Deathknight tankning comparison

[saracen]

Rigth a little backround on myself i feel is inorder for people to get a grasp of this post.

I started playing in TBC as a warlock, and i got my 1st taste of tanking at leo in SSC and ihave been hooked since.

From there in wrath i lvl'd a druid to tank on, tanked on it for a while (now my main as resto however i have tanked to LK on it), i have an alt pala that has tanked up to sindy aswell as a warr that i lvld as a tank through the lfg to lvl 78 atm.

so i thought i would roll myself a dk.. just got to 70 and i thought i'd give tankning ago. so im playing frost (gotta love howlong blast tbh) however on aoe packs i allways seem to findmyself indesperation for a rime proc or for HB to come up again...

on my druid/war i have a constrant stream of incomiong rage and know how to manage it and allwasy find i know what to do next, never findmyself wanting a certain ability to come off DC (or the runes to)

and on my pala its the same, i have a coinstant stream ov mana coming in and allways have somthing to press.

however on my dk i find the rune/RP system screws me over a fair bit.. i allways seem to be waititng for a rune to come off cd so i can use an ability to gain rp..just fustraits me

so i was wondering how DK tankscope with this fustraition, or what you think to the methods of DK tankning ect..i dont overly care about spec just RP/rune managment..

Thanks for hearing me out and sorry for any typo's im kinda rushing.

P.S i aint having any issues holding agro or living..just doesnt seem as fast pacerd as im used to.

[mhp]

Pestilence, Blood Boil and D&D are your very good friends, along with HB. When those are on cooldown, you empty your rune bar a little, with FS & RS.

Can't be much more faster than that.

[saracen]

Indeed, it just doesnt seem to be s i dunno how to explain it, its fun..just not as gripping as war tankning =P

[TheBigC1245]

Having tanked as a DK (my main) and a Pally at 80, and a warrior from 70 to 78, I know what you mean. Warrior tanking is frantic, paladin tanking is all about the rotation. DK tanking is about maintaining your rotation and planning ahead to make sure diseases don't fall off, or that you have IT ready to pick up that add that's coming up. It tends to not be as fast paced as say warrior tanking, but the fun of it for me comes in successfully managing my runes and CDs to get the job done.

[mhp]

Each to his own then, I think. At lower levels, it's a bit of a pain indeed, but at 80, I find it more fun than I found my former main (prot warrior , and I can chain pull as long as the healer has mana.

Sometimes it takes a bit of thinking, and I'll end up spamming FS to keep my runes available for the next pack. When you've ran enough instances, you'll get the feel for it =)

[rabbimojo]

Depends on the spec, but with warriors, you're commonly hitting multiple buttons at once, whereas a DK doesn't usually have to do that.

Warriors are also a lot more... stilted? They have these compelling sound/visual CDs that hit hard.. BAM, shockwave. BAM, tclap. BAM, shield slam. You hit stuff in the meantime, but it has that sort of feel to it.

On a DK, it's more of a rhythm and anticipation game. There's an "optimal" ordering for abilities, assuming nobody pulls off of you, no new adds arrive, etc. So that's what you do by default. Then, as those assumptions fail, your goal is to maintain the same rhythm but account for changing conditions. You need to have resources available to respond to changes, to put it simply.

DKs aren't going to be fun for everybody, and the "twiddling my thumbs" feeling you describe is a known problem for us. Frost tanks are especially prone to this, in my experience. However, every DK has something of that sort, even if just in the DND-IT-PS-Pest sequence. There's a few seconds there before another rune pops up, and it's a very strange feeling.

[Chiruru]

I felt the same you do when I started my DK tank. My tipp, if you lvl via dungeons: Spec into that unholy talent that reduces D&Ds cooldown to 15 seconds and get the glyph of disease, this really keeping up the fast pace that most instances are tanked at.

[Oichi]

I must say while I do feel your pain a bit, I don't quite agree. To me, Death Knight tanking regardless of spec has always felt like DPSing while being near-invulnerable. While I'm certain this feeling only continues to persist because I played a DK and only a DK since the release of WotLK and my previous experience was as a warrior tank/dps through Hyjal/BT/Sunwell... there always seems to be something to do for a DK tank, in my opinion.

Yes, as others have stated, you do need to plan ahead, there is a pacing an you HAVE to have situational awareness. If you see the stupid hunter cast misdirect on you, but no shots are coming, you need to be aware if he's pulling that next group... if he is, and you just wasted 2 runes on something... chances are bad stuff is about go down... but if you see it coming and hold onto 3 runes, you can put a D&D in the path of the incoming pack the hunter just pulled and everything continues without worry.

DK tanks need to live 10-15 seconds in the future. You need to know that in 10 seconds the boss is going to use a hard hitting magic ability, and you need to budget your runic power so that in 6 seconds you'll have 10 Runic Power so you can hit Anti-Magic Shell. You need to always be aware of what the boss is doing, what other raid members are doing, and most importantly what you're GOING to be doing when X-Y-Z happens.

DK tanking isn't for everyone certainly... but damnit was it ever the tank I was waiting for. Warrior tanking was so button-mashy in TBC... it got to the point where tanks in my guild, and even myself a little, had our G15 keyboards programmed with tanking sequences, movements and macros, so that we just needed to monitor for changing conditions. As an experiment, we once did Illidan with the main tank only controlled by G15 macro sequences. It was hilarious, but effective. While at the time it was amusing, now I look back with laughter and smirking.

When I tank, it only feels like I'm DPSing back in the days of Sunwell DPS gear doing 4-DPS Warrior Shattered Halls runs. Charge forward and hit everything as hard as you can as fast as you can... and damnit that's fun.

[cabbageloins]

Undeniable, eh? I deny it.

My guild raids with one of our server's best prot warriors, a bear tank that once broke 115k health, and a small army of prot paladins who range from 'pretty decent' to 'parried Algalon's Ascend to the Heavens'. I have tanked on my DK all the way through LK, and my healers have regularly said that they have no problems keeping me up compared to the other tanks, and I don't even cycle CDs (I'm bad). And my threat is enormously higher than the other tanks'. My survivability is on par with other classes who actually use their mechanics, and my threat is greater; we are not underpowered.

And DK tanking isn't hard; with the changes to IT, the one area of tanking that was difficult - establishing initial threat - has been made incredibly simple. Do you see an add lose? Use taunt>DG>IT>DnD, whichever you come across first. Do you suddenly find yourself lacking resources? Use Empowered Rune Weapon/Blood Tap. Is it on CD from the last time you failed to use your brain? Maybe you should stick to DPS.

[Lao_tzu]

This entire post explains exactly why, in the current game situation, DK's are the most underpowered and difficult tanks to play. Which isn't to say it can't be done, but it's undeniably _extremely_ harder than the other tank.

Get out of your own arse, "Extremely" is taking it to far, having played both class, although not endgame DK tanking I would agree that past the opening moments warriors done need to worry about rage management at all, whereas DK's need to keep RP and Runes ready for use incase something happens. Or be aware of whats going to happen and be ready for it.

I agree with someones post about the DK's feeling less Impact then say Bam Shockwave, Bam Thunderclap. Alot of DK's don't have massive Audios that let you know your attack hit hard and that you've got threat, with the exception of a decent Howling blast crit on multiple mobs, you relying on the fact that all your deseases are kept up and the little numbers ticking on multiple mobs are keeping them in check.

Lots of utility though, so i'll push on with my DK tank, Pally tanking for me was just boring no utility outside of sanc buff and very little oh shit utility other then a ranged taunt, charge/ Deathgrip is amazing, especially with the higher threat gen from IT.