Post 3.1 Unholy tanking cast sequence

[Niley]

This has been giving me headache for full day now, trying to figure out full rotation for my dk, without using reaping as a talent, basically my cast sequence used to look like this:
IT, PS, BS, BS, SS // SS, SS, SS
This used to be standard unholy rotation, but it was changed in 3.1, with the glyph of disease showing up.
We have a DK tank in our guild, his threat is pretty damn amazing, stuff sticks to him like glue, even if adds just steps into his aoe, he magically gains 90k threat(freya adds, when hes tanking freya).
Here is his armory:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Stormreaver&n=Serenn&group=1
You can check his tank spec, it is what I'm using on my DK.
The new glyph provides us with additional SS instead of relaying on SS glyph, and with that it should give a cast sequence macro more reliable(higher) threat, since we wont be wasting PS to refresh the disease, instead we have to have some kind of refreshing ability(glyphed pest.) in our rotation.

This is what I came up with, someone else please look through it and tell me if its looks alright
#show
/Cast rune strike
/castsequence reset=8 Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Scourge Strike, Scourge Strike, Blood Strike, Pestilence, Scourge Strike, Scourge Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Scourge Strike
Just remember that Glyph of Disease lets us replace Icy Touch+Plague Strike with one SS.
PS. I reanimated my team 4 days ago, its good to be back \o/

Aoe macro that should work:
#show
/Cast rune strike
/castsequence reset=8 Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, Blood Boil, Scourge Strike, Scourge Strike, Blood Boil, Blood Strike, Scourge Strike, Scourge Strike, Pestilence, Blood Boil, Scourge Strike
servers are down, so I cant test it.





And just for the hell of it, Ill add my one button spam paladin tanking macro, since i use both tanks:

main threat one, you can use consecrate at the start if You need aoe threat(You can replace wisdom with light):
#show
/castsequence reset=5 Judgement of wisdom,Shield of Righteousness,Holy Shield,Hammer of the Righteous,Consecration,Shield of Righteousness,Judgement of wisdom,Hammer of the Righteous,Holy Shield,Shield of Righteousness,Consecration,Hammer of the Righteous

One that I use for mana intensive fights:
#show
/castsequence reset=5 Judgement of wisdom,Shield of Righteousness,Holy Shield,Hammer of the Righteous,Shield of Righteousness,Judgement of wisdom,Hammer of the Righteous,Holy Shield,Shield of Righteousness,Hammer of the Righteous

[Fat Tire]

Here is his armory:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Stormreaver&n=Serenn&group=1
Watch out he doesn't ask for you or your guild to pay his electric bill for him. I am sure everyone has heard of Serenna/Nathrya and now Serenn......Whata D-bag

Apologies I couldn't contribute more than an insult to your new guild mate. I am currently still tweaking my DK tanking rotation myslef

[ghonosyph and the moocrew]

you need to remember to add in runic power attacks to your rotation, or spam them from a separate macro... also, the reset = 8 portion isn't going to allow you to even get close to the end of your macro, plain and simple 1.5 sec per global cooldown unless you have unholy presence active.

if you're worried about single target threat, that should be a non issue, diseases followed by scourge strikes should do the job nicely. Save your blood strikes till after however, as if you use the pestilence major glyph then you can use it to refresh diseases at the end of the rotation. Keep in mind, however, that plague strike has a naturally high threat modifier for you when in frost presence :)

If you're lookin for solid info go check out the dk info over at elitistjerks.com there's a ton of garbage and numbers to sift thru, but the reading is good, and all the info there is rather helpful =)

[Niley]

you need to remember to add in runic power attacks to your rotation, or spam them from a separate macro... also, the reset = 8 portion isn't going to allow you to even get close to the end of your macro, plain and simple 1.5 sec per global cooldown unless you have unholy presence active.

if you're worried about single target threat, that should be a non issue, diseases followed by scourge strikes should do the job nicely. Save your blood strikes till after however, as if you use the pestilence major glyph then you can use it to refresh diseases at the end of the rotation. Keep in mind, however, that plague strike has a naturally high threat modifier for you when in frost presence :)

If you're lookin for solid info go check out the dk info over at elitistjerks.com there's a ton of garbage and numbers to sift thru, but the reading is good, and all the info there is rather helpful =)

8 seconds is there so it resets quickly out of combat, otherwise is spam it so it wont. I have all runic dumps on separate buttons. I know all the ins and outs pre 3.1 on my dk(Mted and OT'ed everything t7), but I havent touched him since ulduar came out until today.


Watch out he doesn't ask for you or your guild to pay his electric bill for him. I am sure everyone has heard of Serenna/Nathrya and now Serenn......Whata D-bag

Apologies I couldn't contribute more than an insult to your new guild mate. I am currently still tweaking my DK tanking rotation myslef

While I know who he is and what he did, I'm in the guild to raid, and do best that i can do, not to make friends. He's a D bag, agreed, but also a really good player.

[Fat Tire]

hey niley

Can I get you to share your runic dumps? I am always confused about them and when the best time to use them. I just have runestrike on my tanking Macro, not sure if that is the best way to go. :wacko:

[Niley]

hey niley

Can I get you to share your runic dumps? I am always confused about them and when the best time to use them. I just have runestrike on my tanking Macro, not sure if that is the best way to go. :wacko:

if you look at my macro it consists of 3 parts.

1. Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Scourge Strike,

2. Scourge Strike, Blood Strike, Pestilence, Scourge Strike,

3. Scourge Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Scourge Strike

You do runic dumps in between, making sure that UB is up 100% of the time otherwise use dc, with that in mind I managed 7-9 tps spamming that macro on ZG mount run with my team, so I guess it works pretty well.
Armory updated, so here's my DKs armory http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormreaver&n=Lowpass



edit, so full macro looks like this:

#show
/Cast Rune Strike
/castsequence reset=8 Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Scourge Strike, Scourge Strike, Blood Strike, Pestilence, Scourge Strike, Scourge Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Scourge Strike



Now i need to make my macro for good aoe threat(the one above is fine, but I can propably do better)

[puppychow]

I tank as frost and DPS as unholy, since my experience has been that unholy is pretty meh single target threat post 3.1, and frost has excellent AOE and single target threat (esp with howling blast), haven't had any issues tanking u10 up to mimiron as frost. Blood is also a great tank and DPS spec, esp for some of the hard fights where the self-healing can be very nice (40% health pot every minute sounds great sometimes...). I'm actually going to switch my DK to blood dps/tank this week probably since my mage is my raiding main now (too many melee not enough casters... qq)

My understanding was that the glyph of disease was not a great glyph for tanks, and in fact is best for blood spec (but glyph of VB is better) not unholy/frost. But I haven't really kept up with the EJ theorycrafters.

btw any reason why you reactivated the boxers, i'm down to just 1 account until next patch :( the argent coliseum is sooo boring.

[Niley]

I tank as frost and DPS as unholy, since my experience has been that unholy is pretty meh single target threat post 3.1, and frost has excellent AOE and single target threat (esp with howling blast), haven't had any issues tanking u10 up to mimiron as frost. Blood is also a great tank and DPS spec, esp for some of the hard fights where the self-healing can be very nice (40% health pot every minute sounds great sometimes...). I'm actually going to switch my DK to blood dps/tank this week probably since my mage is my raiding main now (too many melee not enough casters... qq)

My understanding was that the glyph of disease was not a great glyph for tanks, and in fact is best for blood spec (but glyph of VB is better) not unholy/frost. But I haven't really kept up with the EJ theorycrafters.

btw any reason why you reactivated the boxers, i'm down to just 1 account until next patch :( the argent coliseum is sooo boring.

I transferred to a new guild, and found a boxer in my own guild, and another one on the server. We decided to give 10 mans a shot, so far we 2 5 boxed, pvp boss, os 10, and some bosses in naxx, unfortunately my time is very limited since i raid in a guild that most fo You would call hardcore, so I can spent only 3-4 hours a week doing that. Some fights are a bit tough since the other boxers just hit 80, so for example Poings paladin isn't even defense capped yet, but they're both great guys, and very good players, so I think we will do great after they get some more gear =D
From what I've been reading unholy seems to be a very good single tps/aoe tank spec, I mean with a macro i was doing steady 6.5k tps in naxx, spiking to well over 12k, I'm sure without it i could do better. Our Dk tank had MT'ed a lot of our hard modes, we only have 3 or 4 of them left
, he's been unholy all this time. Main thing about unholy for me is ebon plague.
Glyph of disease basically makes it so You can do a set rotation, without rng of SS glyph, I think its great tool for boxers.

[puppychow]

yeah I actually multibox tank (when my other accts are active) as unholy DPS in tank gear, I lose stuff like anticipation/morbidity/AMZ/etc but for heroics and 10 mans it doesnt really matter, threat or mitigation/avoidance never an issue.

Where I found threat an issue was in places like hodir and iron council, the DPSers get massive boosts and threat resets a lot and I just didn't find unholy tanking as good as frost/blood. Usually in 25 mans as well there is either an unholy DPSer or there is a boomkin so ebon not an issue.

[Niley]

yeah I actually multibox tank (when my other accts are active) as unholy DPS in tank gear, I lose stuff like anticipation/morbidity/AMZ/etc but for heroics and 10 mans it doesnt really matter, threat or mitigation/avoidance never an issue.

Where I found threat an issue was in places like hodir and iron council, the DPSers get massive boosts and threat resets a lot and I just didn't find unholy tanking as good as frost/blood. Usually in 25 mans as well there is either an unholy DPSer or there is a boomkin so ebon not an issue.

I meant ebon for my boxing group :P not for the raid, that is never an issue.
Our unholy tank has no issues at all, even crazy fights like vezax, where people are doing 10k+ dps are fine.