[DK Tank] why does my threat suck?

[TonicTank]

I have been playing my DK for a while and he is progressing well for the time I am able to play while my time in Iraq comes to an end.

I do heroics everyday and it has been the same story for the past few days. I have gotten great dps and heals for my group but I am constantly fighting for threat, I check recount and they are only doing 2.5k-3.5k. My rotations are what Levatine suggested and my armory link is in my signature. I'm just not sure what the deal is.

ST: IT, PS, BS, BS, OB, <Dump>
OB, OB, OB, BS, <Dump>
MT: HB, DnD, BB, <Dump>
OB, HB, BB, BB, <Dump>

As aways use KM and RM procs trying to save KB for a RM.

Is my gear that bad?
Am I doing something wrong by mistake?
My expertise is low, should I put a couple gems in for that?
Is my latency of 1kms+ really affecting my burst threat and/or TPS that much?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Levantine]

Yeahhhhhhhh~ 1k ms REALLY isn't going to help you out there, and it's the one thing you can't fix. Everything else looks okay, strange gemming, but not really wrong (Except for the Parry gem, kill it. Kill it dead. With fire.)

[TonicTank]

I was afraid of that. The deal with the parry gem is that I had a friend buy them instead of the expertise/stam gem. It was free and I was tired of looking at them so I threw it in. I will correct it and take a look at my gems and adjust fire. Would it benefit me to get expertise gems or strength gems?

[amh]

Have you macroed Rune Strike to a few spammable abilities?

Threat-values (done by Gravity over at deathknight.info): http://pwnwear.com/2009/09/08/threat-st ... ght-tanks/

Frost
EP:50 | Strength | 2.17
EP:50 | ExpertiseRating | 2.61
EP:50 | ExpertiseRating After Dodge Cap | 1.22

[Makaijin]

Your threat rotation differs alot depending on your spec. And like amh said you ought to macro Rune Strike on as many abilities as you can.

The key to getting maximum threat is to actually use a rotation that gives the maximum damage per RUNE. Due to Rune Strike being "next melee" and off the GCD, there will be alot of times where you won't have enough runepower to spam Deathcoil/Froststrike while still waiting for runes to reset. Because of this reason, a tanking DK is typically rune/runepower limited rather than GCD limited.

Examples of damage per rune are;

as Blood, you'd want to spam Heart Strike on your frost/unholy turned death runes over using more Oliberate/Death Strike, because as blood, even a glyth'd Oliberate never does anywhere near as 2 Heart Strikes.

Whereas for Frost, You'd want to use Oliberates (or Howling Blast depending on situation and CD) on your blood turned death runes as Oliberates does more than double of Blood Strike.

I can't speak for Unholy as I've never really tanked as unholy spec.

[Levantine]

I've already been through the rotation with him in the other thread. Admittedly I did forget to tell him to macro Rune Strike to everything.

[TonicTank]

I have had everything except BB and HB macro'd to rune strike since I learned the ability. I leveled as frost tank so it was needed while going through the lower level dungeons and grou quests. I currently use this one.

Code: Select all

/cast Icy Touch
/cast !Rune Strike

[Levantine]

Yeah, that's the fairly stock standard Rune Strike macro. I put Rune Strike first in mine, but I don't think it makes any difference.

Code: Select all

#showtooltip Obliterate
/cast !Rune Strike
/cast Obliterate

[TonicTank]

I will change my macros and put Rune Strike first and see if that makes a difference. I think it's the latency though. I figured it to be a 3-4 second lag over standard internet at 150 ms.