death Grip] - It is not often in PVE content that you get a killing blow before the 35 sec cd timer is up anyway. Mainly for PVP.
[Glyph of Strangulate] - Again, good for PVP.
[Glyph of the Ghoul] - Good for PVP and perhaps unholy DPS if you find your ghoul stays alive.
[Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon] - More for DPS utility then tanking as DRW does not add to threat.
[Glyph of Heart Strike] - Mainly Blood PVP utility.
[Glyph of Hungering Cold] - Its HC. For free.

Guide to Tanking Gems (by slot)

The following is a guide to the various gems that are useful for tanking separated by slot color. This way, if you have a piece of gear that has a red and a yellow slot, you can simply index this list and see what gems would be the most useful, depending on your gear selection. Some of the explanations are a bit rudimentary, but for those of you who are having trouble with the pop feature can see quickly what each is about.

Red
[Bold Scarlet Ruby] - +str = more damage (threat) and parry thru deflection
[Flashing Scarlet Ruby] - Less useful due to the harsh DR of parry
[Fractured Scarlet Ruby] - depends on how Blizzard intends to make arpen "useful" (For this reason, I didn't include the various gems that split arpen and some other stat until we actually see what Blizzard intends to do.
[Precise Scarlet Ruby] - Good way to get expertise capped to add to your threat
[Subtle Scarlet Ruby] - Dodge makes for the best in slot avoidance gem
[Defender's Twilight Opal] - Not the best (parry has harsh DR) but adds Stam as well
[Guardian's Twilight Opal] - Stam and expertise for hp and threat.
[Regal Twilight Opal] - Best in slot avoidance/stam gem
[Sovereign Twilight Opal] - Str and Stam for threat/hp
[Accurate Monarch Topaz] - Hit and expertise for threat. Great replacement for when you don't need straight +def gems any longer
[Champion's Monarch Topaz] - Str and def
[Etched Monarch Topaz] - Str and hit
[Glimmering Monarch Topaz] - parry and def
[Resolute Monarch Topaz] - str and expertise
[Stalwart Monarch Topaz] - Dodge and Defense make for a potent avoidance gem if you only need a few more points of +def

Blue
[Solid Sky Sapphire] - its added stamina to give healers more room for error. 'Nuff said.
[Defender's Twilight Opal]
[Guardian's Twilight Opal]
[Regal Twilight Opal]
[Sovereign Twilight Opal]
[Enduring Forest Emerald] - for when you need just a bit more def without sacrificing Stam
[Vivid Forest Emerald] - extra hit and stam

Yellow
[Rigid Autumn's Glow] - Hit rating for more threat
[Thick Autumn's Glow] - Defense rating if you need a bit more to reach the cap.
[Enduring Forest Emerald]
[Vivid Forest Emerald]
[Accurate Monarch Topaz]
[Champion's Monarch Topaz]
[Etched Monarch Topaz]
[Glimmering Monarch Topaz]
[Resolute Monarch Topaz]
[Stalwart Monarch Topaz]

Meta
[Austere Earthsiege Diamond] - One of the best tanking meta gems out there. Easy Gem cost.
[Effulgent Skyflare Diamond] - Good increase in stam and a reduction in spell damage if you expect to take a lot (Sarth3D maybe?)
[Persistent Earthsiege Diamond] - Okay if you find yourself getting stunned alot
[Powerful Earthshatter Diamond] - Better version of the above gem

This may be a huge guide to read but its very good.
no i didnt write it all myself i found this and edited it alittle.

/Chris
Tuishao
Tuishao
Guardian

user avatar

Joined: 27 Jul 2008
Posts: 1903

Send private message
Reply with quote

re: DK Tanking guide

0
Lol loooong but cool, We do have a post somewhere with links to decent level 80 start tanking gears. Just a personal note I think Will of the Necropolis is one of the most pointless moves ever xD lol


_________________
Remove the mole, before it has chance to turn into Cancer!

Posts from:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    FORSAKEN ENLIGHTENMENT Forum Index -> Class Discussion All times are GMT - 6 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum