Going mad with DK tank macro

[ragawaga]

So I'm trying to fiddle around with a tanking rotation for my frost build. I've only just redone it so the armoury probably won't be updated, so here's an MMO chapion link for my current spec and glyphs.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight#eSQHYIL43IMf6h,SwfeO,11159


I start off with a death and decay then this


(spam button)
/use 14
/use 13
/click BT4Button41
/click BT4Button42
/click BT4Button43
/click BT4Button44
/click BT4Button45
/click BT4Button46



BT4Button41
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=Combat Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, Null


BT4Button42
/cast Frost Strike

BT4Button43
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=combat Blood Boil,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,
/cast !Rune Strike


BT4Button44
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=combat Howling Blast,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,
/cast !Rune Strike


BT4Button45
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=combat Obliterate,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,
/cast !Rune Strike


BT4Button46
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=combat Pestilence,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
/cast !Rune Strike


Unfortunately, all that happens is that BT4Button41 and BT4Button42 go off then the macro dies there. Can anyone help me with this?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Correct. Because only commas will "fall through" to the next step unless the spell is off the GCD (like Rapid Fire for hunters, PoM for mages, etc.).

[ghonosyph]

correct, frost strike is not a fire off and forget spell, it has to be cast just like any other spell, MY RECOMMENDATION as i play dks as my mains, is to move frost strike off to its own key and spam it whenever you have excess rune power. as if you dont have rune power you can VERY easily lock up your macro system. Rune strike should be left in however, as you want it on as much as possible, but due to its random nature can soak up rune power and therefore lock up your clicks if you get lucky and get procs it could steal away runepower enough that you wont have enough for frost strike, thus screwing you bigtime


run on sentence yes i know ;) it sucks that you've gotta use two keys, but its the better way to go due to the mechanics :) good luck!

[Stealthy]

I'd remove the NULL in the first button macro as well, since that macro won't progress past that point until you drop combat (i.e. no good for target switching during combat).

Or you can change the reset condition to reset=combat/target, but then you might be stuck waiting for cooldowns...

Cheers,
S/

[ragawaga]

OK, so I remove the Frost strike button from the sequence and spam it when I get enough RP (as I went to bed last night after posting this I realised that was what was causing the problem).

@Stealthy - I had wanted this to only be run once during combat. As I have the glyph of disease, each time I cast pestilance, the timer on my diseases is refreshed. As such even if I switch target I wouldn't need to do frost strike or plague strike again. I'm hoping for this to be able to maintain AOE aggro - this is something I've been struggling with. To gear up the tank so I can start soloing instances, I've been doing randoms with pugs and find that I'm constantly losing aggro with either this or an unholy spec.

[Dezeral]

I prefer cast sequences for my DK over click macros. With a cast sequence, you have absolute control over when each ability fires versus a click macro which is better suited to first come first serve type rotations. And I also agree that unless you are playing a DPS dk, you are better off leaving out any rune power abilities as they may lockup your sequence if you do not have enough rune power to use an ability. As a DK tank, you will find that you cannot reliably gauge how much rune power you have due to the nature of random rune strikes. Here is an example of my single target cast sequence:

/castsequence reset=combat/5 icy touch, plague strike, death strike, blood strike, blood strike, death strike, death strike, blood strike, blood strike
/cast rune strike

There is a gap after the blood strikes where I am waiting on runes to refresh before I can do the next death strikes. If I have rune power, I will do death coils here or just wait for the runes to refresh to proceed on with the sequence.

Here is an example of a dual wield dps dk macro where I know for sure that I will have enough rune power to perform each frost strike:

/castsequence reset=7 icy touch, plague strike, blood strike, blood strike,obliterate, frost strike, frost strike, obliterate, obliterate, obliterate, frost strike, frost strike

These are tailor made for specific talent builds and specific glyphs. The duration of your diseases can vary if you have epidemic and other factors affect when you want to cast abilities.

[ragawaga]

OK, I didn't realise that the link for the talent build wasn't working. Armoury has been updated, so here is the DK in question's spec : http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Ravenholdt&cn=Razi%C3%AAl&gn=Heal+Pets

Thinking about it though, as I have 3 points in Rime, wouldn't I really want to keep to a /click sequence so that I can take advantage of the procs?

[alcattle]

What happens when you miss? Missing a disease makes a big difference in DPS/Threat and missing the Obit also hurts a lot. I am in the hard to macro DKs school

[ragawaga]

Well, after literally spending hours in front of target dummies playing with macros and found a solution that worked. I can't remember exactly what they were as I'm not at home right now....


I start off by putting down a death and decay then spamming the button.

(spam button)
/use 14
/use 13
/click BT4Button41
/click BT4Button42


BT4Button41
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=Combat Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, Null
/cast !rune strike

BT4Button42
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=Combat Blood Boil, Howling Blast, Obliterate, Pestilence
/cast !rune strike

I think that BTButton42 might be a bit longer.....I'll check later tonight.

So the first sequence puts frost fever and plague strike on my target followed by a pestilence to spread that around. This macro will only run once during combat. The second macro does a blood boil to help grab the threat in the early stages of the pull. There's a little bit of time where my runes are on cooldown...at this point there's normally enough RP for a frost strike. Then comes a howling blast which as well as causing AoE damage/threat refreshes the timer on frost fever....obliterate to cause damage, then pesitlence. As I have glyph of disease, pestilence refreshes frost fever and blood plague. Then it goes back to the beginning of the second sequence. I have runestrike in there to fire off whenever it's available. I'm also spamming the frost strike button to fire that off when there's enough RP. I'm probably going to try to macro this in.

I'll often change target at this point....as I've gathered enough threat on the first one....the obliterates and frost strikes help gather single target threat.

[OogaJiggaWooga]

Check out this thread, similar needs as it involves frost tank macro-ing. Check out the single disease option as it makes it so much better than having to make sure two diseases and pestilence have spread before going all out.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=28995

[ragawaga]

I had a shot at a single disease rotation (not macro'd) and found that I just wasn't keeping aggro. That's probably a combination of my low gear and the DPS having higher gear.....but for the purposes of gearing up solo....I'll need to be able to keep aggro in these circumstances. It was essentially a rotation of howling blast, obliterate, bloodboil, and blood strike I think.

[ghonosyph]

you should be using death and decay as much as possible when tanking, using glyph of rune tap for the heal*if you go that spec* howling blast and death and decay glyphs

DND gets a huge threat modifier and if you use glyph of howling blast you shouldnt really need glyph of disease, its like double stacking for no reason.

Dnd on every pull, howling blast(if you have the glyph) bloodboil/bloodstrike, depending on the amount of adds. then 2 frost strikes

***EDIT**** you're not gonna get a true rotation from the above, because dnd has a 30 second cooldown and thats roughly 20 seconds worth of abilities, the second portion of the rotation is to plague strike, pest, and oblit the current target. theres a ton of info on elitist jerks.com website in the dk forums, its not entirely focused on our main goals and more suited to raiding specs, but the info is valuable if you care to search thru it :)

for every aoe pull this is the standard rotation for highest threat output.

you can do something different with icy touch, plague strike, pest, then DnD but you often will lose agro if your alts are aoeing. Given the fact that frost has heavy snap agro you can always go with what you have for single target(with oblit and such) but for aoe dnd howling blast then bloodboil is the only way to do it :D