DK tank - help needed

[Apocallipto]

HEy guys,

My DK just hit lvl 80 and since i`ve never played any tanking class(hunter is my main) i need a bit help about what enchants/gems should i put and also the talent spec best for me to tank in( i`ll get my crafted items soon and than i`ll post an armory link)

Help would be apreciated

[DN]

Stack stamina gems as much as possible. Just make sure to gem to activate your meta gem, which should be the meta that has 2% bonus armor as well as stamina.

Enchants should go in this priority assuming that you're defense capped:
Stamina > Health > Armor > Defense > Stats > Else

Let me know if you need anymore help.

[Harmacy]

Stack stamina gems as much as possible. Just make sure to gem to activate your meta gem, which should be the meta that has 2% bonus armor as well as stamina.

Enchants should go in this priority assuming that you're defense capped:
Stamina > Health > Armor > Defense > Stats > Else

Let me know if you need anymore help.

All this.

Also, I'd recommend starting out as Frost, as Howling Blast is fantastic for AoE threat (which is 90% of heroics). You can try out blood later, when you get comfortable with tanking or you start raiding, but I really recommend Frost for starting out.

[LavaDuck]

This meta gem is the one the above is talking about.

[Trod]

Stack stamina gems as much as possible. Just make sure to gem to activate your meta gem, which should be the meta that has 2% bonus armor as well as stamina.

Enchants should go in this priority assuming that you're defense capped:
Stamina > Health > Armor > Defense > Stats > Else

Let me know if you need anymore help.

People that say this have obviously never healed DKs are avoidance tanks all your gems ahould be parry/dodge + stam unless blue than you can go straight stam, no shield = lower mitigation ive sat at 5% hp on my dk for several seconds and lived

Velynara on drak' thul if you want to look up currently starting 10 man TotGC content

[Deleted]

ive sat at 5% hp on my dk for several seconds and lived

Then your healers are extremely bad.

currently starting 10 man TotGC content

I tank ToGC25, I stack stamina and win. 'Sup?

[gagoono]

People that say this have obviously never healed DKs are avoidance tanks all your gems ahould be parry/dodge + stam unless blue than you can go straight stam, no shield = lower mitigation ive sat at 5% hp on my dk for several seconds and lived

Velynara on drak' thul if you want to look up currently starting 10 man TotGC content

IF you had stacked stam, you wouldnt have been on 5%

[Fornaw]

ive sat at 5% hp on my dk for several seconds and lived

And I once won money at a casino. That doesn't change the fact that more money is taken for the stockholders and the building upgrades, maintenance and operation fees than is returned to winners.

Avoidance is nice in that it reduces how much mana healers have to spend on you, but healer mana is near infinite if your healers know what they are doing. Avoidance cannot be relied upon to save your life after the big unavoidable hits like impale, given enough stamina you will survive. The sad reality is bosses don't hit for 5% of a tanks health, they hit for 25% or more quite frequently.

Situation using some made up numbers to illustrate my point. Gormak's impale hits for 25k and Gormak's regular swings hit for 25k. Tank with 60% avoidance and 47k health has a 60% chance to survive when both hits come faster than your healers can react. Tank with 52k health and 30% avoidance has a 100% chance to survive when both hits come faster than your healers can react, then your healers have ~2 seconds to heal him up, and if they are all paying attn they can do it.

I wouldn't advise taking a 110 stam 0 avoidance piece over a 100 stam 50 dodge 50 parry piece, but let your avoidance come from gear, and stack stam from gems and enchants as much as possible.

[Jeme]

Stamina > Health > Armor > Defense > Stats > Else

Thats just rubish...

The reason that Stamina is good is because of your armor so they are tightly connected, placing stamina over armor makes no real sense as such, it's really from a case to case comparison... and Health health doesn't really belong on the table... (Yes you have a single enchant providing raw health... but the rest is stamina already, except for some CD's, buffs ect.)

Also you will be equally successful these days weather you use mixed gems to match sockets or just stamina ones your on the secure area of a 2hit kill...
Some stacks stamina to full, others stack a mix of Stamina, Stamina/Dodge, Stamina/defense... some tanks even stack things as Stamina/Exp, Stamina/hit because your job is also to maintain threat.

Apocallipto >> One link you should find very usefull if not already know... www.Tankspot.com

[Jeme]

And I once won money at a casino. That doesn't change the fact that more money is taken for the stockholders and the building upgrades, maintenance and operation fees than is returned to winners.

Avoidance is nice in that it reduces how much mana healers have to spend on you, but healer mana is near infinite if your healers know what they are doing. Avoidance cannot be relied upon to save your life after the big unavoidable hits like impale, given enough stamina you will survive. The sad reality is bosses don't hit for 5% of a tanks health, they hit for 25% or more quite frequently.

Situation using some made up numbers to illustrate my point. Gormak's impale hits for 25k and Gormak's regular swings hit for 25k. Tank with 60% avoidance and 47k health has a 60% chance to survive when both hits come faster than your healers can react. Tank with 52k health and 30% avoidance has a 100% chance to survive when both hits come faster than your healers can react, then your healers have ~2 seconds to heal him up, and if they are all paying attn they can do it.

I wouldn't advise taking a 110 stam 0 avoidance piece over a 100 stam 50 dodge 50 parry piece, but let your avoidance come from gear, and stack stam from gems and enchants as much as possible.

Thats a very mood point since the tank stacking mixed gems is most likely to be out on the "2-3 Hit School" i think they call it these days...
The point of that using the above example in a very boxed in sense (no random damage, totally predictability) is that you need to be able to take 2 concurrent hits of that magnitude (25k) since that will be the maximum TTL you can reach as a tank in such an encounter... beyond the 50.001 hp point, no matter how much stamina you stack beyond that, it won't save your ass at any point... so you switch to Avoidance to increase the chance of breaking of the 3rd concurrent hit in an attempt to give your healers that bit of extra time...

In reality, the numbers are not that round, so you have to aim for something above 2 hits, also accounting for some random damage from other sources. But this is mostly the mindset of a tank using a mixed gem, he will most properly also only aim for socket bonuses that yields a decent amount of stamina there by losing less stamina overall on a 15/12 gem... but optimizing his balance in stats overall...

So using a "you die in 2 hit example" just seems mood and dumb to me.

And yes, those tanks are very successful as well...

[Harmacy]

I wouldn't advise taking a 110 stam 0 avoidance piece over a 100 stam 50 dodge 50 parry piece, but let your avoidance come from gear, and stack stam from gems and enchants as much as possible.

Thank you for bringing some logic into this thread. Stacking stamina is the way to go in ToC and ToGC because of all the unavoidable damage.

[billymont]

the biggest reason stam is the way to go in raids is because we're in the age of hard hitting bosses and healers have damn near unlimited mana. avoidance is good too, dont get me wrong, but more than likely if your healers are worth a shit, you're gonna get spammed anyway so the avoidance that comes with gear will be enough to sustain you and sometimes be worthless.

i've healed and tanked raids and i've received and given heals even after a few dodges/parries. it's part of the game. the idea is to have enough stam that if heals have to be mobile for a sec that you can sustain a couple big hits in order for the healer to reposition himself to begin spamming again. the problem with avoidance is it's RNG, that is not the issue with stamina. in crazy moments the tank should be using cooldowns to help keep himself up in order for the healers to get in position to return to spam healing again. stamina ends up being the clear winner.