Blood DK Tank - New to things got alot of questions

[Epicous]

Hi all,

Firstly if you can take a look at my armory and let me know what i can do gear wise to improve?

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Epicous/simple

I am dropping herblism and taking up jewelcrafting
my bracer i know is pvp lol, but it was better than my old green one
waiting till i'm exalted with Ramkahen to get a new one of those (unless you guys know a temp solution?)

ok my main questions really is why do i take so much damage so quickly?
i can tank normal dungeons no problems..
heroic's are virually impossible for me to tank

i tried going in as a DPS so i'd at least be able to get the heroic loot to help me tank but i get moaned at for doing crap DPS and get kicked out lol

so bit lost as to what to do

any advice will be great

my hit roation is normally:

outbreak
presilence
heart strike (unless cc)
and rune strike
and death strike whenever heal is needed
and also my runetap as often as possible (when needed)
DnD and Boil Blood are used when tanking larger mobs and i need to control everything

so please take a look over my talent build, glyphs, gear etc and let me know where you lot think im going wrong

many thanks

[Epicous]

ok i've done some reforging and changed any hit/mastery into dodge/parry
and just sucessfully tanked a HC

tho still took a battering

also not sure taking away all the hit and mastery away was a good idea (I know this is WELL debated so lets not try and get into that one again)

[Prexie]

Don't reforge away from mastery. It's not a threat stat like hit is.

[Epicous]

What about expertise can I reforge out of that?

[Zee786]

Yea reforge hit expertise to mastery and avoidance

[Netheras]

Reforge for mastery OR avoidance. Don't try and balance them, just go for one or the other. Personally, I would go for mastery as it is a more reliable stat. In terms of your damage intake, you should probably be using Death Strike more often since it gives you more than just the heal. I would grab up Blood Shield Tracker over at Curse or wherever you like to get addons to see when you'll get the best heal and how much of your Blood Shield is left (can't forget about that mechanic, especially if you stack mastery).

Unfortunately I can't see your armory since it says Battle.net is down, so going to have to assume some things.
First, going to assume you have at least this spec: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jcGr0sMrusz:so0zk
Which basically covers the essentials to get to 31 points in the tree.

Make sure you keep Bone Shield up, as it is pretty important for your damage reduction. Rune Tap when you use Vampiric Blood, (the glyphed version is better than without) and use VB pretty regularly since it only has a minute cooldown. It improves your DS heal as well, and I believe the heal from your bloodworms.

Most of your damage can be mitigated through your CDs, since AMS no longer requires runic power, and has a 45 sec CD, making sure you have Scarlet Fever and Frost Fever on your targets will reduce your damage etc.

[Sebadoh]

Enchant your gear, you're missing enchants on pretty much everything.

For raiding, you're definitely going to want a Lichborne spec, but for starting heroics I found a Morbidity spec to be extremely helpful for AoE threat. Something like this with two points to toss somewhere else (probably Crimson Scourge or Imp Blood Tap). And do not glyph Obliterate please, if you ever use Oblit over Death Strike you are doing it very wrong.

Pretty much any bracer with relevant stats would be an upgrade. Like this quest reward.

[Netheras]

Wait... why do you have two Blood Specs?

I can't tell which one to focus on, so I'll wait for a response but please, explain your choices?

[Epicous]

My other spec is my pvp spec, only a minimal difference I know lol
The one that is activated (second one) is my tank spec

[uglie]

Make the alchemy stam trinket and ditch the dmc card, the tolbarad mastery trinket is really nice as well http://www.wowhead.com/item=62466. The dmc card is definitely one case of something being over priced imo. I personally stack mastery out the ass for heroics using http://www.wowhead.com/item=56280 reforged to mastery and using puissant dream emerald for yellow and blue sockets and keen ember topaz for red sockets.
as for rotation use death strike more even if you don't need the heal since it stacks a damage absorption shield which is increased by mastery and NEVER EVER use obliterate period in pve or pvp, keep it in your spellbook and since you won't be using it don't glyph for it.
For your spec try http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jcGr0sMruszG0o . You have 4 free points to use which i personally fill out epidemic and put 1 point in endless winter. Changing out your glyphs will help too, just use the ones i have.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...glieone/simple

[Sebadoh]

I, too, have gone the Mastery-stacking route on my DK and I've been complimented several times on how easy I am to heal (even back when I was in 333-ish gear).

Nice catch with the Alch trinket, that thing is very nice.

[Zee786]

Reforge for mastery OR avoidance. Don't try and balance them, just go for one or the other. Personally, I would go for mastery as it is a more reliable stat. In terms of your damage intake, you should probably be using Death Strike more often since it gives you more than just the heal. I would grab up Blood Shield Tracker over at Curse or wherever you like to get addons to see when you'll get the best heal and how much of your Blood Shield is left (can't forget about that mechanic, especially if you stack mastery).

Unfortunately I can't see your armory since it says Battle.net is down, so going to have to assume some things.
First, going to assume you have at least this spec: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jcGr0sMrusz:so0zk
Which basically covers the essentials to get to 31 points in the tree.

Make sure you keep Bone Shield up, as it is pretty important for your damage reduction. Rune Tap when you use Vampiric Blood, (the glyphed version is better than without) and use VB pretty regularly since it only has a minute cooldown. It improves your DS heal as well, and I believe the heal from your bloodworms.

Most of your damage can be mitigated through your CDs, since AMS no longer requires runic power, and has a 45 sec CD, making sure you have Scarlet Fever and Frost Fever on your targets will reduce your damage etc.

Yea meant to say or but according to elitist jerks it's it's best to get mastery

[Epicous]

thanks for your comments so far guys

i've reforged everything again and instead of choosing parry/dodge i've gone for mastery
i didnt replace parry/dodge with mastery tho just other things

so now sitting on:

Dodge: 12.88%
Parry: 12.68%

Mastery: 13.18

Sound about right?

[Netheras]

Just be sure you've got your mastery as high as you can with reforging. You don't want your avoidance ratings to be too close to your mastery rating, you want a large gap between them.

It is when everything is balanced that you take more damage as a result. Your Blood Shield and avoidance will be at that nice place where neither works out very well in situations of high damage and you don't want that.

[Theotherone]

For raiding, you're definitely going to want a Lichborne spec,

Maybe.

I personally find it clunky to use and I just feel the points in Frost that you have to invest to get to the spec are wasted; but, that said, some like it and find it effective.

[Zee786]

I don't personally like lichborne but I use it. Its saved my toons but loads of times. However I think the lichborne spec is for main tanks but there are the two other specs that are also valid the endless winter spec is for interrupting and the morbidity spec is the aoe spec (as far as I remember).

[Netheras]

The interrupt spec includes LB. It is a pretty useful survival CD if you can manage it correctly. The problem is if you don't have points in LB, you have 6 points that either get wasted (by those new to tanking) or used for a slow (in desecration) that may or may not be useful in more than one encounter (talking about raids). The reason LB works out as a more general spec is because having another CD is part of the tank's job - survival.

The 2 points in Icy Reach I would agree are basically useless, though having the range on Chains of Ice lets you slow a target farther away from you without the problem of having that target in a specific area. The trade off is that Plague Strike would put the damage debuff on the target as well as slow for a limited space. But I would say that either way, you probably should have been putting that up on adds, so I think Desecration falls a bit short (the time the effect is on the ground works out for kiting in a small area and then not taking damage though, so there are benefits there..). This isn't to say I think the spec doesn't have merits, just that in terms of generalized tanking ability, it doesn't compete terribly well in survival terms. The 3 points in Runic Power Mastery gives you more RP for a third Death Coil, which at about 30k healing (more perhaps with VB and other healing effects on you) each, you cover a significant amount of health within the 10 seconds that LB is up. At the very least, those 3 points are not wasted for LB.

But I would say go for what you plan to be doing. Main tanking or add tanking, you should be able to see the benefits of either spec.

@Theotherone: I know I've asked this before, but I have a terrible memory - is it the macro part that feels clunky? or just having to wait for the RP to get the full benefit?

[Zee786]

The interrupt spec includes LB. It is a pretty useful survival CD if you can manage it correctly. The problem is if you don't have points in LB, you have 6 points that either get wasted (by those new to tanking) or used for a slow (in desecration) that may or may not be useful in more than one encounter (talking about raids). The reason LB works out as a more general spec is because having another CD is part of the tank's job - survival.

The 2 points in Icy Reach I would agree are basically useless, though having the range on Chains of Ice lets you slow a target farther away from you without the problem of having that target in a specific area. The trade off is that Plague Strike would put the damage debuff on the target as well as slow for a limited space. But I would say that either way, you probably should have been putting that up on adds, so I think Desecration falls a bit short (the time the effect is on the ground works out for kiting in a small area and then not taking damage though, so there are benefits there..). This isn't to say I think the spec doesn't have merits, just that in terms of generalized tanking ability, it doesn't compete terribly well in survival terms. The 3 points in Runic Power Mastery gives you more RP for a third Death Coil, which at about 30k healing (more perhaps with VB and other healing effects on you) each, you cover a significant amount of health within the 10 seconds that LB is up. At the very least, those 3 points are not wasted for LB.

But I would say go for what you plan to be doing. Main tanking or add tanking, you should be able to see the benefits of either spec.

@Theotherone: I know I've asked this before, but I have a terrible memory - is it the macro part that feels clunky? or just having to wait for the RP to get the full benefit?

I completely agree with you except in raids where I have main tanked I ask all dk's to not Have desecration as it makes it harder to place adds/boss. Now all the dk's (tanks and dps) have 2 specs one for kiting and another for the rest. Real pain to place a raid boss properly with desecration down. Plus a hunter can just throw down a frost trap.

[Sebadoh]

I agree with Zee - Desecration is a waste of talent points for any PvE spec. Not only does it do nothing useful, but it also makes it harder to see stuff on the ground. And Cataclysm is all about stuff on the ground (ask any healer, or anybody who's done Heroic Maloriak).