Hip

Saturday is a no go for me this week. I can do Friday or sunday

Good luck Cryo, It was nice meeting you and stop back by when you pick up the game again. Hip

Few things about your gearing. Why the DPS meta gem? You’re significantly over the expertise cap. Why use the two trinkets you’re using? Do you always run with Rune of the Fallen Crusader? How are you using your Synapse Springs? What caused you to choose that over the dodge proc? What would inspire a change to the defensive tool? From your UI What tools (i.e. addons) are you using to track your CDs; both availability and uptimes? How are you tracking your Blood Shields; uptime and strength? Talent Choice How are you using conversion/what fights? What advantages do you feel this spell is giving you? 10m vs 25m How do you feel your role as a tank is defined in these two environments? Would your focus shift in moving to a 26m team? Logs Your numbers on Ji-Kun are falling in the mid range of applications we’ve had recently in terms of Blood Shields and Death Strike shielding/healing. Your uptime on Blood Shield looks great, but that can be skewed by DS’ing while not tanking/maintaining the shield while not taking damage. With 35%+ overhealing on both DS and BS that tells me that over a third of your uses weren’t used as effective tanking, not necessarily wasted, just not used to recover or prevent active damage. Your bone shield uptime looks great, a product of good BS uptime and effective maintenance of the spell. Curious about how you’re casting Bone Shield, with 80% uptime and 5 casts, are you “clipping” this spell, casting before your last bone falls off? Rune Tap usage/healing is very low. Only 5 uses out of a possible 24 uses on your Jin-Kun kill. I wouldn’t suggest you would need to use it 24 times, but there should have been more opportunities to get a free 10% HP heal off. On the plus side none 0f your Rune Taps went to overheal. But on a fight that is still taking 9 pull to kill I’d want to see a more active approach to your/team survival. DRW, IBF and Vamp Blood usage all look within the range I’d want to see. What is going on that you’d only use AMS 1 time in 9 pulls? That seems to be a wild under utilization of a powerful tool on a fight with significant nature damage. What concerns me is the difference in CD usage on the farm fights of Jin Kun versus the progression fights for Tortos. Yes the fights/pulls are significantly shorter, but the use of your tools seems to drop off disproportionately. In nearly 5 minute fights I’m only seeing 1 use of Vamp Blood and very few (even zero) uses of Rune Tap. Even over the course of 17 pulls in a raid night I’m only seeing 19 total uses of Rune Tap, 5 uses of Vamp Blood and zero uses of your Engineering Glove Tinker (str or otherwise). To be fair, most fights were less than 3 minutes long, and who knows when wipes would have been called. But I’m still seeing that drop off on those 3-5 minute fights that would still give time to effectively use those shorter CD tools. It makes me nervous that when things get hectic you lose focus/don't maintain your survival. Thanks and let me know your thoughts. Hip

Whats up Badmoo, I will be going through your logs with a fine tooth comb this morning. I was unable to get to them over the weekend. At a glance I like what I'm seeing with your character sheet and application. I'm hopeful that your logs will put a smile on my face as well. I'll get back to you soon. Hip

Whats up Rad, Thanks for the app and the answers you've provided thus far. However, your application cannot progress fully without relevant combat logs. If you can provide a WoL report (or meaningful alternative) we can continue you through the process. If you cannot it will be enjoyable to have some discussion but will not result in a guild invite. thanks Hip

Whats up Kad, Thanks for the app. I have glanced through the logs and sure enough, I'm seeing the same trend. Low use of defensive CDs, lower numbers on DS and Blood Shields than I would want/expect, etc. I haven't given them a thorough beating just yet, but after a few jabs the logs are shaking out the same as other 10m Blood DKs. Question regarding your gearing choice in using DPS gear. Is that the gear you're using in your logs? Also I'm having trouble following the logic in your gearing. You're using DPS gear because it's "better itemized"? In what way do you feel it's better suited for Blood Tanking? Then I see you gemming stam and well over hit cap. thoughts?

Also, it's fun that you linked a screenshot of your UI while you were dead

It's raining Blood DKs. Thanks for the app Badmoo. I don't know whats going on, but my home PC won't allow me to use my "enter" key on this site. Only question I have at this time is are the logs you listed the best representation of your play? I won't review until I get a big thumbs up from you that the logs are the best you've got. Thanks

I do see some improvements here You did almost 5 million more total healing last night as compared to the previous log. Blood Shields were a bit larger as well and Bone Shield uptime was very nice at 69.5%. However looking inside the numbers I'm seeing some trouble. Rune tap usage up to 25 uses from 9, but overhealing was way up. Your Rune Tap overhealing was at 42.6%. I wouldn't expect this many Rune Taps necessarily. Certainly I think there's room for more than 9, but this kind of overhealing looks like mismanagement of the spell. Same with Death Strike, overhealing was up a bit 8% increase to 40% overheals. Again, this could be attributed to DS'ing while not actively tanking but could also be DS'ing on CD rather than to recover from damage. You did almost 20% more healing through DS last night as well. Less concern here, but still something to note. This statement also concerns me. Stamina directly influences only the size of a minimum DS and resulting Blood Shield. You will be rewarded with a 7% Max HP + %mastery Blood Shield for DS'ing after taking zero damage in the previous 3 seconds. Stacking stamina is an ineffective way of generating bigger shield directly. Indirectly stamina will produce a larger shield because it will allow you to take a larger amount of damage before needing to recover that damage with a DS, therefore netting you a larger Blood Shield. Essentially Stamina Stacking is a way to boost Effective Health, or not die from 1-3 big shots from a boss. Mastery stacking will net you larger shields in all cases, and will allow for the greatest potential for effective shielding in the long run. There are few times through the course of a fight where stamina stacking will be necessary. Outside of a few encounters per tier (if not expansion) will the stamina provided on gear be insufficient for providing ample EH to survive in those "big hits" situations. I agree, keep 7.5% for hit and expert, but after that your base gear should offer you as much mastery as possible. Certainly keeping a few pieces of gear, or trinkets that will allow you to change out for more stamina or avoidance is nice, but not your bread and butter. I appreciate that you incorporated the things we talked about in the previous posts and I can see you did them all; DS, Vamp Blood, trinket use, Rune Tap. I'll touch base with Ashin and see what he wants to do from here. thanks for your efforts.

So, I'm not what the issue is, but I'm not able to use my enter key when posting replies, and for anyone familiar with my posting style that's a big issue for me. I'll touch base from a different PC tomorrow but I will say that I'm disappointed with your response. A few posts ago you stated that you wanted to get fresh logs as you were confident this would be indicative of your play and that you would stand behind them. Now I'm reading that you're "playing down" to the level of the guild around you, but actually if you put in your full effort you'd really shine. That playing with less skilled players leads you to not be motivated and therefore give less effort and thus have a performance "less than". If that's the case, why should I put effort into reviewing your logs if you're not willing to put the effort in to playing your best?

One thing off the top. Your history concerns me. I'm seeing a pattern of progressing in raids, gearing up a toon and then selling it off, lot's of extended breaks in recent history, etc. You played early cata, but then took a ~year break? It looks like you've been playing again for only the last 2.5 months or so. It's been said, but I'm echo'ing the idea that there's a lack of consistency/credit score here. Yeah I might just be beating a dead horse, but they can't feel anything so whats the big whoop? Also, I’d be curious to see if you couldn’t drive up your Mastery with some regemming/reforging work. You’ve gemmed parry and stamina, you might be able to change to some expertise and hit gems/hybrids and reforge to more mastery in a few places. Perhaps not but with your HP pool so high I don’t see a need for Stam gems. Anywho your Ji'Kun logs Death Strikes look low to me. Your average heal was ~77.8K, average shield ~177K From your current gearing per your character sheet a minimum heal should be around [815000 (buffed HP) x .07 (minimum DS heal)] = 5705 HP heal and a minimum shield would be [5705 (min heal) x 1.5916 (Blood Shield Mastery)] = 9080 Basically what I'm seeing is that you’re DS'ing when you've averaged taking less than 10% of your HP in damage. Of course this can be skewed by DS'ing while not actively tanking. However this would drive your % uptime on Blood Shield up, but thats still sitting at 48% which is good, but not what I’d expect from someone DS’ing while not taking regular damage. Also I see 83 heart strikes so it seems you weren’t exclusively using DS with your Death Runes. This information tells me that you were mostly using DS while you were tanking, but not as effectively as I would want to see. Your average heal to Blood Shield ratio is skewed by stacking Blood Shields rather than waiting for big damage and recovering/shielding from it. Bone shield uptime looks alright at 5 casts and 49%. There’s probably room for another cast or two and perhaps another 10% or so, but it’s hard to be certain with fight mechanics and timing of the CD so I'll give you full credit on that one. However I can tell that you’re not using your full arsenal of abilities. 9 Rune Taps on a fight where you could have theoretically used it 29 times, and for free. Certainly I wouldn't expect you to actually use it 29 times as that would be impractical with a fight with some significant movement/downtime, but I would want to see that approaching the mid teens to 20 mark. Perhaps more liberal use of Rune Tap (especially with the 2pc) would allow you to camp damage a bit longer to get stronger DS/BS mitigation. 3 casts of Vampiric Blood when you could have used it 10 times. Again I wouldn’t expect 10, but 5+ would be what I’d expect. Only 2 uses each of Dancing Rune Weapon, and each of your trinkets. Again should have been 3-4. How are you monitoring these? Are you using them in some macro set-ups? I see you popped AoD which is nice to see. I see that you are capable of racking CDs better than you are showing as you used your Orc Racial 4 times out of a possible 5 times. I would have wanted to see more effort in your survival tool usage. You did a good job using your movement tools, 5 casts of Death’s Advance. I also see you switched into Unholy Presence 3 times, I assume for the DPS and movement benefits? What concerns me is only 1 shift into Blood Presence. Assuming you started the fight in Blood one could assume that you did some tanking in Unholy Presence? What are your thoughts on that? What tools do you use to ensure you’re in the right Presence whilst tanking? (could help explain the DS heals) Looking at your Jin’rokh logs I see a similar trend with your DS to Blood Shield ratio. It’s a bit improved here on the DS heal side of things at a 93k heal, but that’s still pretty low. Your average shield is lower on this log at 147k which further bolsters my hypothesis that you were doing more stacking of BS rather than effective DS usage. Rune Tap use here is better at 9 over a 5 minute fight. You could have possibly gotten 18 of these off, so I would have liked to have seen a few more, but it’s better than before and again I wouldn't expect a full 18 due to tank swaps, etc. Bone shield looks fine at 5 casts and 50% uptime Only 2 uses of Vampiric Blood and I’m only finding one Trinket use on this fight, not what I'd want to see at all Looks like you maxed out that Orc Racial again at 3 uses of a 3 min CD on a 5:52 fight. Overall I’m not seeing an overwhelming credit score. What are your thoughts? What’s your sales pitch to get a higher spending limit? Or do you prefer the term African-American Express? <3 Hip

Whats up Thaiyen, Thanks for the app Our concerns have nothing to do with avatars; a skilled player who uses the tools at their disposal properly could effectively tank 25 HMs in regular mode gear from the previous Tier. Whereas someone who doesn't fully appreciate what they're in for or hasn't proven an ability to use active mitigation and cooldowns effectively will splatter regardless of gear. That said, get me some logs. Your application cannot progress without them. That said I did notice a few things I've got basic questions about. Why the 4pc bonus? What advantage do you feel this is giving you? How are you managing your Blood Tap talent? Why aren't you using the Legendary Tanking Meta gem? That said, thanks, and get some logs posted Hip

So Saturday then? I will be attempting my first "real" workout since my shoulder injury on Saturday morning, hoping to complete the Crossfit Hero wod Murph. It might take me quite a while, and I might need some recovery time afterwards, so I'm thinking mid-late afternoon. If you're not familiar with Murph it's worth learning about, he was a pretty badass individual http://www.murphmovie.com/

Saturday can work, but I'd need to be later afternoon, 3pm or so. Sunday would be better for me, but Saturday is fine as well.

I think it's safe to say that you're not getting it. It's moved from "misuse of a word" to attempting to clean up your "lil bit of throw up" using a bucket if diarrhea. Not proud of the images I selected for my analogy.

hmm, i would have sworn it affects the estimated shield on Blood Shield Tracker. My mistake. Thanks for pointing that out Sim, I was getting worried, I hadn't made any mistakes yet this month and was getting worried that if I didn't get it out of the way soon it might have been something big. Glad it was this. >.> Hip

What are you using to track the usefulness of Soul Reaper? i.e. health of the mob you’re actively attacking? Something to consider; glyphed VB and procs to increase mastery impact Blood Shield generation. Mastery directly increases the shield whereas increased healing will boost the effect of your DS and thus your shield. DRW with double diseases is great, good to hear you’re on top of that. You can refresh those second diseases with a BB right before DRW expires to maximize dps. Saving DRW for high vengeance/Runic Power to maximize if using as a DPS CD I like what I'm reading here and think an interview would be great. I could do something today before 2 pm, or any weekday after 6pm EST. Let me know what works for you gentlemen

DISCLAIMER: You linked Horridon fight 5, but I decided to check out a few of the longer fights as well to give me a better glimpse at your performance on raids similar to what you’d be facing with our team. Be aggressive, B, E, aggressive (AKA your offensive spell use) As you said your uptime on diseases was low on attempt 5, but I did see better uptimes on other pulls. So it shows your capable of monitoring and maintaining diseases on multiple targets and consistency is pretty crucial due to the debuffs your diseases apply (not to mention “free” DPS). Part of the issue with that fight seemed to be a low use of Blood Boil. I am seeing a bit of a pattern of perhaps missed or miss timed Blood Boils as there are multiple Icy Touch/Plague Strikes in all your fights. Be sure to manage your Blood Boils and Crimson Scourge procs effectively. My only conclusion from the use of IT and PS is that you messed up a BB and neglected to use Outbreak/had it on CD. Soul Reaper usage looks good overall, glad to see you’re using this powerful tool effectively. At times it may be a bit inconsistent on some of the fights, don’t forget about it, but I didn’t see any glaring misuse. Rune strikes seem in line as well. I’m seeing some uses of your Tabbard of the Lightbringer. Do you use this as a disctraction/misdirection tactic on boss fights? Why so Defensive (why this funny sub headings?) Blood Shield uptimes look good across all fights, which I like. I recognize that you eluded to DS’ing even at times when not taking so much damage so as not to “camp” runes and gain some benefit of DPS and Shielding but your average Blood Shield was right around 200K. From your character sheet you would be close to 800,000 (using a nice round number to make the math easier) raid buffed HP in your tank gear. Your Mastery is 222.07% so a minimum DS should give you 15.55449% Max HP shield without any damage being in the “Blood Shield Window” ([7% X 222.07%] X Max HP = Minimum Shield = 124,435.92) So not a big leap over the minimum. This seems a bit low to me, but at a 60% plus uptime on your shield this could be a factor of those minimal DS’ings to not waste runes. My only concern and something I’m not able to determine from logs is how much of that BS uptime is due to casting DS when you’re not actively tanking. If your pally buddy is doing the work and you’re using DS you will drive your average BS shell size down and your uptime up. What are your thoughts on this? Bone Shield uptimes are also very good 50%+, but again this is a bit hard to determine how you arrived at this uptime. Perhaps it was through excellent management of your toolkit, perhaps it was off-tanking with a swirling Bone Shield surrounding you. I like the uptime, but would like to hear your response on how you got there. How are you using Vampiric Blood? You are using it regularly, but perhaps not as consistently as you could/would need to in a 25 HM environment. Talk to me about your thoughts on using it glyphed/unglyphed, in conjunction with other procs/spells etc. You’ve got your 2pc so you could be Rune Tapping 3 times a minute for free. You use of Rune tap was low for those circumstances, but perhaps in line with the damage intake you’re facing. I would want to see this used very frequently. How are you tracking the availability/usefulness of this spell? DRW use looks good to me, it seems you’re weaving this in regularly across all fights. How are you deciding when to use this spell? What spells do use when you have DRW up and running? Army of the Dead and Death Pact use also looks good to me. I see these are more “OH SHIT” buttons and it seems you are being prudent with their use, but not leaving them totally unused, which is good. Trinket use seems low and inconsistent. I would want to see trinkets used much like VB and Rune Tap. If they are available use them and weave them together in a pattern that aligns with their uptimes and CDs or in ways to maximize their benefit. Perhaps I overlooked it, but I didn’t see any uses of your Empower Rune Weapon, why not? What is your philosophy on using this spell? Post Script Overall, not bad. I can see that you are using the bulk of the tools at your disposal in ways that show success. I do think you could be doing a few things better (VB, RT, Disease/Outbreak) but no glaring deficiencies. I would like to hear your thoughts/personal conclusions on why you’re doing what you’re doing. I had a sense from some of your earlier posts that you were spouting from forums/posts of the big names in WoW tanking. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, but I would rather have a tank on our raid team that has taken information from the pros drawn their own conclusions/methods as well. Ultimately my biggest concern is what seems to be to be a widening gap in 10s vs. 25s raiding as the Xpac progresses. The damage from your current experience to what you’d be stepping in to is significant. Help put these fears to bed with some well thought responses to what I’ve written above. Thanks again and I look forward to hearing back from you. Hip

What up Sime, Thanks for the app and stopping by the forums. We've got some competition brewing here for our Blood DK tanking spot, what would make you stand out as a tank? I'm seeing very little in the way of HM experience and also only 10 mans, do I have that right? Overall your experience level seems fairly low, how would you make up that gap to be an effective tank for SoH? I appreciate you are watching streams but I'm not sure that vicarious living would do the trick? Lastly I'm going to test the waters before sifting through your logs. I want to be sure that you're ready to stand behind what you've linked. are the logs I would look at the very best you have to offer? If so, let me know the best days/fights to look at to see your A game. If not go get some better logs and come back later. thanks Hip

Thankfully I have learned from previous experience and I didn't start splashing around in the logs just yet. Cryo to be honest with you there's no value in going through your logs if you're saying up front it's not indicative of your best play. Get some logs with you using your CDs and DS'ing and maximizing your survival as best you can. Even if it's overkill for your 10s team it will give me a clearer picture than what you've provided thus far. Trinkets and weapons will probably serve as the most practical means of gaining sufficient EH. It would be a scarce few fights that you'd need to start stam stacking gems, provided you are using your tools (DS and defensive CDs) properly. If you're not already doing it, become a pack-rat of weapons, trinkets and gear. FInd a few pieces that don't play into your Hit/Expert caps and have alternates for those slots gemmed/enchanted differently for differnet situations (more stam, haste proc, etc.). So the HM trash got ya, eh? Dying on trash is no biggie, it happens to any of we over zealous tanks wandering off to grab more mobs. In all such cases it is the healers fault. What is more concerning is, as you've stated, you haven't tanked 25 HM as current content or under the current tanking models. Get me some good logs and the hardcore nerding will commence

You rang? Whats up Cryo, thank for the app, it's a solid one. I will delv in to your logs post haste, but i have a few things off the top How so? Please elaborate on some of the more crucial switches in your opinion. What advantages do you feel a DK has compared to other tanking classes? Where are the holes in the DK tanking toolkit? What class do you prefer to partner with whilst tanking? If you made the switch from Alliance what race would you pick for your (improved) DK? <3 Hip

welcome back Babs, glad to see you over here at SoH good luck with your trial.

Whats up Rad, thanks for the prompt reply. I like that you've got a methodology and that you expirament. I also like the conclusion that you've come to and that you've pulled back some of your stam stacking for additional mastery/avoidance gemming through hybrids. This should be a strategy that will serve you better. As per your comparison with the other DK, I would argue it's in how you're using your DeathStrike in comparion to the other DK rather than how you're gemmed that is making the difference in your Blood Shields. It is through appropriate timing and the size of your HP that allows for the Blood Shields you're producing, which could still be done with a smaller HP pool it would just feel more "roller coaster". The benefit of the roller coaster however would come as the additional mastery would net larger Shields and smoothing things out after the first few spikes. Essentially what you've chosen to do is smooth things out up front by stacking stamina and providing yourself and your healers a larger net to work with at the beginning of a tanking rotation. Then sustaining a higher potential for damage taken as the fight rolls on by having lower potential for your Blood Shields. Essentially this same scenario can be created by rolling your CDs more frequently. Popping a CD early gives you that smooth transition at the start of a pull while you work to stack your active mitigation. Yes, you now have your CD burnt, but it would allow you to take a more aggressive mastery stacking approach, increasing your Blood Shields throughout the fight and therefore lowering your overall damage taken. Essentially Defensive CDs should firstly be reserved for known "Threat Level Midnight" moments (henceforth known as "OH SHIT" moments). If you know said OH SHIT moment is coming 4 mintues in to a pull, pop a big CD early to establish stability and then roll those blood shields. It's no different than offensive CDs. If a known mechanic exists where you want to get through a phase in a fight as fast as possible and you need to have powerful CDS up for that, then save them, otherwise why wait until the last 4% of a fight to "make sure" the monster dies? A raid has already failed if it's relying on the tank to keep themself alive for the duration of a "big CD" I would encourage you to continue to expirament with your Stam and Mastery levels for various encounters. I think you make fine points regarding kiting and having extra trinkets and gear on hand to deal with certain scenarios is always the best choice for a tank. Keep those bags full good sir. I figured you weren't doing much DS'ing while not actively tanking, the size of your shields and # of DS's seemed a bit off relative to your uptime, and your approach explains it. I would encourage you to expirament with this as well, but I see this as a much smaller issue. The DPS you gain through HS rather than DS is making little impact on your raids, as I don't see you hitting many enrage timers in the logs. Feel free to respond if you so desire. Overall I like what I see. I like a tank who has a philosophy, and is willing to challenge it. I also get a good vibe and a sense that you can play this game pretty well. I'll give the logs another go over, but so far so good. thanks,

Whats up Rad, Welcome to the boards and sorry for the delay in my response. I like the thoroughness you display in your app, I like that you’ve reviewed other applications and have an idea of what to expect/anticipated questions. Well done. Off the top, why so much stam? Stamina gemming and 2 stamina trinkets, etc. I see that you recently switched out some gems to get more mastery rather than pure stamina, why did you make that switch? What are your thoughts on the Blood 4pc bonus for this tier and do you plan to pursue it? Talk to me about your Glyph and talent choices. Is your current spec what you normally roll with? Do you make frequent glyph and talent switches? What are some swaps you normally make? Your Blood and Bone Shield usages look ok. Average Blood Shield sizes look ok, but uptimes are a bit all over the place. Do you typically work to maintain/build your Blood Shield when not actively tanking? What are your thoughts on this practice? How could you improve your overall uptime on some fights? CD usage is highly varied as well. How are you using your Vampiric Blood on a fight? Same for IBF. What are you using to track the availability of your free 20 sec CD Rune Tap? I’m seeing a gap on CD usage for fights that probably rank as “easier” vs. more challenging for your current guild. What could you do to prove you could be more consistent? Offensive spell usage seems in-line; appropriate Soul Reapers, BBs/DnDs, etc. How are you using your Raise Dead spell? What philosophy do you keep in regards to using Death Pact? Thanks, Hip

Nice app, welcome to the boards good luck