Should I match sockets as a dk tank or just go all mastery?

[BryceE]

I'm gearing up my dk because I'm bored of my pally, bear and war tanks. He's sitting at 353 eilvl and 359 ilvl. Ran End Time for the first time on him and healer said I was fine, but I noticed he was ooming every fight. Not sure if that was me or him. I was averaging around 4-6k hps every fight.

For DK tanks, it's best to save a DS for a big attack correct? Say on the final boss in End Time, after a breath the dragon does or something DS right? That the general idea of it.

I'm going to send valor bracers and boots from my other toons over to the dk, but servers are down so while they are, any advice for a new dk tank? I'm hoping to get to lfr readiness asap and possibly get to the point I can sub out my main tank in our core group for certain fights my main tank doesn't need gear off of no more. (I'm the only plate wearer in our raid so the gear isn't going to go to anyone else :P).

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...5look/advanced

[Dreador]

Ran End Time for the first time on him and healer said I was fine, but I noticed he was ooming every fight. Not sure if that was me or him. I was averaging around 4-6k hps every fight.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it was him. Why? Unless the DPS is so low that it takes way too long to kill things, with the healer's gear properly gemmed, enchanted, and reforged he should be fine without drinking for an entire heroic. The other clue is that he said your damage intake was fine.

My 2c, I don't pretend to know if DK's should stack mastery at the cost of all else, someone else will have to add that in.

EDIT: You have 5 pieces of unenchanted gear, I would start there. I understand your shoulders are less than crappy, but luckily shoulders and head are the cheapest.

[swelt]

You should match. DKs need other stats as well as mastery, socket bonuses aren't worth ignoring. Mastery heavy matching (e.g. green gems in blue sockets, orange gems in red sockets) is fairly normal. There are also DKs that do well with raw avoidance or stamina heavy gearing.

Timing death strikes well is good practice, as deathstrike scales with damage taken in the past few seconds, although there's also something to be said for just keeping a high turnover (playing 'rune tetris') particularly if the fight doesn't have major bursts. DKs also need to be very active on their use of minor cooldowns. Knowing when it's time to rune tap / blood tap / dancing rune weapon / empower rune weapon / lichborne self heal / death pact etc marks the difference between a mediocre and good DK. At a minimum, make sure you are using your more significant cooldowns appropriately: AMS for magic bursts, boneshield for max uptime, VB often and early, IBF for the tank killer boss move or unexpected problem.

[BryceE]

I know I have the unenchanted items, but figured with my luck as soon as I enchant it I'll get a drop for it -_-. But I'll go enchant em.

I get the cooldowns like IBF, DRW, Lichborne self heal, and vamp blood, but rune tap/blood tap are the ones I really don't have the good of an understanding on. Of course I use AMS for magic bursts and to slow down stack buildup and all that. I try and keep bone shield up as much as I can.

EDIT: Also, some people were saying I should go for a morbidity spec over a lichborne spec.

[swelt]

The simplest time to rune tap is right after VB or of course when you get a Will of the Necropolis proc. Other than that, it's entirely situational - if you think you are about to die you have a list of buttons you can press to 'not die', and putting rune tap near the top of that list is a good start. I notice you haven't glyphed rune tap or blood tap, you really ought to glyph both. I have them as shift+2 and shift+3 respectively. When to blood tap is a harder thing to describe, essentially it's either to get an extra move in (like a boneshield refresh, or a death and decay to cope with extra adds) or just to squeeze an extra death strike into the rotation, probably after a runic empowerment proc. I believe there's also a way to game the death runes, but I've never understood it. The point I was trying to make is don't forget about blood tap (which is easily done with all the other things you have to learn and worry about), improved blood tap is pretty powerful.

As for morbidity vs lichborne, probably depends on your content. Since you are running heroics right now, they might be right. When you get into raiding, maybe not.