New to tanking, DK worth going for?

[Stened91]

Hi, i have been Dps (healer in ulduar) all my time in WoW, after all the new animations and revamps of classes and specs, how are DK tank? I was thinking of switching to tank and want a class that is fun to play and have abit more to it than press 1 button to do damage and 1 button for mitigation. I talked with the druids on their channel and they didnt reccomend guardians atm as they said it was very easy and is getting easyer next patch. Can you reccomend Blood DK?

[PL-Cibo]

Can you reccomend Blood DK?

Is Blood easy to play? depends on the content you like to do. But you have a ~ 5 button rotation without CDs. I don't know if you think this is complex. I do not. It gets harder the higher to content is, good kiting, placing deathstrikes to maximize healing, pulling and controlling etc. I would recommend to watch a few streams or videos where he good guys show their skills.

[Deleted]

First of all, what type of content do you expect to play as tank?

Blood dks are neither complicated or easy. Once you learn the ropes you're good to go, but there is always room for improvement. The higher the difficulty of the content, the more you'll learn to maximize survivability and damage. The spec suffers terribly due to no talent variabilty and mechanical flaws, but overrall is fun to play and has good animations/spells.

[Raiz]

It's one of the easiest tank to play. Druid is easier from what I've heard but it's still the only tank I've not played yet. So I won't make quick assumptions about the latter.
If you want a challenging tank, I'd tell you monk. But if you haven't played any tank yet, I'd not recommend it because it requires some addons to fully exploit the class (using Weak Auras could be more than enough).
If you want a tank with a lot of redundant spells, Paladins.
If not the above, and if you don't like classes with self heals but with strong DPS, then Warrior may be your best choice.
And then we have DH. I refuse to aknowledge it has a tank spec. But if you like having a class that has a strong DPS spec aswell, then, whatever. Pick it. Their tank spec has a lot of redundant spells aswell. Much like a paladin, except you'll have to use them more often.

[Raiju]

There's very few vengeance abilities one wouldn't use every single dungeon run, even if not all of them are useful on bosses. What are you classing as redundant here?

I'd say vengeance is the most fun tank to play, as a side note. Not particularly great if you want to do high level mythic raid tanking but they're the most fun tank I've played this expansion (Bdk, Pala, vdh mostly with a bit of warr/druid)

Bdk wasn't very 'fun' rotationally. It came above druids but that was all, and the lack of tools outside of basic tank kit feels a little annoying compared to palas/druids/dh.

[Raiz]

I'm probably biased. I don't like playing Vengeance nor Paladins. Vengeance has a lot of 12 sec (or 24-30) spells which doesn't feel satisfying when you use them (that's purely a personal point of view). I really hated to level with them because they did 0 damage, and I still feel this way 8 months later.

Paladins have 5 or 10 minutes CDs which feels weird because you can use them only once per fight. In other words, to cheese mechanics. In m+ it's hard to use because you'll lose aggro against big trash packs. It just feels counter intuitive.

[ONCHEhap]

Pros :
Very fun to play
High sustainability
God mode for overgeared content
Both easy and challenging to play*
Very active tanking
Vampiric blood is one of the most powerful,interactive and interesting tank CDs
Giant health pool
Great control over their targets,especially in dungeons
Competing with paladins for best m+ tanks
Vampiric aura (very strong 5 man group healing,can replace the healers for 15 seconds every 45 seconds)

Cons :
Very low damage (fixed in 7.2.5)
Lacks of mitigation (partially fixed with the 7.2.5 legendary rings)
Weak to spike damage
Lowest mobility
Close to no magic mitigation (Unending thirst fills a niche for fights like Star augur with no physical damage at all,making us reliant on leech,I love it,some may hate it)
Both easy and challenging to play*
Terrible for progression except if you're an exceptionnal tank


*Blood is easy to play,hard to master.the harder the content,the more you'll have to bust your ass to make it work,again I love that,some may hate it.You can't rely on passives and have to keep yourself alive with your own skill.I would go as far as saying that in higher mythic raiding content,blood is by far the hardest tank to play

[Watercolour]

After lurking these forums since WOTLK, I actually made an account to reply /attentionseek

Give Blood a shot. Ive been Unholy religiously since ICC and only a few weeks ago decided to try Blood. I think it feels fantastic, the only other time ive tanked as a DK was when Frost was the tank spec. The damage feels huge, survivability is awesome (bar taking more damage but being able to heal more) and it feels pretty easy to play.

One of the downsides to Blood (coming from Unholy ive not tried Frost in Legion) is that it feels like theres no buttons to press. I kinda feel like im keeping everything on CD unless I know theres some harsh mechanic or big dmg coming up. I'm in no way an expert tank, especially when choosing Blood just to make my life easier when raiding/dungeons/whatever but it honestly feels very strong.
Like I said at the start, just give it a shot. You might not like how it plays or how it feels, which fair enough then the spec isnt for you BUT if you enjoy it then we've got more tanks on Azeroth and youre having fun most of all.

[Deleted]

Hi, i have been Dps (healer in ulduar) all my time in WoW, after all the new animations and revamps of classes and specs, how are DK tank? I was thinking of switching to tank and want a class that is fun to play and have abit more to it than press 1 button to do damage and 1 button for mitigation. I talked with the druids on their channel and they didnt reccomend guardians atm as they said it was very easy and is getting easyer next patch. Can you reccomend Blood DK?

As most posters have pointed out, it depends on what you are going to use your tank for. Other aspects are if you prefer mobility, high DPS, good mitigation, active selfhealing or any other defining ability like Grip or Charge/Leap.

I will give you my 2 cents on the matter (have played all tanks this expansion as a mythic raider);
- When it comes down to complexity/difficulty of different tanks, there isn't much difference anymore. Sure monks might have some extra depth, but that's about it. All tank specs are quite easy to get a hang off, but in order to master it for min/maxing they all require some research and experience. With that said, I would not really recommend blood DK for a new or returning player, rather go for a druid or paladin.

- Currently all tanks are viable for pretty much anything (unless you going for world firsts). But it is a lot easier to perform well on a druid/paladin/monk in mythic raiding due to superior mitigation. Paladin/DH/DK all relies more on selfhealing to counter spike damage, so it makes them less forgiving and harder at times.

- Damage wise DK are bottom tier by far. If you want to do serious damage in dungeons you should roll druid/paladin/warrior.

- Mobility is also a big problem for DK's. Even though you can make it easier with certain setup (sephuz/aggrammar/nitro boost/bear tartare). Monks excel at this aspect, along with all other tanks being very mobile as well.

- Niche. DK is very strong right now in higher m+ dungeons. Reason being slower paced, better control with grip/massgrip and the "new" overpowered trait that gives 20% leech groupwide when you pop Consumption. On top of that very high selfhealing.

- Fun factor. This is obviously totally subjective. Do you like an active/reactive tank or more of a robust type that relies on heavy mitigation? Do you enjoy to charge between packs and use heroic leaps everywhere and do really high damage? Do you love to run into a big caster pack and massgrip them followed by a massacre AoE? Look at the DPS offspecs as well, any particular you are fond of?


In the end, Yes I would recommend blood DK! I found it by far the most interesting tank to play, even though I mainly raid as a DPS. Mobility was awful before getting the two legendaries i mentioned earlier, and the damage is a huge letdown (It's getting some heavy buffs though). On top of that I love both DPS specs that DK has.

[Philondra]

In addition to what the others have said, I would add that in choosing not just a tank, but any spec, one thing that you might be on the lookout for is the "WOW" factor. Points where you can say "That was awesome, I'm glad I'm a _____."

For me, the wow factors in being a Blood DK are:

* Popping Bonestorm in a huge pull and seeing all those numbers
* Getting slammed by a salvo of attacks and watching my HP bar pop back up to near-full with a Death Strike
* Making a huge pull in Mythic+ and then Gorefiend's Grasping everything into a tight clump
* Heart Striking in Death and Decay and seeing the sweeping animation together with a lot of numbers

If any of these sound fun to you, consider rolling Blood.

[Deleted]

you're all forgetting the best thing: the awesome squishing/splattering sounds you make when you're doing your thing in a raid/dungeon. it's (literally) visceral in a way that other tanks aren't. you basically feel like Dracula on steroids playing blood. And it's awesome xD

[ThePromise110]

The only reason I have rerolled from my DK is that because I play it well enough to make it worth bringing along.
If I wasn't so lazy and legos so silly I'd have switched to my Monk a long time ago.

[msdos]

When I started leveling my Druid again, preparing to tank on him, they removed Mark of Ursol that week. Then after that they shelled out the major DH tank changes, the Brewmaster stuff, then you could see they were actually starting to address tanks. Not long after that we got the Blood buffs.

They're showing that they're paying attention to tanks, namely Blood. We'd probably all be playing Druids or Warriors right now if they kept things the way they were before 7.2.

[Lamuria]

blood is less of an auto-pilot tank imo you have a lot less mitigation so you have to get used to keeping yourself up through other methods sure you'll freak out some people cause you'll take big spikes sometimes but your probably out healing those people anyways its a rather fun way to tank if you like being more self reliant