How to Play a DK (Tanking)

[Jakewoods]

How to Play a DK tank as Blood
Warning: I am assuming you have knowledge of the basic effect and cause of the Death Knight abilities.
Table on Contents
..............1. Abilities
..............2. Specs
..................2.1 Blood
..................2.2 Glyphs
..............3. Rotation
..................3.1 Self Healing
..................3.2 Threat
..................3.3 Damage
..............4. Stat Priority
..................4.1 Mitigation
..................4.2 Base Stats
.......................4.2.1 STAMINA!!!!!!
.......................4.2.2 The rest
...............5. Utilities
...............6. Healing
.......................6.1 Timing your heals
.......................6.2 Maximizing your heals
................7. Putting it all together
................8. Comparing (Pros and Cons)
................8. Gearing up a new DK
1. Abilities
[Icy Touch] This is really nice tanking ability, causes ridiculous threat while reducing your enemies attack speed.
Plague Strike You only use this to reach to 2 diseases (3 in some cases)
Rune Strike This ability is your main Runic Power consumer, it causes high damage while also causing high threat (Same as Icy Touch) [Can reach 10k crits]
Death Coil ONLY use this when above 60 RP, this costs 40 RP and does decent damage, This can be used to heal someone using Lichborne
Lichborne Turns you into a undead type, allows you to become more vulnerable to paladin attacks and subjected to undead type CC's. The good side is it removes Fear Charm and Sleep effects. Not to good for PvE.
Death Strike IT IS THE SHIT... It heals you for 5% of your health per disease so, 7k non crit heals are VERY nice.
Rune Tap Heals you for double (Improved) the amount as Death Strike - 14k non crit every 30 seconds is very nice.
Heart Strike Decent threat as long as some nice damage. This is also a cleave to 2 targets making it easier to tank 2 bosses at a time. (Blood Council 2 Tank) [Blood boil is the same but AoE]
Pestilence DO NOT MAJOR GLYPH THIS, the change to Icy Touch makes it worth the threat. You may use the minor glyph though - It is handy for trash and stuff.
Blood Tap This is very nice with the T10 4pc 12% damage reduction on a 1m CD is nice.
Strangulate The king of Silences for PvE they cant cast for 3 seconds but in PvP it is 5 seconds, which is slightly OP.
Death Pact 1 word, Yourhealersfavoriteability. 40% of your health and can crit even stronger (in tank) then a LoH sometimes. All is require is a active ghoul.
Dark Command Its your taunt if you didnt know that.
Forceful Deflection Your strength gets turned into your parry at a .75 loss rate. Pretty good but not to notice able in small amounts.
Frost Presence This is your 'shield' it increases your armor by 60% Stamina by 8% and reduces damage taken by 8%.
Mind Freeze This is your main interrupt on a 10 second cool-down only costing 20RP also prevents any casting in that school (Frost, Fire, Nature, Shadow...)
Chains of Ice Nice ability for saurfang or keeping an add of the healer in time for your taunt to come off CD.
Icebound Fortitude This makes you immune to all stuns and you take 30% less damage from all sources
Death Grip This pulls most enemies toward you and causing them to attack you for 3 seconds.
Death and Decay This is a very nice constant AoE ability for trash and certain fights and produces high threat. (Lich King Phase 1)
Anti-Magic Shell (Side note, first time I used this ability i was like "OMFG I AM A EASTER EGG") This reduces magic damage taken by 75% up to a maximum of 50% of your health. Lasts 5 seconds and only on a 45s CD.
Raise Dead This just summons a temp. ghoul (Unless speced) which you will use to activate death pact.
Raise Ally LEAST USED DK ABILITY IN THE BOOKS. This raises a Ally to be a ghoul at there own control and is modified by there stats. This ghoul does quite nice dps if healed.
Army of the Dead This is the most AWESOME ability a DK has it causes a bunch of ghouls to attack a target constantly taunting it (Except raid bosses) and lasts for a nice amount of time. Most people dont notice this but while casting you take less damage equal to parry and dodge chance. (A nice OH SHIT button if Death Pact is on CD.
Vampiric Blood This makes your healers love you, increases healing received by 35% and 15% increase in health. This lasts for 15 seconds (MUST BE GLYPHD)
Hysteria DONT cast this on yourself, causes 1% of the targets health to be lost every 1 second for 20 seconds. A very nice buff for dps but terrible to use on a tank.
Specs
Blood
My Blood Tank Spec
This spec is maximizing Threat while also keeping the key tanking abilities.
(This spec assumes you have a MM hunter and are hit capped)
The main issues in DK's that spec is not that they miss key talents it is mostly that they dont get the right Threat talents, for example some dk's go 2/2 butchery for the RP per 5 but once you think about it, it isnt that good at all.
Another one is DRW, your attacks already dont do much damage (in comparison) so 50% less strength isnt very good - 5k crits would be 2.5k 1k regulars would be 500 regulars. The other talents to move around is things like Hit rating 10% AP and other stuff but it all depends on raid set up and gear.
(I am not going to in-depth with this because the talent choice is pretty straight forward.
Glyphs
The glyph choices are obvious to someone who reads in between the lines
Glyph of Disease - Not a good choice due to the change in icy touch making the threat so much higher.
Glyph of Vampiric Blood - AMAZING CHOICE, this is a great glyph 5 seconds longer is a big difference.
Glyph of Rune Strike - This is just a threat thing, adds some extra crit chance to your main threat skill (mid Rotation)
Glyph of Dark Command - Dont you hate it when a taunt is immune? well now it wont be immune anymore.
The minor glyphs are more of choice then nessecity
(Again the glyph choice is straight forward)
Rotation
Self Healing
Open up with IT and PS
Use DSx3 times before refreshing your Diseases
Use BS when other runes are on CD
When you lose your first 70% use Rune Tap
When you are about to take a burst use Icebound Fort,
When a Magic attack is Incoming use AMS
At 50% ERW and spam DS a few times
30% use Vampiric Blood to get back up
<20% Use Raise Dead + Raise Ally ASAP
<10% (Ask leader ahead of time if it is appropriate for the fight)
Always keep diseases up, use health pots when you can and Lock rocks.
DK's can get up to 3000 hps when played right (They can solo some ICC 10 bosses till enrage)
Threat
This is only usally used in Lady Deathwhisper Heroic
IT PS IT PS HS HS DC and RS when up
Threat Priority - IT > RS > HS > DC > PS
You will be literally spamming IT to oblivion for maximum threat, your dps will be shit but you will have threat.
(This is HIGHLY UN-RECOMMENDED)
Damage
Basically you are dpsing as a Tank for max damage.
IT PS HS DS PS DC DC RS When up, not very tough.
Use your Death runes for HS's to maximize dps.
(Very unusual for people to do this...)
Stat Priority
Stamina!!!!!!
This is my favorite stat.
This is the highest priority on your stat list - Think of all your abilities that use this stat as a percent of or increase?
Veteran of the Third War Rank 3
Increases your total Strength by 6%, your Stamina by 3%, and your expertise by 6.
Frost Presence
The death knight takes on the presence of frost, increasing Stamina by 8%, armor contribution from cloth, leather, mail and plate items by 60%, and reducing damage taken by 8%.
Rune Tap
Converts 1 Blood Rune into 10% of your maximum health.
Vampiric Blood
Temporarily grants the Death Knight 15% of maximum health and increases the amount of health generated through spells and effects by 35% for 10 sec.
Do I need to go on? There is so much a DK benefits from those stats it is ridiculous. I would even go as far as 170 > 226 Dodge, but remember there are limits - ToC+ Trinkets ARE BETTER THEN THE FRICKIN' BREWFEST BEERS. I dont know how many time I have seen trinkets like 25 Gunship passed up for the brewfest ones.
The Rest
The rest of the stats... Oh dear god there is more then stamina?
Def (If not capped) > Stamina > Armor > Parry => Dodge > Hit => Expertise > Agility > Strength
Defense - 25 gives you 1% Parry and Dodge
Stamina - Gives you (When affected by abilites) about 20 hp per
Armor - Reduces physical damage taken
Parry - Stops a boss's attack and resets you swing timer
Dodge - Dodges a boss's attack
Hit - Makes your abilites hit
Expertise - Makes the boss not parry or dodge your abilities
Agility - Gives you some AP Armor and Dodge
Strength - Gives you AP and some Parry
Hit Cap is important and Def cap is HUGELY IMPORTANT
Expertise cap not so much
THERE SHOULD BE NO AGILITY ON YOUR GEAR - EVER
There is lots of armor on ICC gear so there is plenty to go around.
Utilities
Death Grip - Pull running mobs towards you and/or get control over a mob for a few seconds while you get agro
Mind Freeze - Should be Hot-keyed for maximizing your interrupt abilities
Strangulate - Should mainly be used to get a caster towards you while your DG is on CD.
Chains of Ice - To stop and/or slow mobs as they run away or run towards you.
*BONUS* How to Pull Groups of casters.
1 Caster - Pull all the melee towards caster and dps caster
2 Casters - Death Grip 1 caster towards the other
3 Casters - Strangulate 1 Death Grip 1 and stand on the other
4 Casters - LoS (If possible) or Strangulate 1 Mind freeze 1 DG 1 (this is tricky to man-over)
5 Casters - LoS (If possible) or Strangulate 1 Mind Freeze 1 DG 1 DnD on another. (Tricky to master)
6 Casters - I dont know if this is possible but.... LoS or Mind Freeze 1 Strangulate 1 DG 1 DnD on other 2 (VERY DIFFICULT)
+7 Casters - WTF where are we Caster hell? Just use army of dead and hope for the best.
Maximizing Self Healing
Timing your heals
Look over the fight -
Is there Bursts of damage?
Is there Healing de-buffs?
Enrages?
Special Abilities?
Lets look at Rotface, He does a gastric bloat which does decent damage so use Rune tap right after it is casted.
He get 3 stacks and does a bunch of damage - Use DS every time he melee's you. Watch your health bar and hit DS right after he hits you. (no point in wasting heals on overhealing)
Always have a CD up - For example IBF after is expires AMS then a Trinket then a Vamp blood then a potion and you will probably live easily.
Timing your heals is what makes DK's rape at soloing stuff they heal about 1000% more then a paladin this is what makes DK's viable tanks - They dont have shields or stupidly high health pools like druids that is why blizzard gave DK's their CD's. My DK right now has about 9 Cooldowns on his action bar and about 4 more procs.
AMS 75% less magic damage
IBF 40% less damage
RT 20% health
BT 12% damage reduce
VB 35% more healing and 15% more health
DP 40% health
Trinket 1 5000ish health
Trinket 2 5400 absorb
AoD Reduces damage
Potion 2000 armor
That all is 10 Cooldowns that are all very nice pop them all together and you literally could be hit by a train flying from outer-space.
Maximizing your heals
More Stamina = more healing
<End of story>
Putting it all together
Now you know how to Tank as a DK, what do you do? SOLO STUFF :O
Change your pathetic DPS spec to this
And go to kara and test your skills. (I am not even joking I test a bunch of stuff here)
This spec is NOT RECOMMENDED FOR RAIDING. This is just to maximize self healing and will end in over healing in a raid since you have a uhh HEALER lol

Comparing (Pros and Cons)
I will post a video of me tanking with each spec (Best one) and will show you results
-Damage Taken
-Healing Done
-Healer Likability

Gearing a new DK (Tank)
(BoE's are not included use them if you have the money but make sure the ones listed here arnt better)
(First I advise dont tank until you have a 4k+ GS (2.3k ish Wow-heroes) for the lest amount of group kicks and/or wipes)
Start by finding your weakest piece of gear. Replace that first, most likely it is your sigil so get 25 Badges for that.
-Most Gear is going to come from your Badges so save all the badges you can.
-Be mature nothing is worse then a DK tank with no so good gear whining
-Conqueror's Thassarian's Plate/Conqueror's Koltira's Plate will be your first set of armor.
Get the Tier Head Chest Gloves and Legs
Get the 245 Shoulders Tank Ring, Trinket, Sigil and you no longer need badges gear (These are what you will want pre-raiding)
Welfare gear isnt that bad, you can tank Icc first wing with the PoS axe.
Weapons_________________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Quel'delar, Might of the Faithful
2nd Tyrannical Beheader - H Pit of Saron (Last Boss)
3rd Marrowstrike - Argent Confessor Paletress H ToC
4th Edge of Ruin - First Boss H ToC
Chest_________________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Teir 9 Chest 50 Badges
2nd Icebound Bronze Cuirass - Last Boss H PoS
3rd Sun-Emblazoned Chestplate - Last Boss H HoS
4th Ziggurat imprinted Chestguard - Last Boss H DTK
Feet_________________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Black Spire Sabatons - Last Boss H FoS
2nd Greaves of Ancient Evil Last Boss H OK
Hands_________________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Tier 9 Gloves 30 Badges
2nd Horn-Tipped Gauntlets
3rd Gauntlets of the Water Revenant Ichoron - H VH
Head_________________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Tier 9 Helm 50 Badges
2nd Helm of the Crestfallen Challenger 2nd Boss H ToC
3rd Ground Tremor Helm Moorabi Gundrak
4th Arcane-Shielded Helm 2nd Boss H Nexus
Legs_________________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Tier 9 Legs 50 Badges
2nd Bolstered Legplates Last Boss H VH
3rd Ley-Guardian's Legguards Last boss OCC
4th Legplates of the Infinite Drakonid 3rd Boss H CoT
Shoulders_______________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Triumph Badge Shoulders 50 Badges
2nd Shoulderplates of Frozen Blood Garfrost H PoS
3rd Regal Aurous Shoulderplates Argent Confessor Paletress H ToC
4th Iron Dwarf Smith Pauldrons First Boss HoL
Waist______________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Shieldwarder Girdle 28 Badges of Conquest
2nd Ancient Aligned Girdle Last Boss of Azjol Nerub
Wrist_______________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Bracers of Dalaran's Parapets 60 Badges of Valor
2nd Bracers of the Herald Last Boss H OK
3rd Bindings of Dark Will 2nd Boss H CoT
Necklace________________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Fossilized Ammonite Choker Last Boss HoR
2nd Shard of the Crystal Forest 19 Badges of Conquest
Ring________________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Clutch of Fortification 35 Badges of Triumph
2nd Mark of the Relentless 1st Boss ToC H
3rd Keystone Great-Ring Last Boss H DTK
Trinket__________________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Glyph of Indomitability 50 Emblems of Triumph
2nd Ick's Rotting Thumb Ick H PoS
3rd Offering of Sacrifice Last Boss Gundrak
4th Essence of Gossamer 2nd Boss AN
Sigil___________________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Sigil of Insolence
Cloak______________________________________
BiS (Pre Raid) Icebound Cloak Frostlord Ahune
2nd Eerie Runeblade Polisher 1st Boss HoR reg
3rd Cloak of the Enemy 1st Boss Nexus
(If I missed something post it and I will update)


Bearist
(My DK 9/12 heroic ICC 10 if he is in his DPS gear just ignore it cause his dps set sucks xD )


[Tell me things you would like me to improve and/or change about this due to it being one of my first effortful threads]

[SprayPlaster]

I'm still quite new to Death Knight tanking so I find some nice tips here in this guide (especially on how to deal with multiple casters). I would appreciate if you can also discuss the differences of tanking in other specs as I'm currently trying out Unholy tanking. Another problem that I sometimes encounter in heroics are over enthusiastic DPSers. For e.g a warrior might use charge and bladestorm and steals aggro from me, I can use dark command on one mob and DG on another but there's still a few on him. What do I do at this point as his DPS is 5-10x of mine?

[Jakewoods]

The first thing you should to do get agro on multiple mobs is DnD at very start, warrior can be a pain with there Bladestorm so what I do is (Since your unholy) try getting wandering plague - It does AoE damage so it can help you with your AoE threat. If you still have problems with it try swapping in a DPS peice if you can keep your def cap - (example use a DPS trinket)
And Sure I will add a section comparing the strength pro's and cons about each spec if you'd like
glad you liked and good luck!

[nialnees]

For all of you with problems with aoe tanking in heroics ( or raids) -
Use this rotation: DnD (for initial aggro) - IT - PS (Both on strongest/marked mob) - Pestilence and then continue with your usual rotation...
Also use addon named "TauntMaster". It was posted few months ago here on mmowned. It adds a frame similar to healbot so you can just click on someones name to taunt mobs off him. It saved me from wiping many times

EDIT: Blood is easiest tanking spec IMO, but I switched to frost few weeks after I started tanking... Dual wield is so epic xD Frost is also better on AoE fights (Howling blast ftw) and has better survivability but lacks self healing abilities...

EDIT 2: I have just one question - whats the point of using rotations on single targets to maintain aggro? I just use IT every time its available (because it causes very high threat) and try to have diseases up all the time... Dps never gets higher than 50% on threat meter that way

[Grif]

Decent enough guide for starters You could probably format the text a bit better. But good job, ill +Rep for the effort.

[cher]

This reads more like a "How to solo elites as a blood tank" guide, then "how to tank heroics/raids", If I am grouped with a healer, I expect him to heal me, I do indeed mitigate damage by self healing to a degree, but thats a bonus, no one expects the tank to self heal to stay alive all fight, otherwise they wouldn't have a healer required for random instances.

So in my opinion, for raid/heroic tanking, you'd swap out those 4 points in rune tap for something that helps your threat, or your raids dps, something like abominations might for the first 2 points, and 1 point then in sudden doom, they changed dancing rune weapon so the threat is transfered to you, so the 51 point talent looks very good as well. so the spec would end up looking like this.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I appreciate you mention that you "could" do this, but it should more be you "should" do this, and only if you want to break from the cookie cutter, for reasons such as always having an enchancement shammy/MM hunter around, but even in that case, there are much better places for the 4 talents then in rune tap.



Glyph of Dark Command - Dont you hate it when a taunt is immune? well now it wont be immune anymore.

If its immune before the glyph, its immune after, all the glyph does is reduce the 8% chance to miss we have on taunts, if your hit capped then you won't miss a taunt.

as for glyphs, the deathstrike glyph is in my opinion much better then the dark command glyph, we have a backup for if our taunt misses, we have death grip, and on top of that, we accrue hit rating from our gear, so the shortfall is no where near 8% miss chance on dark command, we use death strike alot as a blood tank, why not make it much more powerful?



Open up with IT and PS
Use DSx3 times before refreshing your Diseases
Use BS when other runes are on CD

if you use DS 3x's in a row your waiting on runes, why not use Heartstrike while waiting on the FU runes cooldown? on top of that, if your tanking and getting heals, it tends to be better to go with something like

IT-PS-DS-HS-HS
DS-HS-HS-HS-HSl

as it does more damage and more threat. also I guess its a typo, but you say use BS when you mean use HS.



Hysteria DONT cast this on yourself, causes 1% of the targets health to be lost every 1 second for 20 seconds. A very nice buff for dps but terrible to use on a tank.

I cast this on myself, the reasoning is, I am getting shed loads of heals, and will be spam healed weather or not my health has been going down, 1% damage a second is not much, I am however fighting for threat against 10-12k dps's and I need every little trick possible to stay ahead on the threat meters.



Def (If not capped) > Stamina > Armor > Parry => Dodge > Hit => Expertise > Agility > Strength

I'd move this around a fair bit, we are viscously hit by the parry diminishing returns, so much so that dodge is almost twice as good as parry, dodge has a much less steep gradient on diminishing returns even before we introduce the bucketloads of parry we get from forceful deflection!

a point of defense is still better then a point of parry, once again because of that aggressive diminishing returns gradient.

Str is better then agility, we not only get more threat from str, but we also get parry, while we have a rather lacklustre crit/dodge bonus from agility, it takes alot of agility to get the threat or avoidance that 1 point of str gives.

so it ends up looking like this.

Def (If not capped) > Stamina > Armor > Dodge > Defense > Hit > Expertise > Parry >Strenghth > Agility


I already feel i've written too much on this, but your Pro's and Con's of each spec is really biased towards Blood, you don't even mention the spec defining abilities of frost and unholy for tanking.

its a good attempt at getting some information down for people to refer to.

[JimmyTheGoat]

+rep nice effort here

Also I'm no expert or anything on the dk tanking field but I've played both pala and warrior tank and there a few things i would like to ask/suggest. This goes both to the orginal author and to cher.

First about the hit cap, atleast the warrior taunt is counted as a spell, this means that you'll have a base 17% chance to miss, a sp or boonkin can reduce this to 14%. Since it's a spell and hit gives melee and spellhit make sure your looking under the spell tab to see if your taunt capped. This is were the glyph comes in as it reduces it down to about 9-6%spell hit you'll need swich should be gained from gear alone. BUT
The taunt hit cap is not needed you would barely see any tank use it as they all have secondary taunt's should the shit miss.

Also you both state that hit > Expertise as if expertise had a static value. This is not true due to there being 2 caps were one is the dogde cap and the other is parry cap. Now unless your some elitist who like to obtain all possibel cap's ingame(in which i would advice a feral dps druid since they can make all the melee caps) then you should ignore the parry caps as it requires 54-64expertise(not expertise rating). So first we have one value which is below the dogde cap, in this case expertise provides double the amount of reduced chance to miss the target. the next is when you have the dogde and expertise still grants reduced to parry chance, here i would say(no calculations invovled) that expertise=hit as hit gives less chance to miss a taunt but expertise still gives less chance to parry haste(this is still enabled on some fights).

Anyways I'm out hope you can read that

[spudstar99]

Parts of the Stats guide are Fail

The first and major priority for tanks is the defense cap. This should be your first and primary goal. For level 80 you need 540 defense (that's 688 defense rating) total at all times when tanking level 83/boss mobs. If you have anything less than this there is a good chance you will be crit by the boss's physical attacks. Also, it is noteworthy that when you do get 540 defense you effectively added another 10% avoidance to your sheet because the crit bosses have and the defense bonus itself are converted to a miss chance.

Stat priorities for defensive tanking can be summarised as Defense (until you hit 540) > stam/Armor > dodge > parry - Parry is a pretty poor stat for DK's as we hit the diminishing returns on it very fast due to forceful deflection.

Hit/Expertise are great tools to help you push out threat, but your main priority is tanking, and although being a threat rocket is great if you can't survive the fight and give healers something to work with the fight will not go well. Just make sure you have sufficient stats to survive the encounter before you start gearing entirely for threat. A note on expertise is that while all spec's should seek it for threat, being below the 26 expertise cap will have a greater impact on frost and blood than it will on unholy.

When looking at whether you need more threat or more avoidance gear there is a general rule that in tanking new encounters for you its generally more useful to have more defensive abilities than threat, as it allows for a few more mistakes from your healers and yourself without you dying. The way to get around the need for both threat and defensive power is to have a couple of gear configurations, one for high threat and one for high avoidance. eg: you might carry two neck pieces, one with +hit and + expertise and the other with +dodge and +parry. It does not generally require you to carry 2 full sets of tanking gear around, just enough to push your stats either way. Once content is on farm concentrate on picking up as much spare gear to play with as you can, it will only serve to help you in your next progression push.

Stolen From pwnwear's DK Tanking Overall Guide : DK tank basics

sincery spud

[blink18247]

or for pulling you could go frost, drop a DND, Icy Howl(with talent gives all icy touch disease), Blood Boil, Cools hit sometimes for a sec or 2, then add the PS to someone and then pestilence it around, but icy howl everytime it's off CD and blood boil some, and make sure to do the i think runestrike or whatever it's called? it has the picture of the like longsword, sorry haven't played my DK in like a week or so. i've tanked through ICC 25 with that rotation, and it works perfectly

[Jakewoods]

Your threat may be stupidly high but your damage out-put may not be so high, for example tanks can do like 3k dps on bosses when they are just 10% above the dps threat, the extra threat is wasted because there isnt spikes in threat unless a dk goes to frost presence and uses Icy touch or Rune Strike (Only example's I know). I understand the extra threat will be nice but Icy touch whenever it is up hurts your damage output because you can no longer obliterate as often (Since your frost). It may be good for a End Game tank with threat issues but other then that it isnt all that needed.

---------- Post added at 01:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:39 PM ----------

Parts of the Stats guide are Fail

The first and major priority for tanks is the defense cap. This should be your first and primary goal. For level 80 you need 540 defense (that's 688 defense rating) total at all times when tanking level 83/boss mobs. If you have anything less than this there is a good chance you will be crit by the boss's physical attacks. Also, it is noteworthy that when you do get 540 defense you effectively added another 10% avoidance to your sheet because the crit bosses have and the defense bonus itself are converted to a miss chance.

Hit/Expertise are great tools to help you push out threat, but your main priority is tanking, and although being a threat rocket is great if you can't survive the fight and give healers something to work with the fight will not go well. Just make sure you have sufficient stats to survive the encounter before you start gearing entirely for threat. A note on expertise is that while all spec's should seek it for threat, being below the 26 expertise cap will have a greater impact on frost and blood than it will on unholy.

When looking at whether you need more threat or more avoidance gear there is a general rule that in tanking new encounters for you its generally more useful to have more defensive abilities than threat, as it allows for a few more mistakes from your healers and yourself without you dying. The way to get around the need for both threat and defensive power is to have a couple of gear configurations, one for high threat and one for high avoidance. eg: you might carry two neck pieces, one with +hit and + expertise and the other with +dodge and +parry. It does not generally require you to carry 2 full sets of tanking gear around, just enough to push your stats either way. Once content is on farm concentrate on picking up as much spare gear to play with as you can, it will only serve to help you in your next progression push.

Stolen From pwnwear's DK Tanking Overall Guide : DK tank basics

sincery spud

I did put Def cap as highest priorty, I did put armor right beside stamina but Hit cap is more important then dodge or parry cause if your taunt misses twice in a row (It can) the boss and or mob will just run rampart around the raid. Hit cap is needed to effectivlly tank but Def cap is by far more important but for DK's it usually is never a issue from our rune chant.
Stat priorities for defensive tanking can be summarised as Defense (until you hit 540) > stam/Armor > dodge > parry - Parry is a pretty poor stat for DK's as we hit the diminishing returns on it very fast due to forceful deflection.
Also - Did you even read it? I did put in everything you said >.> I put avoidance before threat tools and for progression encounters (Heroic LK) you should be smart enough to know this stuff, this is mostly for beginner tanks or people brushing up on there DK.

[s_e_a_n_66]

How to play DK tank.
Step 1: Roll DK tank
Step 2: Delete DK tank
Step 3: Roll Pally tank
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit.

[Jakewoods]

This reads more like a "How to solo elites as a blood tank" guide, then "how to tank heroics/raids", If I am grouped with a healer, I expect him to heal me, I do indeed mitigate damage by self healing to a degree, but thats a bonus, no one expects the tank to self heal to stay alive all fight, otherwise they wouldn't have a healer required for random instances.

So in my opinion, for raid/heroic tanking, you'd swap out those 4 points in rune tap for something that helps your threat, or your raids dps, something like abominations might for the first 2 points, and 1 point then in sudden doom, they changed dancing rune weapon so the threat is transfered to you, so the 51 point talent looks very good as well. so the spec would end up looking like this.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I appreciate you mention that you "could" do this, but it should more be you "should" do this, and only if you want to break from the cookie cutter, for reasons such as always having an enchancement shammy/MM hunter around, but even in that case, there are much better places for the 4 talents then in rune tap.



Glyph of Dark Command - Dont you hate it when a taunt is immune? well now it wont be immune anymore.

If its immune before the glyph, its immune after, all the glyph does is reduce the 8% chance to miss we have on taunts, if your hit capped then you won't miss a taunt.

as for glyphs, the deathstrike glyph is in my opinion much better then the dark command glyph, we have a backup for if our taunt misses, we have death grip, and on top of that, we accrue hit rating from our gear, so the shortfall is no where near 8% miss chance on dark command, we use death strike alot as a blood tank, why not make it much more powerful?



Open up with IT and PS
Use DSx3 times before refreshing your Diseases
Use BS when other runes are on CD

if you use DS 3x's in a row your waiting on runes, why not use Heartstrike while waiting on the FU runes cooldown? on top of that, if your tanking and getting heals, it tends to be better to go with something like

IT-PS-DS-HS-HS
DS-HS-HS-HS-HSl

as it does more damage and more threat. also I guess its a typo, but you say use BS when you mean use HS.



Hysteria DONT cast this on yourself, causes 1% of the targets health to be lost every 1 second for 20 seconds. A very nice buff for dps but terrible to use on a tank.

I cast this on myself, the reasoning is, I am getting shed loads of heals, and will be spam healed weather or not my health has been going down, 1% damage a second is not much, I am however fighting for threat against 10-12k dps's and I need every little trick possible to stay ahead on the threat meters.



Def (If not capped) > Stamina > Armor > Parry => Dodge > Hit => Expertise > Agility > Strength

I'd move this around a fair bit, we are viscously hit by the parry diminishing returns, so much so that dodge is almost twice as good as parry, dodge has a much less steep gradient on diminishing returns even before we introduce the bucketloads of parry we get from forceful deflection!

a point of defense is still better then a point of parry, once again because of that aggressive diminishing returns gradient.

Str is better then agility, we not only get more threat from str, but we also get parry, while we have a rather lacklustre crit/dodge bonus from agility, it takes alot of agility to get the threat or avoidance that 1 point of str gives.

so it ends up looking like this.

Def (If not capped) > Stamina > Armor > Dodge > Defense > Hit > Expertise > Parry >Strenghth > Agility


I already feel i've written too much on this, but your Pro's and Con's of each spec is really biased towards Blood, you don't even mention the spec defining abilities of frost and unholy for tanking.

its a good attempt at getting some information down for people to refer to.

O.O WTF?!?!??! Yes, this is a working in progress it is not even close to being finished.
First - Read the Dark Command glyph [Increases chance for it to successfully work by 8%]
taunts dont miss or dodge like spells or abilities they immune, you need 18% for it to work, 10% with glyph 7% with boomkin 6% with draeni (however you spell them) so 6% is easily acquired to make un-immunable

Next thing - If you are reeling on your healers so dam much and think your getting constant heals? you dont there is another 24 people in the raid and they all take damage. Rune tap is amazing DRW is terrible, you do get the threat but it is better spent somewhere else.
What I mean by DSx3 is that use your Unholy and Frost runes for DS 3 times before you use them for your diseases. Also if you could read I said maximizing your heals, for example 2 healers and are down and 1 is left you should be able to take minimal heals will maximizing your own and still live.
DONT CAST HYSTERIA ON YOURSELF, you should never have threat issues if so have a pally Salvation them or just taunt boss taunting puts you 10% higher then the person with the most threat. 10k-12k dps isn't that much threat, in blood queen you are fighting with 20k dps and I easily keep threat. If you have threat problems use your death runes for Heart Strike or Icy touch.
Agility is better from tanking view I never said threat, one more thing you hypocrite you said strength is better from the parry when you just said it isn't good cause of diminishing returns parry is the same as the dodge returns, parry is equal to dodge but parry is better cause you take no damage and return a attack right back at them. Hit cap is more important then extra defense because there is so much dam defense on everything, I have 570 or something defense that is 30 over cap.

---------- Post added at 02:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:12 PM ----------

How to play DK tank.
Step 1: Roll DK tank
Step 2: Delete DK tank
Step 3: Roll Pally tank
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit.

Don't Troll.

[SprayPlaster]

Also use addon named "TauntMaster". It was posted few months ago here on mmowned. It adds a frame similar to healbot so you can just click on someones name to taunt mobs off him. It saved me from wiping many times

Sounds like a useful addon, thanks for the recommendation =). Another way to improve the guide IMO is if you can add a "Gearing Up" section of some sort where newly dinged DK tanks can follow to farm some gears before starting to tank ICC. My DK currently is guildless as none of my mains' friends know that thats my alt so I can have some me time ^^

Will +rep where appropriate when I can, thanks again to everyone for all the tips.

[s_e_a_n_66]

Seriously though, while DKs might be the best tanks for soloing mobs or level 70 bosses, they are always bottom of the chain when it comes to raiding. Trolling was not intended, but I have had my fill of healing(or pulling aggro from) bad DK tanks, they just can't compare to warrior / pally. In my opinion, your much better off putting your effort into becoming badass dps as a DK, because that is what they are best for. However, if your aim is soloing / running lowbies, your spec is great. Your guide is well written and I can tell you put a good amount of effort into it so +Rep

[Jakewoods]

Seriously though, while DKs might be the best tanks for soloing mobs or level 70 bosses, they are always bottom of the chain when it comes to raiding. Trolling was not intended, but I have had my fill of healing(or pulling aggro from) bad DK tanks, they just can't compare to warrior / pally. In my opinion, your much better off putting your effort into becoming badass dps as a DK, because that is what they are best for. However, if your aim is soloing / running lowbies, your spec is great. Your guide is well written and I can tell you put a good amount of effort into it so +Rep

How are they bottom of the chain? Many end game tanks are in fact DK's Keebzz - Malfurion did ICC10 Heroic as a DK tank and tankspot uses DK tanks, they are 100% viable and are equal in all ways, I am not saying you are wrong you probally have just yet to see a good DK tank. There are soooooooooooooooooo many fail dk tanks i can not even imagine and I hope this helps some to learn how to play there class. Thanks for the rep you have your opinion and I have mine.