Ugh, so changing Retx4 DK tank comp

[Multibocks]

Ok so in heroics Im not happy with my DK tank even though he overgears it all. The problem is this: Block. For Paladins you can literally take *ZERO* melee damage from trash and even most bosses. However DKs get no such luxury, they always take damage. Now I read that this is supposed to get changed in Cataclysm, but for now I have decided to change my DK to a dps spec and then switch one Ret to Tankadin. This also removes a reliable heal so with that I have also decided to change another ret to holy.

Phew! Ya, its gonna suck figuring out a good way to heal everyone. What I was thinking was making my holy pally have this massive castsequence in Innerspace. When I hit my rets dps key I want the holy pally to be throwing lights heals on each character. Basically cycling through everyone every 15 secs or so. I figure this should make my group near unkillable in heroics as holy pallies just dont run out of mana. Alternately I could just use the holy light glyph and hope the 10% heal to everyone else is enough to keep them alive. Anyone tried this? Im hoping it doesnt suck :D

[Mosg2]

Between Death Strike, Rune Tap, and 4x Divine Storm I can clear any trash pack in Heroic PoS or FoS and finish it with max health and more mana than I started. Maybe I don't have the luxury of a comparatively geared Paladin tank but... shrug.

[Multibocks]

My tank is frost spec for the +haste bonus to the rets, but maybe I should try blood spec before changing it all around. I noticed your rets are all pvp geared which, believe it or not, makes a huge difference. Your guys have more health unbuffed than mine do with kings. I sometimes wonder if I should buy a pvp set with emblems than the T9 stuff.

edit: hrm I swear you use to list your characters, maybe Im thinking of someone else.

[Shodokan]

My tank is frost spec for the +haste bonus to the rets, but maybe I should try blood spec before changing it all around. I noticed your rets are all pvp geared which, believe it or not, makes a huge difference. Your guys have more health unbuffed than mine do with kings. I sometimes wonder if I should buy a pvp set with emblems than the T9 stuff.

edit: hrm I swear you use to list your characters, maybe Im thinking of someone else.

The extra haste vs survivability is not a good tradeoff for heroics. It's not like you need to milk your DPS for everything they are worth for some progression content like hardmodes.

[Ellay]

I'd stick with the DK tank as more Blood and some into Frost. Healing your main should not be a problem at all with 4 rets. Stick with it :)

[remanz]

Buying furious set with badges now isn't optimal. It costs way more badges than T9. My suggestion is to get 2 pieces of T9. ROV bonus is nice. And 2 pieces of furious pvp sets (especially the pvp glove) for cursader strike damage bonus. In a few more weeks, when season 8 launches, Furious will require no rating. Should be like the deadly gears now. Buy it then with honor or honor + arena points.

I don't have a lot of problems with DK tanking. Getting to tank with 2h is nice. I have some troubles on boss AOEing, (sometimes DS + bubble too late). Once geared up a bit, it should not be a problem.

Also, DK + 4 rets owns FOS and POS (except the scourgelord boss, can't down him yet), those two new ICC 5 man heroic. I cleared those 2 heroics with average gearscore of 3600 for all 5. My shamans team had like gearscore 5000 on average. And my dps drops from 4000 to 1000 when they have to move. So I sometimes still have problems on some of the bosses with shamans . On the other hand, my pallys have like 2000 dps to begin with. When I move around, they still do 1500-1800 dps. Moving, dpsing, and healing all at the same time are priceless.

With that said, there IS a bonus for switching to the setup you want: You get to utilize some of the gears more. Those gears would be otherwise sharded. Plate, Mail + healing gear, caster and tanking shield, caster ring , trinket, weapon etc. Also you get 1 more blessing for the group to -3% dmg.

[Mosg2]

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Gorefiend&n=Chernabog

That's my tank spec. As I said, between Death Strike, Divine Storm x4 and Rune Tap I never have to FoL in instance trash and most bosses don't need it either. That build maximizes the Ret damage while still getting all the important tanking talents.

[remanz]

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Gorefiend&n=Chernabog

That's my tank spec. As I said, between Death Strike, Divine Storm x4 and Rune Tap I never have to FoL in instance trash and most bosses don't need it either. That build maximizes the Ret damage while still getting all the important tanking talents.

Mosg2. Do note that divine storm scales with weapon damage. So does death strike. You have 5 251 2h. Your divine storm and death strike heal quite a bit more than us who are using 219 weapons. Weapon makes a huge difference for 4 rets + dk. it double dips for damage as well as healing.

[Mosg2]

Actually, Death Strike doesn't scale on your weapon damage. It heals for 5% of your maximum health per disease on the target. Improved Death Strike increases that healing by 50%.

When I was using Garfrost's Two Ton Hammer it was the same deal with healing. Your top priority for the DK is keeping both diseases up and Death Striking every oppurtunity.

[Multibocks]

Wow I feel like a loser, my DK has almost 6k more health than yours. However, i251 weaps help A LOT. That said, Im going to try keeping the DK tank and then making one ret go holy. Not as much dps, but at least I feel like I have some control over the healing.

edit: I'd also like to take this moment to rant about heroics and tanks. Tanks that have block have a garguantuan advantage over those with no block. My paladin literally can have zero heals on a boss and not even drop below 90% health. That same boss my DK will either require heals or none at all, based on luck of the draw with dodge/parry. I realize heroics are not end game, but thats fucked up. My paladin could drag a group of sub 500dps losers through a dungeon or a meleeing healer and it wouldnt kill me (although it would make me mad). My DK would definitely die with a bad healer.

[Mosg2]

What's your DPS sequence? How do you have healing setup? What Seal are you using?

I spent 4-5 hours on the training dummies figuring out the best combination of the above that allows me to maintain aggro and do maximum dps.

[Multibocks]

DPS sequence? I assume you mean rets? It's a long castsequence that I pulled from Niley ( I think, may have been someone else, but its the long ret castsequence that EJ forums came up with). Healing is F1-F5 for each character. Rets use SoC, because SoV leaves them low on mana all the time (I use glyph of command for the extra mana). I have to be careful with SoC because it often produces more aggro than my DK can handle.

[remanz]

DPS sequence? I assume you mean rets? It's a long castsequence that I pulled from Niley ( I think, may have been someone else, but its the long ret castsequence that EJ forums came up with). Healing is F1-F5 for each character. Rets use SoC, because SoV leaves them low on mana all the time (I use glyph of command for the extra mana). I have to be careful with SoC because it often produces more aggro than my DK can handle.

hm. Seal of Command not very good for boss fights. Single target damage is low. Running low on mana means healing DK too much ? My gear scores is about 3900-4000 on average now. It finally starts to show. I can zerg down last bosses in heroic now. A good test for PVE gear is Bronjahm (http://www.wowwiki.com/Bronjahm) in FOS. I used to let him eat like 6 orbs before I can bring him to 30%. Once I geared up a bit, he got only 3 orbs then to 30%.

For bosses, you should use seal of vengance. Keeps using divine plea every chance you get. You should not run out of mana. Glphy SOV too to + 10 expertise. This helped a ton in DPS.

As for polling aggro with paladin, no riteogus fury on pallies, in frost presence, keep dumping runic power with rune strike. They should never poll aggro on single target.

DK is not bad for tanking magic based bosses. And the only melee boss I can think of is the first boss in HOL. Other bosses all have some form of magical attack.


edit: Actually, if you are using consecration and exorcism on every CD, adding healing, you will be out of mana. So use SOV, and put consecration on manual. Rets are not designed to max out dps and be able to heal a ton too. Only use consecration when you have mana to spare.

[Multibocks]

Yes I am aware how to tank on DK/Pallies. I research EJ all the time for what I should be using and when. However you did provide a good suggestion I never thought of and that is removing consecrate from the castsequence. That should save a crapton of mana and not affect dps too much. I'll have to try that. Oh and I do use SoV for bosses, its just not glyphed. If I was raiding I would worry about the expertise bonus, but bosses in heroics are only +2 levels and their dodge isnt as huge as a raid boss. Plus there are some bosses where SoC is actually helpful (any boss that summons adds).

[Mosg2]

...

I just don't understand where the gap is between our experiences. I *never* run out of mana and my /click includes Consecration fairly early in the rotation. Are you using the glyph for SoC?

On the aggro issue: My Rets are not dual specced so only two of them have the full -30% aggro talent. All of my abilities for the DK are macros that hit Rune Strike so I never miss an opportunity for it... And they still pull aggro pretty regularly. /shrug

I'm not trying to sound condescending--We're just experiencing polar opposites of the spectrum and trying to figure it out is confusing :)

[Drommon]

...

I just don't understand where the gap is between our experiences. I *never* run out of mana and my /click includes Consecration fairly early in the rotation. Are you using the glyph for SoC?

On the aggro issue: My Rets are not dual specced so only two of them have the full -30% aggro talent. All of my abilities for the DK are macros that hit Rune Strike so I never miss an opportunity for it... And they still pull aggro pretty regularly. /shrug

I'm not trying to sound condescending--We're just experiencing polar opposites of the spectrum and trying to figure it out is confusing :)

I am just curious what your rotation is and what your macros look like. Care to post please?

[Multibocks]

...

I just don't understand where the gap is between our experiences. I *never* run out of mana and my /click includes Consecration fairly early in the rotation. Are you using the glyph for SoC?

On the aggro issue: My Rets are not dual specced so only two of them have the full -30% aggro talent. All of my abilities for the DK are macros that hit Rune Strike so I never miss an opportunity for it... And they still pull aggro pretty regularly. /shrug

I'm not trying to sound condescending--We're just experiencing polar opposites of the spectrum and trying to figure it out is confusing :)

Uhm thats just it, I do use the glyph for SoC (which means their dps is lower on bosses than if they used the SoV glyph). Before I used to have mana problems, but I switched to SoC glyph so now I dont. However if I were to go back to using SoV I could save mana by not using consecration. Aggro is a different beast, my finger is always hovering over the tab button (for mobs that I am not targetting) and mouse button is always over the taunt button. It works, but its a hell of a lot more work than my paladin tank ever had to do.

[Mosg2]

No I agree, the DK *definitely* takes much more micromanagement than the other tanks. What I like about the Ret team though is that they don't, in my experience, take much micromanagement. A simple /click gives you basically the same DPS an individual player would--And in many cases more. In any case, here are my macros for the Rets and the DK:

The Main macro--Plague Strike, Icy Touch, Death Strike, Pestilence, and Blood Boil all key this. It goes in rotation:
Judgement
Crusader Strike
Divine Storm
Consecrate
Exorcism

I was able to get the same DPS out of putting Consecrate after Judge but they would frequently drop it out of range of where the pack would be. I prefer this setup.

For the DK:
I usually Death Grip and drop Death and Decay at the same time. Then Icy Touch and Pestilence--Anymore, if I try and Plague Strike first the mob dies and then I'm out of Frost runes and nothing has Frost Fever... So no 20% haste for everyone. Second target usually dies too fast for me to get Plague Strike and Pestilence but I always try. The next set of Frost/Unholy go for Death Striking and I alternate Blood Boil and Pestilence. As I said, all of the DK attacks have Rune Strike in the macro. When I have excess Runic Power I'll Death Coil.

[Multibocks]

I read someone has three dps keys for their rets and Im wondering how it works. One dps key uses AoW procs for healing tank, next dps key uses AoW procs for self heals and third uses AoW for exorcism. I know how to create castsequences, but this has me scratching my head. How do you get a new target mid castsequence? My only guess is he is using different click sequences. Not sure though.

[Talos]

I read someone has three dps keys for their rets and Im wondering how it works. One dps key uses AoW procs for healing tank, next dps key uses AoW procs for self heals and third uses AoW for exorcism. I know how to create castsequences, but this has me scratching my head. How do you get a new target mid castsequence? My only guess is he is using different click sequences. Not sure though.

Yes mate im using different clickmacros:
Check out my reply in the other thread
http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?p=255882#post255882

[Multibocks]

Thanks for help!