[Satorri]

Well, what spec are you coming from? Do you want to keep the same tree? Do you have a selection of 1h weapons?

Before you worry about more +hit or more exp, let alone haste, you want to look at what tools you have available.

I actually use Broken Promise and Slayer of the Lifeless (each with +2% parry, Swordbreaking), and that allows me to drop my Def trinket for something else. It also buffs my hit/exp and avoidance a little. That extra trinket space I could put a threat value trinket in or a stam trinket to prop my health up another 1300, or an avoidance trinket for another 1.2% passive. Alternately, you could pretty well keep the same gear and use a pair of dps weapons though they won't have Strength on them so you'll likely lose a bit of avoidance but get more tastey threat stat buffing.

I wouldn't bother adding haste to your gear with enchants or gems as a tank. If you get some on your weapon, fine, otherwise, stick with stats that will help survival AND threat. The only exception I make to that is hit rating. Expertise, Agility, and Strength are all both survival and threat buffs. You won't need more hit rating to do more white dmg, but you can improve your white dmg farther with +hit so it will be worth passing the soft cap to benefit that and your spells, depending on spec and raid buffs (frost jumps into mind with IT/HB).

For spec, it's certainly worth your while to trade 3 pts into NoCS to play up melee dmg, this should help decrease your margin lost on strike dmg (this is where what spec you are is important). You also want to now reconsider your move priority. Things like, how does BS compare to BB now, is HB always preferential over OB now even on potential Rime procs, and where are you losing value in other talents that may be better spent elsewhere? Bear in mind, strikes based on weapon dmg will be reduced somewhat (on thinking about it most will not be reduced as severely as I suggested above because they are not 100% weapon dmg unless you're in blood, the strike dmg will likely be reduced more like 25-30%), so buffing your non-weapon based dmg may be better for you, though strikes shouldn't be entirely forsaken.

Give me a particular set of gear, fill me in on the weapons to trade from and to, and tell me what your starting spec is and we'll go from there. I have some particular ideas of how best to illustrate, but it'll take me all day to do every tree. =)

[Ketae]

This has been a very informative thread! Wow!

I have to admit, I'm very new to the tanking scene. My mains before now were a balance druid and a mage, so I'm quite happy having things hit me without killing me in three hits. That being said, I'd like a few tips on being a more effective tank while still retaining the majority of points in my favorite tree...Blood.

I know... Blood's probably the least effective spec for tanking. Which is why I wouldn't mind mixing it up some with the other trees. I just can't stand the thought of being mostly Unholy or mostly Frost ... I tried both (granted, this was while leveling, and went deep into both to see what they were like) and just didn't have nearly as much fun until I went blood. I love ending fights with lots of health, and keeping myself up just with my abilities. I know this isn't actually a tanking mindset, as you have healers to do that job for you. But until the patch hits, I have to use whatever spec I use as not only a tanking spec, but a soloing spec as well, for dailies and such, and for Icecrown questing. I'd like to find something that's at least a pretty good middle ground for now (with tanking being the priority, obviously).

Anyway! Sorry for the rambling, let's get down to business.

This is me in Armory: Unteeka's Armory
My current spec is one I've been in since... well. Actually, I never have changed it since I went Blood, it worked so well! While leveling I had pretty good DPS in DPS gear, and tanked rather well in tank gear (I solo'd AQ20 bosses in that spec when I was 78, if that says anything)

In case it's currently showing me in my DPS gear, my current stats in Frost Presence and in my tank gear are about like this:
Health: 25.8k
Armor: 26.3k
Defense: 558 (with Stoneskin Gargoyle)
Dodge: 18.43%
Parry: 14.41%

I'm mostly in quest/crafted/instance blues and a few epics here and there, and I have a Titansteel Destroyer I'm using for -everything-. I love my two-handers I'm not super-geared. The few gems I have are mostly for Defense and Stamina. At the same time, I seem to do okay tanking heroics, except for a few things... and this is why I'm asking for advice in the first place:

When tanking heroics, my threat is quite low. I keep forgetting to check the numbers, but people steal aggro from me way too easily when I'm tanking. This is also keeping in mind that Blood is not the best at AoE tanking, but there must be some way to increase it at least a bit.

I take hard damage spikes sometimes, and I'm not quite sure why! It leaves the healer scrambling, and that's a bad thing (obviously).

I know 3.1 is coming (eventually)... but is there something I can try for the time being? (Sorry if I sound kind of noobish at all this... but I'm willing to learn!)

[Satorri]

First off, Ketae, Blood is not an ineffective tanking spec and self-healing is not a faulty mechanic for improving your survival. It is a very unique one, however and requires that your healers adapt and become accustom to it. Experience with you as a Blood tank and communication will go a long way for that. As Blood, at least pre-3.1, you generally just have to accept that you will take more dmg (though no one may notice the difference if you've never been another spec), but you make up for it by improving healing by adding your own and buffing incoming heals (Vamp Blood).

I don't know what glyphs you are using, but glyph Vamp Blood and use it frequently, it will make a big difference. More so now than in 3.1 (which should only be a week or two away), you need to use your CDs very consciously and frequently. As Blood it will really take the edge off.

On your gear, I can't comment as you logged out in your dps gear last. Looking at the stats you listed though, you're already over the def cap by a decent margin, I'd HIGHLY recommend getting more def in your gear (trinket from regular HoL should be easy easy with an afternoon of persistance) and swapping Swordshattering for Stoneskin Gargoyle. The improvement will really net you a strong tanking setup with more avoidance when it counts. The bane of new DK's is starting with weak avoidance, the stronger it gets the better off you'll be. As Blood, part of the way to make the best use of your talents/spells is to stack a hefty health pool. Once you've settled out defense, you can pour a lot of gearing/gems/chants into pumping up your health pool (I highly recommend the stam trinket from heroic AN, Essence of Gossamer, it'll boost your health a lot), but it is never a bad idea to keep propping up your avoidance either. Get used to using IBF regularly, and strategically, the better you know what you're tanking and when it's going to hit hard the better you can use it, but with 12 sec per minute, you'll want to use it virtually on CD.

You have Imp Rune Tap and Mark of Blood, both are very powerful tools. Rune Tap you'll want to use on CD whenever your health drops. If you are sharp with it you can time it to the boss swing timer and pop it the second after you take the hit. To healers they may barely notice the drop. Mark of Blood has a longer CD so usually the best time to pop it is when you know you're going to take a barrage, your health dropped because of a big hit or a surprise, or when you're about to pick up another group. Still it is only a 3 min CD so get used to using it more often than not.

A talent that has changed from leveling to 80, Vendetta is great when you're soloing but it is virtually wasted in instances. DPS'ers will more likely be snagging the killing blows, and even when you slip one in, generally, it's after the fight is over and you don't need to be healing then quite the same. Black Ice is not a bad talent, but for you it is a waste to fill it out. All it will buff is IT which will be a relatively small portion of your total dmg (depending on how well you use your other tools as blood IT with talented dmg buff will still only be about 5% of your total dmg). Don't spend more pts there than you need to, but let me give you other things worth spending them on.

1.) Vamp Blood. Get it, use it, love it. This talent combined with your self-heals and even a poor healer will make you virtually unkillable unless it is a one-shot (none but the highest level encounters in the game right now can do that).

2.) Using crits to your benefit. You have Bloody Vengeance which is a fine tool, and a boon to Blood tanking. The one small problem is, in heavy tanking gear you'll have very low crit chances. The way to best make use of this crit-dependency is with the talents that buff specific crit chances. You already have Dark Conviction and Annihilation (the latter will also allow you to use Oblit heavily, which is good), but there are 3 others that may be worth taking: Subversion, Sudden Doom, and Vicious Strikes. I'll say, the last of the three is only worth it for buffing DS, though the PS buff can help get more stacks on Bloody Vengeance earlier. Sudden Doom is one you can take as a partial point filler, or all the way up to 5 pts. The proc is a major value not just for the big burst of threat, but for the guaranteed crit which is also a guaranteed stack/refresh of Bloody Vengeance. I'll explain more on that below. Subversion is a major value as HS and OB are going to make up a significant amount of your attacks and this talent will give you 9%(!!!) to that crit chance, which is the same as almost 300 crit rating!! Besides the major threat buff, it will also speed up your Bloody Vengeance stacking and buff you overall (and it has a nice side value when you switch to dps mode as it will reduce your threat in dps pres's).

Blood skill technique is a tricky thing. It is very tempting to just play into heavy OB spam and try to make that the focus of your moves, but there is a better way if you really use the synergy of the Blood talents. You already have DRM which opens up a very important door: HS spam. On a single target 2 HS (the same cost as OB) will do heavy hurt and with Sudden Doom they promise to further improve your dmg beyond just the strikes. On 2 or more targets HS blows past OB for total dmg and opens up a lot of potential for aoe threat. Bear in mind, as a Blood tank you will have to work to hold groups, but with judicious use of HS and target swapping (I like to turn on over-head health bars and pick out the ones with the most health, meaning they've been hit the least, then move back to the main target to focus threat), you can hold groups of 2-6 quite easily. Very large pulls like you will start to find in Naxx are rather less ideal for blood tanking, but if you work hard enough and use DnD smartly you can handle it. The last feature that will improve this is Epidemic. The extra time before you have to refresh diseases will be very useful to you. Blood well beyond the other specs is not well suited to using IT/PS any more than you have to (Frost gets HEAVY IT hits from all the frost buffing, and Unholy buffs PS what it can and can still get decent IT hits with all the spell dmg buffing). If you can apply diseases and hit Oblit with 18 sec durations, you can have a liesurely second rune set to hammer off 4 or 5 HS's and probably proc Sudden Doom at least once or twice in your first couple rounds.

Don't sell yourself short, nor Blood, but I do highly recommend you check out the Blood changes in the next patch so you can be ready. Personally I like the feel of Blood in 3.1 more so than now. MMO-Champion has some fine tools, particularly an up-to-date 3.1 talent calculator.

[Merko]

I'll let Satorri help you a little with spec...

However, a DK tank scales better than almost any other tank when you first hit 80 since we are hitting slower but harder than other tanks. A DK's blues/entry level epics have almost no hit or expertise on them and this severely gimps your threat gen.

Problem 2 might be your rotation, if you are not used to tanking w/ a DK getting the rotation that works best in each situation down can be tricky but after some research and practice with application you should be ready to go.


edit** satorri beat me to it

[Satorri]

=D


<3 Merko

It's funny, I was actually the other way around. In blues I got hit capped very easily and was sitting around 20 expertise, and I had to be very picky to not lose too much of that switching to the first epics I got. Now my final shift in the best tanking epics available right now, I'm flush with expertise and my hit has taken a major drop (using food to barely scrape the cap, but my net value is far better with those items).

I finally got my t7.5 helm incidentally, that was my last slot to fill with the best net value in every slot (in some cases I have the top 2 or 3 for variable sets). I still want a couple items for threat considerations though, like the Grim Toll, and the Naxx25 sigil.

[Ketae]

Oh wow, thank you so much for the detailed tips!

I'm not sure why Armory isn't updating... I've logged off twice now in my tank gear and for some reason it's not changing to reflect that. Bah.

I'll try switching some points around into things... I had forgotten, for instance, about Vengeance. Those points are virtually wasted now that I'm rereading what everything does.

Another problem, I know, is my rotation. The following will show just what kind of noob I am, but here goes. XD I'm extremely embarrassed to admit that till now I very, very rarely used OB. I haven't moved things around on my bar at all since I leveled, and so generally they ended up on my bar as I received them, and until now I haven't really found any good resources telling me examples of a good rotation... so I kind of just whacked abilities left to right, and then whatever's off cooldown of the abilities I use most. XD For instance... IT, PS, PEST, BS, HS, then wait for cooldown and use my rune abilities to dump those, and then a lot of Death Strike and Heart Strike. Bleh. I sort of made it up as I went along, so to speak, but this is why I'm asking now, so I can do things in a more informed manner. XD

As noobish as I sound though, I do the same thing to tank a group where I have the health bars showing and I grab whoever's been hit least. So I do seem to do okay... until a DPS decides to not follow the kill order. :P

I'll definitely get and start using Vampiric Blood and grab the Glyph... that'll probably help quite a bit.

Okay... this is a spec I came up with to try: Revised Blood Spec

There are a couple parts I'm a bit iffy on, mainly Might of Mograine and Death Rune Mastery. Are Death Runes worth it? They tend to confuse me a bit, making certain abilities look like they're still on cooldown but when I click them they work. Not sure what's going on there.

For Might of Mograine, I figure if I'm getting OB into my rotation a bit more, as well as using the other talents that will tend to crit a bit more often, I may as well buff the crit they do have. What do you think?

Thank you guys so much for helping me out with this. I have a long way to go, but I already feel like I have a better grasp of Blood than I ever did before.

[Satorri]

Ah, good questions. And don't label yourself noob for not knowing things, we all learn some time.

Take Blood Strike off your bar. HS will replace it in every way. The ONLY reason to use Blood Strike would be to avoid the cleave, but I've never seen that need as a tank.

Don't be shy about using DS if you need some healing, when you do it is absolutely worth the runes. Otherwise Oblit is the way to go it will do more dmg and more threat (DS dmg + healing threat can surpass it, but only if it actually heals you, overheal does no threat).

Using Death Rune Mastery is very valuable as Blood. What it does for you, what death runes do for you, is allow you to use HS a LOT. Oblit when you have extra FU pairs, but when they're death runes spam that HS and you won't forget it. Death runes are versatility. You don't have to use them as something other than what they were before conversion, but you CAN. The best thing you can do is to learn your moves and just how much dmg they actually do so you know where things fit.

Might of Mograine is tricky. As a dps talent the answer is a resounding yes, but as a tank it's a little more on the fence. We don't sport heavy crit rates, though we do buff our moves and count on fairly consistant crits. If you have a respectable amount of crit (say 10%+ on your sheet) and add raid buffs, MoM could give you a decent increase in your threat output. At the same time, that's all it is, straight threat, so you may find you want to put those points in something more versatile, maybe not. If you're choosing between that and Blood-gorged I think B-G will benefit you farther per point, especially in starting gear (Expertise is delicious for threat as Blood). For sure the more you really hammer the OB's and HS's the more you'll see your threat step up.

Your new spec looks just fine, though there are a couple things that could swap around. Vicious Strikes I mentioned, and is good, though I'd wager if you use OB more 2-hand spec will almost certainly get you more threat, probably will anyway. Bloodworms is a little tricky as a tank. They provide some nice small heals to boost your baseline incoming health, but they are also very squishy (worms, squishy, nevermind). Any aoe, cleaves, etc and they'll disappear. There also has been concern in the past because they don't seem to have any positioning scripting, so they'll stand next to you in front of the boss and could proc parry haste. I don't know how much faith I put in that, and I'm actually thinking I may go do some testing on the PTR later to figure some of that out (especially since they're getting a buff to their healing in 3.1).

Regardless of all this other stuff, spec, gear, etc, the key to being a good tank, is being on top of the situation in each pull. You set the pace, be aware of what you are tanking right now, where other things are, what could possibly add to the fight, and how much you've hit the different targets. Even if you aren't the strongest on threat, or your gear isn't the best for survival, nothing gets you a bad rap more as a tank than not being able to control a pull. Positioning, attention to detail, and quick thinking are the hallmarks of a good tank.

[Ketae]

Awesome! Thank you lots!

This is the "finalized" version of my spec for now, until the patch hits. I'll do some reading up and see what changes are coming... but sad to say I'm all excited about Dual Spec and will only likely be changing a few things around while using the same spec (such as adding MoM to my DPS spec, etc.). XD I love Blood.

If I have any "extraneous" stuff in my spec as it stands now, it's probably the bloodworms. But if anything, I like sort of using them to say "That's right, I'm tanking as blood and I have adorable (I'm a girl, can you tell?) little bloodworms chewing on faces. Frost is not the only Tank spec. Neener Neener." I just like them. XD And since they're getting a nice buff in the next patch, they'll probably be more useful anyway :3

PS: You rock so hard <3

[Satorri]

Heh, rock the Blood, I'll be joining you as a Blood tank in 3.1. =)

[thebutcher0]

how come no one has talked about using DS as a strike for an unholy build. going unholy only leaves us with 4 strikes to chose from. OB is out unless you take the frost talent. BS is a gotta have. and that leaves ScS and DS. ScS is a talent and does more damage than DS. but DS has a healing ability with a nice glyph to go along with it. i thought i'd give it a try and i like it. i'll stay like this until we get the dual spec. but i've seen crit heals on me for over 5k. how does the tps differ between the 2 strikes. is there that much of a difference?

[obakë]

DS healing is reduced in 3.1
DS damage/Crit bonus is moved to deep blood out of unholy in 3.1
DS does a lot less now and in 3.1 then ScS does damage wise
DS healing is not worth much threat wise assuming the heal isnt Overheal

so yes the tps difference for Unholy is significant if you swap ScS for DS now and in even more so in 3.1

in 3.1 DS serves the purpose of being bloods multi Rune strike, which will then most likely be used to create Death runes for Heart Strikes.

DS serves a purpose, that purpose is to allow you to actively heal yourself in a DK sorta way should you encounter a situation that needs it. In 3.1 its going to play a role in most blood DK's rotations for TPS as well, but i see no reason for it to be in any other specs rotation unless you need that little bit of extra healing which no fight will be balanced around.

DS, Imp. Blood precense, and Mark of Blood are all rather lack luster healing skills in PvE for tanks. DS is the best of them as it really can help, but if you need it, its because you or your healer is doing something wrong or are undergeared for the encounter.

[Satorri]

Obake speaks the truth. Unholy lost the little buff to DS dmg from Vicious Strikes, DS got a dmg increase and a healing reduction, and ScS got more heavily buffed on the base and with unholy talents.

Obake mispeaks on one thing: the threat on DS is significant, but only if you get the full 3 disease healing value (not overheal, overheal incurs no threat), and on a single target (healing threat is split over all the targets you are in combat with).

ScS hits like a truck, now slightly more than before, so the only reason to throw in a DS is out of need of healing. Blood has been nicely balanced to make DS worth using and Annihilation definitely optional.

Obake, you are also mistaken on your last points. You misunderstand or undervalue how blood tanking works. It is a tricky method that is unique among tanks. The value of healing, which comes from small gains in Imp Blood Pres, and big in terms of Rune Tap and DS, is to increase your functional health and reduce healing required. All it takes for it to be very powerful is healers who aren't capping you off and overhealing constantly. When they're comfortable and familiar with your own health gains they can back off slightly to allow them to do the work. And the steady health income buffs threat nicely and makes you virtually unkillable when you pop Vamp Blood. There's no non-one-shot source of dmg that can kill a well geared blood tank with Vamp Blood up and one or two strong healers.

On a related note, healing skill in general I have seen decrease. Because of the abundance of mana for classes, holy pallies spring to mind, there are no penalties for healing excessively, unselectively, and without close attention to need. Blizz wanted to adjust that, though I don't know that they stepped quite far enough in the case of holy pallies. In my book 70-80% overheal means you are not healing smartly, you're just spamming indiscriminately. I used to heal raids when it was better balanced, and we would chastise healers (depending on class) who were above 30%. I very much would like to see that rebalanced. =( Hopefully they've made a good move on that direction.

[thebutcher0]

my spot right now is OT. i use an unholy build. pretty standard. only thing different is i use DS just for the extra healing it can give me. please explain overhealing for this situation. if i am at 98% health, down 3000 life and my DS heals me for 5000. is that overhealing and i gained no threat?

[Satorri]

So healing threat works like this:

Any healing you do, to yourself or others (some special moves do no threat, none of the DK ones apply), the total effective healing amount (heals that actually stick, not overhealed amounts) is divided in half, and that threat is split among all the targets you are in combat with. Your Frost pres multiplier does apply to healing threat as well.

So, if you DS for a 5k heal, and only 3k of that heals you (2k overheals), only the 3k will register for threat. If you are up against one target, that 3k is cut in half (1500), multiply by 2.07 for Frost Pres (3110), and that value is applied directly to your threat total. Think of it this way, that is as if you were a dpser hitting for a 3110 dmg hit. It does get a bit watered down if you have lots of mobs in the pull, though, as that value gets split up.

The classic comparison, I'll use my 3.1 values with my new pet-project spec: DS vs Oblit. Oblit does ~2.2k non-crit, and DS does 1.5k and heals for 2.5k also non-crit. The Oblit does 4562 threat, and DS does 3110 dmg threat and 2592 heal threat for a grand total of 5702. DS does more threat on that one target, but only so long as it actually heals the full value. If that were 100% overheal, it would only do 3110 threat so the swing is about 50% of that Oblit threat which will always be static. As a fun side consideration, take Rune Tap. If I pop Vamp Blood (+15% max health, +35% incoming heals), and pop my health trinket (Repelling Charge, +3025 health), with raid buffs (jumping me up to ~52k health), and I pop a 100% effective Rune Tap heal (costing 1 blood rune), it heals me for ~14k. Factor heal threat and Frost Pres, and it's a ~14.6k shot of threat. =D

For more particulars on threat modifiers Armstrong has a great post HERE.

[Steewe]

i actually think this is a better way to go icy talons http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...&version=9551#frost tank

[obakë]

TheButcher, in your example you said you were at 98% hp. Im gonna assume raid buffed your around 40k. That means you would be down around 800, not 3000. So before you get this 3k healing threat you need to get to around 75% hp. At 75% hp any healer worth there raid spot should be casting a large heal directly at you, unless your tanking trash. So either you waste their heal, or theirs hits and your DS does its small amount of damage with no bonus heal threat.

To better illustrate why this is mostly worthless threat to even consider, go MT some bosses with healers you consider to be decent. After each fight check the Overheal meter in Recount. It will show you precisely how much of your healing was pointless and provided no benefit. Then tank that same boss next week useing ScS, and check the change in your tps. Unless your healers are terrible there should then be no doubt in your mind which is the better tps skill.

If your OT all the time, no one is doing good dps to your mobs, and your group isnt going for any kind of time based awards, then use DS if u want it might help your healers.

and im not misspeaking, im just not considering the unlikely event that at the moment you use DS you may not be at full HP, the reason i wont consider that is because as a tank, an MT especially, you should always be at full HP or have a big heal already coming to get you there.

This rings even more true as we step into new content that blizzard deams to be more dangerous to tanks. Healers are trained to keep their tanks topped off, not "let them hover at 80% cause they do little heals on themselves and get threat from it" Not to mention the mobs will usually have Light judged on them from any of the 3 Paladin specs so there goes more of your top myself off healing threat.

The cost in Talent points and in Combat resources is just not worth a MT's time for the healing options in Blood. Those points and runes could be spent on real threat increases instead of "if A, B, C, and my healers DC'd this is a good thing" type abilities.

As an OT, tanking junk the abilities may show benefit as you'll require less healing so the guy takeing real hits gets more attention, but if your tanking anything thats worth careing about the payout doesnt match the price in survival or tps.

Blood tanks healing themselves is a nifty idea that works in 5 mans, on bosses that hit like girls, and pugs with terrible healers. I could see an offspec build that includes full Rune Tap being worth having around, but this again is only useful if you healers cant get there healing under control for whatever burst damage is happening.

Tanks have to balance survival and TPS, im not about to add healing into that list.

[thebutcher0]

Obake::the numbers i gave were just off the top of my head. so someone might be able to explain overhealing to me while i use DS. i understand it more now than i did before. thanks satorri. as far as the tps i mentioned before between ScS and DS, i was wondering if there was much difference skill wise. i wasn't taking healing into account. the reason i asked was i believe the best crit i got for DS was around 4k and ScS was 5k. that's only around 1k difference in crit damage. so i figure the over all damage from either can't be that far apart. to me, my threat comes from spreading my diseases, BB, UB, D&D. then of course my strikes. that's why i had asked if there is much difference between DS and ScS for building threat. the heal from DS is more like an offset of damage the mob or mobs are doing to me. much like a trickle heal. every XX seconds i gain XXXX health. i do like a few of the new talents that the patch will give us. but i also don't understand alot of what we have now. that's why i am reading all of these posts and asking the questions i am asking. and to those of you who are like me, you can thank me now that's it's not me your waiting on to answer your questions or we'd all be in a big mess. and the next big topic i'd like to ask about is D&D. so stay tuned. hehe

[Satorri]

Obake, your arguments have one major hole = they assume you have a bunch of unthinking or unadaptable robots.

Do you follow a set rotation? Do you adapt your survival CD's? Do your healers have ~80% overheal from spamming on you when you don't need it?

With good communication and smart adaptable players, there's no reason these self-healing talents can't be used to great success. I've done so. I'll give you one thing, it is not easy, and it is not something any other tank will do, even DKs. If your healers don't let your health go below 95% then you're plenty geared and none of the current content is going to test that (except for a suped up Sarth or Maly breath where Imp Rune Tap is godly). This is a tanking arrangement that is best done with smart human beings playing with you who know what to do and can adapt. It allows you a serious benefit if you use it well.

If it's not your cup o' joe, that's fine, but don't eschew things just because you don't know how to use them, that's ignorant and foolish.

[Raspberry]

Hello, I am new to these forums and I was looking around when I came across this thread. I'm currently leveling a blood DK tank (lvl 77 atm) and I have a few questions about the listed specs. First off, how come neither of the blood tanking specs in the first post, nor any of the specs I've managed to find in this thread, have Lichborn? I use it in my spec and love it, but I'd like to hear why other tanks don't pick it up. For myself I am really disapointed that they are removing the tanking aspect of it in 3.1. Also, my spec doesn't have Epidemic, is that any sort of problem? (extra 6sec on diseases) I see a lot of the blood specs in this thread, including both on the OP, have it. In any case this is what I'm using if you're interested:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...5&version=9551 (im 77 so I'm missing 2 points in Might of Mograine and 1 in Blood Gorged)

Also something I noticed about the blood spec AoE rotation, there are other rotations you can use, for instance on an aoe trash pull I start with deathgrip or whatever pull then go into:

DnD, IT, PS, Pest, DS, BB, DnD, IT, PS, Pest, etc, etc

So as far as that goes I just think it could just be down to using DnD more often.

Also I saw the new Pestilence Glyph (I forget its name) that refreshes your diseases on the target, so I thought I'd submit a spec that would take advantage of that:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

One thing I'm not sure about though - for Improved Blood Presence, does it mean that you retain the heal yourself for 4% of your damage thing or do you retain 4% of the 10% bonus healing done to you in blood presence?

In any case though, the idea is to use the overpowered new pest glyph (which should be removed imo) to create a new single target rotation for blood which looks like this:

IT, PS, HS, HS, OB
OB, HS, HS, HS, Pest
and from then on you just spam OB for death runes, HS over and over and occasionally pestilence when you need to refresh diseases. Using this stupid overpowered glyph you can either A) get in more Obliterates at the cost of a HS, or B) get in a ton more HS at little to no cost.

Thanks for reading!

[Aenor]

Source: Satorri Take Blood Strike off your bar. HS will replace it in every way. The ONLY reason to use Blood Strike would be to avoid the cleave, but I've never seen that need as a tank.

Loatheb! The HSs kill the spores and give the threat debuff. Have BS on your bar or swap them for this fight.

Kelthuzad... You want to avoid cleaving the mind controlled team mates or the CCed MCed team mates. I tried Blood for one night and both of these issues were apparent. I've also had blood melee DPS cause problems with HS.

IF CC is returning to the game it can only get worse.