Lets Talk About DK Tanks

[Redbeard]

Howdy,

My group is finally nearing WOTLK content (woot!) and I am getting ready to make the mad dash to 80 and hopefully to heroics eventually. I am currently boosting with my level 80 feral druid, but am planning on making him go kitty and to tank with my DK at 80.

I am going back and forth on talent specs. Due to the nature of my group, I am for sure going blood, but am wondering how much runic power a dk tank has to play with? Is it always pretty much consumed by using rune strike? I know DRW isnt a really a tanking talent but my group isnt exactly conventional so I am up for trying whatever. Corpse explosion is another talent that im interested in for AOEing... both options are stupid if Ill never have the RP to use them though.

Would appreciate anybody running an 80 dk tank to share.

Thanks.

[Hor]

I run a Blood DK tank as my main
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bloodscalp&n=Khaas

There's a few things to keep in mind, one if you're going caster heavy with a Blood DK tanking you'll want a Boomkin. Since you're talking about having your Druid be Kitty, I'm more inclined to think you're going mixed/melee heavy? Either way, I'd be interested to hear more about your group make up. For me, it's Blood DK, Boomkin, Ele Shaman, Frost Mage, and Holy Priest.

Anyhow, on the topic of Runic Power. You really don't have a lot of RP using abilities as Blood, there's Icebound Fortitude (IBF), Death Coil (DC), and Rune Strike (RS) and to a lesser degree Anti Magic Shell (AMS). Other core abilities focus on Runes themselves, such as Rune Tap (RT) which just requires a Blood Rune.

In situations where you're tanking bosses for more than a minute, you will reach an RP plateau with a standard rotation. That is, you'll be sitting on 100 RP consistently unless you dump with DC, which is advised. Of course, you don't want to burn ALL of your RP. Just a couple of quick DCs to add a little more damage/threat and leave the rest for your Oh Shit moments where you use IBF, and of course for RS which will always be your bread and butter threat/damage ability.

In shorter fights like heroic bosses that you burn through quickly you're not likely to reach 100 RP before the boss is dead. But again, this really isn't that much of an issue since all you'd really be using excess RP for is DC in the first place. As for tanking in general as blood, I've written this guide
http://fof.guildlaunch.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3188883&gid=78759

and this macro is very boxer friendly for establishing and keeping aggro as a DK.
#showtooltip Heart Strike
/castsequence reset=combat Plague Strike, Icy Touch, Heart Strike, Heart Strike, Death Strike
/cast Rune Strike
/startattack

Anything else, feel free to hit me up.

[Redbeard]

Hor,

Thanks for the response, and ill check out your links in a bit.

My group is 100% melee, feral druid / enhance shaman / ret pally / fury warrior / blood DK. As youll quickly notice, nobody is specced explicitly for healing, though the enhance shammy will be my primary "off healer". We'll see how well that works when I get there.

Im with you on the whole runic power buildup and using DC. I will post my dps macro that im using on my dk at the moment (he is only level 65), it incorporates DCs in the rotation.

Im more curious if ill have the RP available for DCs / Corpse explosion while spamming RS everytime its up.

Thanks for your help.

[Jubber]

Yeah I keep my plague strike and icy touch on a separate macro. With the glyph of disease you can refresh both with a single pestilence. Like Hor said. As a blood tank you will have tons of Runic Power at your disposal. You can skip DRW as a blood tank if you want.. I never found a use for it in my rotation.

[Hor]

He's got a good point, the only real reason to use the macro I listed is if you're 5 boxing and are really trying to trim it down to 1 or 2 button tanking. IE, you're on the Shaman healing and want to continue doing so in a tank and spank fight.

As for Corpse Explosion, it's got a cooldown and there are some other limiting factors. Most of the times when I feel it would be "really awesome" to use CE, I can't. Either there's dead elementals and constructs or the mobs are dying too fast for it to be any use. If you're trying to build AE threat in Blood, your best bet is to DND, BB, BB, BT, BB. At that point, if mobs aren't dead from AE then you can go for a CE and start picking a mob to do your regular rotation on. Interestingly enough, your self heals give you a good amount of threat too, such as RT and the healing effect of DS. So feel free to use liberally. In my current gear each heals me for about 10K raid buffed.

To the heart of the question: Blood Tanks generate RP very well, but have little to spend it on in practice.

Edit: I forgot to mention something important I had intended to say in the original reply, AMS generates RP when you're hit by spells or melee. So if you're trying to build it up quick grab a bunch of mobs and hit AMS. You should be at full RP shortly thereafter. Works great on bosses too, I use this trick early on to toss a few quick DCs to establish a solid aggro lead.

[Redbeard]

I wanted to ask, and your answer will be skewed if you guys have raid geared tanks, but what kind of DPS can I expect from a heroic geared dk blood tank do you think?

[Hor]

It really depends on how your rotation is. And if you get to cleave with Heart Strike. If you're using a rotational macro then you'll probably stick around 1500 DPS generally in the gear you're talking about. Which doesn't sound like it would be a lot of threat, but it is. Blood generates ridiculous amounts of aggro, especially with self heals from DS and RT.

The most DPS I've done tanking however, was in a raid. XT Hardmode in Ulduar, I pulled 5.2K DPS while tanking Decon. That's not usual though, and that's also as the best geared DK on my server.