Death Knight Tanks.

[Millerz]

hey i was wondering if DK tanks are any usefull in ICC anymore? i am currently OT in our guild and normally i tank on Marrowgar, Lady, Putri and BPC. My current guild is 9/12 25 HC.

http://armory.wow-europe.com/character- ... gn=Divined

i know i have brewfest trinket. but sadly that's the best i've been able to get so far. As i've been really unlucky with trinket drop from Sindy

i was also wondering what should i reforge to? go directly dodge/parry or Mastery?

[Mitranim]

First off, DK tanks are as awesome as ever, if played well. With our short cooldowns and new, enhanced Death strike we can pretty much dominate several fights (say Sindra, the Lich King or Hallion). It's skill dependant though.

When it comes to reforging, as of now the only thing totally agreed upon is that whatever stats you choose to stack, you should try to even out your dodge and parry in the process (due to diminishing returns). From there, you have a few choices: stacking avoidance, stacking mastery, or stacking expertise.

Stacking avoidance is obvious, you end up reforging any hit and expertise into dodge/parry. It can somewhat help your survival, but may cause problems with threat.

Stacking mastery can provide controllable mitigation at the cost of avoidance (which is where you reforge it from). Requires a healthy amount of hit and expertise, and situational DS usage. Blood shield tracker addon could come very handy.

Stacking expertise means stable threat and less DS parries. This is my personal choice at the moment, whatever heretical can it be.

I'd like to hear top endgame tank opinions on this as well, however afaik there's no DK tanks in Paragon, so it's unlikely on these forums. :D

Hope it helps a bit.

[Millerz]

Thanks for the answer, i think i'll try stacking expertise then for the DS.

[Translit]

I'd like to hear top endgame tank opinions on this as well

Go and check my absorb logs with mastery stacking! Still exp reforging? Don't make me troll u!:D

[Mitranim]

How about we go ahead and check your logs? ;D

[20:32:56.616] Транслит Death Strike Транслит +5120 (O: 17232)
[20:32:56.616] Транслит gains Life Shield from Транслит
[20:32:57.769] Король-лич hits Транслит 16273 (O: -1, A: 1743)
[20:32:58.140] Транслит's Life Shield fades

or

[20:33:06.250] Транслит Death Strike Транслит +0 (O: 46014)
[20:33:06.250] Транслит gains Life Shield from Транслит
[20:33:08.676] Король-лич Infest Транслит 4354 (O: -1, A: 4822, R: 2652)
[20:33:12.136] Король-лич hits Транслит 40922 (O: -1, A: 3902)
[20:33:12.248] Транслит's Life Shield fades

What about absorbs, huh? It's like you've got ~zero mastery or something. Who's trolling now?

To be serious, I think that not only WoL fails to count LS absorbs towards your "healing" (it's actually impossible until Blizzard improves combat log to show sources of absorbs), but it also sometimes fails to show melee hit absorbs from our mastery.

[20:34:03.602] Транслит Death Strike Транслит +31630 (O: 23230)
[20:34:03.602] Транслит gains Life Shield from Транслит
[20:34:06.813] Транслит Death Strike Транслит +0 (O: 54859)
[20:34:06.813] Транслит's Life Shield is refreshed by Транслит
[20:34:08.328] Транслит Death Strike Транслит +0 (O: 10972)
[20:34:08.328] Транслит's Life Shield is refreshed by Транслит
[20:34:09.174] Король-лич hits Транслит 18394 (O: -1, A: 11348)
[20:34:09.500] Транслит's Life Shield fades

Also, apparently you can't "roll" big shields anymore.

[Alloy20]

I'd like to throw my 2 cents in this one since I have very little direct converse with other end game DK tanks, all of them on my server seemed to vanish when Cata hit. Ignore my armoury simply because my gear current doesn't directly reflect what I think the end result of the current thoery crafting will be. Mainly because I have been regemming and reforging different models week over week to try things out.

(this is my best guess atm since there isn't much conclusive evidence to suggest one end all gemming/reforging model)
The most recent break in terms of thoery for DK tanks has been a bias towards survival above what might be reffered to as effective health in WoTLK. What this means is that while you need a healthly HP pool to survive the incoming damage of current tier bosses simply stacking stam way over this point is almost useless (sort of ties in with the way healing is now too). Instead gemming with a bias towards mastery, taking into consideration socket bonuses, using Rune of Sword Shattering, gear towards dodge to try and keep that +4% parry from getting too far ahead on dodge for deminishing return balance. Again this is me just guessing based on current thoery but with a heavy reliance on blood shields with mastery stacking, hit and expertise values would probably rise too simply due to the fact that timing DSs to land after large incoming damage will be cruicial and could mean the difference between a 15k shield and a 40k shield (coming back to survial as the new EH for DKs). It does come to mind that this is a lot of stats to balance particually due to the fact we are just entering a new expansion and capping off stats like hit and expertise with T11 stat qouta is a tall order, it is also worth considering that all the above could be flipped on it's head if a fight has a large portion of magical damage or if you are unable to consistently DS due to kiting adds or something. This is one of the reasons it is taking so long to come to a conclusion about gearing gemming and reforging a DK tank and to be quite honest it is also very likely that DKs will need to build 2 sets of tanking gear aimed towards magic heavy vs physical heavy damage fights.
Btw the above is based off of current thoery, personal experience, healer feedback as well as a few other things. I'm not one to crunch numbers too much. Ofc this all could turn out wrong and I will look like a tard :) .

Just noticed that the last post was on the 4th of Nov and my reply is probably irrelevant now lol. Meh, posting anyways perhaps it will spark some more DK tank debate.