Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Frost Tanking Glyphs


I've been experimenting with a few different glyph setups recently to optimize my tanking as a frost death knight.

There are a ton of glyphs out there that could be potentially used with positive results, however I've narrowed down the Major glyph choices to the following three:

1. Glyph of Icy Touch: Your Icy Touch does 10% less damage but generates 10 additional runic power.

This particular glyph is one that I wavered back and forth over for a good while. I was originally using the Death Strike glyph, however noticed that, with the almost constant rune strike procs, I was constantly starved for Runic Power.

The Icy Touch major glyph provides a very noticeable increase in rp generation, with very little damage reduction. Icy Touch still crits for upwards of 2.5k with all of the talents in the frost tree.

2. Glyph of Icebound Fortitude: Your Icebound Fortitude costs no runic power.

This glyph is an absolute no-brainer, and ties in somewhat to the reasoning for Icy Touch. Unbreakable armor is sometimes difficult to work into a rotation because of the rune requirement. Lichborne, on the other hand, is great, as it has absolutely no requirements to activate.

Icebound fortitude requiring no rp opens up more rune strike procs, more rp for horn of winter and mindfreeze, and is just a good glyph to have.

3. Glyph of Unbreakable Armor:
Unbreakable Armor grants an additional 5% parry chance but no longer increases your Strength.

This glyph fine-tunes the effects of Unbreakable Armor by sacrificing the strength bonus for more avoidance in the form of 5% parry. One might say that you still receive parry rating from the strength bonus through forceful deflection, however the amount of parry received is miniscule. You would need to have close to 10,000 strength for the parry rating from forceful deflection to match that granted by this glyph.