Random tips/tricks/advice for Blood tanks

[Castif]

Since it is still fairly early in the expansion there is a lot of stuff going on which we have no clue about because it was not tested on beta (trash in raids for example) or something that was overlooked.

So I figure we can add things we note while playing here that may help each other out. (feel free to include anything that you may think is common knowledge, some people may not have thought about it if they are still in lolfaceroll wrath mode)

My two so this post has a contribution:

1.Heroic Throne of tides- the right side gigoblin pulls were they throw the poison spears, have any rogues sap.. then run in with ams up while your other cc follow up with their ccs as ams will absorb all the poison spears they throw at you, turning a rather annoying pull into a super easy one.

2. Halfus Wyrmbreaker (bastion of twilight) The drakes hit extremely slow and as such really hurt your 5sec rule of bs goodness, let one of your other tanks tank them and you tank halfus, he hits rather quickly and is much easier for you to mitigate then the drakes. (I noticed 3/4 mill dmg less taken over the fight duration by switching and the tank i switched with only gained about 150k more)

[Ikkatsu]

Why would attack speed hurt the 5 seconds of damage taken?

Usually when a mob hits slower, its because they hit harder... therefore compensating for the lack of hits.

Or did i misinterperate what you said?

[Deleted]

When tanking the Omnotron Defense system, the pull and first tank should be split if possible to allow the DK to tank Electron and if possible Toxitron.
Magma and Arcanotron's incomming damage to the tank is very random, that DS has very unpredictable use. E+T do most of their damage as melee to the tank, making DS easy to use. Also Tox's shield hitback can be removed even AFTER it has been applied, using AMS. So if either Elec or Tox are up on the pull, send in the DK first, if it's Mag or Arc, then send in the other tank. This ensures that the DK will tank at least one of the favourable bosses, and give good chance that you'll get both Tox and Elec.

According to recount, you'll take more damage than the other tank, but you'll do so much more self healing, evening it out and making the healers job so much easier.

[Maharishi]

Why would attack speed hurt the 5 seconds of damage taken?

Usually when a mob hits slower, its because they hit harder... therefore compensating for the lack of hits.

Or did i misinterperate what you said?

I think he meant they're so slow, BS may drop off before it has a chance to be consumed.

My tip

/castsequence [target=self][reset=100] Lichborne, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil

[Ikkatsu]

I think he meant they're so slow, BS may drop off before it has a chance to be consumed.

My tip

/castsequence [target=self][reset=100] Lichborne, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil, Death Coil

A better one would be:

#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast Lichborne
/cast [target=player] Death Coil

Its spammable (ie, even with Lichborne on CD it still casts a new Death Coil each time) and doesnt replace target).

I currently use this following macro for taunt to save myself a keybind:

/castsequence [reset=35] Death Grip, Dark Command, Dark Command, Dark Command

That way if you taunt on every CD, you will be back to Death Grip just after the CD wears off... otherwise it will reset back to Death Grip if the macro isnt used after 35 seconds.

You can also use the following Macro to apply the "Core Disease" Frost Fever via Icy Touch if you are playing Diseaseless but have no other class to apply Attack Speed Reduction.

/castsequence [reset=60] Outbreak, Icy Touch, Icy Touch, Icy Touch

[Castif]

Why would attack speed hurt the 5 seconds of damage taken?

Usually when a mob hits slower, its because they hit harder... therefore compensating for the lack of hits.

Or did i misinterperate what you said?

Sorry I should have mentioned that was for 25player mode were you will only be tanking 1 drake who honestly only hits slightly harder than halfus, but swings half as often as him... (numbers are made up but for example, halfus has a 1.5swing timer because of the 100% speed buff and is doing like 40k, the drakes have a 2.6 and are doing 60k). Tanking halfus is just more effective in terms of self mitigation and this early in the game ooming healers is honestly the most dangerous thing so anything you can do to reduce incoming dmg is great. Also another reason I tank halfus is because my other tank sucks at interupts on the shadow nova.( we had nether/storm up this week)

Ikkatsu:

I like the disease macro, i might have to incorporate that, but honestly the taunt macro I doubt I would use, I typically use dg more for positioning or moving things that the actual taunt it does (heroic stonecore room b4 3rd boss with the pats who aggro other groups is a great example, I always use it on the rift conjurers)

[Deleted]

A better one would be:
/castsequence [reset=60] Outbreak, Icy Touch, Icy Touch, Icy Touch

Why not:
/cast [mod:alt] Icy Touch;Outbreak

This will work fine if you have epidemic instead of lichborn spec.

[Ikkatsu]

Why not:
/cast [mod:alt] Icy Touch;Outbreak

This will work fine if you have epidemic instead of lichborn spec.

True.

I was under the impression most people have gone Lichborne though.

The one i posted suits me fine

---------- Post added 2010-12-16 at 02:53 PM ----------

I like the disease macro, i might have to incorporate that, but honestly the taunt macro I doubt I would use, I typically use dg more for positioning or moving things that the actual taunt it does (heroic stonecore room b4 3rd boss with the pats who aggro other groups is a great example, I always use it on the rift conjurers)

The only reason i have the taunt macro like that is to save me a keybind so i dont have two seperate binds for essentially the same purpose.

However... i only ever run dungeons with the Guild so its very rare that i need to use Death Grip in an emergency. I like to use it on the pull to grab a ranged mob away from the CCed mobs

On average it takes about 30-45 seconds to kill a single pack on Heroic Mode so by the time we are ready for the next pull, Death Grip is ready again.

[Deleted]

The only reason i have the taunt macro like that is to save me a keybind so i dont have two seperate binds for essentially the same purpose.

Seems like you can benefit from [mod:alt] here again! [mod:ctrl] is also useful, but sometimes can be a bit of a stretch.

Other useful macro ideas, simple ones:

/cast [mod:alt] Pestilence;[spec:1]Heart Strike;[spec:2] Blood Strike (or Festering Strike if your offspec is UH)

/cast [mod:alt] Icy Touch;Outbreak
/cast [mod:alt][spec:1] Bone Shield

Here, you use Icy Touch on pull, casting Bone Shield at same time, using your Frost and UH rune together. 30 seconds later you use outbreak, 30 seconds later, IT+Bone shield (CD finished) again. Only works well with epidemic spec.

/cast [mod:alt] Deathcoil;[spec:1]Rune Strike;[spec:2]Frost Strike (Or Death Coil, again, though clearly the Macro below is better if UH)

/cast [mod:alt,spec:1] Lichborne
/cast [mod:alt,spec:2][target=pet]Death Coil;[mod:alt,spec:1][target=player]Death Coil;Deathcoil

I didn't test this one as I don't use Lichborne spec. It _should_ work though, if your offspec is UH (heals pet).

/cast [mod:alt] Dark Command;Death Grip

[Yan]

Great Macros. My favorite from those listed is:

#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast Lichborne
/cast [target=player] Death Coil

Thanks Jinna and Ikkatsu for the great advice!

Note: Lichborn really is worth it IMO

[Ikkatsu]

Seems like you can benefit from [mod:alt] here again! [mod:ctrl] is also useful, but sometimes can be a bit of a stretch.

Im already using Mod Alts and Ctrl.

I think in total i have 26 keybinds (all important!)

[Deleted]

I think in total i have 26 keybinds (all important!)

Vent Details?

[Ikkatsu]

Vent Details?

Eh?

We use mumble, but why would you want that? o_O

[Deleted]

No, I was implicating that the vent details was one of the important keybinds

[Avatar Killer]

Lichborne/death coil combo has always been awesome considering the massive amount of RP we can generate when we are being attacked and use SoB. Basically taking damage = giving us the ability to heal ourselves with the exception of the CD timer for LB. In case of an emergency LB/DC combo is insane and when coupled with the glyph makes for a DC 100% health heal

[SurrealNight]

One that helped me save a lot of space is this one:

#Showtooltip
/castsequence reset=combat/target/6 Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence
/startattack [harm]
I'm not sure if the /startattack is required or not but hey it's working great to start both diseases and then spread with 1 button.

[Deleted]

Why are you using IT - PS instead of Outbreak exactly?

[SurrealNight]

I have one that cycles Outbreak > Pestilence as well. When questing and other things outside of dungeons where the pulls are closer then 1 minute fights it comes in handy.

[Appletini]

I like that DG/Taunt macro and may have to steal it.

A good addon to grab is Blood Shield tracker. It's not the most accurate thing in the world, but it basically predicts how big your Blood Shield will be on a little moveable bar and then has a second bar when Blood Shield is up that tells you how long before it expires and how much more damage it can absorb before dropping.

[Deleted]

2. Halfus Wyrmbreaker (bastion of twilight) The drakes hit extremely slow and as such really hurt your 5sec rule of bs goodness, let one of your other tanks tank them and you tank halfus, he hits rather quickly and is much easier for you to mitigate then the drakes. (I noticed 3/4 mill dmg less taken over the fight duration by switching and the tank i switched with only gained about 150k more)

I learned quickly last night that a DK should not try to tank Halfus if the Slate and Scion are up. I was there with a paladin tank and we had Storm, Scion and Slate drakes. The malevolent strikes debuff built up extremely fast, and as it did, Death Strike (and blood shield) just stopped working.

So I tanked the 2 Drakes (storm and scion) while we used Heroism to kill storm fast, then onto scion. We used Hand of Protection to remove the healing debuff once from the Pala tank and once scion was also dead, we went on to rotating the boss between the 2 tanks.

I was lucky at one point, that while DRW was up and I had 20% extra parry, for the malevolent strikes got up to 4 debuffs and wasn't able to refresh, and dropped off.