I am reading up guides on dungeons and there are notes about important heavy-hitting boss abilities, and that tanks should use their “active mitigation” during this time. For like a warrior, I imagine you’d be using shield block during this time, but what do DK tanks do instead? The defensive abilities like icebound fourtitude or dancing rune weapon are on CD, so I don’t think those count for “active mitigation” that you use fairly often.
Bone shield
Boneshield stacks are step one; easy answer is to keep boneshield stacks at 7 and have RP ready for deathstrike as soon as those harder hitting abilities go off.
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I don’t think there are active mitigation debuffs anymore but if you don’t suck you will have it up regardless of what it is for each class.
Death Strike will apply a ‘recently death striked’ buff to you that will mitigate some tankbusters. Some abilities are tankbuster effects, some are just big damage. What you use kind of depends on what you’re getting hit by.
Bone Shield blocks a lot too.
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As above, there are the occasional boss mechanics that will hit harder without designated mitigation.
From my understanding, it is counted as a few seconds after Death Strike. While Bone Shield should absolutely be maintained, and I could be wrong, but I think it was also included in the list as well.
Either way, someone will likely correct me in the mechanic required to avoid that specific AM check to tank buster mechanics.
When it comes to DK tanking, your “active mitigation” is mostly just healing yourself back up after a spike of damage with Death Strike. Unlike most tanks, Death Knights are very spiky, and don’t have many defensives, none of which are on low cooldowns.
But because Death Strike heals DKs for a portion of damage taken within the last few seconds rather than a flat amount, we can get away with taking more damage due to the lack of frequent defensives.
Additionally, we have our Boneshield stacks that we have to maintain, granting us armor and haste per stack. This is different from things like ironfur or demon spikes because it is something we can basically say is added to our base armor instead of being a defensive boost in armor since it’s uptime should be 100%.
Sometimes, AMS can completely block out certain abilities and their effects, but unlike a rogues cloak, it has to be used preemptively instead of reactively. AMS in many cases can actually act as a second Icebound Fortitude, allowing the Death Knight to ignore stuns and disorients. This can be seen commonly in Island Expeditions where many such effects are triggered alongside magic damage like nature and fire.
Like others have said, bone shield (additional armor) + the absorb shield you get from death strikes (modified by mastery) will get you through the little damage ticks while tanking mobs. In addition to the baseline defensive cd’s, you can also spec into rune tap if you need a little something extra. It’s a great preemptive for reducing foreseeable heavy hits, has 2 charges and relatively small cooldown. Will of the necropolis is good too if you still haven’t learned when the big damage will come.
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Does anyone know if Rune Strike counts as AM for boss mechanics?
During WoD, Rune Tap was our foremost active defensive cooldown. However this type of tanking design was removed in legion. Personally I miss it, felt great to be active with your defensive ability, planning, and added fear/excitement for the tanking role. Guess I like punishment…
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I know everyone on this forum hates Rune Tap, but I found that 90% of the time for me WotN gets zero uptime, so Rune Tap is still useful here.
Looking at other guides, it seems that the “recently used deathstrike” is the only active mitigation mentioned for bosses that require it.
If RT could also satisfy the AM mechanics that would be another reason to choose it.
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you Guys talking about this and I’m wondering if you remember mannoroth or the 2nd boss in blackrook hold. I don’t think the game has mechanics like that anymore. If it does then I donno because I tank a lot and I don’t know of any abilities this patch at least that require am to be up to block debuffs. If you’re just talking about preemptively death stroking for the absorb it’s much more efficient to wait till you get hit unless you’re capped on rp anyways. As long as you won’t be 1 shot. I’d rather drop to 15% health and death strike that having to death strike 2x in a row
There are specific mitigation checks that punish the player for not reacting in time to certain boss abilities.
Ya but you should always have your mitigation up when you’re getting hit. What I’m talking about is, the old boss abilities that would apply a dot or debuffs if you didn’t have it up. Obviously you get hit harder if you don’t have it up.
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I like using rune tap still. it’s a good on demand mitigation when big damage is coming in the next couple of seconds
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The “active mitigation” that’s required to be active to not be punished by extra effects from certain abilities is the “Recently Death Struck” buff you get after Death Strike. It lasts for a few seconds, and you will pass the check if you get hit while it’s up.
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Basically provided you maintain Bone shield stacks and don’t waste your Death Strikes you just have to have enough HP to survive the big hits and then you can heal back to full.
Obviously, there is a bit more to it than that but its a very unique play-style that puts much of the control in your hands rather than the healers. Healers won’t keep you alive if you are constantly missing the Death Strike windows.
If you take a Prot Warrior. Their active mitigation abilities are very powerful ‘but’ once they have taken the damage they need a healer to top them back up.
Prot paladin feels like a bit of a hybrid between a Blood DK and Prot Warrior. You absolutely must time SOTR correctly but you do have a number of ‘oh crap’ buttons and decent healing.
Just a quick note, marrowrend also provided the active mitigation buff in legion at least.
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As per the design from Legion, which has followed through BFA and seemingly SL:
The term “Active Mitigation” refers to a single, specific ability that a Tank must use as a “counter” to specific boss abilities.
These boss abilities are designated as “Mitigation Checks”. If you fail to use Active Mitigation against a Mitigation Check, you receive an additional negative side effect, e.g:
The second Boss in Black Rook Hold has “Vengeful Shear”; if she lands it on you and you don’t actively mitigate it, you get a stacking debuff that makes you take extra damage.
The last Boss in Neltharion’s Lair has “Molten Crash”; if you fail to actively mitigate it, you fly far, far away when he hits you.
God King Skovald in the Halls of Valor has “Savage Blade”; If you fail to actively mitigate it, you take a bleed over time.
The first Boss in Vault of the Wardens has “Dark Strikes”; if you fail to actively mitigate it, the boss gets a damage absorb shield.
With this, do not confuse mitigation with a mitigation check.
As above, an encounter will call for an active mitigation check, which will be utilised by the player after applying Marrowrend and Death Strike (some sources are including our mastery (Blood Shield)), and will persist for 3 seconds.
I am unaware if the talent; Rune Tap is considered in the mitigation check.
As per the original question for the thread in what I assume is referring to general mitigation; maintenance of your Bone Shield through Marrowrend, Self Healing (also to a much lesser degree Blood Shield) with Death Strike, and Rune Tap if talented.
Here is a link to help expand on what is mentioned above:
https://hypedragon.net/active-mitigation-in-world-of-warcraft-legion/
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Have 1 million health and nothing hits hard in a dungeon!