Thread: Death Knight 4.0.1 Tanking Guide (outdated)

Table of Contents

1.New Rune System & Runic Power
2.Talents
3.Glyphs
4.Priority System and Ability Usage
5.Mastery
6.Vengeance
7.Races
8.Best in Slot Gear
9.Relics
10.Stats
11.Reforging
12.Gemming
13.Enchanting
14,Recommended Professions
15.Consumables
16.Macros
17. Addons
18.Raiding

• The New Rune System & Runic Power

The latest patch introduces a fresh and newly re-vamped Rune System for Death Knights. Instead of each Rune being on an independent Cooldown, one Rune must wait for the other of it's kind to end it's cooldown before it begins it's own cooldown. For Example:
Blood Rune #1 - Blood Rune #2 - Frost Rune #1 - Frost Rune #2 - Unholy Rune #1 - Unholy Rune #2
You currently have no Runes on cooldown.
0.0 - Heart Strike
1.5 - Heart Strike
3.0 - Death Strike
4.5 - Death Strike

Now you have:
Blood Rune #1 on an active cooldown - Blood Rune #2 is considered fully-depleted and it's cooldown doesn't start until Blood Rune #1 is off cooldown. The same applies to your Frost and Unholy Runes: Frost Rune #1 and Unholy Rune #1 are regenerating while Frost Rune #2 and Unholy Rune #2 are on "standby" and are considered fully-depleted Runes. This sounds awfully complicated at first and it'll take some getting used to if you came from playing WotLK's fast-paced Death Knight but you'll get used to it.
Can different types of Runes (Blood, Frost, Unholy) re-fresh at the same time? Yes, you can have up to 1 type of each Rune refreshing at the same time for a maximum of 3 different kinds. This does not include Death Runes. Keep reading.

Death Runes work in much the same way. This is how these Runes work: Each Death Rune counts as a normal version of it's Rune. What this means is that you can have 1 "Blood Death Rune," 1 "Frost Death Rune" and 1 "Unholy Death Rune" recharging together at the same time the same way you can have 1 normal Blood, Frost and Unholy Runes recharging together. You cannot however have 1 Death Rune and 1 normal Rune of the same type recharging together. So for example:
You use Icy Touch, Plague Strike and then Death Strike.
Frost Rune #1 (used on Icy Touch) is re-charging.
Unholy Rune #1 (used on Plague Strike) is re-charging.
Frost Rune #2 and Unholy Rune #2 (used on Death Strike) have been converted to Death Runes. They will not recharge until Frost Rune #1 and Unholy Rune #1 are ready. Same rule applies if you Death Strike twice together, the second set of Frost and Unholy Runes will not recharge until the first set is ready. Blood Runes converted to Death Runes by Blood Tap are also subject to this rule.

What happens when my ability misses? Nothing. You lose a GCD and the Runes used by the ability are simply refreshed without going on cooldown.

Now I'll introduce you to an important and major addition to go along with this new Rune System: Runic Empowerment. Just as the Tooltip states, it can only grant you fully-depleted Runes. What does this mean? Simple. It can grant you any Rune that is not currently on an active cooldown. To use the same example from above here, Blood Rune #2, Frost Rune #2, and Unholy Rune #2 were all waiting on their #1 counterparts to finish their respective cooldowns. Runic Empowerment will only ever grant you these Runes. Runes that are not currently actively recharging, whatever Rune that may be. This ability may look great however it does have it's downsides. More on this later.

Runic Power is generated when you use an ability that requires one or more Runes. It can also be generated by some Talents, more on that later.
Single-Rune Abilities generate 10 Runic Power.
Dual-Rune Abilities generate 20 Runic Power.
Triple-Rune Abilities generate 30 Runic Power.

• Talents

Many Death Knight talents have been modified, removed, or even re-vamped. The way we use and gain talent points has also changed. You now must choose a Specialization, a "Main Tree" and before being able to apply points anywhere else you need to apply at least 31 talent points to your "Main Tree." Choosing a Specialization unlocks that tree and grants you passive Bonuses from it. At level 80 you now have a total of 36 talent points to spend. Usually you choose your Talent Specialization at level 10. In the case of Death Knights however we start off at level 55 so this is not possible, so instead we choose ours when we gain our first talent point. If you are still fairly confused I suggest you take some time to read this at some point.

The biggest change to Death Knights applied now is that Blood is our one and only Tanking tree. In a way this complicates things, and in a way it simplifies them. The first thing you need to know is that you will always be taking Blood Specialization as a Death Knight Tank. Now, on to what bonuses Blood Specialization grants you:

• Heart Strike - This will become your main strike for Blood Runes, keep it close.
• Blood Rites - This ability is the only thing that allows us to generate Death Runes (apart from your ever faithful Blood Tap of course). There is no cooldown on it, regardless of what the tooltip says.
• Veteran of the Third War - 9% Stamina and 6 Expertise. An excellent passive, providing both Threat and Survivability.
• Vengeance - Is a new and very useful mechanic all Tanks have. The longer the fight is, the higher it stacks. I'll be explaining it in more detail later on.
• Mastery: Blood Shield - Blood's Mastery is our very own Discipline Priest Absorb Shield. It is applied through Death Strike and remains until it absorbs 50% of the damage Death Strike healed you for, effect increased by gemming Mastery and obtaining Gear with Mastery on it. More on this later down.

• The Basic Build

This is the basic Build, you'll want to work off of this, always. Neither Abomination's Might or Scarlet Fever are Mandatory. Now, there's a number of Talents you can choose to drop, take, and ignore all together. You'll see mention of "Diseaseless" a bit, that's explained later down.
Let's take a roll through them:

Blood

• Butchery - Not worth it. Weak and really its just a Dps Talent.
• Blade Barrier - 6% damage deduction, no brainer. Mandatory.
• Bladed Armor - Strong damage boost, no brainer. Mandatory.
• Improved Blood Tap - Quite nice to have, it aligns the cooldown of your Blood Tap with your Rune Tap which is what you'll mainly be using Blood Tap on now that Vampiric Blood has had it's cost eliminated.
• Scent of Blood - Taking into mind the Rune Strike change, you will want this. No question. 1/3 will not serve you enough, while 3/3 is for the most part overkill. The refresh time on 2/3 is just right in most cases. If you like to constantly have high amounts of runic power you might want to go with 3/3. Mandatory unless you want to be runic power starved rather often.
• Scarlet Fever - Utility. Issues: It can only be applied by Blood Boil. There really are better places to spend these two points. If someone else in your raid can provide this for you (Warlock, Bear Druid, Prot Paladin, or Warriors) see if you can maybe skip it. Situational.
• Hand of Doom - Nothing to say really, strictly PvP.
• Blood-Caked Blade - A semi-decent threat talent. Optional. Not recommended for Disease-less specs however, it becomes very weak without diseases applied.
• Bone Shield - A rather weak cooldown with a minimum uptime of 4 seconds right now extended by RNG Avoidance. Good for having up in the first few seconds of an encounter however since you can easily pre-buff yourself with it before pulling. Entirely optional.
• Toughness - No brainer. 10% armor boost. Mandatory.
• Abomination's Might - Utility. 10% attack power boost is pretty nice, however at the same time there are other places to spend those two talent points. If you have someone else that can provide this buff (Markmanship Hunter, Enhancement Shaman, or any Paladin that isn't casting BoK) see if you can avoid taking it. Situational.
• Sanguine Fortitude - 30% damage reduction increase to Icebound Fortitude, and cost removed entirely. Mandatory no-brainer.
• Blood Parasites - A very, very re-vamped version of the original Bloodworms. A lot of people are shying away from this because the WotLK Bloodworms just totally sucked. This version of them is pretty decent when you're soloing content, questing, and doing Heroics. For Raids however they've proven to be rather lackluster. Optional but not recommended.
• Improved Blood Presence - Now that defense has been removed from the game this is the only way you can be Crit-Immune. Mandatory no-brainer. Note: increased Rune Regeneration effect is currently Beta-only.
• Rune Tap - Beyond the fact that its a requirement to take Will of the Necropolis this talent has received a large boost, the previous effect of Improved Rune Tap has all been merged into this one-point ability, and its quite useful to have around with Healers having limited mana consumption now. Mandatory.
• Will of the Necropolis - A mini-cooldown for each time you drop below 30% Health. As a secondary effect it also refresh the cooldown on Rune Tap and grants you a free Blood Rune to use it. Minor cooldown so as not to make it overpowered. Regardless of what the tooltip says, it does not cost a Frost Rune. Mandatory.
• Vampiric Blood - An excellent tanking cooldown which has seen some changes but is still great. Mandatory.
• Improved Death Strike - Our Death Strike has seen a massive overhaul to it's healing portion and this ability only makes an already great ability even greater. Mandatory.
• Crimson Scourge - A tricky set of talents. Apart from increasing the damage done by Blood Boil it provides you with an ability called Blood Swarm. Each time you Plague Strike a target that already has Blood Plague on it, this will proc, granting you a free re-fresh on Scarlet Fever through the means of a free Blood Boil. It can seem great, but its not that good. Entirely player's choice. If you're running Disease-less you will be unable to proc Blood Swarm so the only useful part of this talent for you would be the 40% damage increase on Blood Boil which is quite nice to have in AoE situations, although it may turn some mobs into a bit of a faceroll threat-wise if you play correctly. Optional.
• Dancing Rune Weapon - This ability has seen a few tweaks, however it's biggest change is that it is now a minor cooldown. When it is up it will provide you with 20% more Parry, also it's Glyph will provide you with a 50% threat increase with all abilities while active. Mandatory.

Unholy
This is the only decent Tree for sub-speccing, Frost is not an option. You have a wide array of Talents from which to choose from here:

• Unholy Command - Not a bad choice, it shears 10 seconds off Death Grip's cooldown. Its rather lackluster but better than nothing. Optional.
• Virulence - It's effect has now been doubled to provide you with 6% Spell Hit which makes it a very welcome talent now. It loses some of its potential if you roll Disease-less however. Situational.
• Epidemic - Really the best Talent in Unholy's Tier 1. If you put 3 points into this your Diseases will last exactly 33 seconds, very welcome since the Rune System slows down your play style considerably. Highly recommended if you use Diseases. If you roll entirely disease-less you'll have no use for this however. Situational.
• Morbidity - The only decent thing left for Tanks to spend points on in Unholy after Tier 1. Instead of decreasing Death and Decay's cooldown it now increases it's damage by up to 30%. Not the greatest talent ever however, and it really depends on if you need that extra AoE Threat. There are better places to spend those points. Optional.

• Glyphs

The Glyph System in general has seen a major re-work with the addition of "Prime Glyphs," and all Glyphs becoming permanently engraved into your Glyph Spellbook once you learn them once. The only way to remove a Glyph is by removing it with Vanishing Powder. You'll want to keep a stack around since you'll find yourself constantly switching Glyphs based on what situation you're in. As always there are some Glyphs that are made for Tanks and some that are designed for Dps.

Prime Glyphs:

• Death and Decay - You'll probably want to have this for every AoE situation, especially when you're new to an instance or a raid and you don't know how pulls work.
• Death Strike - You'll want this for single-target situations, a very nice Glyph and a decent damage boost to Death Strike.
• Heart Strike - You'll always want to have this. Due to Heart Strike's new Cleave ability you'll be using it in both single-target and AoE situations so this Glyph will have it's uses wherever you go.
• Rune Strike - Great Glyph, a good threat boost to the ability that will account for a very large portion of your threat, you'll want this in all situations.

Major Glyphs:

• Blood Boil - Great for AoE, but at the same time it sucks if you have crowd-controlled Targets nearby, use it wisely.
• Bone Shield - A good Glyph to have if you take Bone Shield, not something I'd recommend though since you'll most probably already be gaining a good amount of speed from your boot enchant.
• Dancing Rune Weapon - A great Glyph for every situation, you never know when you'll need some snap-threat and have 60 Runic Power to use on Dancing Rune Weapon. This is basically a free 50% Threat boost for 12 each time Dancing Rune Weapon is active for it's duration.
• Pestilence - A situational Glyph. If you have crowd-controlled targets nearby it can cause you to shy away from your Pestilence ability, so I'd say situational.
• Rune Tap - A nice Glyph to have, especially if you're pressing Rune Tap shortly after it comes off cooldown, can really save Healers some mana.
• Vampiric Blood - Another situational Glyph. In some cases the extra healing will come in useful, however in other cases the extra Health may prove to be more so (Healer dead for example).

Minor Glyphs:

• Blood Tap - Removes the 6% base health cost from your Blood Tap ability. Yes you won't really notice a big difference with or without this but since you'll mainly use it on Rune Tap now, let's not waste a part of it on Blood Tap cost.
• Horn of Winter - Its nice to have, I wouldn't say mandatory but better than other minors.
• Resilient Grip - Just about the only other really good minor Glyph. When you Grip a target and it is immune to your Death Grip, the cooldown on your Death Grip ability is reset. Awesome.

• Priority System and Ability Usage

Due to Runic Empowerment and the change to Rune Strike, Death Knight Tanks no longer have a fixed Rotation, instead we have a Priority System. One thing to keep in mind: Rune Strike is now on the global cooldown, so your macros will be obsolete and cannot be repaired. You'll have to learn to press it:

Single-Target:

• Rune Strike - Most important of all. If you can use it, use it.
• Diseases (Icy Touch + Plague Strike) - Still an important part of our rotation, but not as much as before. Skip this if you'll be playing Disease-less.
• Death Strike - For the most part you'll want to spread your Death Strikes out so you can keep Blood Shield up, but you don't want them too far apart. If you're in a situation with an ability such as Soul Reaper make sure to use it right after, the effect will be excellent. Damage no longer increased by diseases. More on this below, under Mastery.
• Blood Boil - Only If you need to re/apply Scarlet Fever. Unless you're going disease-less use this only after you have diseases on your target.
• Heart Strike - Our main Threat move, damage still increased by diseases.
• Death Coil - For dumping excess Runic Power (60-80+) and for filling in free Global Cooldowns when your Runes are down and you have no Rune Strike procs.

AoE:

• Death and Decay - your number one move for AoE as always of course.
• Rune Strike - Same deal, great threat move. Tab-target to get it's effect spread to more mobs.
• Diseases (Icy Touch + Plague Strike) - Increase Heart Strike and Blood Boil damage, and although damage is halved when spread by pestilence now, they still tick for something. Try to avoid using Plague Strike if you can, you'll save yourself an Unholy Rune you can use on Death Strike instead.
• Blood Boil - Only if you need to re/apply Scarlet Fever. Unless you're playing disease-less try and have at least 1 disease up on the attacking mobs when you use this.
• Death Strike - For the most part you'll want to spread your Death Strikes out so you can keep Blood Shield up, but you don't want them too far apart. If you're in a situation with an ability such as Soul Reaper make sure to use it right after, the effect will be excellent. Damage no longer increased by diseases. More on this below, under Mastery.
• Heart Strike - Has a new Cleave effect now, so if you have 3 or less targets attacking you, this is the move you'll want to use.
• Blood Boil - For when you have more than 3 targets. Weaker than Heart Strike but better for large packs.
• Death Coil - For dumping excess Runic Power (60-80+) and for filling in free Global Cooldowns when your Runes are down and you have no Rune Strike procs.

How you'll treat Runic Empowerment Runes:
Blood Runes - Heart Strike or Blood Boil depending on the situation.
Frost Runes - Unless you need to re-fresh Frost Fever wait for an Unholy Rune to pair it with for a Death Strike.
Unholy Runes - Same deal, unless you need to re-fresh Blood Plague, re-apply Death and Decay or re-fresh Bone Shield, wait for a Frost Rune to pair it with for a Death Strike.
Same applies regardless of if you're playing disease/less.

What is Disease-less Blood?
Disease-less Blood is a play style where you do not apply diseases through Icy Touch and Plague Strike. You don't use either of them at all unless you find yourself needing the -20% attack speed debuff from Frost Fever applied through Icy Touch. If you have someone else that can bring the -20% attack speed debuff provided by Frost Fever (such as another Death Knight, Protection Paladin, Feral Druid, or a Warrior) this is a highly recommended play style. It brings in some extra Death Strikes for a minimal amount of Threat loss. The only abilities that lose to this are Heart Strike and Blood Boil. Heart Strike still gains damage depending on how many diseases you have on the target and Blood Boil gains damage if you have 1 disease on the target. The loss for Heart Strike is rather minor and if you need the extra AoE Threat you can always use just Icy Touch.

• Mastery

Mastery is something entirely new, you get a different Mastery depending on what Specialization you choose. In the case of Blood Tanks, we get Blood Shield. Blood Shield is our own version of the Discipline Priest's Absorb Shield. You apply it to yourself through Death Strike and it lasts 10 seconds, or until it absorbs damage equal to 50% of what Death Strike healed you for, and can be strengthened to absorb even more with Mastery.

Death Strike has received a new Healing Mechanic to go along with this: It will now heal you for 30% of the total damage you took in the last 5 seconds. This mechanic makes Death Strike great for situations with abiliites such as Soul Reaper (from the Lich King encounter in Icecrown Citadel) where you take a very large amount of damage. The Blood Shield you'd generate after that would be immensely strong. You'll want to watch out so when you take large amounts of damage in a short period of damage you'll have a Death Strike to use to bomb your Blood Shield.

My suggestion is unless you know you're about to take a large amount of damage (through a boss ability or whatnot) spread your Death Strikes out. It has a 5 second healing rule now, so instead of whacking two Death Strikes together spread them out, maybe one every 5 seconds or so to keep Blood Shield up for as much as possible.

Does Mastery have a cap?
There is currently no known cap on Mastery which therefore leads me to believe that there is not a cap currently implemented onto Mastery.

• Vengeance

Vengeance is a new mechanic given to all Tanks as one of their talent tree specialization bonuses. It takes 5% of incoming damage from each individual hit and turns it into attack power. In a long-duration encounter this will basically ensure you as a tank pull your weight on the meters (just a bit). It has a slight decay factor to it but nothing much to worry about, you can still stack it up pretty easily, of course only up to 10% of your total Health however.

Duration? This is a question that I've seen a lot. Vengeance has no fixed "duration." It'll just show up as a buff whenever you take any damage. Once you leave combat Decay will kick in and soon it'll be gone, how long it takes to decay entirely depends entirely on how strong it is. If it stacks to full effect/near full it'll take a lot of time. If its only stacked to say 20% of its full effect it'll decay pretty fast. The design of this ability isn't made with Heroics in mind, it'll really pull its weight in Raids, where its made for.

Vengeance also makes Stamina even more welcome than it has been till now, both on Gear and on Gems.

• Races

Your race selection will vary depending on what you want to do in WoW:
Horde:
PvE DPS & Tank: Orc (Taurens are also slightly viable Tanks)
PvP: Undead
Alliance:
PvE DW DPS: Human
PvE 2H DPS: Draenei
PvE Tank: Night Elf
PvP: Human

• Best in Slot Gear

Shadowmourne for Tanks; Yes and No. It's probably a bigger boost for your DPS, however it's a nice Threat Weapon because of the proc, so it's still partially viable. Is that a good reason to take it away from a DPS? I wouldn't really say so, of course there are other factors to keep in mind such as if anyone else in your Guild deserves it, so it's really quite situational.

• Helm - Sanctified Scourgelord Faceguard/Broken Ram Skull Helm for more Hit. - Reforging: Parry to Mastery. Hit to Mastery if excess.
• Amulet - Noose of Malachite/Bile-Encrusted Medallion for less Hit. - Reforging: Hit to Mastery if excess.
• Pauldrons - Sanctified Scourgelord Pauldrons - Reforging: Parry to Mastery.
• Cloak - Royal Crimson Cloak - Reforging: Hit to Mastery if excess.
• Breastplate - Sanctified Scourgelord Chestguard - Reforging: Parry to Mastery.
• Bracers - Bracers of Dark Reckoning - Reforging: Parry to Mastery.
• Gloves - Taldaram's Plated Fists/Sanctified Scourgelord Handguards for Set Bonus. - Reforging: Parry to Mastery. Hit to Mastery if excess.
• Belt - Belt of Broken Bones - Reforging: Parry to Mastery.
• Legplates - Legguards of Lost Hope - Reforging: Parry to Mastery.
• Boots - Treads of Impending Resurrection/Grinning Skull Greatboots for more Expertise. - Reforging: Parry to Mastery. Expertise to Mastery if excess.
• Ring - Ashen Band of Endless Courage - Reforging: Hit to Mastery if excess.
• Ring - Juggernaut Band - Reforging: Parry to Mastery.
• Trinket - Juggernaut's Vitality - Reforging: N/A.
• Trinket - Sindragosa's Flawless Fang - Reforging: N/A.
• Weapon - Glorenzelg, High-Blade of the Silver Hand - Reforging: Crit to Mastery.
• Relic - Sigil of the Bone Gryphon/Sigil of Insolence for more Hit. - Reforging: Parry to Mastery. Hit to Mastery if excess.
• Profile

• Relics

Relics are also known as Sigils for Death Knights. The same way as a Gun will give a Warrior some minor Stats, so do Sigils now. Here's a list of them:
Sigil of the Bone Gryphon - This will probably be the one most of you choose, it gives both Dodge and Parry and has the highest iLevel which among other things means the most Stamina.
Sigil of Insolence - If you want additional Hit without having to Gem for it this Sigil will be your friend.
Sigil of Deflection - Look no further if you need additional Expertise without having to Gem for it, because this lovely Sigil can easily provide you with some.

Note: Relics currently have no Socket Bonus in-game. This may change at some point in the future.

• Stats

Expertise: 14% or 56 expertise needed for the parry cap against bosses (almost impossible to obtain) - You gain 6 expertise from Blood Specialization and it shows in the character screen. 23 is the minimum requirement not to have any problems during Raids.

Hit Rating: 8% is the hit cap for 2H attacks and sepcials. You do NOT need to be hit capped for Tanking. But keep in mind that the higher hit cap the less chance to miss so having about 6-7% hit so you don't end up wasting a load of GCDs.

Spell hit cap is at 17% -1% from Heroic Presence if you are a Draenei (Note this is no longer a Group-Wide Buff so you need to be a Draenei to have this buff). If you put 3 points into Virulence the requirement is reduced to 11% (not including Heroic Presence). Do keep in mind however that not all of our attacks are spells. You are required to get less hit rating to obtain 1% spell hit compared to melee hit, so make sure to check your Spell tab for your actual hit rating.

What stats to aim for:

With the launch of TBC tanks started to gem for stamina so they don't have to rely on RNG (Random Number Generator) for their survivability. Of course you might get lucky dodge/parry streaks by gemming for avoidance, but you might also get unlucky and take several hits in a row and die. A tank that gemmed for stamina could have survived that just because of the higher HP pool which also gives your healers more time to heal you up. You can always rely on stamina because there is no RNG involved and the main goal of a successful raider should be to reduce the possible amount of RNG to a minimum. Avoidance has become more interesting in Cataclysm where healers now have limited mana consumption, but it is still inferior since it relies on RNG. If it doesn't proc when you need it to it does absolutely nothing for you, and this is and will always be its weakness, you cannot control it. Now, onto stamina; people make the mistake of thinking they need to always be topped off. This is not true. A Healer can easily keep you at 50% without consuming extra mana to bring you to 100%, when healers had just about unlimited mana and tanks could go from 100% to 20% in 2-3 blows or even less being constantly topped off was a requirement, this no longer applies.

As awesome as Stamina is, Mastery is great as well. The more of it you can get the stronger your Blood Shield gets so its a good idea to reforge as much Avoidance as possible into Mastery.

Do note that as of 4.0.1 Dodge and Parry have identical Diminishing Return now, so one is greater than the other only if you have less of it.

Some Formulas to keep in mind:
Stamina = Vengeance = Threat
Mastery = Blood Shield = Absorb

Another thing to keep in mind is that you'll always want to have Plate Gear equipped, no matter what, otherwise you lose the 5% Stamina bonus provided by Plate Specialization.

• Reforging

Reforging allows you take 40% of one Stat and reforge it into another Stat that isn't already on that item. You cannot reforge base stats (Stamina, Strength, Agility, Spirit etc, white stats basically) or Sockets. For example, you have an item with the following Stats:
100 dodge
58 parry

You can reforge either 100 dodge into 60 dodge and 40 mastery, or you can reforge 58 parry into 35 parry and 23 mastery. This process can be undone and you can have items reverted back to how they originally were. You cannot reforge more than 1 stat per piece of armor. If you reforge a stat and then want to reforge another one you need to revert the item back to how it originally was first and then change it. Keep in mind that you can only reforge Trinkets with "equip" stats. Proc and white stats cannot be reforged, which makes most trinkets be impossible to change. For example, you can reforge Corpse Tongue Coin but not Sindragosa's Flawless Fang.

What Stats should I Reforge from, and what Stats should I Reforge to?
You should always try and reforge parry. If your Gear doesn't have parry there's a chance it'll have something else, mainly hit or expertise, both of which you can reforge if you have excess amounts of. Remember: you do not need to be hit capped to tank, although having the softcap of 26 expertise is recommended it is not entirely mandatory either if you can hold threat. Keeping this in mind, if you feel you have excess amounts of Hit and/or Expertise you can choose to reforge them into something more welcome, in our case - Mastery.

If you want to aim for the Hit Cap and the Expertise Soft-Cap, you'll want to treat Reforging this way:
Excess Hit? See below.
Excess Hit but need more Expertise? Reforge excess Hit to Expertise.
Excess Expertise? See below.
Excess Expertise but need more Hit? Reforge excess Expertise to Hit.
Excess Expertise and Hit? Reforge to Mastery.
Excess Mastery? No such thing.

Where can you reforge? There are special Npcs for this. Guards in Capital Cities can point you to such Npcs.

• Gemming

Icecrown Citadel Specific Gemming:
If you're only raiding Icecrown Citadel discard the below, go for straight Solid Majestic Zircon in every Socket, there is no Bonus worth taking left anymore with the stacking Zone-Wide Buff on Stamina, Healing and Damage. You still need 1 red to complete your Meta however, so that doesn't count.
If a socket bonus is of +9 Stamina, take it (example). If if its less, like +6 Stamina, don't bother (example) or even more like +12 stamina (example) (Note this doesn't count for Helms since in some cases they can be the cheapest way to complete your Meta Gem requirements).
You should always have this Gem in your Gear if you're not aiming for the socket bonus:
Blue Socket: Solid Majestic Zircon
You want to always have the following Gems in your Gear when you're going for socket bonuses:
Yellow Socket: Regal Eye of Zul
Red Socket: Guardian's Dreadstone
If you already have 26 Expertise, take the following gem instead of Guardian's Dreadstone:
Red Socket: Defender's Dreastone
If you need both Hit and Expertise and you've got a red socket to fill, try this gem:
Red Socket: Accurate Dreadstone
If you're a Jewelcrafter you should focus on getting 3 of Solid Dragon's Eye in your gear giving you a total of 63 extra stamina.

Meta: You always want to have this Meta Gem: Austere Earthsiege Diamond

• Enchanting

• Helm - Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector +37 Stamina +20 Dodge
• Pauldrons - Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle +20 Dodge +22 Stamina
• Cloak - Mighty Armor +225 Armor
• Breastplate - Super Health +275 Health/Powerful Stats +10 All Stats
• Bracers - Major Stamina +40 Stamina, Expertise +15 Expertise Leatherworking Only: Fur Lining - Stamina +102 Stamina
• Gloves - Heavy Borean Armor Kit +18 Stamina, Armsman +10 Parry +2% Threat, Precision +20 Hit, Expertise +15 Expertise
• Belt - Eternal Belt Buckle +1 Socket
• Legplates - Frosthide Leg Armor +55 Stamina +22 Agility
• Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality +15 Stamina Minor Runspeed Increase, Greater Fortitude +22 Stamina
• Rings - Enchanting Only: Enchant Ring - Stamina +30 Stamina
• Weapon - Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle +4% Armor +2% Stamina

• Recommended Professions

Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting are the best professions you can get right now. With Jewelcrafting you gain 63 Stamina from Solid Dragon's Eye and with Blacksmithing you gain 2 Sockets for Bracers and Gloves which give you 60 more Stamina for a total of 123 extra Stamina. You can also obtains patterns to craft better Gear for yourself and Patterns to get Gems easier without having to rely on another Jewelcrafter. Both professions give you a high amount of profit. Another option would be Mining since at 450 it also gives you 60 Stamina, but its not as flexible as the JC Gems or the BS Sockets which you can use whatever kind of stats you want.

• Consumables

Flask: Flask of Stoneblood

Food: Rhinolicious Wormsteak, Snapper Extreme or Blackened Dragonfin. Use the stat you need the most for the fight you are doing.

Potions: You will most likely use Indestructible Potions all the time, but make sure you are carrying some Runic Healing Potions with you. You can use an Indestructible Potion before you engage a boss which gives you the possibility to use it midfight once more.

• Macros

• Focus Macro

Code:

/focus

Very important for almost every bossfight.

• Horn of Winter Macro

Code:

#showtooltip
/cancelaura Horn of Winter reset=20
/cancelaura Battle Shout
/cast Horn of WInter

The first line is for people that don't use the Horn of Winter Glyph. The rest is for anyone that has a Warrior in their Raids. First it cancels any existing Horn of Winter and then applies yours so if you try to apply Horn of Winter with Battle Shout or a longer Horn of Winter up you won't get the "There is a more powerful Spell Active" Message anymore. You'll also have to ask your Shamans not to use their Strength of Earth Totem as well because you can't cancel that and they don't stack. You will not be able to use your Horn of Winter ability at all without this Macro if Battle Shout or a longer duration Horn of Winter is active. You will not be able to use Horn of Winter at all if Strength of Earth Totem is up.

• Healing Macro

Code:

#showtooltip
/castsequence  reset=60 Raise Dead,  Death Pact

First it casts Raise Dead to summon a pet and then it uses Death Pact to heal you. Resets every 60 seconds (you might die before you get a chance to use it).

• Focus Target Taunt

Code:

#showtooltip Dark Command
/cast [target=focus] Dark Command

This taunts your focus target without you having to target it, very handy.

• Mouseover Taunt Target

Code:

#showtooltip Dark Command
/cast [@mouseover] Dark Command

This one casts Dark Command on the Target that your mouse is hovering over.

For more Macros I suggest you try this site: WoWWiki Death Knight Macros

• Addons:

Magic Runes - Rune addon, helps with tracking Rune cooldowns.

ForteXorcist - An addon to track your diseases and other abilities.

Blood Shield Tracker - An addon that tries to calculate how much Blood Shield will absorb for.

WakeSpams - An addon that announces when important abilities are used, highly customizable.

Omen - A threat meter, must have addon for tanks.

• Raiding:

In raiding you want to have a good, strong UI, nothing that gets in your way, especially as a Tank. When you're making up a Raiding UI there's only one really simple rule to remember: If its useful, have it, otherwise, eliminate it or hide it during Raiding. A cluttery UI full of useless addons isn't good.
This command is very important, it zooms your screen out to Max:
/console cameradistancemaxfactor 4
Every Tank should know that command. Above I listed some must Tanking Addons. Every person has different preferences when it comes to UIs so don't expect yours to look exactly the same.


I'm done, enjoy. And give constructive feedback + criticism.

No idea about a macro like that.

For SoB - Yes, it refreshes (IIRC) fast enough that 3/3 just makes it overkill. I don't have exact numbers but you can find them somewhere on EJ if you're really into that.

Yeah I got that in a few minutes ago, someone else reminded me of it too.

Totem issue is that if its down we don't get any Runic power from HoW if Strength of Earth Totem is up, so even if you wanted to hit it just for the Rp, you no longer can, unlike pre-4.0.1.

Originally Posted by totalnoob

Since I also want to get accustomed to more traditional tanking builds, I was wondering about 2/3 Sob when 2handed tanking. Is this just because the ability tends to refresh itself before you get 3 swings in, or is there some sort of internal ppm that isn't listed in the tooltip?

Also, do you know of any macros that can be written to check for numbers of available runes before casting a certain spell? For example: Cast plague strike if unholy runes = 2, or cast Icy Talons if unholy runes < 2 and frost runes > 0. Maybe something like: Cast HS if blood runes = 2, or cast Blood Tap if blood runes = 1 and both unholy/frost runes < 2.

Those kind of macros where forbidden in Patch 1.something to prevent "autorogue" macros that made decisions upon every possibility (You could check is buff X up, if no use Y, is debuff Y up if no use Z, etc. no autopilot allowed)


The "standard builds" posted here will be disagreed upon by a lot of people since they have some really useless feats. Disease-less build featuring blood caked blade? Come on, BCB is what you want even more when you got diseases up. Mostly useless things like Abomination's Might (there are a lot of other classes that bring it) and Crimson Scourge (hooray for 1500 extra threat if you are at 8000 AP).

3/3 SoB will probably become mandatory in every tanking build as you are in need for every bit of runic power you can get your hands on. And the chance that 3/3 will refresh itself is a lot smaller than being starved with 2/3 SoB.

This will most likely be the spec covering the basic needs:
http://wowtal.com/#k=Yfqpchnv.a5o.deathknight.

You may add:
BCB - more threat
AboM - if noone else in your 10m brings it (very unlikely)
BoneSh - if you know there'll be some big hits you need to soften, but it's a rather clunky cooldown with 1 UH cost

Originally Posted by Ronyx

"Reforging comes in extremely useful now at level 80 since its our only source of Mastery. As such, you'll want to always reforge all possible Avoidance into Mastery."

That's a bit generalized. Can you elaborate a bit more? An old TankSpot thread about dodge / parry diminishing returns sprang to mind when I read this, and unless something about that has changed I'm sure there are going to be points where reforging dodge (parry) is better then reforging parry (dodge).

Some napkin math: Check this one

I plan to avoid the diseaseless playstyle since I have the sinking feeling that blizzard will do something to kill it.

Can an admin please sticky this and title it "All death knights with the intention of tanking please read this". Maybe, just maybe it'll cutdown on the amount of parry gemming, plague strike spamming tanks that i get when i que for my daily heroic on alts.

I bow.

Originally Posted by Ronyx

"Reforging comes in extremely useful now at level 80 since its our only source of Mastery. As such, you'll want to always reforge all possible Avoidance into Mastery."

That's a bit generalized. Can you elaborate a bit more? An old TankSpot thread about dodge / parry diminishing returns sprang to mind when I read this, and unless something about that has changed I'm sure there are going to be points where reforging dodge (parry) is better then reforging parry (dodge).

Still working out the kinks.

@Nye - Blood-Caked Blade in the disease-less Build is more of a "filler" talent to clear the tier. I had to put points somewhere. I did put a bit too many points but I figured it would be better than 3/3 Scent of Blood which will just cause Scent of Blood to get refreshed too much. I'll do a bit of playing around on Live to see how it works out. I want to see if the change to Imp. Blood pres and Rune Strike from the latest beta build are included in 4.0.1 before making any changes to it.

Blizzard will definitely do something to kill Disease-less Blood (again) but while it lasts I'll probably take the liberty of enjoying it.

---------- Post added 2010-10-13 at 04:09 AM ----------

Well it appears as though blizzard has managed to show how moronic they can be once again, the latest Beta Build with two of the most important Blood changes this whole Beta did not reach Live with 4.0.1. Guess it was too hard to delay 4.0.1 just to give us a closer version of finished classes, or to just launch this Build 3 days earlier.

I'll do some testing with SoB on Live since Beta is... ahead of us, but it'll have to be tomorrow since I'm EU.

Originally Posted by Alcotraz

Blood Tap - Removes the 6% health cost from your Blood Tap ability. Yes you won't really notice a big difference with or without this but since you'll mainly use it on Rune Tap now, let's not waste over 1/3rd on Blood Tap cost.

small mistake here: blood tap does not cost "6% health" but "6% of base health", which is far less. probably around 1-2% actual health, for a decent geared tank.

but very good guide overall

Sy - Thanks for that

Update: I'm tagging Reforging as Under Construction until tomorrow, I want to get a bit more Testing done. Cheers for the feedback!

Originally Posted by Alcotraz

Sy - Thanks for that

you're welcome

edit:
another minor flaw: you are listing blacksmithing and jewelcrafting as the best proffesions. but as far as i know, leatherworking lets you enchant bracers with 102 stamina, which is 62 stamina above the general enchant.
so if you are going for pure stamina, leatherworking is better than blacksmithing or mining.
(not a big deal thought, and i guess most people would go for higher flexibility and use for gear, ect anyway)

SoB napkin math for averages:
Uptime = 0.15 * Talent Points spent in SoB * Player Attack Speed / Mob Attack Speed
max. RP/s = 1.5 * Talent Points spent in SoB / Mob Attack Speed

With an average of 2s attack speed for a boss (2s base speed -20% Atk Speed slow + special every 5s) SoB would be at 0.75 RP/s per talent point with no haste and a 3.7s 2h we'd look at an average uptime of 83.3% and 2.25 RP/s with 3 talent points spent. With 2 points we'd be at 1.5 RP/s and 55.5% uptime.
With all those haste buffs in raids and on gear etc. it should very well be possible to be at a constant 3.4s atk speed so the uptime would shorten to 76.5%@3 points or 51%@2 points.
0.75 RP/s are a difference of 45 RP per minute or, in terms of RS (30 RP), an additional RS every 40s.
1 RS is soon 150% weapon damage.

Let's compare 1 point of SoB with 1 point of BCB:
1 Point BCB = 10% chance of 25% weapon damage diseaseless or 50% weapon damage diseased.
3.4 weapon speed as above, 40s to get 150% weapon damage.
Diseaseless: 40s is ~12 auto-hits of which 1.2 would proc 25% weapon damage so we would get 30% weapon damage
Diseased: again ~12 auto-hits now procing for twice the damage so we'd be at 60% weapon damage.

Basically, even if half of your 3rd stacks of SoB would be clipped, it would still be superior to BCB.

And without having done the math, I'd give my left ball if 3/3 SoB would be inferior to 2/3 SoB + 1/2 AboM. So what alternative is there for SoB in terms of threat generation?

Hm. Ok well that works for me. Disease-less Build dropped BCB and got 3/3 SoB.

Sad that the Rune Strike change will be coming with the next patch though (4.0.3?)

Sigil of Deflection - Look no further if you need additional Expertise without having to Gem for it, because this lovely Sigil can easily provide you with some.

A mistake perhaps.

Great guide, moderators sticky this please.

Now BCB is actually a really good talent it seems to proc about 5-6 times in a normal dungeon pull.