Blood DK's and Heroic Tanking

[Gorechubz]

I'm not sure if I'm where I should be for heroics. At the moment, here are my basic stats:

130.6k unbuffed health (usually 150k when fully buffed with kings/motw, fort)
11.20% parry rating
10.90% dodge rating
4.55% hit raiting
24 expertise (means .5% chance for a raid boss to dodge, and 8% for them to parry. Nothing below a raid boss can parry or dodge my attacks)

My guild and I run heroics every evening, with me tanking. I can't help but feel that the issue with our wipes and the time it takes to complete each one is that I've done something wrong with my gear - are these stats acceptable for heroics? My ilvl is 331 and I have a heroic weapon (heroic Foe Reaper with 202 hit and 202 expertise). In every fight my rotation is huge on self-healing: death strike at every moment it's available, constantly on interrupts to prevent damage, anti-magic shell whenever needed, and my rune tap is forever on cooldown because I pop it the second it's up, if I'm at 80% or lower health.

My healers tell me they love me because of my great self-healing, but I wonder if I can do something to help this, to ensure we don't wipe as much because I die. I've reforged every piece of gear, but perhaps there are enchants I've been unable to find or don't know about that can help (gloves, wrist, boots)...any ideas?

[Ganza]

and what numbers in mastery?? your mastery is a great number in your survival the more mastery the more dmg u can absorb from each death strike, i didnt end up lvling my dk but played with it alot in beta and i remember having arround 95% absortion which average death strike was arround 12k hit and 18k crit it was all about timming the strike with this the rest was complementary

[Gorechubz]

My mastery is about 12, rounded

[Nyanmaru]

You may want to get some more HP for raids, but otherwise your stats are great.

You feel that you are taking a lot of damage is because you got low avoidance and low mastery. 12 mastery is 75% DS heal as shield (you may say it's a 75% buff to your DS self heal) and you are only at ~21% combined avoidance (I guess this is without HoW?).
This is most likely due to your high expertise/hit. These two values allow you a more constant DS than if you would get parried 3-4 times in a row. It really is hard to tell if you may want to step back on some expertise and go for more mastery/avoidance.

Since I can't see your current gear/enchants it's hard to tell what could be upgrades to you.

[Ikkatsu]

Your stats are perfectly fine for Heroics, they are pretty much the same as mine (except i have more Mastery and less Expertise).

Wipes in heroics with your stats will be down to either you or your dps/healer doing something stupid (like standing in fire, failing to interrupt, not using crowd control etc).

[DrgnDancer]

I'm not going to claim to be an expert here, I leveled as Unholy and my tank spec is lagging a bit behind right now; but I've tanked several regulars and one heroic at this point, so I'm not totally talking out of my ass either. It sounds like you're doing pretty much everything right. There's two things you need to consider here.

First, you can't carry the group any more. In Wrath Heroics, a good tank could almost solo most of the fights. Everyone else was there as a combination safety net and speed increaser. Now though... If your healer makes a few mistakes (or one mistake at the wrong time), you're going to die. If your DPS are standing in the fire they are either going to die (which will probably cause a wipe), or drain the healer's Mana (which will probably cause a wipe). I'm not saying that wipes are never your fault, but they almost certainly aren't always your fault.

The second thing is something that you're probably already doing, but I've caught myself making this mistake a few times. Remember that you just can't take the punishment that you used to. Your health isn't that much higher than the DPS or healers health any more. You have mitigation, which is nice, but make sure that you avoid as many mechanics as possible. We all got a little spoiled by how OP tanks were in Wrath. You will die if you stand in the fire, tank or not. Like I said, you're probably already aware of this, but it's worth saying just in case.

[Wingwraith]

death strike at every moment it's available,

One suggestion is to learn to time your Death Strikes for maximum healing/shield and not to over-write your shield with a second DS till the first shield has dropped.
The only time I do multiple DS's back-to-back is when I'm low and I want to pop VB + BT + a few DS's to heal back to full. Otherwise, I try to let my shield drop before DS'ing again.

And if you don't already have it, get the Blood Shield Tracker add-on.

[Avatar Killer]

if you can get your Mastery at around 1500 you should be able to ignore any damage being delt for the duration. this should fix any and all tanking problems. Considering this might take you a while to get... like never... then you are most likely ok. i would probably trade some of the expertise for mastery considering it's probably the only mastery really worth the time for DKs at the moment.

[Gorechubz]

And if you don't already have it, get the Blood Shield Tracker add-on.

^ I think I'll do that. I haven't used it before. I don't know how useful it will be during boss fights, though, as I've tried to keep track of it and I've watched my shield vanish in one mack truck hit.

[Appletini]

Are you specced Lichborne? It's not a secret that Lichborne is so powerful for self-healing that it's basically mandatory for tanking right now.

And let me just add support for Blood Shield Tracker. Because of how the shield won't roll, it's important not to "Death Strike whenever it's up" but rather to Death Strike when the shield is about to drop due to the timer or damage. It's also a great add-on because it tries to predict how big your heal/shield will end up being based on damage taken recently.

[Disinvolto]

Is this a thread about Blood DK's and tanking heroics, or a thread about you and if you're ready to tank heroics? I'm kind of confused. Cause I'm actually really interested in discussing how other DK tanks feel about Blood tanking since I just dinged 85 and entered the dungeons myself...

[Wingwraith]

Cause I'm actually really interested in discussing how other DK tanks feel about Blood tanking since I just dinged 85 and entered the dungeons myself...

I think this thread is about him.
But as to your question, DK tanking is actually pretty solid right now. I highly recommend it.

[Gorechubz]

It's kind of both, so my question overrides that.

I love tanking blood, and I recommend it. I probably shouldn't be so hard on myself because of wipes when heroics have placed us all in a position where we're all accountable. You cannot carry a bad dps, bad tank, or bad healer any more. We have a ton of mitigation with Rune Tap, Death Strike for healing + damage absorption, Icebound Fortitude to prevent sap and stun (and 20% dmg reduction), Horn of Winter for dodge and more healing with Death Strike, Anti-Magic Shell for magic resistance, and Vampiric Blood for a huge 25% bonus to healing (and glyphed, 40%).

Death grip makes pulling mobs very easy even when using CC pulls with hunters and shamans. It's also saved our group many times when I've been able to DG a mob just outside of aggro range of other mobs for a quick and easy way to thin the herd. And an awesome tactic I've noticed a lot of blood tanks haven't noticed is free Blood Boils when re-applying plague strike for unmatched AoE threat along with constant 10% incoming damage reduction.

---------- Post added 2010-12-15 at 02:18 PM ----------

Are you specced Lichborne? It's not a secret that Lichborne is so powerful for self-healing that it's basically mandatory for tanking right now.

And let me just add support for Blood Shield Tracker. Because of how the shield won't roll, it's important not to "Death Strike whenever it's up" but rather to Death Strike when the shield is about to drop due to the timer or damage. It's also a great add-on because it tries to predict how big your heal/shield will end up being based on damage taken recently.

It's been installed and will be used tonight!

I don't know why you're recommending Lichborne, though - it doesn't seem to offer me any kind of mitigation beyond being immune to sleep, charm, and fear effects; I have yet to see a single boss fight use those mechanics, and I have no frost talents I'd like to take to get Lichborne.

[Nyanmaru]

I don't know why you're recommending Lichborne, though - it doesn't seem to offer me any kind of mitigation beyond being immune to sleep, charm, and fear effects; I have yet to see a single boss fight use those mechanics, and I have no frost talents I'd like to take to get Lichborne.

25k Healing DCs on yourself while lichborne is active (about 6-7 DCs with a full RP bar)
It can be a life saver, but you need to learn to play with a rather full RP bar to make use of it in "oh crap" situations.

[Sarutankah]

I was healing last night and although I usually tank on my paladin I found average DK's to be much better to heal than Warriors or Pallies(unless they WOG a lot)
Your stats are perfectly fine for heroics at this point and over the next couple of weeks they will change pretty quickly.

Any fails are probably dps or healer not doing what they should. Heals especially has traditionally gotten by without using Cooldowns when they are up but they are almost required now for all roles, there aint nothing wrong with popping everything on a trash pull - tank, dps, or heals need to use all of their abilities to successfully navigate the pain that is pug heroics

[Gorechubz]

25k Healing DCs on yourself while lichborne is active (about 6-7 DCs with a full RP bar)
It can be a life saver, but you need to learn to play with a rather full RP bar to make use of it in "oh crap" situations.

I wasn't aware that it allows you to self-heal with Death Coil. It doesn't say so in the tooltip or description of the talent. It seems like a worthy one to pick up and put into my rotation during those "oh shit!" moments.

That said, are there are any other blood tanks that use Lichborne? If so, when/how to do you use it?

[Nyanmaru]

#showtooltip
/cast Lichborne
/cast [target=player]Death Coil

Macro it, spam it, love it.

I'm usually at ~70-80 RP all the time (say hello to Glyph of DS) and if I know I'm gonna get pounded soon or the healer needs to focus on the group I gather those last few RP and start spamming my macro. You could also exchange glyph of DS for glyph of DC to get another 15% more healing out off Lichborne every CD. See the tanking sticky for this, it's the "survival spec".

Click my signature for my spec, those 2 points in "On a pale horse" are kinda like floater points, you can put them in unholy or somewhere into blood, I just use OaPH now to get archeology done faster, usually I'd go for either the free mind freeze or the extra disease time in unholy.

[Disinvolto]

I think this thread is about him.
But as to your question, DK tanking is actually pretty solid right now. I highly recommend it.

Yeah, I did my first dungeon last night at 85 and the healer had nearly full mana after every pull... I'm not new to the game, so I took this as a good sign.

I'm absolutely loving it so far though, I really like the pro-active use of death strike with our shiny new mastery!

[tripplebooya]

^ I think I'll do that. I haven't used it before. I don't know how useful it will be during boss fights, though, as I've tried to keep track of it and I've watched my shield vanish in one mack truck hit.

Yes, get it for sure, small simple add-on that let's you know a crucial thing...when to re up that shield.
Its a must

[Gorechubz]

Click my signature for my spec, those 2 points in "On a pale horse" are kinda like floater points, you can put them in unholy or somewhere into blood, I just use OaPH now to get archeology done faster, usually I'd go for either the free mind freeze or the extra disease time in unholy.

Are you tanking in frost (site is down)...? I'm not sure where I'd get enough talent points to put into Frost to get On A Pale Horse to begin with...I'd already have to sacrifice some blood talents to get enough for Lichborne as it is.