Greetings fellow players, if you clicked on this thread i assume you are here looking to improve your tanking skills, learn on how to tank with a Death Knight (DK) and/or just looking through for some knowledge. This guide will be a complete guide to Blood Death Knight tanking starting from level 55 (when you create your character) to end-game raiding. Any feedback is appreciated but do not go out of your way to badmouth this guide just because something in this guide is not to your liking / different from your playstyle as there is no single "this is the only viable way to play your class" guide and everyone has their own preferences on how to properly play your class while these ways are neither wrong or right.
I. Introduction:
So, this is the part where i should introduce who i am and who the hell do i think i am to tell you "how to play your class" etc.
Serentaurus (previously Deantha) i currently play a resto / feral druid. I have been playing World of Warcraft (WoW) for ~10 years (probably more as i started playing in WoW beta but this is what i usually tell people when they ask me for how long have i been playing). I used to play Retail until mid Warlords of Draenor where i decided to leave Retail to move to an older expansion of the game (which happened to be Wrath of The Lich King due to the expansion being my favourite out of all the expansions and the one i played the most). I mained a feral druid for 9 years (does not mean i didn't play anything else during that period, in fact i have achieved max level with every class and raided with all the classes). As for my experience on private servers, i have been mainly healing for a small guild called <Wicked Sick> on Ragnaros, Warmane for ~2 years though my guild disbanded a few months ago just after the new core update was released. So why am i talking about tanks if i mainly healed and played feral druids. Well, i have also spent quite a lot of my time tanking (mainly off-tanking) and i have been experimenting with a lot of different specs and ways of tanking, thus making me believe i am a decent tank. Also i haven't seen a lot of DK tanks around lately which saddens me as i think Death Knights are the best Off-tanks in the game currently.
II. The beginning of the journey:
The first step to your journey to becoming a competent Death Knight tank is to create one. Sounds easy enough but keep in mind that you plan on being a tank with your Death knight so you should choose your race appropriately. I suggest when you are creating your DK tanking to choose the races with the best tanking racials (i will list them below) over the classes with the best looks if you are new to tanking as that will give you a little boost in survivability and make your journey a more pleasant one.
A Death Knight can be any race currently in the game (Human, Dwarf, Night Elf, Gnome, Draenei, Orc, Undead, Tauren, Troll, Blood Elf)
The best to worst classes rated by their defensive racials:
Spoiler:Show
III. Tank setup and UI.
Let's talk a little about addons.
-Note: Addons are modifications to the game which usually improve gameplay in some way.
The Blizzard UI (the standart UI when you first log into your character) is perfectly fine for tanking but in a lot of stress situations (which you will encounter a fair amount of) especially if you are a newer player you will get overwhelmed with the UI and start panicking so i suggest you get some addons to help you out.
Addons we will cover here are:
Spoiler:Show
Setting up your UI:
assuming you got all the addons i listed above and installed them correctly your UI should look something like this when you first enter the game:
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It's kind of a mess, yes. Let's start sorting some stuff out. First you should press enter (to open up your chatbox) and type in "/tmw" (without the qotations)
Your UI should look something like this now:
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Now the next thing you should do is to follow the ElvUI built in installation process, it will guide you through on how to correctly set up ElvUI.
You want to press 'Continue' -> 'Setup CVars' -> 'Continue' -> 'Continue' -> 'Continue' -> 'Low Resolution' or 'High Resolution' (this depends on your computers screen resolution) -> 'Continue' -> 'Tank' -> 'Continue' -> 'Icons Only' -> 'Continue' -> 'Finished'
After you click 'Finished' your UI should reload.
Note: if you want an UI looking like mine do not press Setup Chat!
Now after you have set up ElvUI your UI should look something like this, which is way more attractive than the mess before.
Spoiler:Show
Next up drag your Recount to a position suitable for you. This is where i usually put it (hence i skip the setup chat section)
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Now you can check the disable checkbox on the ElvUI message at the top and click hide.
This is a solid UI if you like it, i do not like the layout of the standart UI though so we are going to switch some stuff up.
First thing you should do to get a UI like mine now is to hit esc on your keyboard and go into the Video settings of WoW.
Now find the Use UI Scale checkbox and check it then drag the slider below it to about the same position as my slider.
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After you do that your ElvUI might give you a promt to disable ElvUI auto-scale. Just click accept.
Your UI should look something like this by now:
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Now you're going to click the little "c" button on the bottom right corner of your mini-map (your mini-map is in the top right corner of your screen)
Click the little "+" button next to the Action Bars settings
Click on Bar 3 and check the Enable checkbox
Then, click on Bar 5 and check the Enable checkbox
Go to micro bar and enable that as well
Go back to bar 3 and change the "Buttons" slider to 4 and set the "Button Size" slider to 45
Go to bar 5 now and change the "Buttons" slider to 8 and "Buttons per row" to 12
Now at the top of your settings there are 4 buttons click the "Toggle Anchors" one
Your UI should look something like this now:
Spoiler:Show
Here you can select any UI element and move it around.
We will start with the Player/Target frames.
Move the player frame to X: -204 Y: 358
Move the Target Frame to X: 204 Y: 358
Next up, Focus Frame - X:-337 Y: 372
Pet Frame - X: -205 Y: 309
TargetTarget frame - X: 202 Y: 302
Bar1 - X: 0 Y: 216
Bar2 - X: 0 Y: 252
Bar3 - X:0 Y: 354
Bar5 - X:0 Y: 4
Click "Lock" (around the middle of the screen)
Your UI should look something like this now
Spoiler:Show
That is my basic setup which moves your Cooldowns and spells to the centre of the screen as well as your player/target frames so you don't have to look at each of the corner to see a specific type of information.
Next up we're going to configure our TellMeWhen
Remember how you typed /tmw when you first started setting up your UI? You gotta type the same in now again. Type "/tmw"
A bunch of boxes should appear on the left side of the screen now
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Take the top box and drag it to the middle of the screen and reduce it's size so it fits between your cooldowns bar and your main action bars.
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Now right click the first box in the TellMeWhen bar you dragged to the middle and click on "Choose spell/item/buff/etc."
It will open a window at the top of the screen you simply want to put in the box the numbers 55095 and click accept.
The empty box should now change into a red question mark
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Right click the same red question mark again and click on Enable Icon then go to Icon Type and select Buff/Debuff.
Your red question mark should now change into an actual icon of the debuff you're going to want to see.
Right click the same icon again and go down to the newly appeared options "Buff or Debuff?" and select "Debuff".
Right Click same icon again and go to Unit to watch, select Target.
Now right click the same icon once again and click on Show Timer and Only show if cast by self
You just set up your TellMeWhen to watch your Frost Fever's timer
We're going to do the same now with Blood Plague
Do the same steps except for the "Choose spell/item/buff/etc." this time you're going to type in the numbers 55078
In the 3rd slot i usually put my ilvl 278 ring's (icc rep ring) proc.
Spell number is 72415
But this time you want it to be a buff and the unit to watch be Player
And the last one i watch is usually my Blade Barrier buff (talent from the blood tree)
Spell number is 64859
and everything else is the same as the ring's proc
Now you just type in /tmw again and you're done with setting up your UI!
IV. Leveling your DK
When leveling your DK you can choose to go blood but i'd suggest you level as frost DPS, it's faster in my opinion.
Leveling Talents:
start off by going:
Spoiler:Show
Few things to note:
1.While leveling as frost always use 2 1-handed weapons
2.This is not a proper raiding spec! But it does work well enough for dungeons
3. While leveling always try to go for plate armor
Your stat priorities are:
Strenght <- Haste <- Armor Penetration <- Critical Strike <- Stamina
Basically always try to go for items that have strenght + stamina + Haste
V. The first Grind:
Once you hit level 80 you should have a bunch of DPS greens (assuming you haven't done any dungeons), a frost DPS spec and 2 1-handed weapons. Now you're going to go to Ansekhwa (Lower Rise, Thunder Bluff) if you're horde or Buliwyf Stonehand (Military Ward, Ironforge) if you're alliance and learn the maces skill from the NPC then you're going to use your Dark Portal spell and return to Ebon Hold to purchase all your spells and if you have enough gold purchase a dual spec (it's 1000 gold)
Next up your grind starts. Hopefully you've been staying away from the Auction House. After you have purchased the dual spec for a 1000g you should have a few hundred left, what you wanna do now is head to Dalaran (you've probably been there while leveling) to set your Hearthstone there and pick up a quest from a NPC called Rhonin. The quest is called Trouble at Wyrmrest. It will send you to Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight. There you will start picking up quests and doing all of them to grind out reputation with the Wyrmrest Accord faction until you are Revered. Once you hit Revered you are going to go to their Quartermaster Cielstrasza
There you will buy the following items:
1) Breastplate of the Solemn Council
2) Sabatons of Draconic Vigor
3) Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions
Note: While you are doing these quests always have your global chat open (you can access global chat on warmane by typing in /join global and look for something called "ICC REP FARM" if you see one join them, these have no gearscore requirements most of the time. Go in and farm the mobs there with the other people until you hit exalted with the faction The Ashen Verdict, they award you with your BiS ring (ilvl 278 ring). Join them as a DPS though you are still incapable of tanking.
After you're done with Wyrmrest Accord move on to Doing a very long quest chain in Sholazar Basin to obtain reputation with The Oracles until you are Revered with them. I won't go into detail on how to obtain Oracles rep, you can find plenty of guides online as it is a long quest-chain and going in-detail here would make the guide unneccessarily longer.
Once you're Revered with The Oracles go to Geen
and buy the following item:
1) Glimmershell Shoulder Protectors
Next up you want to start grinding Argent Crusade Rep (it's in icecrown) you can pick up the starting quest from one of the ships (depending on your faction) that fly around in icecrown. If you don't have northrend flying yet you can get onto the ships by talking to Sky-Reaver Klum (if you're horde) or to Officer Van Rossem (if you're alliance) take the quest and just talk to them again they'll fly you to the ship.
You want to hit Revered with Argent Crusade then go to Veteran Crusader Aliocha Segard
and buy the following items:
1) Special Issue Legplates
2) 2x Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector
Note: Put 1 of your Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector's on your current helm
Next up you need to get Kirin Tor rep to exalted then head to Archmage Alvareaux to buy
1) Fireproven Gauntlets
At this point you should've done quite a lot of quests which means you've accumulated some gold.
Now this is the point where i want to talk about professions. I HIGHLY suggest you get yourself Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting and level them up to 450 with avoiding the Auction House AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Basically get Jewelcrafting + Mining level up mining to 450 and get Jewelcrafting up to 450 and start doing jewelcrafting dailies, then look up a guide for 1-450 blacksmithing and start grinding the required matereals for blacksmithing with your mining, once you have all the matereals neccessary keep farming matereals so you can afterwards create:
1x Tempered Titansteel Helm
1x Titanium Earthguard Chain
1x Tempered Saronite Bracers
1x Titansteel Destroyer
1x Tempered Saronite Belt
1x Titanium Earthguard Ring
1x Figurine - Monarch Crab
1x Figurine - Ruby Hare
After you have accumulated all the matereals neccessary to get your blacksmithing up to 450 and get all of these items delete Mining and start leveling your blacksmithing.
Note: Now, if you are not going to get these professions or you are planning on getting different professions prepare to spend A LOT of additional money on items.
By the time you're done with all this you should have done enough Jewelcrafting dailies to buy the recipe for the ring and the necklace. Get them and make the ring and necklace and make the Helm, wrists, 2-handed mace and belt.
Now you'll go to some random things and you'll start hitting them with your 2-handed mace until your skill with 2-handed maces is 400
At this point you can make your DK's 2nd spec (remember? We bought that dual spec when you just hit 80) blood tank.
Here's the basic survival spec for dungeons:
After that you're going to go to the Auction House with your remaining gold and buy yourself some glyphs. The ones you will buy for now are:
Spoiler:Show
Now you're going to use your dark portal and head back to Ebon Blade, find a runeforge and use runeforging on your Titansteel destroyer to enchant it with Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle and put your Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector on your Tempered Titansteel Helm.
At this point you should be at around 3400 gearscore whilst not having tanked anything yet. Great you're a tank that has some mediocre gear for dungeon grinding with 0 knowledge on how to tank (assuming that's your first tank)
VI. Becoming a tank
As said you're now a tank that has gear but no idea on how to tank. First i'm going to introduce you to your kit (your arsenal of spells you will be using and your cooldowns):
Spoiler:Show
The Rune system explained.
DK's have 2 different resources. Runic Power and Runes.
Every DK has 6 Runes regardless of Spec or gear, these runes are:
2 Blood runes, 2 Frost runes, 2 Unholy runes
Every time you use an ability that consumes runes 1 of those runes will go on cooldown and you will have to wait for it to refresh to cast the same spell again.
For example: You have 2 Frost runes. You cast Icy Touch twice. You will have 0 Frost runes which means you cannot cast any spell that costs Frost runes until a frost rune has refreshed.
The basic Rotation.
Single-Target:
You want to apply both your diseases to your target asap (so open up with icy touch -> plague strike) afterwards you want to start spamming Death Strike every time you can and use Heart Strikes. Once your diseases have 5 seconds on them left you want to use a Pestilence to refresh the duration on them. When you are at 100 Runic Power and all your runes are on cooldown you want to use Death Coils.
Multi-Target:
Drop Death and Decay onto your pack of targets and move yourself into the Death and Decay so your targets don't leave the D&D zone while it's still up, use an icy touch -> plague strike -> pestilence to spread your diseases to all the targets and afterwards you will use blood boils and keep refreshing the diseases with pestilence when they have less than 5 seconds left on them and use Death and Decay off cooldown and when you have the runes for it.
Cooldown usage:
Properly using your defensive cooldowns (as well as offensive) are what makes the difference between a good and a bad tank. You NEVER want to blow all your cooldowns at the same time. NEVER panic. Panic is going to wipe you faster than a dead healer, that said:
Spoiler:Show
Tips:
If you have at least 40 Runic power you can use Raise Dead -> Vampiric blood -> Death Pact -> Rune Tap (Blood Tap) for a massive heal.
Keep your Horn of winter always up. Strenght = parry, agility = armor
bosses cannot be gripped to you with death grip so death grip should mainly be used on huge trash packs or adds during a boss fight.
Now that you are a little familiar with your Blood DK tank you are not going to join a rdf yet. First you're going to solo The Nexus. Yes. Solo.
Fly on over to Coldarra, Borean Tundra. Make sure your dungeon is set to normal and enter the Nexus. And prepare to be there for at least 45 minutes (longer if you will wipe)
As for why i'm telling you to solo The Nexus before doing rdfs as rdfs will be considerably easier is because:
1)Here you will learn the basics of proper mob positioning
2)You will learn to interrupt dangerous spells
3)You will learn to abuse LoS (Line of Sight) to your advantage
4)You will learn to use cooldowns at the correct times
5)You will get a feel for how much you are capable of and how much you can pull at a time before you start running out of hit points too quickly
6)And lastly this will be a good first test to kill off some stress. A tanks greatest enemy is stress and doubts. You need to have courage and you have to be relaxed to properly tank. A panicking tank will make more mistakes than a inexperienced tank.
Don't worry if you are unable to completely solo it, even if you can solo the first 2 bosses you're already doing great!
VII. Familiarizing yourself with tanking in a group environment
After you have soloed The Nexus you should head to orgrimmar or stormwind and go to the Auction House to get yourself gemmed. If you're a JC this should be fairly cheap.
Get:
1x Austere Earthsiege Diamond
4x Defender's Twilight Opal
3x Solid Sky Sapphire
1x Enduring Forest Emerald
1x Enduring Eye of Zul
Put the Enduring eye of zul into your ilvl 278 ring and everything else into their respective sockets. At this low gearscore socket bonuses will be a godsent blessing to you.
Your aims should be normal dungeons for now to get a better feeling for blood DK's.
The gear you should be looking for:
The Culling of Stratholme (normal):
Crusader's Square Pauldrons
Halls of Lightning (normal):
Seal of the Pantheon
Note: If you obtain the seal and have both jewelcrafting trinkets replace the Figurine - Ruby Hare with it.
The Oculus (normal):
Girdle of Obscuring
Note: while doing these dungeons you want to AVOID joining a Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, Halls of Reflection or Trial of the Champion dungeon unless you are 100% sure you know the dungeon's mechanics and are sure that you are capable of tanking it. These dungeons tend to be harder than your usual normal dungeons!
Once you have been doing normal dungeons for a few runs you should slowly start gravitating towards heroic dungeons.
When you start tanking heroics you want to aim to get:
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom (heroic)
Bracers of the Herald
Azjol-Nerub (heroic)
Essence of Gossamer
Ancient Aligned Girdle
The Culling of Stratholme (heroic)
Bindings of Dark Will
Legplates of the Infinite Drakonid
Drak'tharon Keep (heroic)
Waistguard of the Risen Knight
Gundrak (heroic)
Pauldrons of the Colossus
Offering of Sacrifice
Halls of Lightning (heroic)
Iron Dwarf Smith Pauldrons
The Oculus (heroic)
Ley-Guardian's Legguards
The Violet Hold (heroic)
Bolstered Legplates
Note: you are not asked to obtain EVERY item from these dungeons these are just items you should aim for when going into a dungeon as these are upgrades for your current gear.
Now it's time to learn the tactics for Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, Halls of Reflection and Trial of the Champion. Start by learning FoS, PoS, HoR tactics and pick up the quest from dalaran then look for a pick-up group in global for the normal versions of them. (it's advised that you are around 3500 gearscore when trying to do these dungeons to have no issues going through them)
You will always start with Forge of Souls as you have to progress the quest you have picked up in Dalaran to be able to enter Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection.
From Forge of Souls (normal) the only item useful to you is:
Legplates of Frozen Granite
After you have completed FoS you should head on to PoS or look for a new PuG group for PoS
Pit of Saron (normal) has
Garfrost's Two-Ton Hammer and Scourgelord's Frigid Chestplate for you
Halls of Reflection will be the most challenging out of the 3 dungeons but if you can get a group for it and complete it, it yields Eerie Runeblade Polisher for you
Once you're done with these attempt to get a group for heroic FoS / PoS These yield for you
Black Spire Sabatons, Battered Hilt / Battered Hilt, Shoulderplates of Frozen Blood, Ick's Rotting Thumb, Icebound Bronze Cuirass and Tyrannical Beheader
You should aim to obtain all of the items from Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron both normal and heroic before moving on. (if you get the Battered hilt you should skip Tyrannical Beheader)
You want to chose Quel'Delar, Might of the Faithful when you complete your Battered Hilt quests.
At this point you should be around 4300 gearscore and have accumulated a nice amount of Emblems of Triumph. Head over to Dalaran to Magistrix Vesara and buy:
Clutch of Fortification
exchange 34 emblems of triumph into Emblems of Conquest
buy
Shard of the Crystal Forest
Note: the vendor is in the same room as Magistrix Vesara just look for the "Emblem of Conquest quartermaster"
exchange the remaining 15 emblems from conquest to valor
and exchange the 15 valors to heroism
with the 15 emblems of heroism buy Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight
From now on you have 3 choices:
1) Grind out daily heroic dungeons until you have 50 Emblems of Frost. Buy with them
Sentinel's Winter Cloak
2) Try your chances at getting into a Trial of the Crusader 10 man normal raid.
3)Grind gold to buy:
Harbinger's Bone Band
or
Boots of Kingly Upheaval
or
Breastplate of the White Knight / Breastplate of the White Knight
or
Saronite Swordbreakers / Saronite Swordbreakers
or
Indestructible Plate Girdle
I will assume the worst case scenario happened and you didn't get into a single ToC so you had to grind out gold for the waist, wrists and the Emblems for the cloak
I suggest you try to get the wrists and waist if you are unable to get into a ToC due to those being your lowest ilvl items currently.
After having grinded at least 2 RDF HC's every day for the past month you should have a nice stack of emblems of triumph again. Go to the argent tournament grounds (the entrance to Trial of the Crusader) And look for Aspirant Naradiel (if you're horde) or Aspirant Forudir (if Alliance). They sell your Tier 9 items. Get the helm and gloves for the 2set bonus. If you still have 50 Emblems of triumph go to the Emblem of Triumph Quartermaster and buy Glyph of Indomitability if you do not have 50 emblems of triumph and are far off of 50 EoTs look on global for a ToC trinket farm (don't worry that's not Trial of the Crusader that's Trial of the Champion) try to get your hands on a The Black Heart
At this point you should start enchanting your gear and keep gemming it. Now you should be nearly 5k gs and you should start to look for ToC 10 man normal groups and start farming that place every week.
After you've obtained 50 emblems of triumph again (you get a good amount from ToC) buy T9 legs. And grind out 60 Emblems of frost. Once you have 60 emblems of frost go to dalaran to the Emblem of frost quartermaster and get yourself a Corroded Skeleton Key
Now you'll have to make a PuG raid group yourself (assuming you aren't in a guild ready to help you out with a run) you will want to make an Onyxia's Lair run and reserve the Head of Onyxia / Head of Onyxia as this quest item awards you with a sweet ilvl 245 trinket Purified Onyxia Blood Talisman which will be used until late into ICC / RS raiding.
At this point you should fully enchant your gear and gem it with blue gems.
List of enchants:
Head: Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector
Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle
Cloak: Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Mighty Armor
Chest: Scroll of Enchant Chest - Greater Defense
Wrists: Scroll of Enchant Bracer - Major Stamina
Gloves: Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Armsman
Legs: Frosthide Leg Armor
Boots: Scroll of Enchant Boots - Greater Fortitude
Weapon: Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle
Gems:
Meta: Austere Earthsiege Diamond
Red: Defender's Twilight Opal
Blue: Solid Sky Sapphire
Yellow: Enduring Forest Emerald
After you are fully gemmed and enchanted you should be at 5.2k gs which would be enough to get into some ICC 10n alt runs.
At this point you have basically all the knowledge to be a competent tank and all you have to do is keep farming ICC's from here on until you have the emblems of frost to obtain your Tier 10 4 set bonus and grind out gearscore from icc 10n items and later on icc 25n items. From now on it's up to you how you want to gear. Once you hit 25 man ICC's and get some gear from them you can attempt Ruby Sanctum and/or ICC 25 heroic runs.
A more serious Blood DK tank ra
Blood DK Tank BiS list:
Helm: Sanctified Scourgelord Faceguard
Neck: Bile-Encrusted Medallion
Shoulders: Sanctified Scourgelord Pauldrons
Back: Sentinel's Winter Cloak
Chest: Sanctified Scourgelord Chestguard
Wrists: Bracers of Dark Reckoning
Gloves: Sanctified Scourgelord Handguards
Waist: Belt of Broken Bones
Legs: Legguards of Lost Hope
Feet: Treads of Impending Resurrection
Ring1: Devium's Eternally Cold Ring
Ring2: Ashen Band of Endless Courage
Trinket1: Petrified Twilight Scale / Unidentifiable Organ
Trinket2: Sindragosa's Flawless Fang
2-handed weapon: Bryntroll, the Bone Arbiter
Relic: Sigil of the Hanged Man / Sigil of Virulence / Sigil of the Bone Gryphon / Sigil of Insolence
Note: remember - str = parry. And the dodge relics are better outside ICC (RS/ToC...)
BiS enchants:
Head: Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector
Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle
Cloak: Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Mighty Armor
Chest: Scroll of Enchant Chest - Greater Defense
Wrists: Scroll of Enchant Bracer - Major Stamina
Gloves: Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Armsman
Waist: Eternal Belt Buckle
Legs: Frosthide Leg Armor
Boots: Scroll of Enchant Boots - Greater Fortitude
Weapon: Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle
BiS gems:
Meta: Austere Earthsiege Diamond
Red: Flashing Cardinal Ruby
Blue: Solid Majestic Zircon / Solid Stormjewel
Yellow: Enduring Eye of Zul
Prismatic: Solid Majestic Zircon / Solid Stormjewel
As a last few words i wish you good luck on your journey. Become one of the greatest DK tanks and/or greatest tank in general. Hope you enjoyed my guide and most important - found it useful. I do apologize for any typos and/or mistakes in this guide made, it was created in a lifespan of a week so it's bound to have some mistakes in it. Feel free to point out any typos and i'll try to fix it asap.
Have fun playing your Death Knight! I hope to see you one day tanking my ICC 25 HC or RS 25 HC!
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Member
Blood DK Tank gearing & guide (level 55 - end-game raiding)
Edited: July 25, 2016
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Member
no virulence? /disaporove
bryntroll/Unidentifiable Organ/Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight as BIS? u wot?
ZERO expertise rating from gear?
Flashing Cardinal Ruby - ???????? lold
can any mod delete this, until he fixes such ****?
i hope that i will never see ur tanking "skills" in my raidsEdited: July 24, 2016
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Member
no, just no...
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Forum Veteran
I just wanted to say that getting Sigil for Triumph marks should be first thing you get, then 2 parts t9, then 4 parts t9 and by that time you can probably get t10 gloves or/and pants from VoA, as double tanking there is quite easy. Buy t10 shoulders, and you have 2parts t9 + 2 parts t10. You are definitely ready for icc10 normals.
NEVER spend your EoF on trinkets, belts or non-set items, spend them only and only on t10 set parts. Don't buy tanking Sigil for EoF, one you have for EoT is good, you will never have to change it.
Get Defence to 540 ASAP with gems and enchants, I would suggest getting hit rating to 289, expertise 21-25, then you are ready for anything.
Engineering is very good proffesion, you get 800 armor on gloves and epic speed boost on boots. Mining gives 60 stamina, so don't discard it quickly.Edited: July 24, 2016
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Member
Ty for the guide Dean, I thought you were dead tho. The guys from above should have seen Enk tanking LK with that low dk, lawl, before explaining teh only way of bdk tanking (tm).
-- el hunter
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Member
I don't feel the need for virulence as all it does is give you spell hit rating and as i already mentioned there is no "only true way to play a class" so i just prefer going for defensive stats over hit/exp. I just get the glyph to increase the hit chance for my taunt as that's the only spell that you get hit rating for imo.
Byntroll ain't that bad honestly. I heard the proc is bugged here. No issues on my side as far as i played my DK. Aside from that going for a DPS weapon instead is kinda meh, imo. Yeah it's threat and a little DPS boost to your raid but that's about it.
Unidentifiable Organ - i mainly put this trinket there because of the nice armor value it gives, combined with the stacking passive stamina you get a really nice boost to both your armor and stamina meaning you will maximize your Death Strike's value. Honestly though every high-end trinket has it's use on every tank so listing them all there would make this guide unneccessarily more confusing and longer. It's just that unidentifiable Organ has been working the best for me in most encounters (of course there are exceptions) so that's why it was my choice for the list.
Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight - That was a mistake on my part. Sorry for that. I believe it's the BiS relic for lower end gear where the def boost can bring you more. But outside of that. With higher end gear i myself mostly use the eot/eof relics (depending on the fight). Again. My mistake on that one. I'll fix that asap.
As i already explained with the virulence. I prefer defensive stats over hit/exp. If you think otherwise, great! It's always lovely to see that people have different playstyles and this guide has never been a set in stone one meaning that it was there for newer players to get into tanking and find their own playstyle afterwards. Getting hit/exp capped works for you? Nice! You made it work and it'll probably work better than anything else for you. I on the other hand prefer the additional defensive stats you can pull out of the gear and i believe that's also a better choice for newer tanks as it'll make them a little bulkier.
As i said in the very first paragraph of my guide. Don't go out of your way to badmouth a guide. A guide has A LOT of opinionated information in it. Having a different opinion is okay, badmouthing someone else for having a different opinion is not okay.
Hm? It gives you 20 parry. And those gems are listed there for when you have higher end gear. Sorry if i come off as a little rude but. Sorry for disappointing your expectations of me not being a stam stacking tank that ignores all socket bonuses and thinks that blindly increasing his health pool without any regards to mitigations is the best option. I have tried stam stacking multiple times. It doesn't work for me.Originally Posted by dike
If you're nagging about it not being Defender's Dreadstone which would look like the better option for a bdk tank at first then i'll mention this again. These gems are supposed to be more of high-end gear gems where you get a heavy amount of stamina from gear. And the 30 stams in blues + 15 stam from yellows is enough in most cases. For me.
Just to ease your mind. No worries. You'll never see me tanking any of your raids. I don't tank pugs. I very rarely join pugs honestly and i still mainly heal. So if you're worried about me tanking anything for you. Don't expect to see that happen.Originally Posted by dikeEdited: July 24, 2016
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I left VoA out for a reason. You aren't always able to enter it, nor you are always able to get a group for it if you can get into one then yeah it's a great boost!
Talking about T10. The thing with T10 items is that you mainly get it for the bonuses which requires you to get 2 and/or 4 pieces of your T10 set. And considering that the 2set bonus of T10 is rather useless (in terms of defense) i'd suggest you go for the immediate bonuses from the eof trinket / cloak. The trinket is pretty good for what it does - boosts your health pool. And having a nice HP pool is a key part to a blood DK as a higher HP pool will mean more value from your DS.
The EoT relic is not good enough to varrant it getting over any of the items i mentioned in the guide. And as i mentioned in a reply above. I believe Sigil of the unfaltering knight is the best sigil for lower end gear. The def boost is really nice.
Yeah almost any profession is decent. And i'll mention this here right now. Get any profession you'd like to have. I listed the 2 professions there which speed your gearing process up the most and the cheapest.Originally Posted by angrylol
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Thanks for the morale boost.
Off-topic: i returned to retail for a month or 2 to prep for Legion and my guild has some pretty big plans for the launch of it so i was kinda busy. So i'm not dead, just a little busy. I even play wotlk again from time to time.
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ye gg, gl with all those dodged/missed death strikes, gl with those missed IT's and death grips. u can full delete ur "guide" (do u even know that is guide, mate? cuz this wall of text is not a guide, its defenitoin HOW TO NOT PLAY BDK TANK). u even dont know around what ur spec/class works, can u name me a single reason to take u in raid instead of another bdk (with proper gear and spec) or warr or bear or pala? cuz with ur gear setup all ur self-healing will be reduced to 30sec cd on runetap and 2cd min lichborne+dc (****en lold at this). u've made a guide how to stand in fron of boss, doing nothing except auto-attack w8ing for x7MD's (cuz ur tps will be lower than on my ghoul). dont spread such "guids" on forums ( parry gems - srsly?)
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Do i really have to spend my day today making a video of me hitting a dummy for 20 minutes showing how many abilities i miss in the process?
Also considering most people's attitude until now. Ok, i tried to be nice and give constructive replies stating that this guide is opinionated and this is how i do things. But you people just don't seem to get it and come back at me with a horrible attitude. So i will show you the same respect you show for me.
First off. If you could make your goddamn response in proper english that'd be a start, ye?
Secondly, already stated that in my opinion i prefer defensive stats over threat. I don't have issues with threat whatsoever. Maybe you should consider learning your goddamn rotation before you come crying to me about threat.
Thirdly, sorry bud but you won't see me in any of "your" raids. As i assume considering your english is as horrible as the last pug leader's english was when my sister joined. You're still probably wiping at Marrow 10 N because your english is too horrible to properly tell the other players what you want them to do.
Yeah i know it's a guide. That's why i named it "Blood DK tank gearing & guide"Originally Posted by musaew
If you keep on giving me, sorry, "******ed" responses. I won't even bother replying to you trying to explain anything. I didn't make this guide to argue with a bunch of kids that can't accept the fact that there are more than 1 ways to play a blood death knight tank.
Asking for the guide to be deleted... i hope the moderators are sane enough to agree with me here. I made a guide to help out people by giving them tips and guiding them through becoming a tank as that's possibly the most feared role for a newer player giving advice using MY OWN EXPERIENCE and MY OPINIONS on how to do it. If you're so keen on bashing me with your opinion why not go and write your own guide and post it here instead of waste my time, your time and everyone else's time that's reading through the replies section for this thread.
If you wanna keep on complaining. Try the talents, gear, gems and everything else out first. AND THEN post how it worked out for you. What didn't work and what worked, and how i could improve the guide by giving reasons and facts instead of:
"LOLOLO yOUR GUID SUCKS DONKEY BALS NO HIT NO EXP. DELETE GUID"
On a side note after this kind of rant i noticed that you posted this in there.
I never mentioned anywhere that the lichborne should be used with dc's to heal yourself. It's an immunity to fears, charms and sleeps. More of a pvp talent - yes. But it can be useful on some boss fights. I used to help my healers out on the BQL fight with the rune tap glyph + lichborne. So basically whenever BQL was about to fear everybody i used lichborne and rune tap to heal my party while the healers position themselves back after the fear has worn off and heal the second group of the raid (i mainly used that in 10man raids)Edited: July 24, 2016
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I liked this guide, it gives you a nice sense of things if you're completely new to the game and you rushed a Dk as your second character because you thought being a oOo696D4RkKnIgHtOfSh4d0wDe4tH969xXx is cool. All in all its pretty solid and helps with making sense of things, although at several points it becomes a rather annoying wall of text (but then again, to someone new to the game that'd translate to a saving grace).
A "my way of doing things" does exist in this game, but mathematically is not the best way to do things. Basically, you wont be the-very-best-that-no-one-ever-was if you dont go out of this "my way". This delves into many things:
-----As a tank, if something that is not within the standard best-practice works for you, you might need to evaluate everything that comes in touch with you in a raid:
.Healers
.Level of DPS
.Level of Threat
.Boss fight itself
Basically, if gemming dodge/parry sees you alive at the end of the encounter, you might want to ask your healers' mana and CDs. Also, check to see if your DPS is a bunch of Fire mages doing 24k sustained DPS (or whatever mages are doing right now) and end the fight before the 3 minute mark. All in all, maybe you would also survive with just gemming Stamina, but put less stress on your healers,
-----BiS lists: The endgame tank Best in Slot gear was made with just a couple of things in mind:
1. You're melee hit capped. This is mandatory because coupled with the taunt glyph it makes it so that your taunt cant ever miss (it can, and will miss if you're not properly hit capped). While this might be seen as irrelevant or unimportant, there's always the occasional DPS that just goes nuts over the burst before you even use Icy Touch on the b or the healer that wanders too close to the boss's aggro range. Either that or you're in a fight that requires proper tank switching. Its these situations where you absolutely do not want your taunt to even have a chance to miss, because those 8 seconds of CD can very well spell R-A-I-D-W-I-P-E.
2. You carry the most Effective Health, which is attained through a combination of Armor+Health (one of which you dont get by gemming), while avoidance stats are proven (read: PROVEN, as in: MATHS) to be inferior on endgame content (ICC, RS).
That said, Unidentifiable Organ is just a terrible trinket to have, except for fights where you have adds on you 24/7 (basically, only for when you're off-tanking LK).
Also, legit question: what are the benefits of going blood over frost for tanking? I know Frost has 2x Death Strike healing, great defensive CDs and resistances, and also allows dual-wielding tank weapons for extra defensive stats.
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The DK is the only tank that benefits from expertise in a defensive way - not taking parry haste into consideration. All other 3 tank classes have expertise only for threat generation - meaning that if you don't lack TPS, you can ignore expertise. If your DS get's dodged or parried (whenever this will work again) you'll lose your healing capability.
There's also no reason for a video. On warmane with 0 expertise 5.5% of your attacks will be dodged.
Inside ICC you'll never gem parry. You'll always take dodge for obvious reasons - not that I recommend either, tho. Parry also has an absolutely insane DR rate making it even less valuable to gem for. For the stam part: Why are you suggesting http://wotlk.openwow.com/item=50344 if stam stacking didn't work out and you even gem for avoidance in end game gear? Doesn't make a lot of sense.
Also a little note regarding your weapon choice: The last time I've checked Bryntroll on a DK tank was about 1 month ago on a PP25HC kill. The proc healed for 2.5k (!) during to whole encounter (6min 45sec). Absolutely not worth it, imo.
Honestly, get defense cap and activate Frost Presence = tank. As a DK it's pretty much simple as that and I had to tank several 25HC encounters with my DPS specs as tank dced, had connection problems or w/e. Blood advantages over Frost:
http://wotlk.openwow.com/spell=49189
http://wotlk.openwow.com/spell=55233
http://wotlk.openwow.com/spell=49016
The double healing of DS (e.g. 20%) was a bug and is no longer available as far as I know - I just did a quick test on a dummy and got healed for 10%. So Blood healing > Frost healing.
Frost vs. Blood is like a religion. You won't see much of a difference. Personally I prefer blood. The most fun spec to tank with was UH, tho.Edited: July 25, 2016 Reason: some text added
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I think bonus armor from t10 gloves and chest, that 4part defencive is worth much more that DS healing unnecessary +100 per hit. Your job is not to top your HP but mitigate damage.
Why I use Blood over all other specs:
1. Will of the Necropolis, that is the best, it is passive, 100% up and ready to save me at any situation.
2. Vampiric Blood, 15 seconds of immortality, Rune tap and Death strike will top you up for sure in critical situation.
3. Death Rune Mastery, you have pretty much rune at any moment available.
4. Expertise and Stamina early in talent tree, other specs don't have Stamina and 1 less expertise. 8% Strength, more than Frost and Unholy trees combined.
5. Hysteria, nice boost in group damage and missdirected threat.
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Thanks for the nice words. As i mentioned (hopefully somewhere) this guide was mainly intended for newer players. So i tried to give as much information as possible.
On a side not: The guide was created within a week. And on my notepad this guide was almost 3 times longer than the guide that ended up here. I had to cut out A LOT of stuff for obvious reasons. So some parts might seem unfinished / cut off.
Mathematic values are not set-in-stone either. Mathematic values are theoretical and that doesn't always translate in the top-performance practically. Mathematical values are also mainly generalized meaning that they are not the best choice for every encounter and you will still struggle with some aspects more than others. Lastly, mathematical values usually do not always end up the most "comfortable" choice...
I'll make a pretty vague example:
You have a passive talent and an active talent. You can choose only 1 of them
The passive talent is worse than the active talent but the active talent relies on some weird gimmicky mechanic that forces you to go out of your standart rotation to activate the benefits of the mechanic resulting in you screwing up your rotation.
I'd choose the passive talent over the active talent as i couldn't be bothered unless the passive talent is truly terrible.
I could also turn this. If you do not tank for a very small guild with a very small core-raider's group you will find yourself having to work with:
-Different DPS'es (classes as well as skill levels)
-Different Healers (classes as well as skill levels)
Especially every healer will have their own pace and their own strenghts and weaknesses.
One example would be a pally healer from my old guild (Wicked Sick). He was almost always topping the healing charts, but of course at a cost... He'd require 2 Innervates on gunship...
While on the other hand i as a pally healer have never required an Innervate or any other mana-gain tools besides the ones that are provided in my own kit.
You cannot build around any scenario perfectly. So you try to balance it out as much as possible.
This goes back to the previous replies i've stated. I mainly listed the trinket there because it's been working out for me the best. So in my opinion it's a great trinket. Not saying that it's the top-of-the-class best trinket in the game donate for it now! There are better choices and looking back right now i switched it up for a Petrified scale in ICC depending on the fight. Also another thing to note is, i stated at the very beginning of my guide that i have been mainly off-tanking so that's also a reason why the trinket might be there. I'll update it to a choice between petrified and unidentifiable though.
With the BiS list i have provided in the guide you end up with ~6.67% hit (i think. I'm not currently on WoW so i cannot confirm that but it's around that number). And so far during my time tanking i have missed my taunt twice. (and i do have a fair amount of raids under my belt). Even better my main tank (mentioned in one of the replies above naming him "Enk") had ~1.3% hit and i've never seen him miss a single taunt.
I play A LOT of frost DK. I find it actually more entertaining to play. Both specs are COMPETETIVE for tanking. And i won't say which one is better as both of them have strenghts and weaknesses. But i made this guide specifically for blood tanks because, in my opinion, blood tanks are easier to pick up for newer players due to the high self-healing and pretty straight-forward playstyle.
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Well my DS'es don't get parried nor dodged a lot so i'm currently fine with how my build/setup is. (as said i give practical adivce over theoretical) and going for more defensive stats as of right now is better for me.
Stam stacking didn't work out for me, and i think it's terrible how tanks completely ignore socket bonuses and mitigations to increase their health pool, that said stamina is not completely useless. It's still 1 of our main stats and even more so for blood DK's. I just simply prefer the 270 stamina from UO (@ 10 stacks) over the dodge that the petrified scale gives (this depends on the fight a lot as well though). This might have something to do with WotN and PS both proccing at 35% hp though.
As said. A lot of people have stated that Byntroll doesn't work/is bugged and whatnot. No issues on my side as far as i have used the weapon.
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