Intro:
Hello everyone and welcome!
Over the years of playing on Molten then Warmane I've personally tried all DK tanking specs that I could find reasonable. I made couple of specs for myself and friends around me and they asked me many times to make a full guide about how do I go into making specs and what am I looking for in each spec. I'm not gonna bother all of you with that I'll just give u best spec I've made for myself and specific information on how it works. I don't like blood DK tanks since blood wasn't originally made for tanking it was PvP/PvE dps spec, so I always tried to avoid it (and still FROST presence is one you are tanking in keep that in mind :D ).
I will be using short names for spells so remember them it will be useful:
IT - Icy Touch;
PS - Plague Strike;
RS - Rune Strike;
FS - Frost Strike;
HB - Howling Blast;
DS - Death Strike;
RT - Rune Tap;
BT - Blood Tap;
IBF - Icebound Fortitude;
AMS - Anti-Magic Shell;
UA - Unbreakable Armor
SFF - Sindragosa's Flawless Fang;
AOD - Army of the Dead;
D&D - Death and Decay;
BB - Blood Boil.
This spec has few ups and downs like every other spec in the game.
Ups:
-Best aggro holder
-Lowest damage taken during fights
-Good with tanking spell damage fights
-Reasonable self healing
-Very good avoidance (even with -20% debuff in ICC)
-Lots of defensive cooldowns that you can rotate during long fights
Downs:
-2 one handed tanking weapons (reasonably hard to obtain)
-fairly bad with AoE tanking (even with AoE spec tanking multiple targets is not easy)
Gearing:
Head: Broken Ram Skull Helm
Neck: Noose of Malachite
Shoulders: Sanctified Scourgelord Pauldrons
Cloak: Royal Crimson Cloak
Chest: Sanctified Scourgelord Chestguard
Wrists: Bracers of Dark Reckoning
Hands: Sanctified Scourgelord Handguards
Belt: Belt of Broken Bones
Legs: Sanctified Scourgelord Legguards
Boots: Treads of Impending Resurrection
Weapon 1: Mithrios, Bronzebeard's Legacy
Weapon 2: Mithrios, Bronzebeard's Legacy
Sigil: Sigil of Bone Gryphon
Ring 1: Juggernaut Band
Ring 2: Devium's Eternally Cold Ring
Trinket 1: Sindragosa's Flawless Fang
Trinket 2: Petrified Twilight Scale
U can also use some of the following items depending on the type of the fight:
Trinket: Satrina's Impeding Scarab for some big soaking fight where or when you need lots of self healing (since all DKs self healing spells work on % of your maximum HP)
Ring: Ashen Band of Endless Courage instead of Devium's Eternally Cold Ring if you need the hit rating and its good because u can obtain it easy.
Why go for fast weapons?
Simple answer: Parry. Whenever you parry an attack your haste is increased by certain amount and if that amount gets high enough you automatically hit again, in other words it resets your auto attack, so if you use 1.6 speed weapon you have higher chance of getting your auto attack reseted. That means more RS as they are added to your next AUTO ATTACK.
Stats:
Defense cap is 540 but higher you get with your gear you will have more (around 620 BiS geared). You shouldn't gem for it if you have 540 capped.
Hit cap is 8% since you are a melee class, you don't need to go higher then that since you have +3% spell hit from talents.
Expertise cap is 22 but u can go a bit higher. with single target spec you will have 24, with AoE spec you'll have 29.
Parry and Dodge is something you shouldn't care too much about since gear is giving you a lot of it and there is no need to gem it (but if you are doing it go for parry as I did since parry will give you more threat).
Armor cap is not obtainable with gear alone, but with UA active you will get really close to that cap. Normally just from gear you will be around 35k unbuffed.
Enchanting:
Head: Arcanum of the Frosty Soul
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle
Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Might Armor
Chest: Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats or Enchant Chest - Super Health
Wrists: Enchant Bracer - Major Stanima
Hands: Enchant Gloves - Armsman
Belt: Eternal Belt Buckle
Legs: Frosthide Leg Armor
Boots: Enchant Boots - Greater Fortitude
Weapon 1: http://wotlk.openwow.com/spell=70164...ubian Carapace
Weapon 2: http://wotlk.openwow.com/spell=70164...ubian Carapace
Gems:
Head: Austere Earthsiege Diamond and Defender's Dreadstone
Neck: Solid Majestic Zircon
Shoulders: Solid Majestic Zircon
Cloak: Solid Majestic Zircon
Chest: Defender's Dreadstone and Solid Majestic Zircon
Bracers: Solid Majestic Zircon
Hands: Solid Majestic Zircon
Belt: 2x Solid Majestic Zircon and Defender's Dreadstone
Legs: Solid Majestic Zircon and Nightmare Tear
Boots: 2x Solid Majestic Zircon
Rings: Solid Majestic Zircon
Weapons: Solid Majestic Zircon
For start you wanna macro Rune Strike into all your spells. Reason for this is your tanking Sigil that procs on using Rune Strike.
#showtooltip Icy Touch(Rank 5)
/cast !Rune Strike
/cast Icy Touch(Rank 5)
#showtooltip Plague Strike
/cast !Rune Strike
/cast Plague Strike(Rank 6)
#showtooltip Blood Strike
/cast !Rune Strike
/cast Blood Strike(Rank 6)
#showtooltip Death Strike
/cast !Rune Strike
/cast Death Strike(Rank 5)
Main things to remember:
Main threat making spells are: IT and RS.
Main AoE tanking abilities are : D&D, HB and BB.
Main self healing spells are: DS, RT and combo of Raise Dead and Death Pact as your last resort.
Main Defensive cooldowns are: IBF, AMS, UA, BT (If you have 4 set T10) and AOD as a last resort.
IBF is great on Frost DK tanks for a simple reason its duration is 6 seconds longer due to Guile of Gorefiend and it turns it into a masive 60%+ damage reduction cooldown that lasts for 18 seconds and has 2 minutes cooldown.
AMS is great for a simple reason of ignoring any kind of spell damage for 5 seconds (7 with glyph) with only 45 seconds cooldown.
SFF is great cooldown you can use on any nomber of fights. Its resistance power is just too great to be not used almost on CD. Keep in mind that its still has LOWER value of damage reduction then AMS so u should use it combined with some other cooldown that can be used on you by other players (PS from Disc Priest or Hand Sacrifice from other tank if paladin)
UA is great for physical damage fights since its only way to put u close or even at hard boss armor cap (48k) and it lasts for 20 seconds with only 1 minute cooldown.
AoD is a good defensive cooldown but it has abnormally long cooldown (10 mins), but its a last resort spell. Its useful on some fights.
This is the spec I use when there is AoE tanking but it can also be used to single target only downside is less self healing:
http://rpgworld.altervista.org/335/d...00000000000000
Glyphs that I use on this spec:
Major:
Glyph of Disease;
Glyph of Unbreakable Armor;
Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell.
Minor:
Glyph of Horn of Winter;
Glyph of Blood Tap;
Glyph of Raise Dead.
Rotation for AoE Tanking: D&D > IT > PS > Pestilence > BB + HB.
Rotation for single target: IT > PS > 2x BS (so your blood runes become Death runes) then u just spam as much IT as u can).
You can add Frosts strikes when your Runic Power is high.
Why did I avoid any Obliterate in my spec and rotation?
I avoided it for a sole reason of not doing as much threat as Icy Touch spam itself. There is no need for using it but for maybe some CHANCE on Rime (15%) to get Howling Blast proc. For the same reason I didn't pick up that talent, as in my opinion tanks need to be consistently strong and not relay on low % of something happening in their favor or not.
If you don't have a need for AoE tanking u can go single target spec with a little bit more self healing and damage:
http://rpgworld.altervista.org/335/d...00000000000000
Glyphs that I use on this spec:
Major:
Glyph of Rune Tap;
Glyph of Unbreakable Armor;
Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell.
Minor:
Glyph of Horn of Winter;
Glyph of Blood Tap;
Glyph of Raise Dead.
Rotations still stay the same for single target tanking.
Proffesions:
I personally like to go for Mining and Jewlcrafting since they give most stamina (mining +60 stamina and JWC +69 stamina)
Ofcourse you can use any number of combinations this is just my personal favorite.
Add-ons
For tanking alone I use Power Auras for Killing Machine Procs and Omen just for checking threat.
You can use DBM and BigWigs for tactics and timers.
As I promised I'm adding 2-Handed frost tanking spec
http://rpgworld.altervista.org/335/d...00000000000000
Glyphs that I would use on this spec:
Major:
Glyph of Disease;
Glyph of Unbreakable Armor;
Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell.
Minor:
Glyph of Horn of Winter;
Glyph of Blood Tap;
Glyph of Raise Dead.
Rotation should stay the same. Only "problem" is you don't have crazy runic power generation as with 2 one handed weapons and Scent of Blood but thats why I went for Chill of the Grave.
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