[Tharas]

The World of Warcraft Armory

Well then I have a question, do I need 540 def for all heroics and is there some heroic I should be able to tank NOW..??

Is the cap 540? And does it really matter if I need 5-10 def, I'v been kicked out of groups because to low def! Any tips?

Peace out tanks!1 !! Hope to join your epic ranks soon

[Grombrindal]

Well, the target for a heroic is 535 def as that pushes crits off the table. However with your sigil and the resiliance you're likely already there (I'm not totally confident on the math off the top of my head). Although I personally prefer to go w/ straight defense as pvp pieces tend to not make great pve pieces (shoulder enchant is fairly common and the exception I know).

Grom

[Tharas]

Thanks for the reply, so you would say that my toon is ready for tanking heroics??

And enchants, focus on def or stam? Or a mix of both

[Salion]

Yeah, you should be ready to start some heroics. Of course, I'd start with easy ones like Violet Hold or Utgarde Keep to get your feet wet in.

Stats wise, I think all you need for heroics is uncrittability and 20k health. You have the health, and your 44 Resilience should be giving you about .54% crit reduction, making up for the missing defense rating.

For enchant priorities, I'd get the defense rating up to 540 (535 for heroics), just so that you can swap out your pvp shoulders should you get some nice pve shoulders. Or, just run non-heroic Halls of Lightning until the defense trinket drops off Loken. (Caveat: I'm not familiar with death knight mechanics at all, so I'm not sure if you can count on your Sigil to reliably get past 535 defense or not. If your Icy Touch misses, do you lose the defense? Would you have the defense right away at the start of a fight?)

[PatrikL]

Source: Salion For enchant priorities, I'd get the defense rating up to 540 (535 for heroics), just so that you can swap out your pvp shoulders should you get some nice pve shoulders. Or, just run non-heroic Halls of Lightning until the defense trinket drops off Loken. (Caveat: I'm not familiar with death knight mechanics at all, so I'm not sure if you can count on your Sigil to reliably get past 535 defense or not. If your Icy Touch misses, do you lose the defense? Would you have the defense right away at the start of a fight?)

I can answer that last part, it does not go away if you miss. I'd say as long as you have IT in your rotation it's pretty much guaranteed to stay up given that the duration is 30 secs.

I'm seeing you in dps gear right now so I can't really comment on the original questions but I can tell you that when it comes to dpsing (if this is indeed your regular dps gear), you need to focus more on hit rating before you go into things like crit and armor penetration.

About beeing kicked out of groups because of low def, it's quite common to get the question of what your def is from people you don't know (because if someone knows anything about tank requirements it's that def is important). It's quite possible to tank with less but the risk of beeing critted makes it more a game of chance so most people don't tolerate it.

[Tharas]

thanks for the post PatrikL, with the trinket my def jumps up to 534..

But anywho, I tanked DTK/Nexus/VH yesterday and it was awesome, I had some trouble tanking DTK tho, perhaps it was my nooby mistake or NOT pulling the raptor boss back so adds came in, but other than that it went quite well.

Any great PVE shoulders I should get to swap my PVP shoulders out (tnaking shoulders)

[Thaak]

The resielience from your hateful shoulders also boosts you on your way to crit immunity. It reduces your chance to be crit by .54%. This means that your don't actually need 535heroirc/540raids. 522heroics/527raids, is what you need to shoot for while you're wearing those shoulders, to reach crit immunity. Shoulders are fairly hard to come across prior to Naxx, so you're probably better to stick with those for now.( i was talking about the The World of Warcraft Armory you are wearing on your armory. It looks like most of the gear you're wearing id dps gera, but those have a defense gem in them, so i assume they are your tanking shoulders.)

As for DKT-King Dred, if you wait till he is at the back of his area, you can pull the first 2 or 3 raptors one at a time and kill them singly. Once you've done that, wait till he comes all the way to the front, and then pull him. That should make it where you only get King Dred, and possibly 1 other raptor, instead of the entire area.

The only problem i see with using the sigil+IT to be capped is if you get feared/stunned/silenced, its possible that you would not be crit immune for a short period of time. Its UNLIKELY that you would get crit during that time, but not outside the realm of possibility. Watch this video of Ciderhelm's. Epic XT-002 Kill That shows what happens when you upgrade a piece of gear and your mind wanders for a minute and you don't think of crit immunity. Not the same as what i described to you, but i think it shows the importance of always being crit immune.

[Tharas]

I only have one pair of shoulders and I really dont wana be carrying gems around to swap the stats, I'm waiting for a shoulder drop...!! But I have changed out my gear now and I am wearing my tanking gear.

About the sigil, the buff stays up for 30s, so as long as I do IT once every 30sec my 53def rating boost will stay up. I have not run into the problem YET of the seal not beeing up while in combat due to my rotation.

Single target: IT PS HS IT PS HS and so on, I use HOW when I can for that extra threat and I allways use RS when its up, and I use DC when RP is over 50, so I will allways be able to RS. Some times FS

AOE rot is: DND IT PS PEST BS BS IT PS PEST and so on

Keeping aggro is not a real problem but ANY tips to my rotation are accepted

[Varya]

You say your rotation is Icy Touch - Plague Strike - Heart Strike? Or do you mean a different HS? I'm seeing you as Frost in the armory, so this confuses me.

Either way, that rotation is far from optimal. I'm going to assume you are frost for tanking, in which case you should NOT be using Death Coil, ever. Frost Strike is the Runic Power ability of choice for Frost, otherwise you may as well not bother putting a point into it.

Your rotation as frost should be the following:

IT - PS - OB - BS - BS - OB - OB - OB

Repeat as necessary, with Frost Strikes thrown in during Rune downtime. OB = Obliterate, BS = Blood Strike.

For AoE, don't bother using BS. Use BB, Bloodboil, instead. Otherwise your AoE rotation looks fine, though you should really consider speccing into Howling Blast: it's a brilliant ability that significantly boosts your TPS.

On that note, you really need to respec. If you really want to stay frost then I'd suggest a spec such as this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Though some of the points could be switched up a bit, this spec would still be better than your current one. If you spec and glyph this way too, then you could use a rotation such as this:

HB - OB - BS - BS - OB - OB - OB

And continue to use this. You'd drop plague strike from the rotation entirely, but you wouldn't need it.

That said Frost is my weak spot when it comes to DK talent trees. I'm sure there are others who know more about Frost who would be willing to clear up some errors I may have made.

[Tharas]

Thanks alot for that Varya, Ill look into that, changing spec and such. As far as my nooby brain knows I only consider frost a tanking tree..

Are there tanking trees in Blood/Unholy and if so, which one of all the trees is best for tanking.

/facepalm

[Moridin Of Galakrond]

Just to clarify. 535 defense is the minimum for tanking level 82 mobs (Heroic Bosses) and 540 is the minimum for tanking level 83 mobs(Raid bosses). This is the minimum amount required to remove the chance to be critically hit. You may survive a 15k hit, but if you get critted as a tank, that's 30k. This is why it's the minimum to do these instances/raids. Using the sigil to stay above is viable, but can be dangerous if you haven't used IT yet and you run in and by the luck of the draw get critted on the first hit.

Also, using resilence to obtain the minimum is also viable, but not recommended. Defense adds to your dodge/parry/miss chance, where as resil only adds to your non-crit chance. So, ideally you'd rather have defense.

In my opinion Frost is pretty easy for new tanks. Has a lot of damage mitigation and is pretty easy for the rotation.

I play as frost when tanking and the rotation I use for AoE is:
HB - BB - BB - OB
(This is while I'm targeted on the mob being attacked. Use HB when not on CD and OB when HB is on CD. BB to use the blood runes. Also, use Frost Strike when you are above 60 RP. Watch to see which mob is losing health fastest, cause if your DPS are attacking something other then you, you'll wanna switch. But, generally, I don't lose aggro to much with this method. Also, I use glyph of Howling Blast to apply frost fever. I don't use PS for it's disease at all when I'm tanking.)

For single target: I'll use a rotation like this.

HB - OB - BS - BS (Also using Frost Strike when above 60 RP. If I'm worried about aggro on other mobs, I'll not use HB and apply Frost Fever with IT.)

Also, I have /cast !Rune Strike macro'd into all my abilities so that it gets used as much as possible. Here's one of the macro's for example.
(Use the ? icon and it'll put the correct icon automatically, also the ! is so that it doesn't get toggled on and off, just on.)

#showtooltip
/cast Blood Strike
/cast !Rune Strike

Some of the stuff I've learned as a frost tank.
#1 Don't concern yourself with a "rotation", but have a priority system for your skills depending on the situation. HB generally does more damage then OB, at least what I've seen when I don't use PS.
#2 I don't use DnD to much, only in situations where a new add is spawning, and I need to pick them up. Sarth, Gothik, etc.
#3 Use your CDs liberally. I use IBF on trash, it only has a 60 sec CD. If I pull 4 mobs at once, I pop IBF at the beginning to give the healers some leeway at the start when you are taking the most damage. I've never run into a situation where we get to a boss and go right into it. There is always time before where my CDs refresh. (This is key - Learn to use your CDs proactively, not reactively. Don't think of them as "oh ****" buttons, but rather plan when you are going to use them. Like Sarth Breaths, or Fusion Punches, Tantrums, etc.

It takes time to learn the ropes. Everyone does it, takes alot of heroics, alot of trial and error.

You can tank as Blood or Unholy, they both have their pros and cons and it's up to you. There are plenty of articles on this site about said pros and cons.

Sorry about the wall of text, hope it's not to unruly and actually helps you out.

[Tharas]

Thanks for that post Moridin! No wall of text stops me.

But as I just got a new computer(other one crashed) I canot play untill DLing and updating of Wotlk is complete.

BUT I WILL, first thing when I log on change talant spec, I hope you dont mind me borrowing yours..?? =D

And agian, thanks for awesome reply <3

[bluenjoy]

Source: Tharas The World of Warcraft Armory Well then I have a question, do I need 540 def for all heroics and is there some heroic I should be able to tank NOW..?? Is the cap 540? And does it really matter if I need 5-10 def, I'v been kicked out of groups because to low def! Any tips? Peace out tanks!1 !! Hope to join your epic ranks soon

Honestly when I did my first couple of heroics (3.0) i was only 520d rating and I did fine. Of course I got hit a little hard lol but we cleared. I had in game buddies tanking in flippin fury spec (no lie). It's hilarious. You can tank below the d cap for heroics but it's best you don't to relieve the healers mana.

[Moridin Of Galakrond]

I'm glad the info helped. Feel free to use my spec. There are a few things I move around sometimes, depending on the situation, but it's pretty good as is for most anything.

Keep reading up on stuff, and it'll make more sense why certain talents are chosen over others, or how some of them have a good "synergy".

[hawki2971]

when you pick up a mob make sure that you keep them off your back. The damage is almost like double and your def rating dont mean a thing. Keep in line of site of your healer and put you back to a wall so they cant wack you hard