DK Tanking questions

[Rilik]

Basically I'm having issues with threat generation and any advice anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Here's a link to my armory:
The World of Warcraft Armory - Gnowammies @ Skullcrusher - Profile

I'm honestly not sure what spec is best for tanking as a DK anymore, I know all of them have the ability to, I just don't know which is most effective right now. Any spec advice would also be very appreciated. Specing my tank has always been one of the biggest problems I've had too XD

[Trork]

I highly recommend going blood, I used to be frost tank as well, but blood spec is awesome. Either way, you should respec.

Heres a good frost tank spec. (2 handed)

Heres a good frost Dual Wield spec

and Heres a good blood tank spec.


I also recommend you making macro for each and every damage spell you use, and add /cast !rune strike to it, ie.

#showtoolip Icy Touch
/cast !Rune Strike
/cast Icy Touch

or adding a addon (Event Alert or Power Auras) telling you when u got the proc on, for the addon, make sure to also add the Killing Machine and Rime procs to it, so you can easily track when they are on and when to use (ie. save rime for when KM is on, use frost strike when KM is on)

frost is fun and still doable, although DW frost tank might be better now, but you will like blood more after a while. Try it out.

[Mtzgrmeister]

Personally, I prefer frost tanking for its multi-mob tanking abilities, i prefer an unholy for single target.

The Rotation I use when I'm Tanking multiple mobs as frost is
1. Start out with Death and Decay (Take the unholy talents to reduce the CD)
2. Apply Frost Feaver
3. Apply Blood Plague
4. Grip any casters into range that aren't. Use Pestilence (Glyph so it spreads diseases)
5. Now all mobs in area have Diseases and that threat is just ticking aggro. From here i usually pop Blood Tap to get the runes to use Howling Blast for that additional threat
6. From here, i just spam blood boil when its up, and howling blast when its up
7. GOLDEN RULE OF DK TANKING: Whenever your Rune Strike is up, use it, it is a killer threat generator, I recommend MLK Scrolling combat text wich will display a warning in the middle of your screen and a sound when this ability is up.
8. Every so often use pestilence again to keep your diseases up.

Now if you don't have a bunch of *ahems* in your group/raid, either your teammates will be using AOE's and should never be able to take your aggro away unless they are WAY better geared than you, or they should be attacking the target you are, so with your continued rune strikes, you should have solid aggro.

If you get the odd deeps who wants to choose his own target (i.e. not yours) and he grabs aggro, grip that mob and keep chugging with your rotation on it.

This rotation works fairly well single targets as well, but a dk, imo, will never be able to match a Warrior's single target threat, so on patch for instance, if you have a warrior as the other tank, your stuck eating the hatefull's, but it should be plenty enough to keep it from your deeps/healers.

As for your spec, IMO, you could change it up a bit, I would take your points out of Scent of Blood (T2 blood) and stick them into 2h wep spec (if indeed you want to use a 2 hander). Also, I would take points out of endless winter, hungering cold and dump it into Tundra Stalker. As I said, its handy to have points in unholy command, i personally would take points from epidemic to get some points in.

As for gear, you have good raid gear, but if threat is your problem, unless you're in progression content where you NEED that amount of HP, etc, I would throw some dps gear on, as long as you're at 540 Defense (535 for heroics) you are golden, and the dps gear helps your threat generation significantly. (I know it seems painful to get all that great gear to not use it, but especially for running heroics, there are allot of people with t10+ gear running randoms all the time, and the dps isn't interested in playing it safe (sadly to say) They want speed and their name on the top of the deeps chart, so you have to lvl the playing field.

Hopefully i was of some help, and i wish you all the luck in the world for your future endeavors.

[Rilik]

I probably should have been more specific. Single target threat is where I'm having the issues, and this is mostly regarding my guild's 10 man raids where four of our DPS are at a constant 6k+ I just have trouble holding threat unless I taunt off of our pally who has 0 issues with threat generation, and run with what she's already got.

As far as specs I've tried all three and I'm not partial to any one spec. I like them all for different reasons. So I'm not opposed to going back to blood. Frost was just the last one I'd tried. So as far as single-target threat goes what is the best spec going around right now? To give you an idea of where we're at. Rotface/Festergut is where we're at and trying to get past...so I need to be not-squishy for Fester and have enough threat gen to keep agro after the tank swap.

[Djtk]

Blood is where you will get the best single target threat. If you really find that you are having threat issues, you "may" ( and I mean this SPARINGLY ) want to attempt to try to use Army. The threat that Army generates I have found will be transferred back to you once Army is finished. However, there's the whole, moving the boss around bit that might mess things up.

Another thing to try, is DnD. DnD is, quite possibly, the best threat generation that a DK has. While it has low damage, it does have a high threat value. I am unsure of the exact numbers.

My lvl 80 Blood DK Tank Build

The above shows what my current Spec build w/ Glyphs are.

As well, I find that I tend to do Dark Command every now and again. I am unsure if there is any actual threat generation from Dark Command. I haven't really seen any addition to my TPS when I use it, but then again I am not always looking at Omen either.

From what I remember, this is my usual rotation for single target threat.

Death Grip, Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Heart Strike, Heart Strike, Blood Tap, Heart Strike, Death Strike, Death Strike, DC ( if there's any Runic Power ), Empower Rune Weapon, Heart Strike x6.

Also, one thing to note, I have Rune Strike macro'd to my Heart Strike and Death Strike abilities. This ensures that I am always activating it as I am either spamming Heart Strike or Death Strike.

My TPS can avg from 4k-7k. If I need additional threat, I lay down a DnD as well.

Anyways, hope this helps.

[Rilik]

Thanks Djtk. One question about your spec. Does Dancing Rune Weapon apply its threat to you, or is it just there for a DPS effect?

[Djtk]

I'm under the assumption that it does add its threat onto your own. I haven't seen where it doesn't, but then again, I haven't seen where it does. Even so, the extra damage is always nice. I suppose you could put the additional point into Scent of Blood, but there's no real need since you can generate more than enough Runic Power with evne just 1 point in Scent of Blood.

[Rilik]

Alright. I really appreciate all the help. I've just got to get better about using D&D off of cool down always. XD

[Djtk]

Its all about managin your Runes really. If you can juggle it so you can always lay down DnD, then great. If not, but can still pull the threat, then no worries.

[Proletaria]

I'm under the assumption that it does add its threat onto your own.

Per the EJ boards circa a few months ago (i'll see if i can dig up the post for a link, it's in the Suno's Fireside Chat thread) they disproved this.

[Djtk]

Oh really? Well that kinda sucks. Not sure why Blizz wouldn't have it so any threat that the DRW creates would get transferred to yourself since it is an extension of you and an ability that causes damage.

[Selene]

Because it is a "Pet" like your ghoul, so it makes its own threat.

[Djtk]

But Army of the Dead generates threat for you and is transferred to you when it finishes.

[Trork]

So as far as single-target threat goes what is the best spec going around right now?

I have around 10-12k TPS on single targets with blood, opposed to 7-8k tps when I was frost.

Does Dancing Rune Weapon apply its threat to you, or is it just there for a DPS effect?

It does not generate threat to you, and should not be a tank talent.

But Army of the Dead generates threat for you and is transferred to you when it finishes.

You should watch out when you pull army up, there are some fights that they will taunt off adds and make a mess (scatter the adds around).

[Rilik]

Alright. Did a respec into blood and then ended up doing a Naxx last night because I figured Patchwerk would be a good place to just relax and watch Omen. Started doing between 8-10k TPS I think this really fixes my problem. Thanks so much everyone.

[Kariel]

I have around 10-12k TPS on single targets with blood, opposed to 7-8k tps when I was frost.



It does not generate threat to you, and should not be a tank talent.



You should watch out when you pull army up, there are some fights that they will taunt off adds and make a mess (scatter the adds around).

RE: DRW, it does generate threat. This was patched into 3.3.0, but since 99% of blood tanks never take the talent nobody noticed. It's pretty solid as a threat tool in both single target and AE situations now.

[Djtk]

Kazriel, you're wrong. I went back to the 3.3.0 patch notes and DRW is not mentioned at all. The only ability that was buffed for threat was Rune Strike.

Death Knights

• [Army of the Dead]: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Army Ghoul damage dropped by 50%. Cannot be used in Arenas.
• [Raise Ally]: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 15 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
• Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle: There is now a 1-handed version of this rune in addition to the current 2-handed rune.
• [Rune Strike]: Threat generated by this ability increased by approximately 17%.
• Talents
  • Unholy
    • [Night of the Dead]: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 45/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players. In addition, this talent now reduces the cooldown of Army of the Dead by 2/4 minutes, down from 5/10 minutes.
    • [Scourge Strike]: Redesigned. The base ability now deals 50% weapon damage plus an additional amount as physical damage. However, for each disease the death knight has on the target, the target will take additional shadow damage equal to 25% of the physical damage done.
    • [Unholy Blight]: This talent now deals only 10% of [Death Coil] damage as a damage-over-time effect on the target.

[Kariel]

Kazriel, you're wrong. I went back to the 3.3.0 patch notes and DRW is not mentioned at all. The only ability that was buffed for threat was Rune Strike.

Death Knights

• [Army of the Dead]: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Army Ghoul damage dropped by 50%. Cannot be used in Arenas.
• [Raise Ally]: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 15 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
• Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle: There is now a 1-handed version of this rune in addition to the current 2-handed rune.
• [Rune Strike]: Threat generated by this ability increased by approximately 17%.
• Talents
  • Unholy
    • [Night of the Dead]: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 45/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players. In addition, this talent now reduces the cooldown of Army of the Dead by 2/4 minutes, down from 5/10 minutes.
    • [Scourge Strike]: Redesigned. The base ability now deals 50% weapon damage plus an additional amount as physical damage. However, for each disease the death knight has on the target, the target will take additional shadow damage equal to 25% of the physical damage done.
    • [Unholy Blight]: This talent now deals only 10% of [Death Coil] damage as a damage-over-time effect on the target.

Yea, I know it wasn't in the notes. I'm just letting you know how it works now. Omen WILL read the threat events/threat data. Very easy to see how good it actually is for threat via some simple testing in Crystalsong.

[Djtk]

This was apparently disproven over on the EJ forum. DRW is a pet of its own and has its own threat table, which does not feed back to the DK. I'm gonna try and dig that up if possible.

[Kariel]

This was apparently disproven over on the EJ forum. DRW is a pet of its own and has its own threat table, which does not feed back to the DK. I'm gonna try and dig that up if possible.

It was not disproven on EJ. As I stated, prior to 3.3.0 it generated 1 point of threat per swing/ability. It now (post 3.3.0) transfers 100% of the threat it generates, which can be substantial.