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Tanking while leveling
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Post by
Tsaketh
Well, with the Death Knight talent trees being of a very original style, I've been having some problems getting to grips with them. I've been Unholy since I started spending points, and am loving the leveling (also loving my first trip into Northrend).
I've tanked endgame vanilla WoW with a Warrior, but have primarily been a Resto/Elem Shaman through TBC.
What I'm wondering, is, with my gear and spec, am I suitable for tanking instances while leveling?
Also, is running instances whilst leveling worth it in Northrend? In Vanilla WoW it was simply because of how difficult leveling became between 45-60, but I hit 70 in TBC without running any instances, and was able to run Heroics in rep gear and Quest greens to gear myself for Kara. Is the endgame of Wrath similar?
Oh, armory link:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Thorium+Brotherhood&n=Tzaketh
Also, sorry to continue bombarding you all with questions, but I've been thinking of Respeccing to Frost, or some sort of Frost Unholy hybrid.
Any advice on anything is more than wanted, even if you're just telling me my spec is stupid for reasons A, B, and C.
Post by
Amyndar
Death Knights in a full tanking build can still quest relatively easily. I have a 72 frost DK right now and she has had no problems with any quests yet. I even solo most of the group quests. Also, a lot of good tanking items can be found in just the first few instances. Mostly from quests in Utgarde Keep and The Nexus, but you can upgrade your necklace, shoulders, boots, and gloves from just 2 instance runs. For the other slots, I suggest picking up the cobalt set if you're serious about tanking, the defense and stamina on the set are a great starting place for tanking as any plate class.
Long story short, it's feasible as a DK to spec into a tank build, tanking when needed, and you still don't lose much in the way of questing. I'd say yes it is worth it to run a few instances, if only for the experience you'll get along the way. I don't presume it'd be very fun to be 80, and attempting to run a heroic that you've never even ran in normal yet. Plus the drops are just a bonus.
As an unholy spec DK, I've taken to comparing it almost to a "Block rating" style of protection warrior tanking. Where the damage is a lot more steady, even if you don't necessarily mitigate as much as other specs. With your bone shield up, that's a steady stream of mitigation for as long as it lasts. With frost however, it's more your traditional avoidance setup.
The only thing to note for speccing if you're wanting to tank, is make sure you do the 5/5/5 spec to start with, and then go from there.
That's 5 points in Blade Barrier, 5 points in Toughness, and 5 points in Anticipation. It'll even help with your survivability while questing, so it's points well spent imo.
If I went offtrack, I apologize. Just let me know.
Any other questions, or to clarify any that I missed, just ask away :P
Post by
pmpage
I leveled my DK up as a tank, and found that it really did make a mockery of most "group" quests by solo'ing them with ease. Useful talents are the three listed above (core of any tank build IMO), Rune Tap and Unholy's permanent ghoul.
There's not too many +Def items as quest rewards, so primarily I found it easiest to stack Strength and Stamina and Critical (try to avoid Haste, it doesn't help a lot)
Post by
Zxian
If you want the cheapest and probably best intro tanking gear, go get the Cobalt Set from a blacksmith.
Cobalt Legplates
Cobalt Shoulders
Cobalt Helm
Cobalt Gauntlets
Cobalt Chestpiece
Cobalt Bracers
Cobalt Boots
Cobalt Belt
The set alone is a wonderful intro tanking set that's stacked with strength, stam, and defense. I'm using
Featherweight Claymore
as my tanking weapon, with the Rune of Swordshattering.
I've been collecting various pieces of quest gear as I've been leveling to switch out for damage over defense, but in all honesty, the actual damage gains while questing have been fairly minimal.
If you're really crazy/dedicated or just semi-OCD (like me =D), you can get some other items to make your intro tanking life that much easier. I've decked out my set with
Borean Armor Kits
, mostly because my LW friend had them. My main is a BS, so I got an
Eternal Belt Buckle
with a
Solid Chalcedony
. Finally, I had a crapload of jaggal pearls kicking around, so I had my JC friend make me a
Necklace of the Deep
, and got her to cut me two
Regal Shadow Crystal
.
End result - a 71 BE DK with 13.4K health, 16K armor, 19.3% dodge, 17.7% parry, and 466 def.
Armory Link
Post by
Maliander
If you intend to tank with your DK at 80 I definately recommend leveling as a tank as well. I'm doing it myself on my currently lvl 73 DK (
Armory Profile
) and questing speed is completely unaffected: round up as many quest mobs as you can find and AoE them down.
Meanwhile, you get some much needed experience with tanking as a DK in Northrend dungeons. This will benefit you when doing heroics at 80, which are less tolerant to "oops, blood presence" or "what do you mean these guys fear?" moments.
Running instances for gear is not required to be able to level efficiently, so if you just want to get to 80 as fast as possible, skip them. For tanking gear, quests in Utgarde Keep and especially The Nexus give some very solid upgrades to the Cobalt starterset Zxian linked to. You won't find many tanking pieces outside of instances until late in WotLK.
As for spec advice, I'd suggest
this Unholy build
as a solid combination of tanking and leveling talents at lvl 70. Fill out Toughness first. If by then you've ran an instance or 2 you can decide if you first want to invest in defense (Improved Icy Touch) or offense (Bladed Armor).
Post by
DerrHans
for gear i suggest to read the Sticky..
Helps alot on finding def gear as Q-reward through out the game and lvl's.
I started as DPS in instance and tried to get gear. U as DK can also DPS while in tank gear with high str in blood presence. So u would know a bit how the low instances works.
Than start to get some Defence gear and Tank the instance u now know and work on some tactics. It helps to have some friends with u. They have more patience than all players u find through LFG.
When u get to lvl 74 / 75 Do some Violet Hold runs and this will help u concentrate u more on rotations as it's fast and sometime Split up groups u have to taunt / deathgrip for u to aggro..
I've done a lot of VH runs and this experience has helped me a lot on the rest of the instances. And it drops nice Def gear (lvl 75 gear) to. I could even tank on HoS with out problems when lvl 75 (had 534 Defence, @ lvl 76 it drops to 524)
My build @ 76
and
@ lvl 80
Post by
Afoxi
5/5/5 are the important talents to get for tanking. It doesn't matter where you put the other points, since you're tanking while leveling.
It's good to see young DKs aspiring to become tanks.
Post by
Tsaketh
Alright, thanks for all this advice.
I've taken a lot of it to heart, and I did respec Frost. I'm enjoying it very, very much. Also, I don't buy into the whole "Frost is the tanking tree" oversimplification stuff, I just wanted a change of pace.
I've leveled quite a bit since then, and am currently 76.
I've been trying to keep up with my Wyrmrest Accord rep and have been running the two dailies, well, daily.
Picked up the 5/5/5 and have tanked my first few instances. Took your advice and picked up some Cobalt gear, I've since upgraded most of it. Made sure my group knew I hadn't run the encounters before, and encountered the disdain for DKs that seemse so prevalent. But I haven't had a wipe yet, in fact, I've only had one player die on me, and that was an Enhance shammy who seemed to enjoy pulling bosses with Frost Shock.
I'm not sure if I'm actually tanking properly, or maybe I'm just running with bad pugs, but I've been at the top of the DPS meters as well, which of course means that there's no real threat management I'm dealing with because everything is attacking me anyway.
Still not quite sure how the Frost rotation should be maximized, any pointers would be very welcome.
Armory:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thorium+Brotherhood&n=Tzaketh
EDIT: As of posting, the armory link hasn't been updated. I'm currently sitting at 462 def, with 17.7k HP in Frost Presence.
Post by
Kelborn
Well, you're spec isn't what I'd take, but that's the beauty of the class.. it's flexible. Take a look at the armory link in my sig for my DK. I recently respecced from DPS (was tank in OL, but went Blood for early NR) so I don't have that much tank gear.
My guess is that you've just run into some bad PuGs. I know I sure have...
Here's some simple rotations for tanking. If you haven't been using these so far, they make help you out a lot.
Single Target Pulls
: IT > PS > (Deathchill) > Howling Blast > BS > BS > Frost Strikes
This is a basic rotation for single pulls, you're basically generating the bulk of your threat through the HB crit, though if Deathchill is on cd it still works.
Two - Three Mob Pulls
: IT > PS > Pest > (Deathchill) > HB > BB > Frost Strikes
Pretty basic. About the same as above, but adds a bit more AoE. This just about does it most of the time for me. I've been running into a lot of antsy dps lately, especially melee, and the following seems to be a bit better if your group likes to jump right in and pew pew away.
Multi-Mob Pull
: D&D > IT > PS > Pest > Frost Strikes (wait for runes) > HB > BB
This starts you off with a ton of threat, and keeps it going strong. Usually by the end of this I'm at about 50k+ threat. Only way I ever lose threat on this is if we have one insane dps unleashing the fury of hell. Or you stand and auto-attack...
Since you're lvl 76, you should grab
Ivory-Reinforced Chestguard
from the Kalu'ak faction (if you're honored). Only thing superior to this (and small if that) prior to heroics or the Wyrnrest rep piece is
Battlechest of the Twilight Cult
. Lost that to a dps. D:
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