Tanking Questions... with a DK twist

[Johnson420]

Howdy fellow DKs,

Just hit 80 with my DK, and looking to tank. Ive been playing WoW since it came out, had 7x lvl 70s spread across many servers, but trying to concentrate on 1 toon this time, and I decided it was going to be a death knight. The only problem is, ive nvr seriously tanked. (Ive tanked some easy crap with my epicd out holy pally)

What I'm wondering is how much defense should we have before moving on to other stats like parry, dodge, sta, etc... I'm under the impression that once you hit a certain amount, you dont need anymore defense. Is that correct? and if so, how much is needed? Then I'm also wondering if there is a cap on dodge and parry? or should they be at the highest possible?

Also, how much +hit is needed for a DK tank, and also what stat we should be looking at for extra hate? (atk pwr, crit, spell pwr?)

Thanx in advance for your responses!!

Oh, btw... I'm frost

[Noktismorté]

The def cap is 540 - once you reach that your uncrittable by raid bosses. After that focus on dodge and parry - stat wise try and get as much str (boosts your parry) and stam (for obvious reasons)

Currently im sitting at 529 def (bastard def cap!) with 11.51% dodge 17.18% parry, in frost presence I have just over 21k Hp and around 22k armour.

I have sacrificed my other mitigation talents to try and reach the def cap so they are a little low atm.

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...or&n=Cryogenix

WTB trinkets as mine suck ass for tanking =(

[Johnson420]

Thanks for such a quick response, and holy crap, my stats are almost exactly what you have. Have you ran any heriocs yet? I'm a little worried that I may be slightly under equiped for them, since im in like lvl 73-78 blues... And coming from a guy whos done a ton of healing, theres not much worse than an under equiped tank.....

[Noktismorté]

I have done a few heroics but only the easier ones - nexus and utgarde keep, tried violet hold heroic last night but the ethereal dude wiped the floor with me, still trying to get a few more items from non heroics to reach the def cap but its hard getting a group going - once there though should have no real problem with tanking anywhere really, I have been told that i am quite easy to heal mainly due to the amount of short CD oh shit buttons (unbreakable armour takes me to nearly 33k armour). You shouldnt have any issue with the easy heroics and any of the normal instances though.

[burn]

@ noki, u could have reached cap if u kept the helfire trinket
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28042

[Noktismorté]

I know - if I had done my research a bit more I would have noticed that tanking trinkets were relatively rare in Wrath - however I didnt do my research and i didnt take the tanking one - I took the melee DPS one coz Im a noob at times ><

[skyclops]

Just a note
done a bit of research on best weapons for DK tank
& it seems a fore gone conclusion 2hdd maces is the way to go

[burn]

also u shud use the trinket given to you as a starter dk
til u get better that is

this is how im looking so far

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...de&n=Blackcold

[Deleted]

I'll throw here myself

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...dar&n=Lapiduch

The trinklets are really really bothering me

[Noktismorté]

The trinkets are the biggest pain in the arse imo, the only good ones i have seen in wrath are the one from Loki in halls of lightening normal (cant remember the name) and Essence of Gossamer from heroic Azjol Nerub.

Gonna buy the Argent crusade rep 2h mace tonight and skill it up and start wearing my wrymrest accord tabard again =D

[LordDarkmatter]

Good stat to stack after you reach defence cap is expertise too, will help with your threat as much as hit would and gives you a bit of protection against the dreaded parry, though for red gems whether it would be better to stack it or dodge/parry is a tough call, to answer your earlier question the hit cap is 9% so 300 rating at 80 and the expertise cap is 26 or about 200 rating depending on talents.

[kriS411]

The trinkets are the biggest pain in the arse imo, the only good ones i have seen in wrath are the one from Loki in halls of lightening normal (cant remember the name) and Essence of Gossamer from heroic Azjol Nerub.

you mean Seal of the Pantheon I guess.

@LordDarkmatter
Expertise cap for a tank is 60, 26 only caps dodges, as a tank you have to deal with parries to.

[Noktismorté]

Thanks KriS thats the one.

[LordDarkmatter]

you mean Seal of the Pantheon I guess.

@LordDarkmatter
Expertise cap for a tank is 60, 26 only caps dodges, as a tank you have to deal with parries to.

Thats true to stop parries completely, but I probably wouldnt go much over the 26 just because now your stopping only parries instead of both and I would think at that point the points would be better spent in avoidance, course T7 has some pretty nice stats already so who knows T8 you could probably go all the way.

[Zyloric]

For does with very bad trinkets, here is a good one that many tend to forget about, i have started to use it again now.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30300

should be soloble on 80 and starts with this quest
http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=10437

[Zodak]

Hmm I will start off by saying that I have not spent the needed amount of time to correctly factor in stats like: &#160;Hit rating, Expertise, Haste, Armor penetration.

The itemization I am discussing is for tanking mitigation only not threat generation.
I also have not played a death knight anymore then just fooling around on one for a few hours.


Assuming the other posts are correct and 540 defense is the cap that makes you uncritable to a level 83 mob.

The reason for this is a mob 3 levels above you will have a 5% crit chance, 540 defense will lower the chance you can be crit by 5%. This does not mean that defense is not a worthwhile stat anymore. Defense still adds a small amount of dodge/block/parry even after 540 defense. It just no longer reduces the chance you can be crit by a lv 83 mob.

In most cases tanks prefer to start stacking other stats because they get better mitigation using specific stats Dodge or Block or Parry then using defense to contribute to each of them.

I will use an example from two tanks in BC that might demonstrate this concept. All numbers below are made up for demonstration purposes.


Tank #1 Prot Warrior lv70

Gemmed for max defense
850 Defense
23% Dodge
17% Parry
31% Block
13,800 Hp
71% from Dodge/Block/Parry


Tank #2 Prot Warrior lv70

Gemmed for lv 70 defense cap, after that focused Stamina / dodge
490 Defense
28% Dodge
13% Parry
25% Block
17,800 Hp
66% from Dodge/Block/Parry




Neither of these tanks can be crit by a lv73 raid boss. One has better mitigation the other has more health. In my experience I have found that when running lower level raids i.e. Kara and Heroics the Tank #1 with the much easier to keep alive then Tank #2.

When it comes to higher content Gruul, Mag and above the Tank #2 is much easier to keep alive due to a larger health pool. &#160;If the Boss is hitting the tank for 7,000 per hit the Tank #1 can only handle 1 hits the 2nd would kill him, where as Tank #2 Could handle 2 hits the 3rd would kill him.

To get more hp you have to sacrifice other mitigation stats. This gives your healers more time to do their job.

Dodge is a more valuable stat then Block or Parry for overall damage mitigation so most tanks prefer to stack extra dodge over using extra defense that splits between Dodge/Block/Parry.

Comments welcome.

[ijin]

Just wanted to point out that Block is useless to a DK, as Block requires a shield.

[Sergejsvk]

he compares wariors

[generalanders]

There's no defense cap, only a softcap (540) because you have -5% to be crit against level 83 (raid bosses). You still get benefits of dodge, parry, block, miss. However, usually you can get better avoidance out of direct dodge/parry after hitting the defense soft-cap.