Kâdâj - 530 Blood Death Knight

[keytachi626]

Hi there!

About me:

My name is Brandon, I am 20 years old about to be 21 by next week. I've been playing game since like 6 years old starting out with the super nintendo system. I've been raiding back in Burning Crusade as a Protection Pally. The raid schedule fits perfectly for me as it was my current guild time.

When I am not playing wow, I am usually playing other games as of current I am playing Skyward Sword, Borderland 2,

Why I am applying:

My current guild which is a 10 man, decided to call it as a raId group due to people felt the lack of progression with the group as a whole. The guild I was in was 10/13 Heroic which started falling apart on Dark Animus as people was against the leader call to not stay on it and push for Twins.

I am currently looking for a guild, it can be a 25 or 10 man guild. I would prefer to have 25 since back in wotlk/cata I raided as 25 man and it was a lot of fun compare to the 10 man that was available to us. I don't know how this guild environment is but I know I can adapt to it quickly. I would also prefer a guild that was the same progression as my old one since I prefer not to redo the other progressions. I don't really want a 12/13 or 13/13 guild since it defeats the purpose of progressing to the end game as it will feel like I just got carried and couldn't experience the epicness of a fight.

Raiding Experience/Previous Guild (Why I left them):

BC: 12/12 Kara

2/2 Gruul Lair

1/1 Mag

3/4 TK

2/6 SSC

(Blood Crusade) - Everyone basically quit the guild since the guild leader decided to quit without telling anyone.

Wotlk 15/15 Naxx

1/1 3D OS

1/1 EoE

(Checkmate) - Leader also quit for a job and the rest of the member decided to reform as Aftermath.

12/14 HM Uld

4/5 HM ToGC

(Aftermath) - Burnt out from raiding 5 days a week with 4 hours a day.

11/12 HM ICC

(Checkmate) - End of the expansion.

Cata: 2/6 HM BWD

1/4 HM BoT

2/2 TotFW

(Checkmate) - People left for SWTOR.

8/8 HM DS

(Kraklenheit Industries) - Pugging just getting back to the game.

MoP: 6/6 HM MSV

5/6 HM HoF

1/4 HM ToES

10/13HM ToT

(DSLB) - People didn't feel like raiding anymore as there was a lot of people quitting the game.

Computer Spec/Internet Speed:

Processor: Intel I5 2500k @ 4.2 Ghz

Ram: G.Skill 1600mhz 8gb

Graphic Card: GTX 680 2gb

SSD: Samsung 830 128gb

Monitor: Shimian 27 inch 1440p

My internet speed is usually 30 Mb/s download and 4Mb/s upload. I have uploaded a test to Chicago server.

Why pick me?

I am a competitive player that thrives to be good at his class. I push myself to get better. I might not be the perfect player but I tend to not fail at most of the mechanics on fights that are progression. When I do horrible one night, I usually tend to find what I can do better and prepare myself to do better next raid. I don't really like to use excuses on why I failed on single nights.

How Do I theorycraft

The way I theorycraft is look up other dk's to see how they are running their enchant/gem. I would sometimes copy them and run stuff for fun to test it out and if I like it then I'll stick to it for a raid night, and if it goes well then I'll keep it for a while, otherwise I would just test out a new gems/enchant. I usually get my source from MMO-Champion.com and elitistjerks.com

Log/Armory/Reason for gearing

http://worldoflogs.c...qa99j3m50a53un/ (My last log as I've been tanking on my pally on farm contents for the last 2-3 weeks).

http://us.battle.net.../Kâdâj/advanced

As of currently I am using dps gear in my tanking set since it's better itemize than most of the tank gears out there plus they are heroic piece which gives me more stamina than a normal 522. Currently I am in a stamina build for Dark Animus as we were two tanking and two healing the fight. While that said I am mostly going to go back into the full mastery build since it's more survivablitiy as when I was full mastery with trinket, I was at 240% unbuff which to me in 10 man felt over kill as there wasn't much damage going out.

Glyph/Spec

My default glyph is normally Anti-magic Shell, Pestilence, and Vamparic Blood.

Depending on the fight I would either switch them out.

Anti-magic Shell is a nice glyph as for fights with a lot of magic in an instant instead of over time which can prevent a lot incoming damage to a tank and also prevent certain debuff as in Megaera, Twins, and Dark Animus (Doesn't increment the debuff on explosive slam).

Pestilence is a nice glyph I like to use because when there are adds that are decently far from the boss, I can still cleave them with the blood boil as the disease spread out there.

Vamparic Blood is my last choice as I find it a lot better to have a 15% healing increase then having more health. The health increase can also determine if you get gib or not to me but I usually start spamming the crap out of Death Strike at that point.

Icebound fortitude, wouldn't be the most use glyph as it's not as good as the others. It has certain uses imo as a fight like Dark Animus to me having a 1.5 minute CD on shield wall would let me have more chances to drop the explosive slam debuff. I've also used it on my first megaera kill as I would use it mostly on the green head's breath with another cool down ready for after the breath.

Rolling Blood is my first choice as it's a free pestilence with blood boil for cleaving which is really a no brainer.

Purgatory as it is basically a last stand which can save me before I die to a boss.

Death Advance as a Tier 3 since it is a good idea to have a passive speed increase and a speed boost.

Death Pact as Tier 4 as the other two aren't as good since Death Pact can basically become a Lay on Hands every two minute with Vamparic Blood.

Runic Corruption as my Tier 5 as I feel like Blood tap would be better but I would rather have all my runes regenerate quicker instead of just getting one rune regenerate instantly.

Last tier depends on the fight, as if a fight needs everything closer together then Gorefiend's Grasp, but if a fight needs an add cc while I am tanking it, I use remorseless winter.

UI

Horde Symbol = Bone Shield

Meteor = AMS

Double Sword = Dancing Rune Weapon

Red = Vamparic Blood

Blue = Icebound Fortitude

If you have any question you want to ask me. Go ahead and ask me as I'll try to get back soon to you guys. Thanks for reading.

[Ashin]

Hey Brandon,

I was hoping to see your app today - glad you could make it.

You definitely come to us with a solid raiding resume. Could you clarify whether you've been tanking all that time? When was the last time you tanked a 25 man?

How would you describe your personality?

How would you contrast the pro's and con's of blood dk and prot paladin at current item levels with the 5.3 changes?

[keytachi626]

The last time I tanked in a 25 was during t11 which as my main spec through out wrath was mostly ret paladin. I can adapt quick to a 25 man group easily.

I would describe my personality as a friendly type of person. I don't usually rage unless I am playing a fps game and I don't really like to talk crap at people which was basically my last guild as we were racing for server first, they kept bashing every other guild. I just ignored them and just kept raiding. So I guess you can say I am loyal to guilds even when they are falling apart.

The pros about being a blood dk to me is that they can mostly self heal themselves, do a lot of damage during the beginning of pulls, capable of having more than one taunt, army of the dead to tank the adds, and I think dk have one of the best magic reduction compare to brew master monk and warriors.

The cons I see them comparing to a paladin is that a lot of these fights are basically physical damage fight and to me paladins have the best mitigation for physical damage. Paladins scale way better than a dk with vengeance which increase the raid healing, paladins have more raid cooldown than a do since do are the selfish tank.

5.3 there wasn't much changed to dk but for paladin they did get nerf a bit but they are still doing better than dk imo since of their raid utility. And they still haven't remove the bop, divine shield remove debuffs .

The do are suppose to be dk my phone keeps auto correcting.

[Ashin]

I figured you were posting from a phone.

The reason we're always concerned about 10m v. 25m tanks is because the damage you take is vastly greater in 25m. 10m tanks tend to develop lazy habits or overly aggressive / dps oriented strategies compared to their 25m counterparts, in our experience. For example, when Hip has time he will look through your logs and is probably going to see (I hope not tho! Maybe you will surprise us!) that you're not taking full advantage of your damage mitigation tools. Then you'll probably tell us that's because you don't take that much damage in the first place, etc. Not to stereotype but that's how all our conversations with 10m tanks seem to go. And at that point we're left wondering whether you will be able to adapt or not.

Our prot warrior Esta joined us from a 10m background. I'm happy to say she was able to step up, but perhaps when she's on the site she can chime in here and elaborate on why we always ask this question.

Let me know what you think!

(Also I like what you said about being focused on your own team's success - that is something I have to remind my raiders of from time to time. I also dislike bashing other teams.)

[Estarriol]

The reason we're always concerned about 10m v. 25m tanks is because the damage you take is vastly greater in 25m. 10m tanks tend to develop lazy habits or overly aggressive / dps oriented strategies compared to their 25m counterparts, in our experience. For example, when Hip has time he will look through your logs and is probably going to see (I hope not tho! Maybe you will surprise us!) that you're not taking full advantage of your damage mitigation tools. Then you'll probably tell us that's because you don't take that much damage in the first place, etc. Not to stereotype but that's how all our conversations with 10m tanks seem to go. And at that point we're left wondering whether you will be able to adapt or not.

Our prot warrior Esta joined us from a 10m background. I'm happy to say she was able to step up, but perhaps when she's on the site she can chime in here and elaborate on why we always ask this question.

I remember my habits as a 10m tank and they make me cringe. Using large amounts of rage for pure damage output instead of mitigation was perfectly viable, especially for farm content, and cooldowns were things to be used only for periods of high damage. During my interview, Ashin and Hip put a substantial amount of effort attempting to describe to me that the difference of damage intake isn't just more, it's punishing and nearly overwhelming at almost all times. It was said to me at one point that one of the largest difference between 10m and 25m is that for 10m, you use your CDs when your life is in immediate danger and that for 25m, your life is in immediate danger whenever you do not have a CD up. Honestly, it sounded a bit silly to me when I first heard it, but through my experience this tier I've seen that it is absolutely the truth. The largest challenge of adapting to this mindset is finding how to keep yourself covered while also having enough cooldowns to deal with the highly damaging mechanics of the fight. If you can't adapt to this method of using cooldowns you will get destroyed, so it's one of the most important questions for a 10m tank to answer.

[keytachi626]

Yeah I have mostly read that most tank stack stamina in a 25 man heroic progression build exception for paladin as they benefits more with haste.

Also I have found as more gear we got in 10 man, the less damage we would take from adds like horridons which as time goes by I tendto not worry aabout mitigation on the adds when I tank them. The fights I see that would compare to 25 man raid from 10 is mega era and durumu as they are all about the tank damage which I don't think I did badly on. But when tank on my paladin it kinda felt a lot better on mega era since the self healing and the chance of having to block an attack and then we normally one shot it every week with my paladin compare to my dk.

My guild made me switch to my paladin since we want to cheese fight and one tank it which I can see what you're saying about 10 man habit focus more on the DPS than a 25.

[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?

[keytachi626]

When I say its better itemzie I mean like there is mastery on the gear than you wouldnt find on any other tanking gear as they have dodge/parry. I also have been really in unlucky with gear to also drop to me as in a 10 man you only get two loots out the giant loot table. Which is why I use some DPS gear. Usually in progression fights I would either use double mastery or double stamina or mastery and stamina trinket. But as for farm content I would just use double DPS trinket just for the lawls.most of the logs, I was demoted fromain tank to off tank since our brew master tank out gear me as I was sitting at 523 for a while and he just shot up to 535 Ilevel. Also I wanted to get the two set (pants has mastery on it and other choice would be from horridon and no gloves has mastery so it might be better off getting a 2 set) for DPS as its really useful as you can do it and its a slight DPS increase as which in case the 10 man habit of pushing for DPS. I haven't been playing hardcore much on my dk and I was perfect hit exp cap until I got the boots from twins.

[Ashin]

I think what is going to come down to is can you show us specific logs that will make us feel comfortable that you can play your blood dk correctly?

[keytachi626]

I'll try and get some logs next week as my guild wants to do one last raid before we depart from one another.