DK Heroic Rediness Questions

Hello,

Yes, I'm a noob, so now that we've established that I have some questions regarding tanking heroics.

BACKSTORY: Tried to run H CoS yesterday as tank. I've run it as dps, so I knew the instance. Agro was not an issue. Living was. The healer (priest) suggested he might not be enough of a healer to 'keep me up' indicating that he had healed Naxx 10-man no problem but keeping me up was just impossible. The next pull after that went fine. The pull after that one we wiped and he left the group and hearthed.

So basically he threw me under the bus as being undergeared.

Ok, fine. I'm a big boy and maybe I am undergeared. Ergo, this post. So what is the appropriate gear level to tank heroics as a DK?

I currently have 544 defense and 24.9k health specc'ed as Frost. My gear is basically the stuff from:

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f97/4...ear-guide.html

I have no tanking gear from heroics or Naxx. I have successfully tanked The Old Kingdom on heroic but we had a well geared paladin healer that was crit-healing me for 14k. I think a mage could have tanked with that guy as healer.

My AOE rotation is basically DnD,IT,PS,PEST,HB,BB,FS,OB,HB. I use one of those buff/debuff mods so I can take advantage of Killing Machine and Rime whenever they proc. Single target rotation is the old IT, PS, BS, BS, OB, OB using FS and RS as runic dumps.

Again, threat hasn't been the issue. Survivability is.

Do I need better gear? If so, where do I get it? Try to 'tag along' on 10-man naxx as dps? Should I respec to blood for tanking? Should I just write this whole tanking thing off and relegate myself to the DK dps scrub gallery or reroll a healer?

I'd link my armory, but it shows me in my dps spec/gear. I could itemize out my gear from memory if that would help.

U can go blood for more health, or start using ur CD's alot more often untill you get better gear

In my opinion, if you have 25k HP and you are uncrittable, you are fine for heroics, and probably for Naxx 10 as well. I would just shrug the whole thing off.

Likely, it was a healer problem. Pally healers are pretty much made to lock on to a MT and keep him up, which is probably why you cleared OK and thought a mge could have tanked. Also, being able to "heal Naxx 10 fine" doesn't mean he is going to do great in heroics. My shaman raid heals Naxx 25 with no problem, but I've come close to letting the very same MT from that Naxx group die on several occasions in heroics.

The main place you are going to get the new gear would be from these very same heroics, so keep going with those. I think you'll be fine. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Angrakhan

I'd link my armory, but it shows me in my dps spec/gear. I could itemize out my gear from memory if that would help.

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25k ub hp and def cap should be fine for heroics. I started at 22.5k ub hp, Frost, and was hard to heal but still doable. Can you link your talent build? Armory talent page seems to be down atm.

I ran into that exact same issue myself (I heal 25 Naxx, this shoudn't be an issue) and indeed, he threw me under the bus as well. The very next night I took a RL friend into H UK (Same instance) as my healer, fresh 80, no gear to speak of, and there was no death. Not just no wipes, but no deaths. In my gear, I run about 21.5 in frost with 545 def rate. So just because that priest felt special because they heal raids doesn't mean jack. I tried to check you out on Armory, but it seems your last outing was a DPS/PVP trip according to gear and active spec. One thing I can say from experience is that unless you're used to tanking in Blood, it can be tough. I'm working toward getting used to it myself by using it on hc bosses and for single targets, it's well worth the effort so far. Ironically, your blood spec, which you kinda mentioned was used for DPS, is an excellent tank build and your frost spec seems a little lacking due to the missing 5/5 in Anticipation. Specing into that will give you more shots at RS for easy threat boosts.