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[3.3] Intro to Death Knight Tanking
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Post by
Nystali
Table of Contents:
Note, Key Terms, What You Will Be Using
Key Talents
Frost Tanking
Unholy Tanking
Blood Tanking
Useful Information
Note from the Author
With their powerful rune weapons allowing them to command the unholy forces of death, to raise a single ghoul or an entire army to do their bidding, to turn the very water they walk upon to ice so they can forge a path across it, and to spread diseases upon their enemies wreaking untold devastation; there isn't much to not like about the Death Knight class. Well, except for the fact that every huntard and his mother decided to roll one.
With so many Death Knights infesting the servers, it can be hard to stand out as a competent one who had taken the time to learn their class from the Deathtards that attempt to faceroll their way through content. On top of that, it can be even harder to dispel the notion from those players who stuck with their Huntard mains that, yes, we can indeed tank without shields and we can be quite good at it. However, each individual tree has its own style. That is why I wrote this guide. It is my hope that, as a new or even old player to the class, you can gain a more solid understanding of our tanking capabilities as well as some recommended starting points for you to design your character around before you step into the fire of tanking an instance.
Tanking can be a tricky job to fill. It can be doubly hard when you have a brand new class to the game that many people misunderstand and yet still give their expert yet shoddy advice about. My Death Knight was my first true tank as I am sure it will be for many of you as well. It was a little daunting to level, learn the basics of the class, and try to run parties through instances at the same time. Ultimately, I found a bit of success doing so and now I tank heroics and raids with my Death Knight when I'm not healing them with my Paladin.
I won't pretend to be an expert in the class and all of its nuances. However, I am knowledgeable and have some solid understandings of the tanking mechanics of the class. My strength is the Frost tree, but I try to read up on Blood and Unholy and have a much better understanding than when I originally wrote this up (at first it didn't even have a Blood section, such was the state of that tree at the time). If you have any questions regarding particular trees or just tanking in general, I and many others will try to help answer them.
While I do work to keep this Intro up to date, I would highly recommend reading through this thread as I have found many of the discussions and even arguments to be quite insightful on the class and how it has changed from patch to patch.
Most importantly: Please don't embarrass yourself and your fellow Death Knights.
Important Terms
Threat
- How much the enemy hates you. As a tank, you want to have more threat than your DPS. The more threat you have, the less likely the mob will turn to attack the healer or any of the DPS.
Mitigation
- Reduces the amount of damage done to you. The more armor you have, the more mitigation you have. There are also abilities that mitigate only physical damage, some only spell damage, and some mitigate all damage. The more mitigation you have, the less damage you are taking per hit.
Avoidance
- Reduces the chance to be hit. Parry and Dodge are two primary avoidance factors that can be altered through gear. Some talents also increase the chance for attacks to miss. The more avoidance you have, the less likely you are to be hit. Overall, the Death Knight is an avoidance tank.
Important to note:
Tanks that stack a lot of avoidance tend to require less frequent healing but take much spikier damage. Tanks that stack a lot of mitigation will be frequently spammed with heals but hardly ever take large killer hits.
Uncrittable
- The most important number with the new level cap is
540 Defense
. This makes it so raid bosses (your level +3) cannot crit you. As a result, all other mobs cannot crit you either.
What You Will Be Using
Key Tanking Abilities:
Frost Presence
- This is your tanking presence. Turn it on and tank away.
Icebound Fortitude
- Great mitigation ability. The damage mitigated is related to your defense skill, one of the reason to stack defense beyond 540. Can use the
glyph
to make always work at full strength.
Anti-Magic Shell
- Great magic mitigation ability.
Dark Command
- Taunt for Death Knights. This will increase your threat to a level that makes it attack you over it previous target. There is a major
glyph
that decreases the chance of a miss.
Death and Decay
- Costs a lot of runes but is a high threat aoe ability. Great for group pulls.
Strangulate
- Force a caster to come melee you.
Mind Freeze
- If you catch in mid-cast, can force the caster to come melee on you.
Pestilence
- Mark as many of your targets as you can with your diseases. Refreshes the diseases on all put your target. Can be
glyphed
to refresh diseases on your main target as well and a
minor
one to increase its radius.
Blood Boil
– Good snap aoe threat tool.
Rune Strike
- This is a high threat runic dump ability that processes whenever you parry or dodge an attack.
Horn of Winter
- Great to reapply between pulls. Added strength means more parry and threat while agility adds a little bit of armor and some crit.
Death Grip
- This is a fun ability that is often misused. It will taunt the target and, the fun part, will yank them too you. Excellent tool for pulling of casters or mobs that are running away (maybe towards another group). However, the problem is that DPS death knights have the ability too and may often misuse it. Try not to use this ability in a group if you are DPSing unless you are specifically asked to.
Stats:
(In order of importance)
Defense -
540
to become uncrittable to raid bosses and below. It generally takes 5 defense rating to equal 1 defense skill (actually 4.9ish but you can't go wrong by overestimating). You can go above this number (especially after 3.2), but at this point Stamina should have greater weight and there is a debate whether it would be better to start stacking avoidance stats instead.
Stamina - The more health you have the more of a cushion your healer will have to heal you which makes for happy healers.
Hit Rating - You want to be able to hit your opponent with your melee attacks and spells. 8% is the melee hit goal with a two-handed weapon which you should strive for as a tank and is relatively easy to reach.
Dodge - Dodge is an avoidance stat. All it does is increase the chance your opponent won't hit you. No reset swing timers or anything. You may find that most tanking equipment adds dodge since it is a universal tanking stat to all classes. Probably the best avoidance stat in that it suffers the least from diminishing returns.
Expertise - The more expertise you have the less likely your attacks will be parried or dodged. 6.5% is what is needed to avoid dodges from raid bosses while what is needed to avoid parries is much higher at 15%. While the 15% mark may be rather difficult to attain, getting near 6.5% to push dodges off the table may not be easy at first, but as you progress through content it becomes easier to reach and your threat generation will be better because of it.
Parry - Parry also adds to your avoidance. The great thing about parry over dodge is that it resets your swing timer so you can get some more normal attacks in. Parry does provide similar rating per percent gain as dodge but it suffers more from diminishing returns so the more you have the less valuable it becomes. It is debatable whether it would be worth it to even gem for parry at all, considering you dodge is provided on all the same gem colors.
Strength - Not only does strength increase your AP, Death Knights also get a bonus to their parry based upon strength. While strength is needed to increase out threat output, almost all of our gear will have a good amount of strength on it already that we don’t necessarily need to gem/enchant for it over the above stats.
Attack Power - Death Knight abilities use an AP coefficient so the more AP you have the more damage you'll be doing which means more threat. However, it is better to stack AP through strength as you get added benefits that you don’t get through gemming for AP alone.
Post by
Nystali
Key Talents
Base Talents:
This talent build should be how all tanking builds start:
5/5/5
Some people propose that a few extra points are required:
5/8/5
It is
imperative
when you come up with a rune rotation that you find a way to always have
Blade Barrier
active. This will probably be difficult to do to start off a fight, but once you get going, it should always be up. One thing I try to do in my rotations to help this out is to not use both my blood runes in a row. I use a blood rune and then one of my abilities that uses a frost and an unholy and then I use the last blood rune. This gives me an extra second to use a blood rune that has just come off its cooldown before the second one does.
Toughness
and
Anticipation
should be a given so no further comment.
Improved Icy Touch
slows the attack speed of what you are tanking, therefore it slows how fast the damage is coming and acts as mitigation.
Tree Specific Talents:
Frost
Lichborne
– While mobs will continue to attack a tank when feared if the tank remains tops in threat, chances are that its hitting you in the back while you’re running around. This talent may be worthwhile to have for just such an occasion and may save you while your healers are still feared. However, it has lost a lot of its tank usefulness when the reduced chance to be hit was removed. Now more of a strictly pvp talent.
Frigid Dreadplate
- Additional avoidance.
Improved Frost Presence
– While this talents allows you to keep the health bonus of Frost Presence while in other presences, its main tanking purpose to the added mitigation it provides.
Unbreakable Armor
– A great emergency mitigation ability that may help in some rough spots.
Guile of Gorefiend
- What is a DPS talent doing here? Oh wait, extra time with Icebound Fortitude. Very useful.
Acclimation
- Great talent for when it procs. Could probably be skipped but may also help out in some magic heavy fights.
Unholy
Morbidity
– Allows the more frequent use of our best threat generator.
Magic Suppression
- Great spell damage mitigation.
Anti-Magic Zone
- Awesome spell damage mitigation ability.
Bone Shield
- Oft misunderstood spell. This is a great mitigation spell while it is up. The great thing about it is the internal cooldown on the charges so that even if you are aoe tanking, you have a guaranteed amount of time with the bone shield active. There is a mandatory
glyph
that adds an extra charge which adds extra uptime for this ability.
Blood
Scent of Blood
– This talent helps to increase your runic power generation while tanking which can be used to increase threat output through
Rune Strike
and other runic power dumps.
Rune Tap
and
Improved Rune Tap
- Blood is all about self healing to make it a little easier on healers for its lack of mitigation and avoidance.
Spell Deflection
- An iffy mitigation talent dependant upon you parry chance.
Veteran of the Third War
- More stamina makes healers happy.
Mark of Blood
- More outside healing to help your healer keep up.
Bloodworms
- Even more outside healing to help out. Generally frowned upon though for tanking as they have a mind of their own on what they’ll pull.
Improved Blood Presence
- Allows you to generate health while in frost presence from damage you deal.
Vampiric Blood
- How much more healing do you need?
Will of the Necroplis
- If all your self healing isn't cutting it, this is a nice talent to add emergency mitigation autmatically.
Heart Strike
- This strike is a cleave to help the blood tree keep some threat on multiple target.
Rune Forging:
Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle
- This rune was given to DKs to turn their DPS two-handers into more of a tanking weapon by adding a flat 25 defense (not defense rating) and 2% stamina.
THE
tanking Rune now as it allows you more freedom when deciding what gems and enchants you will use.
Rune of Swordshattering
- This is a avoidance rune (increases chance you will not be hit by melee attack).
Rune of Swordbreaking
– The one-handed weapon version of Swordshattering for those who are dual wielding.
Rune of Spellshattering
- This is a mitigation rune (reduces amount of damage done by spells).
Rune of Spellbreaking
– This is the one-handed version of Spellshattering for those who are dual wielding.
Rune of the Fallen Crusader
- This would be an interesting choice of rune in that it has a chance to heal you, aiding your healer just that little bit extra, and also increase your strength which results in added parry. However, I can't say this would be recommended over the other rune choices.
Major Glyphs
(Ones useful to all specs)
Glyph of Death and Decay
- This glyph will help produce extra threat if you do rely on
Death and Decay
in your rotations. For the more AoE threat minded tank.
Glyph of Rune Strike
- This glyph can help with threat generation from our highest threat producing runic power ability. While its not a guaranteed boost to threat each strike, there is a greater chance at better threat generation per strike. For the more threat minded tank.
Glyph of Dark Death
- This glyph boosts the damage of one of our runic power dumps and therefore boost threat generation. For the more threat minded tank.
Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell
- This glyph adds two extra seconds to one of our defensive cooldowns. This probably has more PvP application than tanking application but it can still be used. For the more defensive minded tank.
Glyph of Dark Command
- This makes it so your taunt will not miss if you are not quite yet at the melee special attack hit cap of 8%. Once you pass the hit cap, then you can drop this for another glyph. (There is some debate as to whether a taunt can still miss after 8% melee hit. I have yet to have a taunt miss since reaching that point, but at the same time, I do not taunt often.)
Glyph of Disease
- This glyph can help simplify rotations so you can refresh your diseases on all the mobs you are tanking with one ability, allowing for more frequent use of heavier hitting abilities. Frost Knights have a glyph that generally renders this one obsolete, while Blood and Unholy Knights can still benefit greatly.
Glyph of Icebound Fortitude
- Do not confuse this glyph as a tanking glyph. It is for PvP purposes as tanks will already get full effect from
Icebound Fortitude
due to being at or above Defense cap. For the more simple minded tank.
Each tree's section will have a look at the glyphs that benefit that tree and then a recommendation for how to glyph for that tree. Those recommendations are pure opinion and can be altered with any of the above glyphs or glyphs explained for the trees below as personal preference dictates.
Minor Glyphs
(Not a whole lot of choice here)
Glyph of Horn of Winter
- Allows you to refresh this buff whenever its off cooldown. Without the glyph, you can't refresh and get the extra 15 runic power if another Death Knight with glyph provided the buff and it still has over 2 minutes left on it.
Glyph of Raise Dead
- This glyph frees up a bag slot that would normally be used for reagents and can provide some extra DPS during boss burn phases.
Glyph of Pestilence
- This is a useful glyph for helping to tag mobs out of normal range and hopefully bring them in on you.
Glyph of Blood Tap
- If you're rotation uses
Blood Tap
frequently then this is a worthwhile investment.
Glyph of Corpse Explosion
- A useful option for Death Knights going far enough into the Unholy tree.
Glyph of Death's Embrace
- Since
Lichborne
is no longer a tanking talent and for PvP use, this glyph is also for PvP use.
Post by
Nystali
Frost Tanking
Frost Tanking is can be considered the more generalized tanking tree. While Blood might excel more at single target threat and Unholy at aoe threat, Frost is a happy medium that can suitably do both.
A base Frost build for tanking might look something like this:
5/51/5
(The point in
Lichborne
can be switched into
Deathchill
or another talent based upon preference, its only needed to complete the tree)
This leave at least 9 points to customize to your own preferences. The key talents were listed above but for some further explanations:
Runic Power Mastery
- More chance to spam
Frost Strike
while your runes are on cooldown. This would be one of the easier talents to move points out of as your goal is not to store up a whole lot of runic power to begin with.
Black Ice
- More damage from frost and shadow damage abilities means more threat.
Annihilation
- This turns
Obliterate
into the choice multi-rune ability for the frost tree as it will no longer remove your diseases on the target.
Killing Machine
– This ability is there to increase damage done and therefore threat generated. It procs on a fairly regular basis so its well worth the 5 points. However it is not specifically a tanking talent and could be skipped for something else of your own preference. That is not recommended though.
Chill of the Grave
- In conjunction with
Runic Power Mastery
, you will have a harder time running out of things to do while your runes are on cooldown.
Glacier Rot
- Great to have with
Howling Blast
so that it causes more damage and more threat.
Rime
– With
Obliterate
as your main multi-rune ability, this talents provides you the opportunity to get a free
Howling Blast
and refresh its cooldown at the same time so you can use it when it procs.
Blood of the North
– This provides the use of Death Runes which you can then use to form more threat intensive rotations illustrated below.
Frost Strike
- A great ability that ignores all enemy avoidance to act as a runic power dump. There is a
glyph
that reduces its runic power cost so you can get a few more strikes in over the coarse of a fight.
Tundra Stalker
- More damage is more threat and expertise helps prevent you from being parried/dodged.
Howling Blast
- Great aoe ability to help build threat on a group. There is a great
glyph
that makes this spell also spread
Frost Fever
Dual Wielding
The frost tree has two talents that allow it to effectively dual wield. The chief among the two is
Threat of Thassarian
. This talent allows for most of the frost tree's strikes to hit with both wielded weapons. Dual wielding has the advantage of having its threat scale better than using a two-handed weapon on single targets.
A base build for dual wielding might look something like
5/53/5
which leaves you with 8 points to place where you like.
On deciding which weapons to use while dual wielding, you have several options. You can use two tank weapons for added avoidance stats, but the problem is that they are generally faster weapons. By using tanking weapons, you can use
Sword Breaking
and gain even more avoidance while still getting some defense from your weapons. You could also use the new one-handed version of
Stoneskin Gargoyle
to help make it easier to reach uncrittable and gain a little health at the same time.
You could also go with two slow one-handed weapons which are primarily designed for dps. Slower weapons will generally hit for more damage (unless they are a lower item level in which case a faster weapon with a higher item level may have a higher damage range and so you'd use that instead), increasing the amount of threat you put out. Unless you've stacked enough defense on all your other gear, you'll generally need to use the one-handed version of
Stoneskin Gargoyle
to become uncrittable.
The other alternative is to use a combination of tank and slow dps weapons and you could even use two different runes.
So with the basic trees down, you can add (or even remove) talents to your preference. Now you need to work up a proper rotation. The key to any tanking rotation is to increase threat on all non crowd-controlled targets and keeping your
Blade Barrier
active. These are the rotations that I have had success with.
Single Target Pull
(Just a single mob such as a boss, or all but one mob will be CC'd)
IT
->
PS
->
BS
->
OB
->
BS
->
FS
By the end of this rotation, you can hit another
FS
to waste some runic power or repeat it from the beginning. The longer you wait to restart the rotation, the more likely your
Blade Barrier
will drop off.
If you have
Blood of the North
talented, you first rotation produces Death Runes which you can then use to go into a second half of a rotation:
IT
->
PS
->
BS
->
OB
->
BS
->
FS
OB
->
OB
->
OB
->
FS
Group Pull
(All melee mobs or at least with casters you can keep in range)
IT
->
PS
->
Pest
->
HB
->
BB
->
FS
Again, by the end of this rotation, you can hit another
FS
or restart to keep the blood runes on cooldown.
If you have Death Runes available through
Blood of the North
then I alter my rotation a little bit:
IT
->
PS
->
Pest
->
HB
->
BS
->
FS
OB
->
OB
->
HB
->
FS
This allows you to keep strong amount of threat on the main target and spread enough threat around the other mobs in the group at the same time.
If you have
Howling Blast glyphed
, you can go into an even simpler aoe rotation:
HB
->
BB
->
BB
->
OB
->
FS
If you notice, in neither of these pulls did I start of using
Death and Decay
. That is because I have found not to need it unless I have a full group of casters or someone pulls unexpectedly or a patrol stumbles upon the group.
Caster Group Pull
(All or mostly caster that are close enough together to be within
D&D's
range)
D&D
->
IT
->
PS
->
Pest
->
FS
I have found that once this initial rotation had gone through, I generally don't need to lay down another
D&D
and I can begin using the Single or Group Pull rotation, but its a judgment call.
Some Suggested Builds
13/51/7
– High threat build with some loose rotations thanks to
Epidemic
.
14/51/6
– High threat build that also potentially builds a lot of runic power.
12/51/8
– High threat build that could make heavy use of
Death and Decay
.
12/54/5
– Some added mitigation through
Acclimation
.
12/53/5
– Drops
Killing Machine
for the group buff of
Improved Icy Talons
.
10/56/5
– Uses both
Killing Machine
and
Improved Icy Talons
but sacrifices some stable threat generation from
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
.
Frost Tanking Glyphs
Glyph of Howling Blast
- This glyph is almost mandatory for deep frost builds. It helps turns frost tanking into a single disease spec and allows our big AoE spell to also tag all mobs it hits with
Frost Fever
which then allows us to forget that
Pestilence
even exists. Very strongly recommended for all frost tanks.
Glyph of Obliterate
- This glyph allows more threat generation through
Obliterate
which is a heavy part of a deep frost rotation in order to proc more Rimes. For the more threat minded tank.
Glyph of Frost Strike
- This glyph reduces the runic power needed to use our runic power dump. Highly recommended as
Frost Strike
often accounts for a large portion of our damage done and therefore threat generated. For the more threat minded tank.
Glyph of Unbreakable Armor
- This glyph provides some extra mitigation when the cooldown is used. For the more defensive minded tank.
Glyph of Icy Touch
- Since this glyph has changed, it more of a threat/dps glyph. Generally
Frost Fever
does not make up a whole lot of my damage done, so the threat gain would be minimal. However, in an aoe heavy fight, every extra bit of threat on every target helps and this could be paired with the
Howling Blast Glyph
to great effect.
(I personally recommend glyphing for
Howling Blast
,
Obliterate
, and
Frost Strike
for a more threat oriented build while glyphing for
Howling Blast
,
Frost Strike
, and
Unbreakable Armor
for a more defense oriented build)
Post by
Nystali
Unholy Tanking
An Unholy Tank used to be considered the best at aoe tanking, but a lot of changes have occurred since. It is probably still the best at taking magic based damage. While it may not be as strong at single target threat as Blood or Frost, it is still more than capable at performing that role.
A base Unholy build for tanking might look like this:
5/5/56
There are 3 points to juggle around with this particular build, but there is a lot of customization that can be done within the tree as to where you want to get extra damage from. Here are some breakdowns:
Virulence
- Increases chance to hit with spells means increased chance to produce threat.
Vicious Strikes
- Increased chance to crit means increased chance for added threat.
Epidemic
- This talent allows you a little more time to produce your rotation as your diseases will last longer on your targets.
Morbidity
- Unlike the Frost tanking above, Unholy probably leans a little more on
Death and Decay
as an opener and so its nice to have it available as often as possible.
Ravenous Dead
- Some extra strength to help increase threat production.
Outbreak
- Some extra damage for two of your regularly used strikes.
Unholy Blight
- Some dot damage provided by your runic dump of
Death Coil
.
Impurity
- More damage is more threat.
Dirge
- Bonus runic power means you can cast more runic power dumps or more frequent
Unholy Blights
.
Reaping
- Death Runes can lead to more powerful rotations.
Desolation
- When you use
Blood Strike
to change your Blood Runes into Death Runes for more powerful rotations, this will increase your damage (threat) done.
Crypt Fever
- Another disease means more damage from certain attacks and also increased damage from the other two diseases for more threat.
Wandering Plague
- Some extra aoe damage possible from this talent.
Ebon Plaguebringer
- All sorts of extra damage taken means more threat.
Scourge Strike
- A good high damage strike for good threat development based upon all the diseases you have on it.
Rage of Rivendare
- Extra damage done and reduced chance to be parried/dodged.
So once again you now have to find a rotation that maximizes your threat generated for your talent build while keeping Blade Barrier up.
Single Target Rotation
(Assuming that you don't need to start off with a
Death and Decay
)
PS
->
IT
->
BS
->
SS
->
BS
->
DC
Followup Single Rotation
(Thanks to prolonged plagues from
Epidemic
)
SS
->
BS
->
SS
->
BS
->
DC
Note that if you put your free points into
Reaping
you could do three straight
Scourge Strike
instead.
Starter Group Rotation
D&D
->
PS
->
IT
->
Pest
->
DC
Followup Group Rotation
BB
->
SS
->
SS
->
BB
->
DC
Unholy Tanking Glyphs
Glyph of Bone Shield
- This glyph is almost mandatory for deep Unholy Knights as it prolongs the mitigation boost provided by
Bone Shield
through extra charges. Very highly recommended.
Glyph of Scourge Strike
- This glyph can be very useful for Unholy Knights in that they can almost forget about the reapplication of diseases on single targets. This allows them to continue using their stronger
Scourge Strike
as opposed to
weaker
abilities
used to apply diseases.
(I would recommend glyphing for
Bone Shield
,
Death and Decay
, and then
Disease
)
Post by
Nystali
Blood Tanking
A Blood Tank is probably the strongest at single target threat generation, although with 3.1 there is a very strong possibility that its aoe threat is no longer as weak as it once was (I would say that it may even be too strong with changes to
Blood Boil
and the Blood tree's ability to spam it). Another unique facet to Blood Tanking is mitigation through self/improved healing.
A base Blood build might look like this:
48/5/5
This leaves 13 points to customize to your preferences. Here is a breakdown of talents not previously mentioned:
Bladed Armor
- Increased attack power from your armor which increases your threat output.
Scent of Blood
- Allow greater production of runic power which can then be used for more runic dumps. Often two points are all that is needed.
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
- Assuming you are using a two-handed weapon, this help to increase damage done which increases threat output.
Dark Conviction
- Increases your chance to crit which increases your chance to build a large amount of threat.
Death Rune Mastery
- Allows for the creation of Death Runes from your Frost and Unholy Runes which allow for more usage of
Heart Strike
.
Bloody Strikes
- Helps to increase damage which increases threat.
Abomination's Might
- Potential buff for your group and the increased Strength which increases your parry chance.
Improved Death Strike
- With
Death Strike
meant to be Blood's multi-rune strike, this increases its damage done.
Sudden Doom
- Free
Death Coil
against your target when it procs for added threat.
Might of Mograine
- This ability increases the damage of your
Death Strike
to allow for increased extra self-healing. Strongly suggested to also put talents in
Vicious Strikes
(not done in the base build) allowing for even greater crit chance and crit bonus.
Heart Strike
- Strong melee attack to replace
Blood Strike
in your rotations in using up blood runes.
Single Target Rotation
IT
->
PS
->
HS
->
DS
->
HS
DS
->
HS
->
HS
->
HS
->
HS
Group Pull Rotation
D&D
->
IT
->
PS
->
Pest
DS
->
BB
->
DS
->
BB
HS
->
BB
->
HS
->
BB
->
HS
->
BB
If you only have two mobs in a group, you could use the single target rotation since
Heart Strike
is a cleave.
Blood Tanking Glyphs
Glyph of Vampiric Blood
- Increases the duration of
Vampiric Blood
which can be quite a lifesaving cooldown. Fairly mandatory for a Blood Tank.
Glyph of Death Strike
- Increases the damage of
Death Strike
which leads to more threat generated. For the more threat minded tanks.
(I would recommend glyphing for
Death and Decay
,
Vampiric Blood
, and then
Dark Death
or
Death Strike
)
Post by
Nystali
Useful Information
Rune Strike Macro
Some people have found it useful to create macros for all their rune abilities that will cast Rune Strike at the same time. This can work since Rune Strike does not work off the global cooldown. Doing this will free you up from having to pay attention to when Rune Strike does proc and frees up a space on your action bars since you don't need it there.
Icy Touch is the example spell here:
#showtooltip Icy Touch
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Icy Touch
/cast Rune Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()
What does this do?
Keeps the icon for the base spell and its cooldown on the action bar.
Removes the error frame that would display for not having enough runic power to cast Rune Strike.
Casts the base spell.
Casts Rune Strike.
Clears the errors and returns the frame back to normal.
Dual Wielding
When I was first planning out my Death Knight, I knew it would be frost to tank and I knew it would be dual wielding. Unfortunately, there is an interesting
discussion
that has already taken place that lays out some of the cons of dual wielding. As a result of this and the numbers behind it, I've put off on trying DW tanking until I can gear with more expertise and hit which means once I get to a raiding level. But if these numbers don't scare you off, more power to you. I really do like the idea of using two of
these
or
these
.
To over simplify: Without the proper amount of Expertise, having two weapons increases your chance and speed of which you are parried which then increases the speed at which mobs hit you which means more damage which means more frequent healing which means more mana which means oom/angry healer which means you're dead.
Here is an example of what you have to put up with when Dual Wielding:
Its nice you can get 76 defense rating from your two
Red Swords of Courage
(used as best one handed tank weapon before raiding). But compare with my
Titansteel Destroyer
with SSG:
Your two weapons only have 11 more Stamina (Advantage me with the +2% stamina SSG provides)
Your two weapons have 74 less strength (about 4 gems)
Your two weapons have 2 less hit rating (push)
Mostly importantly your two weapons do have +76 defense rating which translate roughly to 15 defense skill which is 10 skill points less than what SSG gets you, which translates to 50 less defense rating (about 3 gems).
Most likely you'd have two Swordbreaker enchants on your swords for 4% extra parry. The defense provided by SSG provides roughly 3% general avoidance so you only have the advantage of 1% extra avoidance (which I can easily make up through gems saved if I wanted to).
In the end, by using 2 weapons, you are having to use
7 more gems
to get the same +def and +str than I would using the Destroyer with SSG. After that, you need even more gems to get near the melee Dual Wielding hit cap.
A lot of this has changed with the new one-handed version of
Stoneskin Gargoyle
so DW Frost tanking has been made even more viable.
However, to counter this theory there is
this
posting on MMO Champion saying that its not as bad as the number might suggest. (Thanks to Wildhorn for posting that link in the forums)
Post by
Cross88
I've been looking for one of these guides. It's nice to know how to tank properly so I don't waste all my runes and have to watch as I lose threat on my targets.
What is your input on duel wielding? Does it have any applications for tanking? Or should we stick to our slow two-handers?
Post by
Cross88
Also...what kind of stats should we look for? Your guide shows a big emphasis on Parry. Is that going to be our main tanking stat to build on (other than generic defense)?
What kind of good tanking 2-handers are there?
Post by
226227
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Post by
Nystali
I just wanted to create a base build that people can start off with and alter from there. I don't find Blood of the North key to being able to tank. Maybe come high levels it will be, but I see it as more frill. I can do a good tanking rotation without any death runes at the moment. If an aspiring tank would find it useful for them, that base frost build has 8 free talent points to place as they wish.
Post by
Nystali
To Cross88,
I've tried adding some info to help answer those types of questions. I was really looking forward to DW tanking, but I've put it off for a bit due to the numbers provided.
As for stats, I think after you hit 540 defense the order would go Stam>Str>Parry/Dodge>Hit>Expertise>AP. I'd love to see some feedback on that.
Post by
112770
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Post by
2033
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Post by
Nystali
-540 defense - more than this is NOT wasted. In avoidance numbers, it gives about 95% of the pure avoidance as does dodge rating. And in addition to that, it gives you a slightly better form of avoidance ( one-third of defense's avoidance is in the form of parry). It also allows more leeway with your gear.
Wasted was probably too harsh a word, but would you advocate continuing to stack Def after you hit 540 over adding +stam/str/dodge/expertise/hit/parry through gems and enchants? I always read it was better to then focus elsewhere which was what I was trying to get across.
Removed that language until I can get a better sense.
Thanks for all the other info I needed.
Post by
Nystali
Thanks for that Unholy tidbit, kalisala. Switched them around. I guess it all depends on how you have to pull. But that does certainly seem to max threat generation within the first cycle.
Post by
146010
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Post by
258751
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123609
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Post by
Nystali
Shirash,
I take your point that there are a lot of talents not needed to tank in my base unholy build, but unfortunately, there are a lot of points you need to put somewhere in order to get higher up the tree. If people can start posting what they see as some base Unholy builds that hits all the required abilities that allows unholy to do its tanking thing, that would be great and I could possibly post more than one base build for people to work with.
As with morbidity, I don't necessarily see it as required for frost tanks. With Howling Blast you get a nice aoe blast to go on top of Pestilence and Blood Boil. Now, if your pull ALWAYS starts off with death and decay, then yes, the points are well spent. But if you only use it in certain situations like I do, that's 3 points that could go elsewhere. I've never had a pull yet where I've wanted to use Death and Decay and it wasn't already off cooldown or just about to.
SmileyTPB,
Yea, fallen crusader is most definitely not recommended (I should probably put that there), but there are some slight tanking boons from it so I decided to include it anyways to promote some creativity.
Tzunamii,
Interesting choice to go up the blood tree there. I see you didn't pick up rage of rivendare or unholy blight... do you find you are still able to hold respectable leads in aggro without both of those? What do you use as your runic power dump? Just Scourge Strike? Also, when you have a group, do you just keep dropping down a death and decay whenever it is up? I'd just be worried about maintaining aggro and a full group with your current setup without Unholy Blight.
Post by
146010
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