[Necroshen]

Hello Everyone,

I am in need of some guidence right now and I am hoping that people can offer their input into my problem.

To give you some background to my play history, I used to be a Main Tank on Magtheridon for a guild called Vogon Poets and I was a prot warrior, I really loved it however with the introduction of the Lich King I wanted to play the hero class and chose to re-roll a DK.

Now to the tanking problems, I am still "building" my char's gear and so I am not finished with that as of yet. My DK is called Necroshen and I am on the Agamaggan server.

I specced Unholy which worked great however during multi mob tanking no matter what I do, I keep getting mobs running off. I tried full frost spec but I got the same problem. So I respecced back to Unholy.

If I am multi mob tanking this is the process I use:

Pull -> Icy Touch -> Plauge Strike -> Pestilence -> Blood Boil rinse and repeat.

With maybe a Oblitirate and Deathcoil thrown in. However even after I do that, mobs will run off. I am in Frost presense of course for threat and stamina.

Is my disease rotation wrong?
Is there more threatening processes I could be using?

I need help as last night was a nightmare and people were really getting confrontational about the whole tihng. haha. Feel free to view my spec and my char in the armory, bare in mind that I am still gearing to epic level at the moment and my rings and trinkets are not the best at all. However that is in hand saving my badges ofc. I have included a pic of my UI layout to maybe help view my current setup.

[KnThrak]

I'm Unholy too (don't laugh about my spec, I can explain why it looks the way it does!) and I do AE pulls this way:

D&D -> Icy Touch while they're running -> Plague Strike on contact -> Pestilence


Now it depends. Usually I have enough threat to wait for the runes to refresh, but if I miss one of the strikes and hence only have one disease spread I'll Empower Rune Weapon, then BB BB, do the diseases on a mob I may have missed again to catch it, then Scourge Strike that one. Then next cycle DnD and re-pestilence.

That works for me.

[Throrik]

Are you using DnD at all, it's a massive threat increase when you've got it ticking away at your enemies.

[Necroshen]

Yeah I use D&D, sometimes I slap that down first.
But as I approach I would use Icy touch then pestilence, but the rune cooldown is too long imo.

So I put down D&D, use Icy Touch and then cast pestilence and I still get mobs running off.

Does repeated application of pestilence generate threat?

[swelt]

Step 1: Decide where you want the fight to be, look at the mobs and see if any of them are casters (PRO TIP: They wear dresses and have names like Pewpew Lazermancer). Mark the target you want killed first with a skull.

Step 2: Put death and decay where you decided you want the fight to be. Maybe that's under the mobs and you are running in to them, or maybe you are pulling them back and want to death grip in the lazermancer.

Step 3: Start your disease rotation, making sure that the mobs are all in range when you use Pestilence. If you need some extra threat at the start, you can blood tap for an extra blood boil or if things are really bad you can empower rune weapon for even more startup threat (special occasions / boss fights / emergencies)


If you want people to look at your armory, go post in the HALP forum and provide a link to your armory page.

[Necroshen]

Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply. One other factor for consideration is the gear that other players are wearing. If I have for example a fully epic mage in the group that loves a bit of pew pew...my mix of epic/blue's could cause problems could it not? I ask because it was something that was mentioned a while ago but as an ex prot tank I just deal on TPS tables and never really considered the gear causing aggro spikes from other players.

I would comment that things have been different in LK in that most people are fully epic and most people are just always in a hurry. PUGS Ahoy!

[Tonytony]

frost is for aoe tanking. DnD, Howling, BloodBoil = nothing is going anywhere. make sure you glyph howling.

all the other specs pale in comparison

[swelt]

Tony, I respect you and imma let you finish, but Unholy is the best AOE spec of all time!

[Ulosthegame]

I'm blood, and I'm having 0 problems with AoE pulls.
doing
DnD>IT>PS>Pest>DS>DC>Blood Tap>HS>DS>HS>HS>HS
then just Pest to roll diseases and DS/HS.

[Necroshen]

Thank you for all the replies is has been a help in many ways but in other ways leaves me questioning what spec is best. Blood spec for tanking is usually frowned upon and I personally liked unholy because it increased the damage of a lot of diseases. Frost was ok, but I wasnt much of a fan.

Does anyone have suggestions on glyphs? for unholy tanking and for frost tanking?
At this point I think I will stick with unholy (partly because I dont want to respec again :-) ) and try the suggestions above.

[Necroshen]

I have linked to my armory profile in the HALP thread. My Gear and Glyphs

[Madoxx]

i have tanked frost and blood mainly i am at the moment blood and have no problem what so ever with large pack of aoe mobs never had in blood , and spec on dk can AOE tank effectively quite easy as Stated above .

DnD-PS-IT-Pest-BB etc you should have no argo problems unless a you have a nuke happy lock on one of the adds going full force .

BUt tbh you main problem i would say is your gear if you have people in you group with full epics they will grab argo easy , upgrade you weapon you can get a decent blue one easy from arena quest and so getting better gear leads to better argo .

If you constantly losing argo you may have a good gear player just nuking too hard tell them to hold off and let you argo a bit more

[Lulia]

DnD + Icy Touch + Plauge Strike + Pest + Blood Tap + Blood Boil

That should work, works for me.

[Ulosthegame]

Source: Necroshen Thank you for all the replies is has been a help in many ways but in other ways leaves me questioning what spec is best. Blood spec for tanking is usually frowned upon and I personally liked unholy because it increased the damage of a lot of diseases. Frost was ok, but I wasnt much of a fan. Does anyone have suggestions on glyphs? for unholy tanking and for frost tanking? At this point I think I will stick with unholy (partly because I dont want to respec again :-) ) and try the suggestions above.

Blood? frowned upon? what? Blood is like...the end-game tanking spec at the moment >.>

[Lulia]

Yeah, sadly, Blood is far away the best tanking spec for DKs. Blood being frowned upon for tanking is old news. Frost and Unholy are still quite viable for most everything though, just not as good as blood, especially not for hardmodes.

[Necroshen]

It certainly sounds like it is down to what people prefer, it seems everyone has an opinion about what spec is best. I remain impartial till I get an oppertunity to try blood, that wont happen at the moment because of my gear issues.

None the less last night, I re-specced frost and I re-glyphed. Based on the advise found on here I have to say WOAH. What a difference. The aggro increase was immense.

DnD -> HB -> BB

One rotation I was carrying out for multi mobs and it worked a treat. Thanks for the input from everyone as it has sorted out many many bugs for me.

[Satorri]

There's a lot of opinion represented as fact here.

Frost is not *the* aoe tank spec for DK's, it has good aoe burst threat, which is handy, but it is not far and away untouchable.

Blood is a very strong tank spec, especially used well, and it appeals to the people who think maximum EH is the *only* way to play. That doesn't mean it is the best tank spec. I happen to love it, but I have no illusions about the fact that Frost and Unholy can stand toe to toe.

Please try to keep comments to helpful advice, strategies, and tactics, rather than just declaring what you think is "best." It'd be more helpful...

[Tonytony]

don't crap on the value of opinion. giving helpful advice strategies and tactics is well and good for wall of text, but simply saying "frost is very good for aoe, this is the rotation i use" accomplishes the same thing in much less verbage.

case in point, OP tried it and it seems to have helped.

[klor]

Source: Tonytony don't crap on the value of opinion. giving helpful advice strategies and tactics is well and good for wall of text, but simply saying "frost is very good for aoe, this is the rotation i use" accomplishes the same thing in much less verbage. case in point, OP tried it and it seems to have helped.

Frost dk aoe damage/threat has always been easy at low tiers to pull off because it didnt require much gear.

The statement above yours, Tonytony, still applies. When someone is asking for advice, using hard facts is always better than oppinion especially when said oppinion is not designated as such to the person asking. If he doesnt learn how to tank aoe normally now, he'll struggle if he decides to end game tank later as frost just can't hold a candle to the cooldown and survivability of blood sadly However, they can pump out more threat in comparison (or atleast last i checked).

The point still is, unless he learns how to tank properly now without submitting to lolhowlingblast for aoe packs, he'll either a) find himself right back where he was now, unable to do so when he starts tanking raids or b) respecing to a frost aoe tanking spec for all trash in the instances. Doesn't sound like much fun to me.

[Tonytony]

i don't see what's to learn. mark a target with skull, drop a DnD and spread diseases. hit blood boil which is your only supplement to DnD.

yell at the idiots that don't attack skull

he's getting agro ripped because he's in low gear is my guess. frost spec will help since it is a much more powerful AoE spec and it's frontloaded.

i don't see why you are up in arms about using the spec. it's obviously good, facerollingly so.