Long story short, I've primarily been shield tanks (Pally/Warrior) and while I do have a DK at 85 I promptly ignored him. I'm tempted to dust him off as it seems like a fun class in all their specs, and a different perspective on tanking. However, I'm pretty clueless about how to correctly play a Blood DK tank.
I kind of understand the Death Strike healing (I used it once in a while as DPS if I was taking damage) but does this ability get used as a normal attack, as part of the normal rotation/priority system? My understanding is when you use it, you get the Blood Shield absorb thing, so is the idea that you use it before the big attack to get a bubble up, and then use it again after the attack lands to heal yourself back up (and give you another shield)?
Next, Heart Strike. This move feels like Revenge, but is it used in the same way? If 4+ enemies do you use Heart Strike, or just spam Blood Boil? On that note, Blood Boil is like my Thunderclap? Use to apply debuffs, spam on AOE packs?
For cooldowns: Always have Bone Shield up before a pull, refresh it during the pull if it falls off? I get AMS (like Pally's Divine Protection) and Icebound Fortitude (like Shield Wall), what about the others? Vampiric Blood looks kinda like Enraged Regen or Last Stand. What about Dancing Rune Weapon? There seems to be more DK cooldowns than one can shake a stick at
Is there (or could someone give a Cliff Notes type version?) of how the DK abilities compare to others? As I said some make sense and are roughly equivalent to the abilities I know as a Warrior, but some (for instance, Dancing Rune Weapon, Army of the Dead, and some of their weird talents/gimmicks like using Lichborne + Death Coil) make no sense to me.
I'm pretty confident I could learn how to tank as a DK, just a bit afraid to try it since I've never done it before on one and from what I've always heard DK tanks are very unforgiving, and it's easy for a newbie to screw up badly.