Blood Tank ... Squishy?

[PowerGamez]

You shouldn't feel squishy. DK tanks are amazing in that they take so much less damage than other tanks due to their shields. I have 3 tanks (Pally, Druid, DK ) and by far the one I feel most comfortable on is my DK. Download the addon Blood Shield Tracker and configure it to show your shields well. Timing is essential to getting great big shields.

Try not to use your death/frost/unholy runes for blood strike (unless you're trying to spam out some AoE threat) - always use them for deathstrike.

Use your short CDs A LOT. Use them readily and all the time:

- VB + deathstrike healing + Rune Tap (1min)
- LB + Self DC (2min)
-AMS (45secs)
- Bone Shield ( 1 Min) - handy to pop after getting a big shield off for -20% dmg for a fair while
-DRW

EJ would dispute a few of your glyph choices as would I so head to there for more info. There are better options but they won't make or break your game play.

[Drunkenvalley]

Bwahahaha. DKs shouldn't feel squishy? Bullshit. <3

You're only going to DS every 6-10 seconds. Your shield will not last nearly that long. Ever. So you have relatively long period lacking healing and shields. Periods that paladins and warriors won't have by comparison.

[Big Baz]

Ignore Hit/Exp completely.

Stack Mastery like crazy and re-forge in to avoidance where you can't in to Mastery.

You'll have moments of squishiness after you've lost BS and not got DS up for example. Shouldn't be too much of a problem.

[SurrealNight]

I don't think "squishy" is the right word for us, as I know I take the same or less dmg than our warriors/bears/pallys in boss fights. What does happen is our health tends to spike down a lot more than the other tanks which can be jarring to healers. We go from taking a lot of damage to suddenly taking very little, rinse and repeat.

Assuming you have good DS per min and cycle your CD's you just need to work with any regular healers on what to expect with DK's. I had to point out to my priest friend that even when I drop to 30% life I usually pop VB, work in 2 RT (for 28% heal of 53k) and gain 25% DR with WotN. This isn't even counting the follow up DS heals/shields.

This isn't counting situations of extremely high damage (like flames orders cho'gall + worship stacks), but it is tough for healers to get used to how our life tends to spike.

[Ashareth]

You shouldn't feel squishy. DK tanks are amazing in that they take so much less damage than other tanks due to their shields. I have 3 tanks (Pally, Druid, DK ) and by far the one I feel most comfortable on is my DK. Download the addon Blood Shield Tracker and configure it to show your shields well. Timing is essential to getting great big shields.

Try not to use your death/frost/unholy runes for blood strike (unless you're trying to spam out some AoE threat) - always use them for deathstrike.

Use your short CDs A LOT. Use them readily and all the time:

- VB + deathstrike healing + Rune Tap (1min)
- LB + Self DC (2min)
-AMS (45secs)
- Bone Shield ( 1 Min) - handy to pop after getting a big shield off for -20% dmg for a fair while
-DRW

EJ would dispute a few of your glyph choices as would I so head to there for more info. There are better options but they won't make or break your game play.

DK tanks are indeed the most squishy tanks and the more spiky because they rely so much on active things to survive, and have far less armor than the other 3. On top of that, they are balanced around taking damage, to generate heals and shields, which is somewhat perturbing for healers, and don't really works well on AoE fights (the amount you absorb with shield is far inferior to the amount of unmitigated damage you take from them while your shield is down (ie most of the time).

DK really needs either DS Healing/Blood Shield brought back up a bit, or their armor propped up again. Because right now DK have the less armor, the less health, don't have more avoidance, and don't have a "block" mechanism as efficient as others (in fact, it's quite nice, nearly too good on slow hitting boss, it's shit against multiple opponents or fast hitting mobs).

[Dyzon]

DK tanks are indeed the most squishy tanks and the more spiky because they rely so much on active things to survive, and have far less armor than the other 3.

You obviously haven't played a bear recently, talk about a poor block mechanic.

Regardless, your point is only that they require more skill to play due to active abilities not they are actually squishier. Sure we're not great on AOE, but Pallys and Wars have had a significant step up on AOE all the way back to BC, ultimately it's really not game-breaking. Bears actually have less health, but health isn't really an issue, this isn't Wrath (yet...). The tanks are pretty well balanced this tier, it's the next tier you should be worried about.

[Mudkiper]

You obviously haven't played a bear recently, talk about a poor block mechanic.

Bears arn't remotely squishy on trash anymore - like they were, unless the ones your playing with are failing.

[Leben]

One thing you nee to be aware of as a blood DK is that its a very "busy" class. There is a reason we have a ton of cooldowns. We have less armour than any other tank, yet have a similar (yet, perhaps slightly lower) avoidance level than a druid in similar gear levels. It all about effective use of your cooldowns, making sure you are covered for special boss attacks, or just keeping your cooldowns up as much as humanly possible for fights where incoming damage is very high (see Nefarian and Cho'gall heroic). Death Strike is important of course and later in the fight when you have a solid lead on threat, you can save your DS to help heal up any damage you may take, which has the double effect of assisting the healers with getting you back to full HP, but also the amount healed is based on the amount of damage you just took. Its not rare for me to see DS heals of 60k+ in heroic encounters, which in turn gives me a physical damage shield of around 100k+ (I saw 160K shield from a single DS once. It was a nice feeling )

So in short, we are not squishy. Unless you let yourself be squishy. Use ALL your coolowns as often as you can and try to save your DS heals until you take some damage. Sometimes it misses and thats OK. Just do it again!

[kaelleria]

My healers swear I'm the easiest tank to heal out of the 3 tanks we run with (Paladin, Druid, DK(me), sometimes war). We all have the the sameish gear. This isn't to say I take less damage... Looking at our logs I usually end up taking a bit more damage, but have some rediculous amount of absorbs and healing to make up for it. I'm also significantly better at rolling cool downs than the other tanks are.

And as I've said in other threads... You cannot avoid avoidance. I usually end up with 40-50% avoidance when you count up dodge/parry/miss/full absorbs.

As of now it really seems that good DK tanks have to play better than other classes to be competitive. Right now we're in a pretty good spot, but they will probably have to do something to keep us competitive, probably starting in Firelands hardmodes.

[Mimic]

I'm going to throw this advice, sorry if someone says it before me, but you should keep your dodge and parry as close together as you can(mathematically it's better).

[Ashareth]

You obviously haven't played a bear recently, talk about a poor block mechanic.

Regardless, your point is only that they require more skill to play due to active abilities not they are actually squishier. Sure we're not great on AOE, but Pallys and Wars have had a significant step up on AOE all the way back to BC, ultimately it's really not game-breaking. Bears actually have less health, but health isn't really an issue, this isn't Wrath (yet...). The tanks are pretty well balanced this tier, it's the next tier you should be worried about.

Yeeppee, another stupid clueless assumption...
I DO play all 4 tanks, including the Bear one. And since the last patch his "block-like" has become better than the DK one by quite a margin, due to the fact it's up more often AND there is nothing special to do about it (it procs from the bear's attack).

And no, DK don't only requires more skill, they are far more squishy because their "block like" is only up a fraction of the time (less than 40% of the time on nearly all fights), and they take a shitload more damage when it's not up.

And not good at AoE ? Once again it depends what you mean by that. If it's "AoE survival" yes ours is shitty. If it's threat/damage we are the only ones competing whit Pallies (no, even if some people really want to convince themselves that Wars are AoE threat/damage Gods, they aren't, they are pathetic).

For AoE Survival you currently have something like Pally>War>>Bear>>DK and it's not fun. The nerf dks got in the early Cata patches on armor mostly havce been too harsh and should be reverted partially.
That would go a long way to make them viable at AoE tanking/survival, and a little less spiky on single target fights, even if it means to tone down a little the coefficient of mastery to have blood shield scale slower.

[pedrodevaca]

For AoE Survival you currently have something like Pally>War>>Bear>>DK and it's not fun. The nerf dks got in the early Cata patches on armor mostly havce been too harsh and should be reverted partially.
That would go a long way to make them viable at AoE tanking/survival, and a little less spiky on single target fights, even if it means to tone down a little the coefficient of mastery to have blood shield scale slower.

We are arguably the strongest single target tank when in the hands of a good player. Damage taken will always be higher than the other tanks. But subtract out healing done and absorbs - and I almost always have less damage taken then other tanks. We also have decent snap threat which other classes struggle with occasionally. I'm ok with having relatively crappy AoE survival (which effects basically one heroic mode fight) in exchange for being slightly superior in nearly all other fights. The other tank classes would have a hard time surviving many of the things that I have managed to squeak through.

[Deleted]

At some times I feel squishy aswell, especially if the mobs are doing physicly dmg spikes. But you aren't, not at all. I can drop people their jaw in ZG after what I did (solo'ing first boss, solo'ing last boss if there is 1 chain left), especially those moments make me feel overpowered. Seeing that you have a 100k+ shield is nice aswell.
My stats:
145k in Blood without any other buffs.
23.08 mastery -> 144% shield.
31.11% dodge+parry with 400 rating in between.
And 29705 armor

[mihaitha]

If you feel squishy you are probably doing something wrong. Make sure you keep your debuffs up (Frost Fever and Scarlet Fever - these make you take 10% less physical damage 20% more slowly). Don't tank diseaseless unless you have another tank providing the debuffs for you - for example paladin tanks apply their debuffs by their normal rotation, you as a DK however need to make sure you refresh them). Also keep Blade Barrier up by using both your blood runes before it falls off (that's another 6% less damage you take). And like the others already said, use your cooldowns wisely, not only as a last resort solution, if you are there then it's probably too late for them to be of any use (except maybe for Lichborne + self DC spam - provided you have enough RP stacked - or Raise Dead + DP - which is a GCD away).

[Drunkenvalley]

We are arguably the strongest single target tank when in the hands of a good player. Damage taken will always be higher than the other tanks. But subtract out healing done and absorbs - and I almost always have less damage taken then other tanks. We also have decent snap threat which other classes struggle with occasionally. I'm ok with having relatively crappy AoE survival (which effects basically one heroic mode fight) in exchange for being slightly superior in nearly all other fights. The other tank classes would have a hard time surviving many of the things that I have managed to squeak through.

Superior? Hah, not with looming threat of random tank death. That's the DK in a nut-shell. Even if we had lower damage taken (which I do sometimes have in fact) we still have our damage taken being all over the place. A warrior or paladin can rest comfortably around a certain buffer of health, but DKs go from zero to hero and hero to zero at seemingly random.

Simply put, our mechanics make all healers shit bricks. Healers shitting bricks is really unnecessary when you have the option of it not happening.
DKs are "fine" in the sense that they're perfectly capable, but less "fine" because their hp's all over the place.