I could really use some help

[Sigquit]

Hello. I created an alt deathknight so I could enjoy the experience of tanking. I just dinged 3 days ago after a long break and I honestly don't know many things about the classs.

This is my armory profile The World of Warcraft Armory

Can you please check if my spec is suitable for tanking,my gear and also I could use some help with a rotation since I just press buttons and end up with all runes on CD at times unable to do any skills. I have only tanked some normals and VH hc once.

Thanks for your time.

[Insahnity]

It would help if you have some specific problem to tackle (survival, holding threat, etc.) If you are doing fine then you have some innate ability that is serving you well. Or you haven't hit content difficult enough for you to be challenged, thereby forcing you to learn tanking. Some day this will come. However, that subject is so broad we can't cover it in one post, there are whole websites devoted to tanking (*cough cough TANKSPOT.COM Cough cough*)

Spec appears to be OK. Some might tweak it a bit but I wouldn't.

Gear is as expected you just hit 80. Keep upgrading armor, and keep caps in mind (in order of importance).
1. 535 defense rating in heroics, 540 defense for raids. Don't bother running a a raid if you don't have at least 540 defense.
2. Expertise up to at least 26
3. Hit to 264

When in doubt or when possible, stack stamina in your gear and enchants.

[Oclusal]

i'm having a little trouble with threat on my own dk:
The World of Warcraft Armory

Any ideas on a good rotation i can use..?

normally on first fight i generate about 5.5k tps, but it suddenly slumps to in and around 3k until my dnd cds, but it peaks and troughs!

irritates me greatly!

any help would be appreciated

and YES i am DW.. :S and NO i wont change it lol! not yet anyways.

[Sterbefall]

Don't DW tank (seriously! it's hampering your threat).

Get GoG, Glacier Rot, max Bladed Armor.

[Sterbefall]

Also, change your glyphs. Get Obliterate, drop DnD (you don't even have Morbidity, so don't even bother), and Unbreakable Armor is weak, get something else.

(I'm still wondering why you wouldn't take GoG. It adds 6 seconds to IBF.)

[Oclusal]

thing is that i was 2h tanking before and i was generating the same amount of threat (roughly), i figured i'd give dw a go as a) it gave me more avoidance and b) it gave me more health.

what should i drop to get talents below? and shouldnt i get 2h wep spec aswell??

[Sigquit]

It would help if you have some specific problem to tackle (survival, holding threat, etc.) If you are doing fine then you have some innate ability that is serving you well. Or you haven't hit content difficult enough for you to be challenged, thereby forcing you to learn tanking. Some day this will come. However, that subject is so broad we can't cover it in one post, there are whole websites devoted to tanking (*cough cough TANKSPOT.COM Cough cough*)

Spec appears to be OK. Some might tweak it a bit but I wouldn't.

Gear is as expected you just hit 80. Keep upgrading armor, and keep caps in mind (in order of importance).
1. 535 defense rating in heroics, 540 defense for raids. Don't bother running a a raid if you don't have at least 540 defense.
2. Expertise up to at least 26
3. Hit to 264

When in doubt or when possible, stack stamina in your gear and enchants.

No I never really had any problem with threat even in groups but sometimes I spend all of my runes and I just do white damage until they finish their cd. I guess I need to pay some more attention on how to spend them etc. One last question. Which glyphs shall I use. Also how could I use Obliterate efficiently in a fight?

[Sterbefall]

You're giving up 6 talent points to support dual wield tanking. That's a large part of your way to greater threat. Also, you have to give up a trinket spot to Repelling Charge, would could be replaced with a threat trinket or avoidance trinket.

If you go back to 2H, I'd go with this spec:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Not everyone likes the single disease HB spec, but I personally think it makes for outstanding snap threat (for packs especially).

The 2% stamina bonus on SSG should make up for any health loss for going back to 2H, and changing your trinket will go a long way to making up avoidance loss.

Additionally, your low hit and expertise will hurt a lot less with 2H than dual wield.

[Insahnity]

No I never really had any problem with threat even in groups but sometimes I spend all of my runes and I just do white damage until they finish their cd. I guess I need to pay some more attention on how to spend them etc. One last question. Which glyphs shall I use. Also how could I use Obliterate efficiently in a fight?

Poor Sigquit had his thread Hijacked by Oclusal..

You are running out of runes because you don't have anything to do with your Runepower, other than possibly runestrike, and then you might be out. You can experiment with dropping epidemic and corpse explosion in favour of Scent of Blood. That generally generates enough RP to permit a DeathCoil (which is also buffed by Morbidity). But really as a blood DK white hits are not a problem. White hits are more of a problem with a frost DK, indicating RP starvation to do frost strikes. Unholy's dont mind too much either either with necrosis and blood caked blade.

You shouldn't be Obliterating, that is for frost DKs. You need to be doing Heart Strikes and Death Strikes.

Finally for Glyphs, I'm not the best person to ask. But I would start with heart strike, vampiric blood and one of (rune strike/death strike/pestilence) as majors. Minors would be Horn of Winter, Raise Dead and possibly Pestilence.

[Insahnity]

You're giving up 6 talent points to support dual wield tanking. That's a large part of your way to greater threat. Also, you have to give up a trinket spot to Repelling Charge, would could be replaced with a threat trinket or avoidance trinket.

If you go back to 2H, I'd go with this spec:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Not everyone likes the single disease HB spec, but I personally think it makes for outstanding snap threat (for packs especially).

The 2% stamina bonus on SSG should make up for any health loss for going back to 2H, and changing your trinket will go a long way to making up avoidance loss.

Additionally, your low hit and expertise will hurt a lot less with 2H than dual wield.

I would agree with Sterbefall in that DW is not for you, but only because you are not geared (yet). Once rid of most of your crafted and reg toc gear, you can start looking at DW again. The key is in Steberfall's last sentence, you need to be capped on expertise and hit. Don't even try to DW unless you are at least 26 expertise and 264 hit, and hopefully with a better tanking weapon than the blue OH you have.

Blood tanking and DW frost are VERY gear dependant, and most unforgiving. Trying to DW because it feels cools is fine, if you don't mind being scraped off the instance floors every pull and being excluded from serious raids. Think of Steberfall's advice as a stepping stone to DW, not as a "Don't DW" post.

[Oclusal]

Point taken, I have mostly 10 man naxx gear and have ironsoul as my 2h tanking weapon, also have repelling charge, I'll look at the spec later as I'm in work, thanks for the help and sorry to sigquit about the hijack!

[bashef]

@Sigquit:

Glyphs should be a choice of:

Threat: Rune Strike, Death Strike
AOE/Utility: Pestilence
Utility: Dark Command
Survival: Vampiric Blood

The pestilence glyph lets you refresh diseases with a single blood rune rather than a frost and an unholy, and if you're aoe tanking will refresh them on all targets so saves you a further blood rune to spread them. Dark command will stop people getting their faces ripped off since you're running so low on hit at the moment that taunt miss is a real possibility. I don't remember the figures, but I believe the two threat glyphs are about equal until you get 2pcT8 where RS pulls ahead. I don't personally like the VB glyph since the things I usually find myself using a cooldown for are over in the unglyphed period of VB, so the extra is a waste. It is, however, useful on fights like Thorim where you want to maximise CD uptime. Finally Heart Strike glyph is for PvP and you shouldn't use it.

As far as your rotation goes, Satorri will shout at you, me or anyone else who suggests a fixed rotation for blood tanking - however, I very very rarely find myself in rune blackouts on single targets, and only at the start of a pull for AOE tanking (which I strongly dislike as blood, so I actually run two tank specs with a general purpose frost one which I aoe tank in and a blood one I use for bosses and single target threat). Blood's primary attacks are single rune, so there's almost always something to do.

One possible set of priorities for rune use is as follows:

Keep both diseases on the target
Death strike to convert FU pairs to death runes
Otherwise heart strike

A rotation which will do this is as follows:

IT, PS, DS, HS, HS... DS HS HS HS HS

which spans two rune cooldowns and assumes you have epidemic (you do at the moment). However... using this ignores a lot of the nuances of blood tanking, and furthermore if you have the pestilence glyph you should use that just before the diseases run out which means you only need to IT/PS once at the start of the fight. It's also worth macroing rune strike into every one of these abilities since I always find myself swimming in RP as blood (without scent of blood) and so it's perfectly safe to do so.

Things you should consider are:

• death strike is a sizeable heal. If you're low on health, you probably want to death strike rather than heart strike
• you're specced for rune tap, in which case again if you're low on health you might wish to use a blood rune for that rather than a heart strike

The way I learned to tank as blood was to start with a rotation I knew would consume runes, and then get used to modifying it on the fly to fit current situation. In this way, it evolves into more of a priority system than a rotation. This takes a fair bit of practice and comfort with the spec though, so be prepared for some frustration, and don't be ashamed to start with something rigid.

[Insahnity]

Incidentally, another cause for rune blackouts is the number of runes you use at once. For example, if you have you 4 runes on CD and 2 death runes, you could Deathstrike, or you could Heart strike x2. The heart strike x 2 will drag out the time as you have the GCD to contend with between HS's. However, a deathstrike will produce significant RP to be produced, and if you had some RP before it, you should have enough to trigger an ability (a death coil, IBF, AMS, etc.), also keeping you busy after the deathstrike but before runes come of CD. But I would not sweat a few white hits as a blood DK.

[Sigquit]

Thanks a lot for all your advices. Today I want a Nax 10 run with my guild and it went very smoothly. Also now there were not many white hits. I think I might be improving. Thanks a lot again