Death Knight 4.1 tanking specs

4.1 is here and it is time to talk about tanking specs. Given not many of the Death Knight talents changed, they are basically the same as for 4.0.6, discussed in this post here. One thing of note that I read on pwnwear.com is that because interrupts are now unmissable, expect to see encounters relying on interrupts a lot more in the future. Which means for 5 mans, the spec with Endless Winter is likely to be very useful, and I shall definitely be using that one.

One other thing is don't forget you have a combat res now! Raise Ally was redesigned to be a combat res, costing 50 RP. If someone goes down and you have the time, pop it on them. It is an instant, so could even be cast while tanking. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to glyph it to return the player with 100% health, unlike the Druid combat res which has precisely such a glyph. Even Warlocks, who also get a combat res in 4.1, get a glyph which increases the ressed player's health to 70%. By comparison, ours only gives the player 20% health, which is poor. Please to be giving a glyph kthxbai!

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.

Rurikhan DK blood guide

Rurikhan again delivers the goods with this video on Blood DKs. Check the big one out there, or on his website.

I am still working through Vashj'ir on my DK. I have DPSed Throne of the Tides but not tanked anything until I get some better gear.

Rurikhan DK blood tank video

Rurikhan has posted a video about the Death Knight blood tank which runs though specs and shows him tanking a heroic. It is very informative and well worth checking out.

Links for Cataclysm

If you haven't seen this yet, Pwnwear.com have a post with links to loads of 4.0.3 threads, with such useful information as a Tanking 101, starter tank gear list (for Cataclysm) and a cookie-cutter tank spec. Which is very much like the one I have, because pwnwear.com is where I got it from :)

I have been meaning to take a look at the gear available from quests etc, but given my leveling plan, I intend on doing probably Vash'jir -> Deepholm -> Uldum -> Twilight Highlands, with some instances along the way. The gear list posted on pwnwear is excellent and will really help me spot which gear to keep along the way.

It goes without saying that the best quest rewards are in Twilight Highlands, so I will be hitting that as soon as I can so I can finish all the quests and get some great gear.

Troubles in UK

I tried to tank UK normal last night, but it did not go well.

I had 11.3k health, 493 defense, 13.4k armour.

Was I taking crits? What is the minimum defense level for UK on normal? Crit immunity for a level 70 player against a raid boss (which is level 73) is 490 defense. The bosses in UK are level 72 and the mobs level 70. From Wowwiki a level 72 mob attacking a level 71 player has 5% + 0.2% chance to crit = 5.2%. I must lower my chance to be crit by 5.2%. Every point of defense beyond the base (of 71 * 5 = 355) lowers the crit chance by 0.04%, thus I need 5.2/0.04 = 130 defense points extra, thus my sheet total needs to be 355 + 130 = 485 defense skill. Thus I am over that by enough to not get critted.

We failed on Dalronn and Skarvald, with the DPS and healer getting owned a lot. Reflecting I think it was because the combination of shadow bolts from Dalronn and charges from Skarvald killed off the squishies - we killed Dalronn first or tried to kill them both at the same time, but his ghost was killing people. Perhaps next time kill them both at the same time, BUT interrupt Dalronn's shadow bolts otherwise he will kill people. Also I can tank Skarvald and only secondarily tank Dalronn as he doesn't seem to have an aggro table anyway.

I could maybe do with more health, on the successful run we did the tank had 20k but he was SWP geared. Still some leatherworking armor kits on 5 slots will increase stamina by 90, which means 11.4 * 90 health (for blood tank spec) = 1026 health. Or some normal Borean Leather kits (10g vs 80g) which give 60 stamina = 684 health, ie 60% of the health but for 12% of the cost. Hmm. Also my cloak and rings are pretty bad and I could maybe investigate some quest chains to get better ones with more stamina.

Pre raid tanking gear list

Here is a list of gear obtained by Emblems of Triumph or other grindable items, plus the total cost in Triumph. Not the cost in sanity to grind this number of triumph however. Gear stolen from pwnwear.com forums.

Helm 50 triumph
Neck 19 conquest
Shoulders 30 triumph
Cloak 25 valor (or do Ahune)
Chest 50 triumph
Wrist 60 valor or AH and gold
Hands 30 triumph
Belt 23 conquest
Legs 50 triumph
Feet 40 valor
Ring 1 35 triumph
Ring 2 25 valor
Trinket 1 50 triumph
Trinket 2 40 heroism
2H Sword 25 champion's seals
Sigil 25 triumph

Total is 552 triumph and 25 champion's seals. By spending some gold on the Wrist this comes down to 492 triumph. Total defense rating for all this is 561, 657 including rings etc. The defense skill needed is 540, or 688 rating. However the Rune of the Gargoyle gives 25 defense skill, so some of these items may not be needed.

Now the Titan-forged shoulders are higher item level, but have no defense or parry on them. The Wrathful Gladiator's Bracers of Triumph, Relentless Gladiator's Greaves of Triumph and Relentless Gladiator's Girdle of Triumph have no defense or parry rating on them either. However I may get away with gearing from blues to hit the cap, then farming triumph and stopping once I have the non-honour items, then grab these honour items for threat.

To get started I shall follow this article which shows how to get upto the defense cap, also running daily normal LK dungeons gives 2 Triumph.

Loltanking Ramparts

Ok so after running Ramparts as DPS at level 67, I decided to try out tanking the place. Turns out reading up any boss tactics was not needed, the run I DPSed on we just killed the place and didn't really bother with all the intricate stuff like we did when I ran it in TBC (at level 60).

I didn't tell the group this was the first time I had tanked either :) The tree healer said "pull lots and keep going". Pure chaos was what I will describe it as. I tried opening with IT, PS then Pestilence but usually someone would have pulled a mob by the time Pestilence went off. So I then tried DnD right off, the IT PS Pest and that worked a lot better. Still, I can see what Ghostcrawler is saying about DKs, I am hitting a key every GCD and also trying to target run aways and other mobs, leading to an utterly chaotic feeling. The run itself went well of course as I utterly outgeared it, but I was still shaking from adrenaline afterward. What fun.

Now I have a quest for Blood Furnace and am considering just getting in there, but I still have a suspicion I should read up on the encounters a bit.

Aha finally WoW.com have posted a Blood Tanking 101 article. Still waiting for Rurikhan to post his Blood tanking video.

Death Knight tanking article

It is probably a while before I should be thinking about tanking stuff, but WoW Insider have a nice article about Death Knight tanking with some suggested builds.