Lich King

[Splug]

Notes from last week:

- Arthas has ADHD in P1 due to the swarm of zombies around him.

- The Shambling Horrors in P1 can be death gripped.  Doing so removes the risk of it spawning in an awkward position and running through melee, then punching someone in the face.

- The first time I was asked to tank Arthas and the drudge ghouls, I was a bit concerned about holding single target threat while using a primarily AE rotaOH GOD EVERY SWING IS RUNE STRIKE THIS IS AWESOME.  Ahem.

- The Phase I->II and II->III transitions aren't too bad, but they require a bit of planning to make sure everyone goes to the same half of the room.  Having a couple dps wander around the full radius of the circle is pretty much going to be bad news.  Also, be sure you're not tanking Arthas in the center when he's about to fall through a phase shift (70%, 40%).

- Phase II is by far the most difficult part of the encounter.  Death knights, particularly with the 4x T10 bonus, make extremely strong Arthas tanks due to the specific function of the cooldowns available - the surges of magic damage make AMS a key contributor.  Gravity - bone shield and AMZ may actually shine enough that unholy is a superior tanking option; you only need to soak about 4 hits, so you shouldn't run out of charges on BS.

- Phase III is a joke.  If you get there, it's spread out and collect purples.  Don't waste time on killing the spirits; you'd need about 2.2 million damage in ~15 seconds (25-man) from only ranged if you were going to get rid of them all.

[Salted]

Awesome! Thanks for all the useful information Splug. Sadly none of this applies to me, my Guild is bad and can't kill anything past Saurfang. Does anyone think I should find a new Guild? I spend so much time Min/Maxing my performance and it all ends up being useless when other can't perform.

[Neeber]

You pay to play this game, correct?

You pay with the mind of having fun, correct?

Are you having fun?

[Vexill]

thanks Splug

We finally cleared sindragosa on 10 man on monday so we took a look at him despite none of us having done any research on the fight, didn't get past 90%.

We'll head back on friday night and try finish him off with an extended ID I think

[Gravity]

It would be quite something if Unholy tank ended up having a place in hard-mode Lich King, or maybe even normal mode?

It would also be easy to spec into improved death grip for phase 1, if that helps.

Lastly the 2-piece bonus (DND threat) combined with Unholy +spell damage +coefficient and a D&D glyph would be insanely AOE and single-target threat if the target doesn't move out-of-range, which might help too?

Perhaps a blood spec on all most fights with unholy for Lich King and Valithria?

Catch is, bone shield has 2s internal cooldown, so you get a pathetic 6s uptime in a worst-case string of incoming damage.

[Splug]

It would also be easy to spec into improved death grip for phase 1, if that helps.

The adds I was referring to only spawn once per minute, so that is not necesary.

Valyries in p2 are immune to death grip.

Catch is, bone shield has 2s internal cooldown, so you get a pathetic 6s uptime in a worst-case string of incoming damage.

That's fine, you only need it to last through a five second debuff.

-Splug

[Gravity]

Might be a contender, then.

Question is whether the alternative of spell deflection or acclimation, WotN and howling blast, etc, are worth more overall to the encounter than Unholy's spell-damage-reduction.  (In 25s, I presume you have a DPS Unholy DK for diseases, in 10s however you might not, so the disease debuff could be valuable in its own right).

[Splug]

(In 25s, I presume you have a DPS Unholy DK for diseases)

I'm actually the only death knight on our roster, despite our best efforts to recruit another one... they keep vanishing on us.

-Splug

[Derivel]

Weird how that happens. We started with something like 7 DKs on our raid team, and dwindled to 2 by the time Ulduar was done. Now I'm the only one and we can't even find another that's half decent.

[Gravity]

Actually... I've noticed a similar thing. Most of the "mains" are not DKs, there are LOADS of DKs in PUG raids, but I've noticed less as mains raiding too.

[Kuren]

The forums are full of people claiming we're bad tanks and now we're behind on DPS.  I assume most people dropped their DKs along the way.  I don't mind too much as it wasn't fun when the VoA PUG raids were full of DKs.  It then changed for a while and I was sometimes the only DK.  Lately there will be 1-2 other DKs.

[Kuren]

Spyte, I'm curious if you're using that Unholy tank spec for anything besides the Lich King?  If so how does it work for you both on Lich King and outside that fight?

I saw you mentioned you may go back to 2H Frost so I've been watching your specs as I'm in the same spot but it feels wrong to drop DW Frost.  I'm just tired of the back and forth between DW and 2H.  I'm very tempted to go 2H Frost or Unholy even.  So many reasons to stick with DW Frost and plenty to try a new spec...

[Gravity]

Splug's current Unholy build would do some monster AOE threat, with 4/5 black ice and 3/3 wandering plague. (I'm using an Unholy build atm for 5-mans, it's a great spec.)

[Kuren]

Yes, that's my thought.  My DW Frost is for AoE and heroic tanking plus I picked up IIT for 10 man raids.  Although now that our melee has IIT they may not be happy if I change specs.  :-)

[Splug]

Splug's current Unholy build would do some monster AOE threat, with 4/5 black ice and 3/3 wandering plague. (I'm using an Unholy build atm for 5-mans, it's a great spec.)

Yep - hard mode deathwhisper is all about multi-target pickup.  With no other DK on the roster, spreading ebon plague was a big sell there as well.  (Credit to Gravity for reminding me about that with his earlier post in this thread, actually.)

-Splug