Deathknight tanking, learning the ropes

[kadaan]

You're not going to dodge/parry enough to get a RS every single swing unless you're tanking multiple mobs at once, very much unlike heroic strike for warriors. I looked through some logs on WoL for Saurfang (tank and spank with no movement) and the DK tanks I saw were about 2:1 to 3:1 melee hits vs rune strikes. It doesn't really matter though, as you rely on your special hits for 90% of your threat anyway. Not sure what's "scary" about it, even melee dps classes don't really worry about it much after they're yellow hit capped.

A decent frost AE tanking macro would be something like:

(manually cast DnD first)

/castsequence Howling Blast, Blood Boil, Obliterate, Blood Boil
/cast !Rune Strike

HB talented applies Frost Fever to everything it hits, and your Blood Boil now does extra damage to everything. For AE packs I didn't really worry too much about Plague Strike much. You could change the Obliterate,Blood Boil to IT+PS+Pestilence if you wanted. You'll also want to tab around and dump your RP on Frost Strike.


I started out tanking as Frost, but recently switched to Blood and like it a lot better. AE threat is a little lower, but DnD+Pestilence+Heart Strike is enough to keep anything on me unless someone in a pug is nuking hard on something random. The boost to self-healing with Death Strike is also an added bonus.