DK Tanks - What Presence do you tank in and why?

[knopstr]

Hachoo,

I started this thread after noticing in some, if not all of your videos (which are really a godsend - can't thank you enough) that you tank in unholy presence.

It got me to thinking, what presence should I be tanking in?

Is it a personal preference?

What are the advantages to one over the other?

I have always played dps style characters. This is really my 1st tank of any kind and I'm still learning. I personally was tanking (still am for the moment) in frost for the extra armor/threat.

Please discuss. As always, thanks to all who contribute.

[Bigfish]

People tank outside of Frost? Mind=blown.

[Svpernova09]

People tank outside of Frost? Mind=blown.

^^ Seriously, if you're not in Frost, you're missing out.

[turbonapkin]

As an unholy tank, I highly doubt he tanks in unholy presence... what you are seeing is probably an unholy aura buff, the mount speed thing. I run an unholy tank in frost presence with four shamans and know that not using frost would be suicide when those LBs hit!

Happy to be proved wrong of course!

[knopstr]

I guess I'm mis-interpreting the green skull on the screen for the unholy buff aura...if this is the case my apologies...I don't have the green skull anywhere on my screen as a buff and I'm obviously a knucklehead

[puppychow]

unholy aura = 15% movement speed buff for party, removed in patch 3.1. A talent in the unholy tree.

Every DK tank, when tanking, will be in frost presence. And your weapon should have Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle. Always. Without frost presence DPS will pull aggro pretty much every fight.

The nice thing about DKs is you can quickly swap gear, change to blood presence, slap on rune of the fallen crusader, and be top 10 DPS. Don't have to change spec, reglyph'ing of course would be nice for more DPS.

Unholy presence is pretty crappy and I don't think anyone ever uses it for anything.

[Hachoo]

Yeah I've only ever tanked in frost presence - what you're seeing in my videos is unholy aura - not unholy presence. Unholy aura is a talent...

You should never, ever, tank in anything other than frost presence unless you want to get slaughtered and not be able to hold aggro

[Zerocool2024]

When I 5box my DK's through Heroics, I HAVE to keep them all in Frost.
I tried specing 3 of them DPS, and two keep tankage.

I put DPS gear on them, put them in Blood/Unholy, and I could hardly get past the trash.
Because I have no healer persay, any damage they take, or aggro, or AOE damage, it drops them quick.

Put them back in no Crit range/Frost Aura, and back to normal clearing.

[Multibocks]

unholy aura = 15% movement speed buff for party, removed in patch 3.1. A talent in the unholy tree.

Every DK tank, when tanking, will be in frost presence. And your weapon should have Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle. Always. Without frost presence DPS will pull aggro pretty much every fight.

The nice thing about DKs is you can quickly swap gear, change to blood presence, slap on rune of the fallen crusader, and be top 10 DPS. Don't have to change spec, reglyph'ing of course would be nice for more DPS.

Unholy presence is pretty crappy and I don't think anyone ever uses it for anything.

Actually once you hit the minimum defense +25(so you dont drop below) you can switch to the 4% parry runeforge. That one comes out slightly ahead, but its not a game breaker.

[Hachoo]

Eh - IMO its better/easier to just keep the +25 def and gem for something other than defense - unless your tank has mostly/all valorous gear you're not going to hit 565 defense without wasting a bunch of gems on +def.