Death Knight tanks. Much dmg?

[Deleted]

Hello Death Knights.

Me and my friends started raiding 1 week ago and we recruited this Death Knight tank. He is an alright guy and his gear seem correct and he has been reading up on mmo-champ etc. But we are having a problem with him.

Compared to our Paladin tank he take huge spikey damage on bosses such as omnotron defense system, Is he doing something wrong or is that how death knight works compared to other tanks?

Sincerly Coreey.

[Sal]

I'm pretty sure this is how they're supposed to work thanks to Death Strike.

[Penatar]

I'm pretty sure this is how they're supposed to work thanks to Death Strike.

Yeah, for the most part. I'm not saying I'm a perfect tank, but out of all my tank toons I feel that DKS need to balance CDS more, which i really enjoy.

[Deleted]

So the problem isn't his gear its more then likely his way of playing and using cd's at a correct time?

[rabbimojo]

So the problem isn't his gear its more then likely his way of playing and using cd's at a correct time?

The question is really how much of that damage he actually needs healed.

In other words, a DK in a sense brings his or her own mini healer. Your goal is to keep from taxing the real healers too much, so the DK wants to make sure that mini healer is healing optimally.

But while that's happening, the DK will be lower on HP sometimes, in order for the "mini healer" to heal it back up. :P

[Deleted]

Thanks for all quick replies. Hopefully we will survive with a DK tank in Cataclysm ^^

[Penatar]

The question is really how much of that damage he actually needs healed.

In other words, a DK in a sense brings his or her own mini healer. Your goal is to keep from taxing the real healers too much, so the DK wants to make sure that mini healer is healing optimally.

But while that's happening, the DK will be lower on HP sometimes, in order for the "mini healer" to heal it back up. :P

This too. When in heroics I am usually doing between 1500 and 2500 heals per second.

[Deleted]

Anyone of you who have any experience of raiding as blood tank?

[Larcissa]

Omnitron is honestly, a horrid boss for DK tanks, when the shield goes up and you can't DS, it's really taxing on the healers, tell your DK to pop AMS when Magmatron uses the raid-wide flamethrower, also he should use Rune Tap straight after the flamethrower if he's glyphed it to help the raid. Vamp Blood + Rune Tap is key to survival, and it's only on a one minute cooldown, and Rune Tap is free is he drops low, tell him to macro this up and hit it if the healers can't keep him up

Also, Healthstones, potions, anything that can help the healers out should be used

[Deleted]

Thank you for that info Larcissa. I'll share this with him when he gets online Any more usefull survival tips for a dk tank?

[Deleted]

We've got the hang of interuppting the Arcanatron but our tankadin thinks that the fight overall is easy and he actually take almost no damage at all compared to the death knight.

Also I were wondering which runeforging you should choose as a tank?
I see Stoneskin Gargoyle as valid but I also see Swordshattering as a good one. Which one to prefer? Stamina overall or some more parry chance. It's all RnG but still.

[Larcissa]

I think you guys need to work on controlling the fight more actually, I'm getting hit (melee) for around 30k-40k as a DK tank on omnitron with around 170k fully buffed, 27% combined avoidance and 350 ilvl. The idea of the fight is to negate as much damage as possible, the big damage dealers in the fight are Arcanotron and Magmatron, i'll just go through it briefly and you can read up more if you want, from my own tanking perspective.

For this fight, I specced into the 2nd tier of the frost tree for Endless Winter which makes my Mind Freeze cost no runic power, reasoning behind this is because when I don't hit the boss with anything I don't get RP, so I can't interrupt, if I make my interrupt free, even when Arcanotron is shielded I can interrupt regardless. It is VERY important to keep interrupting Arcanotron until he goes offline, we had myself and a Ele shaman on permanent interrupts, because the damage he does can take off 50% of a player's health

Secondly, I specced into Lichborne for progression raiding, there's is a macro around, too lazy to look for it, but it basically has you use Lichborne and dump all excess RP into self-healing death coils, basically another CD for a Blood DK to use.

Just some rules of thumb, he should already know this

1) Keep Scarlet Fever up
2) Keep Blade Barrier up
3) Pull with Bone Shield
4) There is a delay when the next bot spawns and the one you're tanking goes offline, don't body pull, or you can get hit for over 70k.
5) Flask and food up, always helps

---------- Post added 2011-01-13 at 08:04 AM ----------

Stoneskin Gargoyle till your gear is past the need for excess stamina and armor, then use Swordshattering

[mihaitha]

This too. When in heroics I am usually doing between 1500 and 2500 heals per second.

I did 7.2k HPS on my DK tank at one Halfus 10man wipe the other week (I died about the time the first drake was about to fall).

[Deleted]

Yeah the taccs are relative easy but it's just that the damage he take seems to be high from time to time. But thanks a lot for the information and I will let him know this.

Also we've made him use the specc from the Dk tanking thread, the sticky one. So he has LB for coil healing. The body pull part was good to know because I think he do body pull from time to time. Thanks a lot for the information!

[Foibles]

Are you comparing the damage taken on a logging site? Our damage taken is more spikey than the others, try and have him coordinate cd's with the healers ("Using Vamp Blood, toss some hots on me").

Plus Paladins are currently ridiculous if they are specced and glyph correctly.

[Deleted]

Iam not comparing damage taken on a logging site. Iam just comparing towards the Paladin since I thought that blizzard did somewhat okey job to balance the tanking classes around! but thanks for that Vamp blood info, i'll be sure to use it to next raid!

[Penatar]

I did 7.2k HPS on my DK tank at one Halfus 10man wipe the other week (I died about the time the first drake was about to fall).

That's awesome. I haven't had a chance to get into raids with my funky work schedule.

[Barael]

I'm tanking in a 10-man group that's currently working on Nefarian and tbh I've never noticed any dramatic difference compared to our prot pala; we're usually within 10% in damage taken. Cho'gall sometimes tends to kick my ass but it's usually due to healers being MCed and not interrupted quickly enough (and as long I have cooldowns left I can take care of myself, of course). Omnotron has never been any kind of problem at all; for example when the bot I'm tanking shields I usually pop Bone Shield (which I'm usually a bit bad at using) for 20% less damage taken for usually the whole duration of the shield.

[Xaos]

Hello Death Knights.
Compared to our Paladin tank he take huge spikey damage on bosses such as omnotron defense system, Is he doing something wrong or is that how death knight works compared to other tanks?

Providing we manage our CD's right, and have a reasonable ammount of avoidance & Mastery we don't take spikey damage.

Chances are your DK is either;
- Not cycling CD's and instead panic popping 2+ at a time, leaving large gaps of no CD's
- Not refreshing Bone shield when its ready (amasing how many DK's haven't started doing this yet)
- Not burning his blood runes fast enough to keep up blade barrier
- not DS'ing enough, or has low mastery, or is back to back DS'ing ruining the 5second rule.

with 107% mastery shields and ~30% avoidance my healer finding me a joke to keep up on Omnotron. (in 10man with 1 healer on me)

[Deleted]

Next raid (tonite) I will get some logs to see if the damage taken between the 2 tanks is any different but as you say, you have 10% difference which isn't to much. But what seems so hard is that all of a sudden the DK tank drops a lot health quickly.

---------- Post added 2011-01-13 at 10:16 AM ----------

I will ask him about this later on. Thank you for the info.