DK tank builds 4.0.6

WoW Insider have a post up with a Death Knight tanking 101, freshly updated for 4.0.6. On there they have a DK tank build which is this one I call the Lichborne build. This is because it includes the Lichborne talent, which turns you undead and thus you can heal yourself with Deathcoil. This is meant to be used as a tanking cooldown for some self-healing when trouble arises, and can be made easier using the following macro:

#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast Lichborne;
/cast [@player] Death Coil 

This will activate Lichbourne, then cast Death Coil at yourself, even if you have another mob targetted. It can be used instead of the actual Lichbourne spell on a toolbar, and spammed to use all runic power in self heals.

Now some people don't like this style of play, and so don't want the Lichborne spell in their arsenal. The build Blood tanking in the sidebar does not have Lichborne, instead pics up Virulence and Morbidity with the hope of some more AOE threat, with diseases doing more damage and threat and DnD having more damage and threat. This removes your Lichborne spell.

Finally, there is a variant of the Lichborne build I called Blood Lichborne tanking 2 build on the site. This one takes a point out of Scent of Blood and one out of Epidemic, to put points into making Mind Freeze cost no runic power. I've read 2/3 Scent of Blood is optimal anyway, so no worries there. Taking 1 point out of Epidemic means diseases will need refreshing sooner, but the bonus is you get to interrupt every 10 seconds even if you are dry on runic power.

Now for 5 mans I think this will be useful because some of the encounters need multiple interrupts, and I have had to do interrupting myself as tank sometimes. For normal mode raids, it may not be so useful because you can have DPS doing the interrupts, or reserve some runic power, but then again if you find yourself having to do interrupts a lot, this spec may be good. In 4.1 the interrupts will always hit, so getting a tank to do them will be more viable than now, where you run the risk of missing.

I am undecided which build to take, I may try the Blood Lichborne tanking 2 build so I can interrupt in 5 mans, at the moment AOEing stuff down is not really done, so single target threat is probably more useful and I can live without more threaty DnD and diseases.

Gearing update

I have finally finished Twilight Highlands on the DK, and gotten a nice 333 item level boots reward. Next up is grinding through the Deepholm quests so I can hit revered with Therazane and grab 346 rings, both tanking and Dps.