Hello my fellow Death Knights, I hope you are all suffering well. I have a question regarding Stoneskin vs Fallen. I’m currently breaking my way into +9/+10 keys and I am sometimes very tempted to try stone skin for the extra 6% stats. I ran a 9 Mists this week and one pack in the maze with 3 guardians killed me almost instantaneously. I’m more looking for ways to increase my survivability. I know Fallen crusader got a small nerf, but I was curious if anyone ran the numbers and knew the difference in numbers between the two, and if anyone around this key level runs it? Thanks!
I’m doing keys around that level now and still use fallen crusader. I don’t think 5% stats is gonna make much difference for survivability.
My sims still have fallen crusader winning out by a sizable margin as well.
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Idk what is used for PvE but you use both for dual wield
I’d go fallen crusader 100% on 2H
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oh god i wish blood could dual wield. Can we give blood dual wield please?
I couldn’t see why not, but we know blizzard wont
Unless you are dwing or pvping, you should be using only uh crusader. Well I suppose I don’t know much about tanking, but I think they prefer it as well. Probably also in pvp you would want uh crusader. It’s just that good.
Wait is it called fallen crusader now? When did that happen lol. I always thought it was unholy crusader
Screw it. LET"S GIVE EVERY SPEC TO DUAL WIELD.
Remember DW Unholy? The Machine Gun Build? Good times.
Its always been Fallen Crusader.
Go for it, but its going to be bad for both Blood and Unholy.
Which one? The Hybrid build? The bug in Cata that was fixed in like a week? Morbidity which isnt really unholy?
Agreed, I was more or less checking to see if even under extreme circumstances stoneskin would be an acceptable alternative. However +18% strength and a 4% health heal is just way too good.
Oh hell yes sounds amazing, lets give blood dk’s duel wield MACHINE GUNS
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Someone hire this man at blizzard immediately. Dual wield two m60 machine guns and make it the new sanlayne spec.
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The term “Machine Gun” build stemed from DW Unholy procced so many Sudden Dooms that you are spamming Death Coil.
But you imagined a literal machine guns did ya? 
I did. Rambo style 
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I’m prefacing all of this with, this is 100% my personal preference. You will never see anyone in the DK community recommend adding more defensive layers because many of them spend more time simming their tank damage (this is strange to me) and giving new tank players bad advice. The sims will never tell you to run more Vers or prioritize a dodge or absorb trinket for X dungeon that has some very stressful pulls.
Players who come for newbie tips aren’t experienced enough to drop defense to focus on damage and most of them aren’t playing in organized M+ groups with voice comms. When you can call out for externals every big pull, you CAN focus more on damage. This is the primary disconnect between organized vs pug groups.
Yes, Stoneskin will increase your survivability by increasing your health, I get about 400k health using it over FC and my damage is more than enough to hold threat - especially with 30-second Reaper’s Mark and having it up every pull.
My AoE damage is more than adequate for being a tank, but some tanks prioritize damage over survivability which I don’t agree with for the key levels available to us, tank damage isn’t what bricks keys, tank deaths do.
The best advice I can give you is to farm some tank trinkets. The Silken Court trinket gives close to a 5 mil absorb shield and minor passive damage, with the ability to use the full shield on-use. Most of the tank trinkets are mediocre but there are a few that are situationally strong.
Throngus’ Finger and the Stonevault taunt trinket are also decent options. Finger gives you passive Versa & a proc of 11k dodge once per minute. Taunt trinket gives you a 2.2m absorb shield once per minute. Keep in mind, Death Grip counts as a taunt and will proc the buff.
Go through your talents and make sure you have all of the strongest defensive ones that pertain to self-healing and damage absorb. The talent at the bottom that’s a buff after Vampiric Blood expires is very strong, as is the cheat death talent.
At the end of the day, these are all just layers to help mitigate damage and while some amount of layers are required, the most invaluable defense is good play. It’s the difference between taking lethal amounts of damage or getting feared and losing threat. Playing with a solid group who doesn’t pull extra mobs and kicks the priority spells is worth more than any talent or trinket.
So a bug that wasnt intended. This wasnt even a “build” it was taking advantage of a bug where the offhand was proccing sudden doom as well which wasnt intended. This lasted maybe 1 week before it was fixed.
I guess i misread the name in wrath and then never looked at it too closely again lol
I run both lol. Frost pvp
The buff is called Unholy Strength, you probably combined the buff and the runeforge into Unholy Crusader at some point.
Ah yeah true that makes a lot of sense
Was that even a bug? I feel like it was more of a hilarious oversight on Blizzard’s part. They’ve had some fine ones.