Question about a friend

[Nazumo]

My RL friend is tanking DK - The World of Warcraft Armory -- it seems with random healers some work and can keep him alive doing heroics .. and some cant ... he thinks its him or his spec , but could someone take a look and see if he is setup for heroics.

I personally think its the healers cause his stats sound like he should be good enough to do it ... thnkx in advance.

[Tnar]

to me it seems that your friend might be at fault here. i dont know a ton about dk tanking but his hp is really low for a dk he is only at 514 def and his armor is only at 14k so i think that a really good healer could probably get him through an easy heroic but there is no chance he could tank a tough one like AN or Pinnicale IMO

[elrusoloco]

I'd say:

1. Get him to 540 defense, using enchants, gems, whatever it takes
2. Anything after that should be toward more stamina
3. Guessing he didn't log out in frost presence as the cause for his low armor. I think the guidelines for heroics are 540 def, 20k HP, 20K armor - he needs to get there
4. His weapon is runed with Fallen Crusader - should have the 4% parry one (Swordshattering, I believe)

In summary - there's a lot that he can do to improve. He does have what seems like a decent set of gear, but he's well short on defense, which means he'll get critted, and those hurt in heroics.

[bludwraith]

As a DK Tank, you have to get to 540 def, this is manditory.

After that the DK tank needs to know when to use his/her cool downs.

As a side note the armory no longer shows what presence or buffs you have, His gear atm in frost presence will put him at well over 23000 HP with over 23k armor.

Also his spec is not the best for tanking, while all 3 specs can tank blood is more gear dependent then frost or Unholy.

Mark of blood is nice but not a life saver on boss fights (save heavy aoe fights)

Also there is a post in here about getting to 540 def with rep gear chants and gems. It helped me get my tank set to 540 def before I started doing 10 mans (and some heroics)

Good luck get to 540 def then if a healer cannot keep you up the healer is not paying attention.

[kolben]

Echoing the previous posters comments

540 Defense. At 514 he's taking crits, maybe not frequently but I'd be really surprised if he isn't taking them enough to be a problem. A crit when he's at full health or in the middle of a parry string may not be the end of the world and seem like it's fine; one at low health during a bad string of unavoided could just as easily happen. It's all about RNG, 540 removes the chance of it happening (except mobs that have +crit buffs.., HoL)

Most of what I'd recommend doing are enchant changes. Leveling up JC and Mining will both be improvements, as well as changing some enchant choices to defense. Outside of that, it's a gearing up process for your friend and looking at wowhead to find items in each slot that are better and where to get them.

[Satorri]

For heroics you can skate by so long as you're over 530, ideally he'll want the minimum 540 before he steps into a raid. Until then he can be critted and he will be, and that will be a real problem with his lower health.

In (and preparing before) the next patch he'll also be well suited to pick up another tanking trinket (non-hero HoL there's a great def trinket, 2 birds 1 stone), and trading the tanking accessories with armor for other rings/necks etc. We'll no longer get the armor multiplier on that armor and that makes them significantly less valuable in my mind, I'd sooner focus on avoidance since it also tends to feed our threat (a la Rune Strike).

He's off to a fine start, but a blood spec with that gear will be a little rocky in heroics.

[Bramborough]

Am not a DK, so not familiar with the class specifics, but agree with the general points above. Just two quick notes:

1. For the record, as is seen many other places on this site, 535 is the "un-crittable threshold" for heroics, not 540. (I'm trying to stay away from using the misleading term "defense cap").

2. Trinkets. Didn't look at the Armory page, but I infer from Kolben's post that your bud's two professions are JC and mining. There are two JC BoP trinkets (Monarch Crab and Ruby Hare figurines) which offer +63 Sta and two gem slots. Using the JCs' BoP dragon's eyes gems, these offer a great way to stack a *lot* of Sta...or alternatively, gem for a lot of Defense. In addition, the Monarch Crab has a very nice Dodge boost.

Only thing that bugs me is that the Ruby Hare ability is useless...but with it's Stamina and two gem slots, I haven't found anything else worth replacing it with. It's going to take a pretty leet trink to induce me to give up 145 Sta.

Final note...both trinkets are crafted using very-easy-to-obtain mats, especially since other profession is mining.