4.3 Death Knight Tanking Guide and Discussion

[Sufferings]

It's really up to personal preference. You can see from my spec in armory I went away from that all together. If you run mostly 10 mans, then stuff like Aboms Might and Endless Winter are insanely important. But in 25 man raids, they are wasted talent points. Even on fights like Nef when you need lots of interrupts in P2, we still have3 or 4 people on each pillar that can interrupt. Mine is just there as a backup, especially since I am not spell hit capped.

So yes, feel free to move those points around, especially if you never have to interrupt, but in a 10 man raid setting, I would recommending helping out on interrupts as often as possible, since you have less people to do so.

[Zorgen]

Like I mentioned above I'm not 85 yet (My main hunter is), and I've not needed to silence a mob or boss once from 60-78. Is there more need for silences at 85? I understand a free silence is greatly useful, but am I really going to be using it often? What exactly is the problem with Blood Caked Strikes? i've seen a few people mention it was useless.

[Deleted]

Once your Diseases drop BCB's damage is pathetic, and you'll mostly only be getting Diseases from Outbreak so yeah, weak damage.

[Zorgen]

Ok, weak damage is a good reason to avoid it. That raises another question though.. should I not always keep my diseases up? All attacks seem to be based of the amount of diseases on the target such as Death/Heart Strike. Also since I'm 78 atm I've not yet learned Outbreak, does it replace the need to apply diseases manually?

[Nyanmaru]

Death Strike and Rune Strike aren't based on diseases, check again.
Heart Strike is the only attack based on diseases (and blood boil to a minor extent).

Diseases are just interesting for debuffs and DpS.

[Zorgen]

Interesting, I always figured diseases had to be up all the time.

Thanks for the help guys, didn't expect to have my questions answered so promptly and with good info.

Cheers!

[Aldurok]

Just to make sure you know this: the one exception to not really needing diseases beyond Outbreak (when you get it) is if you don't have anyone else applying the attack speed slow that Frost Fever does.

The reduced attack speed reduces your damage taken by quite a bit, and is pretty much mandatory in most fights (even useful in "aoe" in Cata dungeons, plus puts a disease on 'em to get BB hitting harder).

If someone else is applying the debuff, it can still be handy to keep it in mind in case that person dies or is unable to apply the debuff for whatever reason.

[Deleted]

Two quick questions, but pretty important ones for myself;

1) Regarding hit and expertise, are we saying its not viable to reforge for either of these, and go for dodge/ parry/ mastery instead? im wondering if i should reforge some of my (already reforged hit) into more dodge.

(names Esmena if you need to look on wow armory, cant link it as im new to the forums and it wont let me >.<)

2) is it still viable in groups of mobs to throw in the odd pestilence in your rotation for a bit more threat if you are to have less hit?

thanks

[Sufferings]

Two quick questions, but pretty important ones for myself;

1) Regarding hit and expertise, are we saying its not viable to reforge for either of these, and go for dodge/ parry/ mastery instead? im wondering if i should reforge some of my (already reforged hit) into more dodge.

(names Esmena if you need to look on wow armory, cant link it as im new to the forums and it wont let me >.<)

2) is it still viable in groups of mobs to throw in the odd pestilence in your rotation for a bit more threat if you are to have less hit?

thanks

Hit and expertise are important because they help ensure timely death strikes can land. If you miss a couple death strikes in a row, you could lose the damage spike in that 5 second window and therefore not have a large death strike heal and shield. There is no set number, but I recommend getting close to 8% hit and 26 expertise. Just go where you feel comfortable where you are not getting chain misses.

And yes, it is viable, and recommended to pestilence when you are trying to keep aggro on a lot of mobs. I only use it in conjunction with outbreak, wasting 3 gcds to spread diseases is just to much for me.

[Deleted]

Thanks sufferings, my hit is at around 5.5% and expertise around 19, not having any problems thus far with agro tbh, just wondered if i could reforge any more of the two into dodge (answers no by the looks of it). Thats good news then, will defo start using it more, agree with the GCD's, outbreak is a god send for that reason in grps of mobs, not used it hardly as tank so will start to fit it into my rotation.

another one, plague strike, useless as a tank?

[oplawlz]

Not useless, per se . . . I personally only use it on single target bosses when outbreak is on cd, though. The extra threat generated from having both diseases on a boss allows my more energetic dps (ret pallies) to burst without fear.

[Sufferings]

I never need threat, so I never hit it. Only time I do is if I am in an offtank role not taking damage for a period of time, I will keep both diseases up for the sole reason of doing more damage.

[Sellest]

Hi,

I have 2 tanks - paladin and DK on 85. I decided to play DK as main but sometimes I have to tank and I find it so much annoying when I compare it to paladin. I am taking much more dmg (ye I can make up for it with healing but still when I compare logs with our bear tank, heals doesn't justify difference) I have problems on trash pulls, I have problem on bosses keeping up IT + SF. I just can't get used to it. Runes on CD without RP is rather normal then rare situation - on the other hand frost dw feels much better, I have almost always some resource available. I am not sure if anyone tried different tanks and difference in raids/heroics. I don't know real numbers and don't want to generalize who is best tank and who worst. I just want to ask for opinion how you feel while tanking. Mine is that I am rather disappointed.

armory:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...otion/advanced - pala
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...selli/advanced - dk

DK is in pvp gear, but I will logout in tanking one when I get home

[Zao]

I'm not quite sure what you want me to tell you. No gearing/speccing advice will change how DK tanking "feels" to you.

Selfhealing is meant to be a form of damage "negation", and just because you don't think that it justifies taking more damage, doesn't make it less of an important thing. Same goes for rune and RP usage. There's not much you can do about free gcds aside from stacking haste (which you shouldn't) Although I have to say that Paladins do have free gcds too, but for them it's regular ability cooldowns instead of runes.

Long story short: If you don't like tanking on your DK, go for your Paladin instead.

Oh and for getting better used to FF/SF application, try the POWA string I posted on the first page.

[Deleted]

Hello Death Knights. Iam not sure this has been up.. Haven't seen it anyway!

You suggest in your talents that the DK should go frost to get the Lichborne and I can see why for the survivalpart of the tree. But I have a bigger problem with the dk tank we use.

Missing important interrupts such as the Storm on Maloriak. Wouldn't it be better to skip Lichborne and go straight for Virulence? The 3/3 of unholy tree or should he get some kinda hitcap?

Cheers // Coreey

[Deleted]

Hello Death Knights. Iam not sure this has been up.. Haven't seen it anyway!

You suggest in your talents that the DK should go frost to get the Lichborne and I can see why for the survivalpart of the tree. But I have a bigger problem with the dk tank we use.

Missing important interrupts such as the Storm on Maloriak. Wouldn't it be better to skip Lichborne and go straight for Virulence? The 3/3 of unholy tree or should he get some kinda hitcap?

Cheers // Coreey

Next patch DK's are getting the +spell hit part of Virulence as baseline

[Nyanmaru]

Nevertheless, if you are the one on interrupt duty, you aim for the hit cap.

[Zao]

Even with Lichborne you can get 2 points in virulence. Which should put you on hitcap for lvl 87 mobs like the adds on nef.

You can take the points needed out of one of the "lesser" blood talents like Abomination's might or Bloodworms, or even out of Endless winter if you're confident enough in your RP pooling abilities.

Especially on Maloriak it's a rather bad choice to have your tank be someone who has to interrupt, since even in 10man you should have enough people that are able to interrupt and can reach the hitcap without sacrificing survivalstats.

[Deleted]

Cheers for info. I'll look into that.

[Deleted]

Hey, is there a soft cap on avoidance? or any guidelines for what to stack. It's pretty clear that for dk's mastery and avoidance come above stamina but what would be a nice balance?