[Frost-DK-Tank] Does 3.3.3 change the tanking build at all?

[Shoju]

With the changes to talents in 3.3.3

Endless Winter: No longer causes Frost Fever to be applied by Chains of Ice, but instead grants 2/4% strength.
Icy Talons: The personal haste benefit provided by this talent is no longer exclusive with other sources of melee haste. This will allow death knights to always swing 4/8/12/16/20% faster when Frost Fever is applied. Windfury Totem and the party/raid component of Improved Icy Talons still do not stack.
Improved Icy Talons: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc. The self haste buff remains unchanged.
Nerves of Cold Steel: Now increases off-hand damage by 8/16/25%, up from 5/10/15%.
Unbreakable Armor: The amount of strength granted is now 20%, up from 10%.

Would this at all change the way the tanking build looks?

This is what I had been looking at, but it's not a 'huge' difference.

I'm curious what A couple of the DK mains cruising the boards think. I dont raid tank on my DK too often, but I'm trying to stay current to help a guildie DK tank who is learning.

[KysenMurrin]

Bug fixes may be of note, too: Rime no longer has two chances to proc from a dual-wield Oblit, and Necrosis can now proc from Rune Strike. No idea how much the latter would buff the Unholy sub-spec, probably not enough to swap from Blood.

[Folstar]

Icy Talons: The personal haste benefit provided by this talent is no longer exclusive with other sources of melee haste. This will allow death knights to always swing 4/8/12/16/20% faster when Frost Fever is applied. Windfury Totem and the party/raid component of Improved Icy Talons still do not stack.
Improved Icy Talons: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc. The self haste buff remains unchanged.

In my mind this makes IIT a solid choice. Not only do you get 1475.55 haste for 6 talent points (about 160 ap per talent point- on par with bladed armor)*, but also provide a valuable raid buff.

Nerves of Cold Steel: Now increases off-hand damage by 8/16/25%, up from 5/10/15%.

From what I have seen DW was already top tps- thanks for free threat blizz

Endless Winter: No longer causes Frost Fever to be applied by Chains of Ice, but instead grants 2/4% strength.

Not for DW- you don't have the points.


*We require 32.79 Rating for 1% Haste. - EJ
DW- HasteRating | 0.65 AP -Pwnwear
-I don't know if those numbers are totally up to date and accurate, but you get the idea

[Fenris]

I was thinking about something like this

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathkn ... BV9,,11623

Swapping to a death runes=IT rotation,missing epidemic should not be a huge problem anyway...

Still,an IIT spec could probably be better...The only problem i'm having atm to place togheter one is finding the last 2 points (2 from KM,2 from epidemic......2 from BI?BA?....)
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathkn ... sdD,,11623

[Vorianloken]

Icy Talons: The personal haste benefit provided by this talent is no longer exclusive with other sources of melee haste. This will allow death knights to always swing 4/8/12/16/20% faster when Frost Fever is applied. Windfury Totem and the party/raid component of Improved Icy Talons still do not stack.
Improved Icy Talons: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc. The self haste buff remains unchanged.

In my mind this makes IIT a solid choice. Not only do you get 1475.55 haste for 6 talent points (about 160 ap per talent point- on par with bladed armor)*, but also provide a valuable raid buff.

But is it worth picking up for a tank though? The only way to pick it up would be give up major part of unholy subspec and/or not going for scent of blood

My dk's tank spec may be a little wierd but I picked up 2/2 EW at the cost of 2 pts in the disease timer talent in unholy and have 1/3 SoB. Have only done one heroic in the new spec though so I haven't seen much of a change and the lower disease timer doesn't seem too bad. Once I can do some more runs I should know better

[KysenMurrin]

4% Strength is really small enough that it's not worth going for. It's nowhere near as good as other options in a talent point limited Tank spec.

[Levantine]

Endless Winter is great for DPS, not even close to worth it for tanks.

[amh]

Necrosis can now proc from Rune Strike

Recent bug? I can't remember Necrosis not proccing on a Rune Strike.

Edit: As of January 4th 2010 October 27th, 2009 (at least that's when I posted this shot):

[Vorianloken]

4% Strength is really small enough that it's not worth going for. It's nowhere near as good as other options in a talent point limited Tank spec.

Fair enough. back to longer diseases then

[Gerunna]

I ran Kahorie's sim on this spec which takes IIT and KM plus a couple of variations: 1 with the points from IIT moved into Black Ice and maxing KM, and another with the points from KM moved into Black Ice. For me the first two were nearly identical TPS against 4 mobs (IIRC the Black Ice + KM option was about 1.2% TPS ahead of IIT + KM) while losing KM lagged significantly behind. I figured since I almost exclusively run 5 mans on my DK I'd go with the first option since giving the group the haste buff will let me get my emblems faster.

Probably the biggest change for me is ditching the HB glyph and single disease rotation thanks to the Rime fix.

Edit: I just did some reading over at Pwnwear, and it's looking like 13-53-5 might be the winner for DW Frost. I simmed it for my DK setup, and it was about 6% ahead of the TPS of my other linked build.

[Fenris]

In the end i went 10/56/5 with 2/5 Black ice and 4/5 KM...High chance that it is not the optimal spec but i want to try it a bit

[Shoju]

Thisis the build that I went with. It is maximized mainly for heroics, with a lot of RP to fuel Frost Striking + Rune Strikes, as I still prefer single Disease AoE tanking.

My threat is pretty high, but I'm unsure if I'm going to be sticking with this build. I didn't notice a DPS loss switching from [5/5 BI, 5/5 KM] to [IIT , 3/5 KM] but it does seem that my threat is significantly improved, even in AoE situations where I'm not using Icy Touch.

[KysenMurrin]

Respecced my DK last night, and eventually settled on this build for myself, which is not very optimal but I really don't like living with a 20 yard pull. I should probably have pulled the extra point from somewhere other than Bladed Armor, though.

What I can't quite get the hang of is when to refresh diseases - watching my disease timers and runes it always seems like I'm deciding between refreshing them 5-6 seconds early, or a few seconds late. I'm probably just doing it wrong.

[blakk]

Epidemic not being in your build is why diseases are falling off in that spot

[KysenMurrin]

Builds without Epidemic are showing higher threat numbers now, which is why it's out. What I need to know is how best to work with it. I guess with the threat buff refreshing early is the solution.