Death Knight Tanking rotations

[Bigfish]

So after looking at the patch notes for 3.08 and being moderately unimpressed with how my DK was tanking Old Kingdom yesterday, I've come up with some new rotations for my Frost DK's Tanking. For Multi-target pulls:


0 - Icy Touch
1.5 - Plague Strike
3 - Pestilence
4.5 - Blood Boil
6 - Howling Blast
7.5 - Howling Blast
9 - Frost Strike
10.5 - Frost Strike
12- Repeat

By the time the second howling blast goes off, I should have 85 Runic Power to fuel the 2 Frost Strikes (Chill of the Grave included in there).

For single target tanking:


0 - Icy Touch
1.5 - Plague Strike
3 - Blood Strike
4.5 - Blood Strike
6 - Obliterate
7.5 - Obliterate
9 - Frost Strike
10.5 - Frost Strike
12- Repeat

Should provide the same runic power as above. Is this ideal, or is there a better way to be doing this?

[puppychow]

My DKs not high enough to join my team yet, but all the DK tanks in my guild are spec'd blood, they say it provides higher threat and more DPS than frost. Dunno if patch changes that.

[Bigfish]

I wouldn't know. I've considered speccing Blood for the self healing and all that, but I also depend on Frost for my melee synergy.

[Niley]

Right now blood falls behind other specs for tanking, doesn't provide much survivability, threat is medicore. As unholy in my last naxx run I was doing anywhere between 5-8k tps, as frost i could do more, plus I would add quite a bit more survability to my table. I choose unholy mainly for ebon plague, as my team is all casters.
My rotation goes like this. pull with DnD then IT-PS-Pest-BS-BS-UP-SS-SS-SS-DC-DC, rune strike whenever I can, I also rely on SS glyph to re apply my diseases, so I dont use PS often.

[Hachoo]

I don't like putting anything in my rotation that requires RP because if a couple attacks miss or get dodged or whatever it might break my cast sequence. I also haven't integrated Blood Boil into my rotation but might after 3.0.8.

Right now I do this:

/castsequence reset=target Icy Touch,Plague Strike,Pestilence,Blood Strike,Death Strike

This uses all runes perfectly so I can just cycle through it repeatedly if I don't switch targets, and generally on trash if I switch targets a few times it works out perfect too, as I'll generally get the first 3 attacks out before a mob goes down, then I have just the right amount of runes to use the same 3 attacks again, repeat forever.

Might change Blood Strike to Blood Boil (might as well for AoE).

So, I pull with Icy Touch, then I drop a DnD right in front of me so the mobs run through it as they're coming to me, to front load as much aggro as possible. I don't pull with DND because the mobs will just run towards you out of the DND and not get hit with the entire thing.

For boss tanking I do have a separate single-target macro that I hardly ever use (it is better for single target but I don't really need it).

Basically:

#showtooltip
/cast Rune Strike
/castsequence reset=target Icy Touch,Plague Strike,Blood Strike,Blood Strike,Death Strike - like the other one, this uses all 6 runes so I can just cycle through it repeatedly.

I'm unholy so I just use unholy blight whenever its up as an RP dump, keeping just enough for AMS or IBF as needed.