Blood DK Tank gearing & guide (level 55 - end-game raiding)
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:
1)Dwarf - dwarves are the kings of tanking due to their amazing active racial Stone Form which decreases their damage taken giving them essentially another free defensive cooldown. Dwarves are also resistant to frost damage which you do encounter in a lot of fights in WoTLK.
2)Tauren - Tauren have passively more Health making them a solid choice for tanking but what most people do forget about is War Stomp - the active racial of the Tauren which is a nice on-demand hard AoE CC that is mostly useful for adds on a boss or trash.
3)Undead - Undead are passively resistant to Shadow Damage which is particularly useful on the Lich King encounter in ICC. They also have an active racial - Will of the Forsaken which is an on-demand Fear, Sleep and Charm removal (can be useful on fights such as Blood-Queen Lana'thel)
4)Draenei - Draenei similar to Undead are resistant to shadow spell damage but their active racial is a nice heal over time that can be useful in some sticky situations (though mainly when soloing)
5)Night Elf - Night elves have a passive racial that makes them harder to hit at all times (basically it's free dodge/parry). Their active racial Shadowmeld is super situational so it's not really useful for tanking.
6)Troll - Trolls have a passive racial that increases their health regeneration making them a somewhat viable choice as a tank (the bonus is really small though so it's not really worth it). Their active racial - berserking is a damage cooldown so not very useful for tanking.
7)Blood Elf - Blood elves are resistant to arcane magic which is not particularly common in WoTLK fights but can be useful on rare occasions. Their active racial is an AoE silence that also instantly restores some of your resource (mana, runic power, energy, rage) this racial is rather situational but can see some use when both your DK's interrupts are on cooldown and you need an instant interrupt.
8)Orc - Orcs do not offer much besides some stun reduction (which mostly can be useful on trash packs as a lot of them have stuns) and increased expertise while you are using an axe or fist weapons. As a Blood DK your BiS weapon is an 2-handed axe but expertise is not important enough for a tank to roll an Orc for it.
9)Gnome - The only thing gnomes got going for them is the passive arcane resistance. They can break out of slows with their active racial but that is rarely useful for a tank nowadays.
10)Human - The ever-so popular human comes in as last because all they offer is a similar CC break to that of a gnome, it's better but it's clearly a PvP racial and they get increased expertise while wearing a mace and/or sword.
The best races for tanking are:
Alliance: Dwarf
Horde: Tauren
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:
-ElvUI (The UI i use - it's simple, has almost everything you need and it's easy to adjust to your preferences)
download (thanks Kkthnx for sharing!)
-Deadly Boss Mods or DBM (Deadly Boss Mods is your main PvE addon. It shows you boss ability cooldowns, tells you when to run, when to taunt, when to do what in most situations)
download
-GearScore Lite (a notorious addon for almost destroying PuG raiding on Retail back in WoTLK. It is commonly used among WoTLK private servers so you should get this if you are ever planning on joining pick-up groups)
download
-Recount/Skada (i use both, you can use only one. Shows the Damage your party/raid is doing, healing, absorbs, damage taken, deaths and a lot of other useful stuff)
download
-TellMeWhen (An addon that lets you see cooldown timers, buff/debuff timers, ability timers and a lot of other useful information which will make your tanking easier)
download
-TidyPlates (An Unit Plates modification that makes it easier to spot when a target that should be attacking you is attacking your healer)
download
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:
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:
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.
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)
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.
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:
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:
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
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
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.
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
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:
http://i.imgur.com/609kbwP.png
start off by going:
Frost Tree
Improved Icy Touch 3/3
Runic Power Mastery 2/2
Black Ice 5/5
Nerves of Cold Steel 3/3
Annihilation 3/3
Killing Machine 1/5
Icy Talons 5/5
Endless Winter 2/2
Glacier Rot 3/3
Improved Icy Talons 1/1
Rime 3/3
Merciless Combat 2/2
Killing Machine 3/5
Unbreakable Armor 1/1
Threat of Thassarian 3/3
Blood of the North 1/3
Frost Strike 1/1
Blood of the North 3/3
Guile of Gorefiend 3/3
Tundra Stalker 4/5
Howling Blast 1/1
Tundra Stalker 5/5
Blood Tree
Subversion 3/3
Butchery 2/2
Bladed Armor 5/5
Dark Conviction 5/5
Frost Tree
Killing Machine 5/5
Chill of the Grave 2/2
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:
http://i.imgur.com/gG2rEaz.png
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:
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):
Frost Presence - Your tanking presence, always have this on when you're tanking anything. It reduces the damage you take and increases your threat generation.
Icy Touch - A ranged spell that does a little damage and a bunch of threat if you're in frost presence. It also applies Frost Fever - one of your 2 diseases.
Plague Strike - A spell that does pretty low damage but applies blood plague - your second disease.
Death Strike - Your bread & butter. You aim to use this spell as much as possible, it does decent damage to your opponent and heals you for each of your diseases on the target.
Heart Strike - A damaging ability that does decent damage and is semi-aoe (similar to a warrior's Cleave) it hits another target next to your main target. This ability does 10% extra damage to each target for each of your diseases on the target.
Blood Boil - Your first true AoE ability. Does extremely bad AoE damage but it's damage is increased if your targets are debuffed with at least 1 of your 2 diseases.
Death and Decay - Your other AoE ability. Does bad damage in an area that you drop it in. It's a pretty expensive spell to cast and it's not really worth it hence we are buffing it with Glyph of Death and Decay.
Pestilence - Your third AoE ability. It spreads the diseases from your current target to all nearby targets and refreshes the duration of the diseases if glyphed with Glyph of Disease.
Death Coil - Decent damaging ability that costs 40 Runic Power. Your second RP dump.
Rune Strike - An auto attack modifier that does a decent amount of threat. Your main RP dump.
Blood Tap - Coverts one of your Blood Runes into a Death Rune (Death runes count as all 3 runes Blood, Frost or Unholy).
Rune Tap - A pretty nice self-heal on a small 30 second cooldown. Basically a semi-defensive cooldown.
Dark Command - Your taunt. You'll use this to taunt off enemies attacking players other than you.
Death Grip - Similar to a taunt but ranged. It pulls the target to you and forces that target to attack you for a small amount of time.
Horn of Winter - A 3 min buff (if Glyphed) that increases your strenght and agility.
Vampiric Blood - Your Blood-specific defensive cooldown. Increases your max HP by 15% and increases the healing you get from all spells (so basically increases the healing of Death Strike)
Icebound Fortitude - A defensive cooldown that decreases damage taken by 30% and makes you immune to stuns
Anti-Magic Shell - A low cooldown defensive cooldown that reduces all magic damage you take by 75% (up to a maximum of 50% of your max hp) so you cannot absorb 75% of a spell that hits you for 900000 damage.
Mark of the Blood - Your other blood-specific defensive cooldown. You basically place a debuff on an enemy which has 20 charges and lasts 20 seconds and every time you hit that target while he has that debuff on him you are healed for 4% of your max health. On a side note: this heal stacks with Vampiric blood for even more healing.
Mind Freeze - your spell interrupt.
Hysteria - a blood only buff you place on a DPS that will increase their damage while draining a small % of their health.
All the other spells are more or less situational and you an always get an idea on what they do by reading their tooltips.
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:
Vampiric Blood - use this cooldown if you fall below 35% health. It's usually best used with Empower Rune Weapon (which resets all your runes that are on cooldown and gives you a decent amount of Runic Power) and then spam Death Strikes and use your Rune Tap for the heal.
Icebound Fortitude - If you are at around 60% health and the boss is about to use an ability that does a lot of damage (like enrages). (your DBM will most likely notify you of such an ability)
Anti-magic Shell - Whenever the boss is casting a spell that does a fair amount of damage. You can be quite reckless with this defensive cooldown as it's cooldown is only 45 seconds though you might want to save this for a spell ability that the boss casts which does a lot of damage.
Mark of Blood - If the boss has any kind of channeled damaging ability or debuff (DoT) he puts on you.
Rune Tap - If your healer dies and you're starting to get low on health or if your healer is struggling with mana.
Blood Tap - If you need to instantly pop one of your defensive cooldowns but the rune required for the cooldown is still recharging.
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
http://i.imgur.com/VYHUlK9.png
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!
