I had some time to run a few random instances this weekend, and I had been holding onto the secondary spec as a DPS spec. But, my DPS on Artie blows chunks now.  I’m so out of that game with the unholy rotation or the blood rotation that I was only pulling 2K DPS…  Rather than try to be a jack of all trades and master of none, Artie is now a full fledged tanking toon.  I’ve even taken this to the extreme and sold all of my DPS gears so that I’m not tempted to revert back anytime soon (and before anyone freaks out, my DPS set was blues and a few epics from 3.0 heroics — before ToC — and a few epics from regular mode ToC.  I’m not too stressed about replacing that stuff.)

So, as a full-fledged dedicated Death Tank, I left my bread and butter 2h frost in the main slot, paid the 50 gold to unlearn the latest Unholy DPS talents, and stacked in a dual wielding ITT frost spec — it’s nothing earth shattering, and it looks like this:

What are all the goodies?

Well, I’m still taking all of the loveliness associated with Icy Talons and Improved Icy Talons — more haste for more swings and more applications of the Rune of Razorice. When we don’t have a shammy in party haste buffing, I can haste buff. When we do have said shammy, I’m still hitting faster… The animation reminds me of a rogue cracked up on Red Bull and just wailing away, and I fuggin love it.

Also, I retained what I consider the essential tanking talents: Blade Barrier in Blood, Anticipation from Unholy, and Toughness, Frigid Dreadplate, Improved Frost Presence, Unbreakable Armor and Guile of Gorefiend.

Sacrifices?  Simply not enough talent points for two staples in 2H — Black Ice and a maxxed Killing Machine. Hey something had to give, and I would rather go all the way into IIT and I’m willing to lose the 10% boost to Frost attacks from Black Ice with the change to the threat mechanic for Icy Touch in 3.3.3. With regard to the 3/5 Killing Machine, it still procs, but I have noticed that it doesn’t fire nearly as much as it does with 5/5, so this may be one area to play around with in the future.

Test results?  Who am I kidding, I’m no where near disciplined enough to spend hours in front of simulators… I plugged the above in, swapped out for my one-handers (Rimefang’s Claw with Rune of the Nerubian Carapace in main hand and Peacekeeper Blade with Rune of Razorice in off hand) and drew Drak’tharon Keep. Only time we had any issue was on the back rampart after dropping Dred… I got antsy and gripped a single over a bit too close to a pack, and with Rain of Fire falling, I wasn’t able to regrab the pack aggro before they dropped the warlock…  But, all was well because I apologized for pulling too close and he apologized for AoEing without giving me a second to pick ‘em up — no hard feelings and we wrapped up the easy mode dragon dude quickly.

I didn’t notice any issues, and my shammy healer (I’ve struggled with squishiness from shammy heals in DTK before) didn’t seem to have any problems whatsoever with the New Spec.

One attempt does not make a classic, but going all Spartacus is pure Win in my book.

I promised myself I’d never spend time blogging about upcoming patch changes or game changes.  For this one, I’ll make an exception.

Straight from the Crab’s mouth:

In Cataclysm, death knights will have a dedicated tanking tree, much like the other three tank classes. That tree will be Blood.

Hmmm….

Now, I’m not gonna freak out. I’m not gonna go all chicken little and insist that the sky is falling. I’m a bit speechless, truth be told.

But, Blood?!? Really?

I leveled as blood. Self healing was awesome, dps was excellent, downtime was minimal, and I could solo all of the stupid 5m group quests in Dragonblight… Those were some heady leveling experiences (almost as easy as with a hunter and a gorilla). But, as I migrated into collecting tanking gear and tanking focused items, I wandered deeper into the unholy and ultimately frost trees. For me, focusing on the daily heroic LFG runs, I encounter fewer wipes and aggro issues as frost than I ever did as unholy… and the one time I tried blood tanking, the healer wasn’t healing me at all because my mob of mobs wasn’t on me — the first AoE peeled ‘em all off and sent them right at the squishies.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the change.  Until I can log in and experience it, it’s vapor ware and may waft into something new at any moment, so I’m not gonna get any panties in a bunch. They could have chosen any of the trees, and until we can play around with the talents its a guessing game.   (I was really hoping for Dual Wield talents to be low level fruit in a tree so that I could have the option to go all Spartacus and use two swords — that’s just plain fun).

However, I am quite intrigued on the changes –  a dedicated tanking tree with multiple tanking talents (bone shield and unbreakable armor and veteran of the third war?!?!  OP, baby!) may, just may, quell the notion rampant among the masses that DKs can’t tank. After playing both a hunter and a DK, I’m kinda used to being the “Rodney Dangerfield” and getting no respect. Maybe, just maybe, that misconception will fade away when Thousand Needles floods! I will be staying tuned!

Is this the only change?  Nahhhh… Check out the other impacts direct from the blues if you’re so inclined.

Catclysm will be in many ways, a brand new WoW.

Cheers!

Based on some feedback here, I attempted dual wielding again.

The spec I went with was a pretty basic 10 | 54 | 7

As far as my gems / gear, I’m too broke at the moment to stress much about swapping ‘em around. My stats are suffering a bit (hit’s horribly low for example), but I’m not ready to fully commit to dual wield tanking just yet. The biggest dilemma has been weapons – which ones to equip and how to runeforge ‘em.

Weapons

With two hands and two kinds of weapons, I have four possible choices:

1. Two fast tanking weapons
2. Two slow DPS weapons
3. Fast tanking weapon in main hand, slow DPS weapon in off-hand
4. Slow DPS weapon in main hand, fast tanking weapon in off-hand.

Keep in mind, I’ve never raided on Artie, so my toolbox contains crusader seal rewards or heroic instance drops. My best one handed tanking weapons are: Teldrassil Protector (I have two of ‘em purchased back in 3.2), Peacekeeper Blade (only one so far), or the Red Sword of Courage (pretty sure I just need to sell that sucker – not a big fan of it).  My best slow one handed weapons are the Ghoul Slicer and the Hate-Forged Cleaver.

Runeforging

Initially, I thought that the rune choices were a no-brainer…. You had to go with Rune of the Nerubian Carapace (RoNC), right? The thought of tossing a Rune of Razorice on the main hand weapon so that frost vulnerability was in the mix is appealing, but so is a Rune of the Fallen Crusader.  I’ve done neither yet and I’m going with RoNC.

Results

First Run: Thursday

Using Ghoul Slicer in MH and Peacekeeper in OH (option4).   Get Utgarde Pinnacle… Shammy heals and pally / hunter / warlock DPS. DPS was okay (pally was tops was 2.5K, hunter was 3rd with 2.0K and ‘lock brought up the rear with 1.8K). Neither the ‘lock or the hunter had been before and they didn’t know to run away from Skadi’s whirlwind of death (beauty spot to pop an Icebound Fortitude by the way!) so 3 manned Skadi. Bit frustrating after a /readycheck before starting the event and asking if everyone was good to go…. but I digress.

Threat?  No issues.  DPS?  About the same as 2h frost, around 2.1K. Survivability?  Didn’t seem to be an issue. Heal check — no worries, shammy was happy… take that as success.

Second run: Friday

Equip the 2 slow DPS weapons (option 2), Ghoul Slicer and Hate-Forged Axe (RoNC on both).  Get Drak’Theron Keep. Freshly dinged 80 holy priest heals, mage, shammy and warlock DPS.  Shammy was having lag issues and pulled 900 DPS for most of the run. Lock was having AFK issues and pulled 2K.  Mage pulled 2.1k.  I topped DPS charts at 2.3K…. so uh, the slow weapons made a nice DPS change.  With the low DPS, the bosses died slower, but they still died.  Only issue we had was when priest got feared at the end into the 2nd pack of undeads on the way to the Prophet, but we still pulled it out (was a nice test of staying power, actually).

Bottom line, I’m digging looking like a rogue in plate and it doesn’t appear to have gimped me other than my +hit stats…  So I may have to stick with it for a bit!

Thanks to those that encouraged the retry!  If I can get the Rimefang’s Claw or Lucky Old Sun to drop, then I’ll gladly change over… Same thing for the Black Icicle. ‘Till then, I’m kinda digging it!

So one of my biggest frustrations with healing tanks on my  priest is spiky damage: one moment tank’s at 95% health, next moment he’s at 30% and it’s still dropping.  In raids, that’s just gonna happen.  In 5m instances, the only time that should happen is when you ate your wheaties and feel invincible…. or you’ve done too many tequila shooters before logging in.

The best defenses are layered: the Death Knight has boosted dodge and our parry is increased by our strength, which help to prevent attacks from missing in the first place. But when they do land, then we need mitigation.
Mitigation

1. to lessen in force or intensity, as wrath, grief, harshness, or pain; moderate.
2. to make less severe

as defined on www.dictionary.com at least

Here goes a summary of the big three DK mitigation talents.

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From the random observation of Artie, here’s a post that I wish I had seen before attempting my first heroic (which was UP, so probably not a smart move on my end).

Talents

In my opinion, deep Frost with 15|51|5 is the way to go, especially starting out. I’m a big fan of Unbreakable Armor and Guile of Gorefiend’s boost to Icebound Fortitude.  Can you tank in other specs?  Sure!  But that’s another post….

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