Intro

I was originally going to write about the new Blood Tanking changes but there isn’t that much info available at the moment on how Blood Tanking will work in Cataclysm. Instead I’m going to write a little guide on how to deal with pugs (pick up groups).

The first problem in being a Death Knight Tank is that from the onset in a pug you will have a bad reputation. There is a lot of bad Death Knight tanks and they get remembered more so by the community as its “cool” to make fun of Death Knights.

The only way to overcome this bad reputation within the group is to know what you are doing and do it well.

Pro tips:

• Reading other DK guides about what talents and glyphs to use
• Asking questions on the DK forums about anything you don’t understand
• Macro’ing certain abilities like Rune Strike to your other melee attacks
• Watching videos of how to tank dungeons you haven’t been to before
• Be polite and ready to do the dungeon soon as you port in
• Knowing what rotations to use on single mobs and groups
• Watch the healers mana and it get’s low ask if they need a mana break
• Remember to Use Horn of Winter and Be in Frost Presence!

What’s your role?

A tank should generally know where to go in an dungeon and provide some leadership to the group. You set the pace for the group so you need to try and be fast as you can without doing things that can potentially wipe the group.

Your job is to keep threat on all mobs that are attacking the group. All damage should be direct at you so the healer doesn’t waste mana healing the whole group.

It also help if you know the boss fights and explain quickly explain them to the group in case someone is new to the dungeon. It could just be a few remarks like “stop dps when vines come up” or “stand here, I’ll tank the monster over here”.

What Specialization to use?

For 5 mans and heroics I’d say frost. As frost works well even if you gear isn’t that great. It also has some awesome AoE threat with Howling Blast and a great “oh crap” button with Hungering Cold. You can go Blood and Unholy but at the moment their more for raiding as the scale better than frost, but frost to me is still the number one 5 man tanking spec.

What dungeon’s to do?

Some dungeons are harder to tank than others. I’d advise newer players not to sign up for a random dungeon as this can put you in dungeons that might be a tad too high for you and therefore harder to tank.

I generally find a dungeon I enjoy doing (or has good tank drops) and stick to it until I’ve leveled up and can’t do it anymore. If you want to challenge yourself after a few runs on the same dungeon, try pulling bigger groups in the dungeon, but make sure your healer can handle it otherwise you could wipe the group.

I’d keep doing selected dungeons until you hit the level cap, then go to dungeons with tank drops you want. After you have geared up a bit you can do random dungeons or move onto selected heroics (provided you have hit the def cap etc).

How other players can negatively affect your run

When you use the LFD system you are put in a group with four other people who you might never see again. You will also group with players who might not know how to play their role/class properly. The following is a list of things that other players might do on your run that can make your job harder or wipe your group.

DPS (damage dealers):

• DPS will try to off tank the mobs and might pull agro on them – Get a mod like “skullme” that will auto mark you target and ask the dps to only hit the skull marked target.
• Some impatient DPS will try and pull the mobs before you can – This is really annoying as a tank, so ask the DPS to not pull. If they continue to do it vote to kick them or just stand back as the mobs bash them to death. Remind me as a tank it’s your job to pull each group.
• DPS uses knock-back spells or deathgrip – Just ask them politely if they can stop doing it and explain why their bad. Deathgrip will make the mob attack the user for 6 seconds and knockback spells are meant for pvp and can agro more mobs.
• DPS wants to roll on your tanking gear – Sadly you can’t do much about this, DPS can roll on your tanking gear if they can equip it. All you can do is roll need and prey you get it. If the DPS wins you could try and ask them for it as you are the tank.

Healers:

• Healer isn’t really a healer just signed up to heal as its a faster queue – Kick it soon as you can.
• Healer want’s to DPS rather than heal – Remind them of their role and what they signed up for. If they find healing that boring they shouldn’t be doing it.
• Healer wants you to go faster – Don’t do this, play at the speed your comfortable with. It’s better to be a bit slower in pulls rather than wipe the group and have to spirit walk back to the dungeon

Those are just some general things that can happen and every group is different. Some may be great while others might be your worst nightmare.  Just try to be reasonable and polite while asserting your wishes firmly without being a dictator.

Final points

You will have great groups and very crappy groups in the LFD finder. Don’t let the bad players or groups get you down. Just do your best and most of the time you should have a fun experience, even if you are doing the same dungeon a lot of that tank drop.

Be firm with bad players and try to remember they are probably not aware of what their doing is wrong, so take the time to point out why what their doing is wrong in a firm but polite way. Some players can be reasoned with on any level though that should be vote kicked out of your group. But also on the other hand players may thank you for pointing out their mistakes if you provide solutions to the problem.

And remember this:

If the Tank dies it’s the Healers fault, if the Healer dies it’s the tanks fault, if the DPS dies it’s their own dam fault.

The other week I rolled a Blood Elf Death Knight by the name of “Cathartik”. You can see his armory profile at the bottom of the post.
I decided even before I roll him that I was going to make him a tank and level him by just by doing dungeon runs. I thought it would be interesting to track his progress by blogging about it and write some newb guides to DK tanking.

A lot of new DK’s seem to get confused by multiple DK tanking builds. It’s true that you can tank in all three tree’s of Blood, Frost and Unholy with two handed weapons or two one handed weapons. But for the new DK’s its recommended you go Frost using a two handed weapon. Until you get some nice epic gear at 80.

Here’s the build I’m currently using along with what glyphs to use: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight#eSQeNhlIJIHf6h,wYae-3,11723

You should get all your Frost talents first so you can get Howling Blast at 60 (get the glyph as well!). Then you should get Blade Barrier and Anticipation next in any order.

It’s recommended that you start tanking at 60 as you will have both Death and Decay and Howling Blast at your disposal. You can start at 58 if you really want to. You need to have a good rotation set up in order to keep multi-threat. You basically need to spread your diseases and blood boil to keep multi-threat. So ask the dps to hang back a second till you do that.

I currently use this rotation on my DK for groups at 64:

Death Grip/Strangulate (if not on cool down) > Howling Blast > Plague Strike > Pestilence > Blood Boil > Obliterate
Then Frost strike as your rune dump then maybe Blood Boil then repeat.

The rotation is basically applying diseases via Howling Blast and Plague Strike. You then use Pestilence to spread them to the other mobs and Blood Boil to do damage to any mob effected by a disease. Once my diseases are up I use Obliterate then I have enough runic power to my frost strike once or twice.

I currently use this rotation on my DK for single mobs/bosses at 64:

Howling Blast > Plague Strike > Blood Boil > Obliterate > Frost Strike

Basically the same rotation without pestilence. If you need to grab agro quickly on a mob thats running for a dps or healer then hit it with Icy Touch as it produces a lot of threat now (Patch 3.3.3.).
Please don’t just spam Icy Touch though, you will keep agro but it lowers your damage a lot and makes you look noobish.

Next entry I’ll talk about upcoming Cataclysm change that makes Blood the only tanking tree.