DeathKnight... I failed?

[Mijen]

My DeathKnight tank, seen here, was just destroyed on the trash pulls to Marrowgar(ICC10).

It was the first time I had attempted to tank with her but know the pulls from runs on my warrior.

On the initial entrance pull I had aggro on all the mobs but died after a few seconds.

I also died on a single giant skeleton.

Is this an issue due to gear or spec? Or just me being bad?
Any advice?

[Nexus2089]

Your links bad.

Im going to assume this is you based on what you tried to link. http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...mmer&cn=Marroh


From what i can see, both your trinkets suck...hard
You have the armsman enchant which is terrible(Get a BC armor enchant or lvl engi), no enchant on your chest 275 health or def or stats
Unleveled Proffesions
No helm Enchant
Gemming for parry, try agi/stam if you want to meet a socket bonus you get dodge/armor/crit/stam with those.
Gemming for Def over the cap, bad but not as bad as parry

Talents....Spell deflection, Imp BP, Im pretty sure Mark of blood is bad too but thats debatable.
Glyphs... IBF glyph is useless for a tank, you should at least have the rune tap glyph and be using it alot.



Your fairly undergeared, if it was ICC 25 its no wonder you gotowned especially if it was a pug with unreliable healers/offtank

[Talkryn]

I have to be honest.

If you died with the 30% buff up, either you had no healers healing you, or you are bad.

If that post by Nexus2089 is true, then there are a few pointers.

A) Make sure you are in Frost presence.
B) Never... ever... EVER gem parry/stam. if you must gem for slot bonus, do agi/stam.
C) Ditch the glove enchant, and get +18 stam borean armor kit.

[Dreager_ex]

Talents....Spell deflection, Imp BP, Im pretty sure Mark of blood is bad too but thats debatable.
Glyphs... IBF glyph is useless for a tank, you should at least have the rune tap glyph and be using it alot.

Spell Deflection has some pretty fair value on a lot of fights in ICC and on Halion himself... beyond that I agree 100%

[Mijen]

I did forget a couple of enchants. lol
I only gemmed Def/Parry to meet bonuses that gave stam. Going all stam is better than mitigation with a min loss of stam?

Spec Wise. Where would the points be better spent? I have 0 issue holding aggro and the talents you mention all raise survivability in blood tanks.

I forgot IBF thanks for point it out.

However I still don't see how it would an issue of just being undergeared since tanks have done ICC 10 with a similar gear level prior to 30%.

[Fornaw]

I did forget a couple of enchants. lol
I only gemmed Def/Parry to meet bonuses that gave stam. Going all stam is better than mitigation with a min loss of stam?

Spec Wise. Where would the points be better spent? I have 0 issue holding aggro and the talents you mention all raise survivability in blood tanks.

I forgot IBF thanks for point it out.

However I still don't see how it would an issue of just being undergeared since tanks have done ICC 10 with a similar gear level prior to 30%.

First off Parry is not mitigation, it is avoidance. The only mitigation stats in game are Armor and Block value/rating.

The real problem with Parry/Stam is that Parry has a sharper diminishing return than Dodge. In the end you want very roughly twice as much Dodge rating as Parry rating. DKs have the Strength->Parry Rating conversion which gives them almost always gives them more Parry rating than Dodge rating, so they NEVER gem dodge, use expertise/dodge/agility depending on whether your preference is threat, avoidance or threat/avoidance/mitigation.

Personally I reject the agility gems myself because their contribution is ridiculously low, DKs get the same amount of crit and dodge from Agility as a Warrior, for some reason Paladins are blessed with Crit/Avoidance conversions on Agility which are far better. A half Agi gem is 20 armor (<0.1% of total armor), ~0.16% chance to crit and <0.1% chance to dodge. On the other hand 10 expertise is over 0.6% additional chance to land a melee attack since you are under soft cap.

Technically speaking you're right that your talents get the most survivability, but you're also sacrificing good threat talents like Dark Conviction, Bloody Vengeance and Bladed Armor for bad threat talents like Sudden Doom and Scent of Blood. I'm in the camp of saying lose Spell Deflection, it's better if you learn to use AMS. Also IBP is a joke of a talent, you'll do maybe 4000 DPS as a tank, which is a whopping 160 health per second with 2/2 IBP, most of which is just going to be overheals.

[DesT.]

Even in that gear, with the 30% buff active, you should not die to the trash if your healers are awake. I've seen worse geared people clear the trash with ease. With the gear you have now 9/12 should be easy enough. 30% seriously trivialized ICC 10 normal.

[Alexio]

and dont forget to use your CDs

[Donald Hellscream]

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-ta...horwan&group=1 here is the link to my death knight im not the best ever or anything but by all means take a look and see if there is anything that seem like usefull knowledge to you^^ also i checked your specc and wondered why do you miss out hysteria and dancing rune weapon? i know it doesnt help survivability but still also atm the best way to go is to just gem stamina and eventually use nightmare tears to fill the meta requirement and even so it seems very odd that you get obliterated by icc trash with the 30% buff active.. i think the healers must have been slacking also if you happen to have the chance swap out icks thumb with the 228 stamina trinket from frost emblem vendor it should help^^

[Alvito]

If you are new to tanking as a DK you may want to try frost it isnt as good once you get into heroics and the threat for bosses is a bit worse but it is easier to learn managing cds and managing runes. Your spec could use some tweaking even just switching to the cookie cutter version in the DK blood tanking spec in the DK forums should help out. You should switch your glyphs and swap out or pick up some enchants. Even with all that a tank in all Naxx gear should be able to hold up to trash pulls unless you were solo tanking everything and your healers dont understand how to heal. GL

[Mijen]

Thanks to everyone for the advice. I plan to put it to good use when I get home.

[Ashareth]

Thanks to everyone for the advice. I plan to put it to good use when I get home.

First thing to do is to drop all your majors glyphs that are bad for raid tanking.
Go for Vampiric Blood and Death Strike (mandatory ones) and then decide for rune strike/dark command or things like that (not pestilence, you NEED the icy touch for threat so pestilence is useless).

Then go read the tank sticky on this forum, and take a more cookie-cutter spec (you'll change it after once you are used to it).

And with your gear it should be enough, but try to farm ToC normal for the stam trinklet it's better than the onyxia one/ick one's. Try to buy the Frost emblem stam trinklet too till you get better (the Satrina/Juggernaut's vitality in ToC25 is really good too).

[DesT.]

First thing to do is to drop all your majors glyphs that are bad for raid tanking.
Go for Vampiric Blood and Death Strike (mandatory ones) and then decide for rune strike/dark command or things like that (not pestilence, you NEED the icy touch for threat so pestilence is useless).

Then go read the tank sticky on this forum, and take a more cookie-cutter spec (you'll change it after once you are used to it).

And with your gear it should be enough, but try to farm ToC normal for the stam trinklet it's better than the onyxia one/ick one's. Try to buy the Frost emblem stam trinklet too till you get better (the Satrina/Juggernaut's vitality in ToC25 is really good too).

Death Strike is hardly mandatory, its the glyph that's swapped around most - I.E Taunt / DND / Death Strike / Pestilence. Most DKs use Rune Strike / VB as their main 2 glyphs. Furthermore, you do not NEED IT for threat, only bads go all out IT spam. It's situational when you need to spam IT other then on pull.

[AdrianCC100]

Just want to say there is nothing wrong with her glove enchant.

[Mudkiper]

Cloak enchant should be armor btw

[bondgirl]

first of all your specc is shit (not that you'd have survived with better specc but in general it need some optimization)

get rid of sudden doom / morbidity spell deflection

use the points for BV / BA and subversion and hysteria (every physical melee will love you for giving this twice a fight )

sudden doom is useless for threat since its like 2k threat you create with a non crit DC in frost presence, tho you do a 2nd hit with BS anyway which does more threat.
morbidity is not realy needed since if the packs r down your DnD is off of cd anyway. Maybe a nice gadget for heroics but BB and BS spam can help out the missing starting aoe from DND.
spell deflection, well i never was a friend of it since you had no direct inc spells that much in naxx/ulduar or toc so i never used it. your a tank, most of inc damage is physical so get mitigation for this instead of "wasting" 3 points in SD.

glyphs arent choosed wisely either.
diseases, ok - fine with me, using it myself, even tho i should use vampiric blood instead.
would suggest to use Runse Strike and Death Strike simply for Threat.

enchants and gems:

drop the def gems for pure stam (6stam socket bonus aint worth using seomthing else than pure stam gem)
else like the rest said use agi/stam - simply more benfit from agi
chest enchant = 275 hp
cloak = armor (guess agi would work aswell)
gloves = 18stam (if you have done the mentioned things accroding to glyphs and specc you should have problems with aggro)
ofc head enchant totally missing

else a lil hint : 15stam + speed on boots = in most situations better than those 7stam more due to running/kiting w/e

so have fun in your next icc, maybe you should start with 10 mans first

[wolfhunt123]

One thing to note on those trash pulls at the beginning, the Damned trash, if you can't effectively block, dks and a druids, then you take a LOT more damage because of the speed and how hard they attack. The big guys just hit like small trucks, but should be easily healable through unless you happened to be taking both the damage and the cleave damage too which for an undergeared tank is insane. One last thing, if you ever EVER had anything hitting your ass that damage is totally unavoidable and will often be your death. So, don't do that if you were!

[Zka]

Okay, both trinkets suck and some other minor problems... But seriously, with the 30% buff it's impossible to die there. My guildie has tanked almost all ICC10 trash in dps gear+shield at the 20% buff.

[Ahpuch]

Just want to say there is nothing wrong with her glove enchant.

Umm yes there is, 10 parry is barely anything, and only if you are really bad would you need that extra 2% threat, and it wouldn't help. 18 stamina however contributes much more to your effective health which is what we rely on most as DK tanks.

[Deleted]

Hi Mijen,

I think since posting this you've made some nice improvements. However, like the poster above me I feel that the +18 stamina enchant on your gloves would be better than 2% threat. Threat is generated by a good rotation and a whole bunch of experience with a dash of skill. A flat 2% threat enchant will be of very little use and you'd almost definitely not even notice the difference if you took it off! ^^

Trinkets are quite an easy fix tbh. Grind Trial of the Champion for The Black Heart and 60 Emblems of Frost will get you Corroded Skeleton Key.

I use the 264 frost emblem trinket and a Brewfest trinket on my tank. I regularly run ICC25 as main tank and they do me just fine!

Dig deep into your pockets of gold (or spend emblems on alts for Primordial Saronite) and get the 264 crafted boots. Well worth a purchase as they're pretty much BiS until 25 man heroics! Same goes for the legs, but they'd be even more expensive!

With a few simple tweaks you'd be fine to go for ICC10 normal. Make sure you drop in a good group and check out the healers before you start, going with a holy paladin as well as 2 other raid healers will give them the best chance at keeping you on your feet. Also, make friends with an experienced and well geared tank to allow you to be Off-Tank and get them to give you some pointers. Gear really isn't the be-all-and-end-all of tanking. Knowing exactly where to be, what mobs to turn around etc. is much more important.

Tanking is such a fun thing to do when done right and I hope you soon get to enjoy it as much as I do!



-Theo