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Blood vs Frost for tanking

Posted: 05 Nov 2015 15:00
by awoo
I know DK's are a long way off, but I've never gotten to play them during the 3.3.5 days that this server will eventually come to. Was wondering what everyone's opinion was on that.

Re: Blood vs Frost for tanking

Posted: 05 Nov 2015 18:33
by Glonz
Blood tanks seemed more suited for sustain, with all the self heals and stuff

iirc frost tanks were good in early wrath on retail, but nowadays, i see more blood than frost tanks on other wrath servers (or the ones I have been shortly playing on here and there, idk lol)

both are pretty good for tanking, though I always favored blood tanks

Re: Blood vs Frost for tanking

Posted: 02 Dec 2015 00:21
by Doublespoons
Blood was for Tanking and Frost was a dps spec. Frost is actually the highest dps spec between Frost and Unholy. Even with Shadowmourne there is only one or 2 AoE fights (Lady Deathwhisper) that comes to mind that Unholy can even compete. This is with Shadowmourne mind you. Unholy was hit too hard in patches before 3.3.5 for it to be viable. You'll see DK's tanking in Blood and Dual weild dpsing in Frost. I doubt anyone with a brain will go unholy.

Re: Blood vs Frost for tanking

Posted: 02 Dec 2015 08:22
by .MerelyASetback
For the choice of which spec to tank in, the first question you have to ask is:

"What will I be tanking most of the time?"

If you solely will be tanking raid bosses, blood should be your primary choice.

If however you'd tank heroic dungeons most of the time, I'd go frost. Frost has amazing aoe snap threat.

This is just a rule of thumb, blood can be used for aoe tanking as well (although holding threat will be significantly harder on multiple targets (3+)) and frost performs just as good on raid bosses, especially on spelldamage heavy fights (if specced into acclimation).

For Frost however you must keep in mind that 2h is better than dualwield tanking. (If however you still want to dualwield tank, stay away from classic tank weapons, they are too fast for Frost tanking, use slow dps 1h weapons with the right runeforge).

Unholy tanking is a gimmick and sadly enough there are no encounters that they could shine in. The existing aoe fights are in general too short (both in duration and mob health pools).


For dps, any spec is viable endgame. (If anything should be said it's that Frost should be the weakest of them all, in contrary to the above post.) All three specs bring something useful raidwise as well.

Frost dualwielding reigned king for a while (most likely because Frost Strike double dipped somewhere it shouldn't, but this got fixed?).

Unholy will stay a strong (even single target) spec even without shadowmourne and with the 'fixed' Wandering Plague.

Blood was on the rise a while back but truth is, it has been viable for quite some time. People complained that two 'main' talents were/are bugged (Blood Worms, which in truth is just a filler talent and Dancing Rune Weapon, this may be a little more truthful, but it got fixed I believe or at the very least less glitchy.


This post is based on my own experiences on the TrueWow sister realm from 6 months to 1 year ago (new developments may have occured in the mean time).

My specs there are unholy dps and frost 2h tank, both specs fully ICC 25n geared with some heroic pieces, BiS trinkets and without Shadowmourne.

Re: Blood vs Frost for tanking

Posted: 02 Dec 2015 11:06
by Deim
MerelyASetback wrote: Blood was on the rise a while back but truth is, it has been viable for quite some time. People complained that two 'main' talents were/are bugged (Blood Worms, which in truth is just a filler talent and Dancing Rune Weapon, this may be a little more truthful, but it got fixed I believe or at the very least less glitchy.
Bloodworms and Dancing Rune Weapon are not main talents for tank spec. Most of blood tank were not even specing into them (I also come from TrueWoW). Bloodworms healing factor was just 2low to bother with it and Dancing Rune Weapon is 100% dps talent in WotLK( additional dmg not parry rating like in Cata) so using it in tank spec is reasonable only if your dk has aggro issues during burst phases.

Also blood performs miraculously on boss fights where you gain single target spell dmg (Spell deflection talent) and since most of them are just stamina stacking and breaking the sockets after capping def rating they perform quite good on fights where "normal" tanks risk getting one-shoted (Like tanking multiple shambling horrors when they all hit enrage :> ) They do heal for ~18k with all buffs and VB poped when using DS and having endgame gear ofc. One thing that is really important is that blood don't have strickt rotations since they rely a lot on poping cooldowns in correct moments of boss fights (f.e.anti-magic shield exactly 1sec before Sindy/Ony breath or any other massive spell damage etc.) They only do have "general rules" of using skills.

Frost single disease 2h tank works fine but is much better as an offtank and has less survivalibility in terms of selfhealing but you cannot say they are "weak" they just work more similar to other tank classes. Dualwielding frost dks had some issues on retail that if they missed few parries in row they were pretty much dead if i remember well... Haven't seen them in raid's on TW so I'm not sure if that's true or not.

Unholy tanks ... ugh no .. just don't... u may pick talents from it's first two branches they are handy like more aoe DnD damage or more dodge /shorter grip cd (Valk'yrs on LK!) but that tree is least suited for tanking (yeah bone shield but that one goes off pretty fast)

Example of 2h Frost sped:
http://www.truewow.org/armory/talents.php?n=Gardi&sp=0
The blood spec I was talking about:
http://www.truewow.org/armory/talents.php?n=Deim&sp=0

Re: Blood vs Frost for tanking

Posted: 28 May 2016 00:55
by NubzX
Doublespoons wrote:Blood was for Tanking and Frost was a dps spec. Frost is actually the highest dps spec between Frost and Unholy. Even with Shadowmourne there is only one or 2 AoE fights (Lady Deathwhisper) that comes to mind that Unholy can even compete. This is with Shadowmourne mind you. Unholy was hit too hard in patches before 3.3.5 for it to be viable. You'll see DK's tanking in Blood and Dual weild dpsing in Frost. I doubt anyone with a brain will go unholy.
Don't pretend to know things that you have no clue about.

Re: Blood vs Frost for tanking

Posted: 28 May 2016 14:34
by Dr. Who
with my DK i have both. Frost and Blood.
i dont play for a long time but from what i remember i used to play Frost on Trash and dungeons and Blood on Bosses and i was allwais OT never MT. DK can be good Tank but i admit he lack on some things cant survive as long as a Warrior or a Paladin.

and i use dualwield with the same weapons for both trees. never had problem in hold agro as frost but as blood is a bit more challenging especially on end game containt.

Re: Blood vs Frost for tanking

Posted: 28 May 2016 15:12
by Fastor
Necro because???

Anyway just to add up, lm happy with Starter Frost tanking lm using since l hold even icc25hc agro and dmg. Here is guide l wrote about it: http://www.truewow.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=14634