WotLK DK Tank PVE

[Fenixloko]

Hi guys, my English is bad, so I apologize in advance. I'm starting DK Tank now and I wanted to know which is the best talent to follow, blood, frost or unholy for pure Tank PVE

[abircin]

This expansion is pretty much all about effective health when it comes to tanking. Blood is the way to go for most effective health. While you can theoretically tank with frost and unholy aswell, blood is just better for overall tanking.
One common endgame spec is something like this, although you can make many variations out of fhis:
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent...1s9m11s7n21sxz
Key talents are Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis. Also Blood dk are pretty handy with AP buff from Abomination's Might and melee haste from Improved Icy Talons and of course lets not forget Hysteria which in most cases you would give to a feral cat.

[csijowiu389]

(...) of course lets not forget Hysteria which in most cases you would give to a feral cat.

Totally not biased information rofl

[angrylol]

I would suggest you go blood and instead of icy talons in frost tree you go get death and decay CD reduction in unholy tree. This will be a huge benefit in dungeons, use death and decay on each pull. DKs who spam blood boil and complain about aoe threat are really funny to me, don't be one of those. Change it back to icy talons when you start to tank raids.

[fyrinis]

I would suggest you go blood and instead of icy talons in frost tree you go get death and decay CD reduction in unholy tree. This will be a huge benefit in dungeons, use death and decay on each pull. DKs who spam blood boil and complain about aoe threat are really funny to me, don't be one of those. Change it back to icy talons when you start to tank raids.

Not necessarily. You can maintain a variant of the common 43/26 build by speccing into Bloody Strikes instead of Bloody Vengeance. Or spend some points on Black Ice over fully ranked Killing Machine or points in Glacier Rot. Lichborne is also handy for some dungeon encounters. With Death Rune Mastery 3/3 you can do more Blood Boil without relying so much on Death And Decay. Especially if you learn the art of taking one diseased mob to an other pack and Pestillence+Blood Boil. With some dps pieces, in particular stuff with strength and crit rating on, this works wonders.

[angrylol]

Blood Boil does unnecessary threat to targets that do not need it and not enough threat to targets that need it.
When you have to make whole new spec for Blood Boil to be useful, idk man.

[abircin]

Blood Boil does unnecessary threat to targets that do not need it and not enough threat to targets that need it.
When you have to make whole new spec for Blood Boil to be useful, idk man.

Lets see.. in addition to blood boil, you got autoattacks, rune strike, death strike and maybe do some icy touches if needed. It is some work and possibly fun. Should you happen bo be invited to raid, you bring more to the table if you picked unholy subspec. The spec is not optimal for single target, but in most cases it works.

[angrylol]

Lets see.. in addition to blood boil, you got autoattacks, rune strike, death strike and maybe do some icy touches if needed. It is some work and possibly fun. Should you happen bo be invited to raid, you bring more to the table if you picked unholy subspec. The spec is not optimal for single target, but in most cases it works.

Irony is, if you do that, you don't need blood boil. Instead you have extra blood strike for the same runes, for even higher efficiency.

[TutellaF]

The main appeal of DnD is that it is ranged, front-loaded AOE dmg.
Everything you listed is in your arsenal, but is mainly single target.
Applying diseases takes 3 gcd + another for BB / tick and you have to be in range to apply PS.

BB w/o diseases hits like wet noodle and even healer will pull the aggro from you and screws your runes, so it is not an option to start with that.


But if you start with DnD at range you get instant AOE aggro on the whole mob group (= no hot /replenishment will pull aggro) then follow with IT while still running towards the group -> PS -> Pesti.

Effectively you start building AOE threat way faster.



For OP:
Personally I love dungeon and RHC tanking as unholy with full tank gear.
AOE aggro is on par with ppal and all the downsides everyone metions when comparring blood vs unholy for raid tanking doesn't matter there, only tps.
+ in T9s with 3rd disease my DS heals about the same as it would in blood and I have a pet always ready for sacrifice if something goes really wrong.

You could do blood for sure to learn the ropes, but expect to have hard time when low geared and whenever you get a group who cares about numbers only...

I'm currently running with something like (have blood spec as well for VoAs/weekly:
https://armory.warmane.com/character...daeron/talents
or for low lvl:
https://armory.warmane.com/character...daeron/talents

[Dragonslash94]

if people are using icy talon builds than its no wonder DKs on the server have major threat issues, iv been tanking on a blood DK since WotLK went live, you should ALWAYS max out anticipation and morbidity as a tank, you will deal more more threat with DND and a bit of crit than you will with 6 blood boil

icy talons is worthless in dungeons, but OP in raids so only use icy talon builds for raiding, although strictly speaking you want a frost or unholy DK to bring in icy talons for the raid instead of the tank

[Morvion]

if people are using icy talon builds than its no wonder DKs on the server have major threat issues, iv been tanking on a blood DK since WotLK went live, you should ALWAYS max out anticipation and morbidity as a tank, you will deal more more threat with DND and a bit of crit than you will with 6 blood boil

icy talons is worthless in dungeons, but OP in raids so only use icy talon builds for raiding, although strictly speaking you want a frost or unholy DK to bring in icy talons for the raid instead of the tank

true.
im surprised to even see someone has an argument against this:

I would suggest you go blood and instead of icy talons in frost tree you go get death and decay CD reduction in unholy tree. This will be a huge benefit in dungeons, use death and decay on each pull. DKs who spam blood boil and complain about aoe threat are really funny to me, don't be one of those. Change it back to icy talons when you start to tank raids.

[KronoAS]

This expansion is pretty much all about effective health when it comes to tanking. Blood is the way to go for most effective health. While you can theoretically tank with frost and unholy aswell, blood is just better for overall tanking.
One common endgame spec is something like this, although you can make many variations out of fhis:
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent...1s9m11s7n21sxz
Key talents are Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis. Also Blood dk are pretty handy with AP buff from Abomination's Might and melee haste from Improved Icy Talons and of course lets not forget Hysteria which in most cases you would give to a feral cat.

I don't see Glyph of Disease. Is it not good any more for ICC raiding?

[SilverFlash]

if people are using icy talon builds than its no wonder DKs on the server have major threat issues, iv been tanking on a blood DK since WotLK went live, you should ALWAYS max out anticipation and morbidity as a tank, you will deal more more threat with DND and a bit of crit than you will with 6 blood boil

Sure, you still won't hold threat against proper aoe dps. People tank on raid spec bc they don't want to respec just for dungeons or have two tank specs, not bc blood with frost sub is that good for aoe, blood will still be the worst aoe threat spec no matter what you do.

icy talons is worthless in dungeons

And like that, you lost every melee that was listening.

or unholy DK

And where would they find the points for it? You'd need 9 more points, which would mean losing gargoyle and rage of rivendare, 1/3 WP and no SS.

The proper advice is this: go frost for better aoe tanking in dungeons if you really want to do it properly, no amount of shenanigans will make blood good in that department. Raid spec blood is just as fine as 3/3 morb bc you'll still lose threat to the geared trigger happy ret/warr etc.

[Anidoggg]

Hi, I run 3 DK's through icc HC every week and in mine, and most other players the best talents for tanking is blood. Frost tank with 1-handers can also be great for dungeon farming, but in general for raids you are gonna want to be blood spec.

This is the best spec in my opinion (double buff spec[AP & haste]): this means you don't need to run a frost DK in your raid also, because you have the haste buff: https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent...1ts841s8g51sxd

Short explanation of the talents:
- You mainly want to get "will of the necropolis" talent. Very strong defensive talent.
- Rest of blood talents is focused on aqquiring the most important defensive talents with the most optimal talents for threat.
- Icy reach is great for a lot of fights, will allow you to make great use of chains of ice on valithria for example and allow you to icy touch mobs from a far distance if you want to have threat on them.
- Killing Machine & Glacier Rot is your main threat talents. These talents are the reason DK's is the number 1 single target threat tank in the game.
- Frigid Dreadplate is not a good talent, it gives you avoidance which generally is considered a less important stat on tank as it isn't something that you can count on. It also doesn't count as a dodge or parry so it won't even proc runestrike.
- "Virulence" from the unholy tree is extremely good. With t10 and armor items you hit will not be optimal. Usually you go for 8% melee hit, which means you are not hit capped for spells. I personally don't like to miss Icy touches as it can mess with my rotation

GLYPHS:
- Dark command: you dont want to miss taunt
- Disease: you generally dont like to waste runes on plaguestrike, this glyph helps with that
- Vampiric blood: There is nothing better, extending this defensive cooldown can in some cases save your life, as it also increases the healing you get from rune tap and deathstrike

[abircin]

I don't see Glyph of Disease. Is it not good any more for ICC raiding?

Glyph of Disease is optional. You can exchange it with Glyph of Rune tap. Death Strike heals is most of the time overheal and that extra heal on party members can be useful sometimes. Its really up to you.