DK tanking for Starters

A very nice guide written by Dorkbad of Kul Tiras, Europe. Original guide can be found on wow-europe Death Knight forums.

Foreword:

This guide is not meant for end game raid tanking, but for those who’re levelling/tanking as they go – and so I’ll be recommending some things which are not used at 80, but will help both the levelling process and tanking in dungeons on the way up. Some builds posted will not be standard cookie cutter builds but will be there to hopefully make mine and other peoples jobs as a healer (on my levelling alts easier) if the new tanks read this and learn from it. This is a primer for tanking, and will discuss some very basic principles, so don’t expect a super advanced read.

Contents:

Introduction.
Specs.
Pulling – a how to.
Threat generation and the art of gluing mobs to you.
Your cooldowns and you.
Spell interrupts and the art of not dying to magic.
Gearing for tanking.
Will of Iron.
Conclusion.

Introduction:

The goal of this guide – is not to tell you how to raid tank at 80, or even tank HC’s at 80, but to give you the foundations of tanking as a Death Knight to build upon while you get there. Each of the tanks in my guild do things their own ways, and each way is different, but – the groundings of each playstyle are identical. Simply put, there’s a few very very important things to get right – and once you’ve got them right, how you go about the rest is down to you.

So, what makes a tank.. a tank?

Well, firstly and foremost – you’re the lunkhead who takes hits in the head for the team. You’re the one who’s meant to get pounded by the bad guys first and hardest and still have them wailing on you as they scream their last. How can you achieve this well…

1: Survivability
2: Threat Generation

Those two things above are the keys to beating dungeons. It’s a small list really, but critical you get both right.

But – you’re there thinking, that *can’t* be all there is to tanking.. well, not quite no. You, as the tank are also the pace setter for the group, and frequently the unofficial leader of the group. In short – you set the tempo, and the burden and responsibility for wipes will generally sit squarely on your shoulders. It’s a crap deal to be frank with you, but it’s the price you pay for being a tank, with that said though, tanking is a lot of fun, and I think it’s the most enjoyable role in the game too.

And if you’re reading this, and still aren’t put off, then the role of tank is hopefully one you can enjoy.

Tank Specs:

There are 3 trees which are all good to use while levelling up as a Death Knight, however – some do things better and worse than the other two trees. I’ll explain the basics of the tank specs, and key talents for you to pick/choose as you go along (note that some of these will become stronger/weaker as you progress as a tank, and some will eventually fall out of use).

Firstly, the key talents you must get as a tank are the 5/5/5 split in the trees. The talents: Blade Barrier (Blood tree),

Toughness (Frost) and Anticipation (Unholy). These are the founding talents for your tank, as they give you increased armour and avoidance which buff both your survival and threat generation (will be explained further later on).

How do you pick which tree you want to be?

Frost tanking is a Dual Wield spec, and probably the easiest and most forgiving to play. You get incredible snap AoE threat, some very good utility tools, and well.. it is by far the easiest to play. Even at 80, if I need to be aware of whats around me more than the mob in front of me, Frost is my preferred spec for that situation assuming I can survive the confrontation as Frost.

Blood is a very strong tank spec, giving the best self healing, as well as the best health of all the trees, and the buffs you get are just brilliant. Hysteria is just awesome if you cast it on a fellow party member against bosses.

Unholy is my preferred levelling spec, for On a Pale Horse, and has the incredible Ebon Plague, which will increase the dps of all magic users in your group, as well as increasing the damage you do from diseases.

As an Unholy tank, at 61 I’d recommend something akin to this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#j0xZ0xZ0ghbxbbx0uxzuzo:oVZ0m

You have some unusual talents and a glyph that I cannot say are good for tanking, but will help the levelling process outside of being a tank in instances, because it’s silly to expect a player levelling to only tank. These are:

“On a Pale Horse” Probably the best single levelling talent in my not so humble opinion. The move speed increase is just awesome for questing, and you’ll still be doing a lot of that.

“Night of the Dead” Sequence of talents and Ravenous Dead. At 80, if you stick with being a UH tank, you won’t have your ghoul out all the time, but for levelling it’s a real boon to have, and adds to your personal dps when in dungeons.

As you level up, dump points into Rage of Rivendare/Ebon Plaguebringer and Wandering Plague, before moving into the other trees (Gargoyle can be taken, but it is a DPS tool, so it’s up to you on this one).

As Frost DW tank at 61, I’d recommend this as a starting spec:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jZhxe0AMu0c0fuzAo:ToZ0m

Note how as Frost DW tank spec I’ve ignored the trinity of 5/5/5 and gone straight for deep Frost spec. This is because Howling Blast (HB) is the key to making your life easier as a Frost Tank. It’s basically a win button for Threat Generation, and combined with Death and Decay (DnD) will make all the mobs stick to you like glue. And I mean the proper stuff that stuck the pages of the book together in the Ebon Hold before we all went carebear and joined the light. Those avid readers among our ranks will probably already know the book I mean. Hur hur hur.

Once you’ve gone all the way to deep Frost, then branch into Anticipation and Blade Barrier.

A lot of people don’t rate Lichbourne, saying it is a PvP only talent. I disagree, knowing that while you’re getting to grips with tanking, a lot of players will be getting to grips with healing or their other roles, and won’t necessarily be doing things like instinctively dropping a tremor totem if there’s a fear coming up. I know, because Im guilty of it too (I’m not the best healer in the world), so learn to use it until you get with a guild that when you run with them, you don’t need it any more.

As Blood tank at 61, I’d recommend this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#j0EGVh0Icborssx:GoZ0m

Again, deep into Blood for the talents Will of the Necropolis and Blood Gorged, once you have these, go get Anticipation and Toughness. As a tank, I don’t rate Dancing Rune Weapon. It’s an amazing tool for dpsing, but you don’t need it for general quests.

This spec has the most health available for a Death Knight, has the buffs Abominations Might and Hysteria which will help the enemys drop a lot faster.

With the base talent trees out of the way, I felt it good to share a few of the really solid talents that will make life easier:

There are a few really nice talents that you can pick up along the way, these include but are not limited to for the various specs:

Bladed Armour and Scent of Blood from the Blood tree. The synergy between Toughness, Frost Presence and Bladed Armour will increase your attack nicely, and therefore increase your threat generation. Scent of Blood will help you make more Rune Strikes post level 67, which as a tank will be one of your primary threat and damage tools.

Improved Icy Touch and Black Ice from the Frost tree. Improved Icy Touch increases damage and slows the enemy attack speed, and Black Ice is just solid damage increase.

Epidemic and Morbitidy in the Unholy Tree. Epidemic gives diseases longer to tick, so you can do more inbetween refreshing them and morbidity will help by reducing the cooldown on Death and Decay. While you may not end up relying on Death and Decay at level 80, and you will get to a point where you don’t actually use it every pull, it’s definately worth having early on to speed up pulls when you’re starting out.

Meh talents that look good: Butchery, Runic Power Mastery, Unholy Command. As a tank, you shouldn’t really need or want any of these. You won’t be making killing blows a lot, shouldn’t have a full Runic Power (RP) bar, and Death Grip shouldn’t be used a lot for general pulls. Casters are the exception but I’ll go into those shortly.

Pulling – a how to.

Now you’ve got your spec sorted for tanking, got your Frost Presence on, and are ready to go, you should get to grips with a few basics of pulling, with my personal do’s and don’ts. Once you’ve got them down, and understand the why’s of doing them, then you’ll be able to adapt and change them to suit your own playstyle.

I have to state – pulling well is probably the most complicated part of tanking dungeons, and once you’ve mastered the art of pulling, you’ll start to be remembered as a really good tank for dungeoning, even if you’re not amazingly geared or overstatted, once you’ve got this one thing down, the rest of the tanking will fall into place. A good pull is half the work you have to do in a fight.

Pulling isn’t just about Death Gripping a mob and letting them run to you. Or charging up to a pack of mobs and dropping Death and Decay down and hoping they’ll all hit you and not the healer. You need to be aware of your surroundings, what mobs are nearby, are there any mobs that patrol, do the mobs flee, does the healer have enough mana, are there players missing, etc? Mostly, unless you know the dungeon intimately from a tanking perspective, these are things which will come with experience, and so – to minimise your wipes, take it slowly. To quote Rick Mears “To finish first, you must first finish.”

So, a list of DO’s to start thinking about when you’re pulling:

1: Does the healer have enough mana to heal me through this if the pack behind the pack I want to pull links and I have to tank through all of them? If not, wait for the healer to get Mana.

2: What’s the group made up of? Melee attackers or ranged/casters? If melee, then the pull can be fairly simple, if ranged/caster then you either have to get in really close to them, or force them to come to you by using line of sight.

3: Is there a patrol/boss nearby that can link? If so, you need to keep an eye on that group to make sure you can move from them before they link.

4: Does a specific mob need to be focus fired down first? If so, mark it up before the pull and tell people to follow your marking.

5: Do the mobs flee? If so, make sure they aren’t near other mobs that can link.

6: Do think if you need a cooldown for any of these mobs? If the answer is yes, then wait.

7: Do I need to turn the mob away from the group? If so, plan to be able to turn it.

A list of DON’Ts which by now should be fairly obvious.

1: Don’t pull when the group isn’t ready. It’s likely to get you killed, and then the party killed, and then they’ll think you’re another crap 12 year old Death Knight Arthas Wannabe and will not be amused.

2: Don’t try and chain pull like you’ve seen done at level 80. You’re not as overgeared as the tanks you’ve seen doing this.

3: Don’t just pull with Death Grip. It’s a waste of a taunt cooldown and one that you can use to yank a wayward mob if a dps gets threat happy. It looks cool, I know.. but it can often be used better.

4: Don’t rush. I honestly would repeat this over and over and over, but I don’t think that will make anyone who won’t follow it once, follow it ever.

Now we’ve got the DO’s and DON’Ts out the way, some basic techniques for pulling:

No real chance of other mobs linking:

Pack of melee mobs:

Run towards them, drop Death and Decay clipping at least couple of them (but making sure they won’t run out of it getting to you), then start your disease machine rolling.

Pack of melee mobs + 1 caster:

Run towards, drop DnD at your feet, centred slightly ahead of you, Death Grip the caster, Blood Boil/Howling Blast the melee once they get into range.

Pack of melee/2+ casters:

Run in dropping DnD on the casters, if there’s a wayward caster (outside of the DnD), hit strangulate on it, to make it run to you, then Blood Boil/Howling Blast the melee, then disease machine.

Lone mob/caster:

Run in, casting Icy Touch on the charge, Plague Strike, keeping a finger on your mind freeze button in case of needing to interrupt a manouver.

High chance of mobs linking:

Pack of melee mobs:

Pull with Dark Command/Death Coil at max range if you have the RP floating, run back a little, drop DnD in their path, and move to meet them. BB/HB and then Disease up.

Pack of melee + 1 caster:

Death Grip the caster at max range, drop DnD slightly behind you, so you’re standing in the forward half, backstep but not out of range of the caster, Mind Freezing if they cast, then BB/HB before you get your disease machine rolling.

Pack of melee + 2 casters:

Drop DnD at your feet, Death Grip one caster at max range, Strangulate the other, HB/BB and hope the second caster gets to you in time/before DnD runs out.

Pack of casters:

Find a wall/object that prevents them from casting and use Dark Command to get their attention, then run behind the wall, drop DnD at your feet and pray that your dps will let the casters get to you before engaging. This is one of the hardest pulls to be consistently good at in the game, and relies heavily on the rest of your group. So, if in doubt, pre-warn them not to attack until you’ve got the mobs picked up. If there’s no wall/object to hide behind, then you need to make the group run to you, by running out of range, then doubling back to them and dropping a DnD and hoping you can pick them all up with Death Grip/Strangulate. If you’re going to be taking damage on the pull from spells, use Anti Magic Shell.

*There aren’t that many situations that come up that are like this, but those there are can be pretty vicious.

Lone mob/caster:

Dark Command or Death Grip (if caster) at max range to the group, Icy Touch and go.

Situational pulling:

This is where you get mobs that either have horrid melee AoE, directional AoE, or alternatively attack/charge ranged party members. A good example of this is the level 80 Dungeons Halls of Stone/Halls of Lightning. While positioning is also the responsibility of dps, most of the time, you’ll have people with you who’ll be the first to die in Deep Breaths, standing in the fires, etc. Don’t worry if you don’t get the references now, you will eventually.

For mobs with directional AoE, you’ll want to pull and turn them away from the casters. If melee dps stand in front of the mobs, it’s their own fault.

For mobs with harsh AoE that’s interruptable (akin to Stormforged Runeshapers in Halls of Lightning), keep them away from melee, focus down one, interrupt it if Flurry is used.

For mobs that charged ranged, you’ll want to position the mobs as close to the ranged as possible. Things like the Titanium Vanguards in Halls of Lightning, these guys will drop a lower geared caster very quickly, and since few casters will run in to save themselves the hurt, you need to get the mobs to them.

That’s pretty much the end of this primer on pulling, and covers most of the things I can think of that you’ll face when running dungeons. Use the techniques listed above together, and you’ll find your pulling will become smoother and you’ll start dropping mobs faster. The most dangerous point for 99% of fights in this game is the pull. It’s when your (the tank) threat is the lowest, and the dps are prone to blowing their collective loads too early in a vain attempt to top pew pew meters. The better your pull is, the easier a time you’ll have. It cannot be emphasised enough.

Threat generation and the art of gluing mobs to you:

After the pull, this is probably the next hardest thing to get consistently right after pulling, and can be helped amazingly with really good dps, and can equally be hindered just as much by bad ones.

Firstly, if dps are killing everything randomly, then as a tank, you need to start marking mobs so that the dps can know which target to focus fire on. A fairly commonly used convention for Kul Tiras is {Skull} > {Cross} > {Square}, although your server may differ, so use what is known to you, or – let people know the order of the marks.

Once the dps are targetting down the right mobs, you can get down to doing what you can do best, which is making threat.

I tend to use priorities for what to cast over set rotations when tanking, although – when dps’ing I use a strict rotation.

I’ll list what I consider the primary things to prioritise for each tree, I haven’t listed Rune Strike as it should be macro’d into your skills/spells and be used automatically:

Blood:-

1: Diseases up (and spread if multiple mobs)
2: Death Strike (to convert Blood Runes into Death Runes)
3: Heart Strike/Blood Boil
4: Death Coil
5: Death and Decay (if facing many mobs after the pull and solidifying threat)
6: Horn of Winter (When out of usable RP, Runes on cooldown)

Frost:-

1: Howling Blast (if Rime and Killing Machine procs are active on single target)
2: Diseases up (and spread)
3: Obliterate/Howling Blast
4: Blood Strike/Blood Boil
5: Frost Strike
6: Horn of Winter

Unholy:-

1: Diseases up (and spread – especially for Ebon Plague.. /drool)
2: Scourge Strike
3: Blood Strike/Blood Boil
4: Death Coil/Gargoyle (if talented)
5: Death and Decay (Multiple mob again)
6: Horn of Winter

I also recommend using a macro for activating Rune Tap and the tree specific cooldowns (these are mentioned below). It looks like this (using Blood tree for example).

#showtooltip
/cast Blood Tap
/cast Vampiric Blood
/cancelaura Blood Tap

You’ll need to activate this macro twice, firstly to cast Blood Tap and your defensive cooldown, and a second time to cancel the Blood Tap buff. The reason for cancelling the buff is so that it doesn’t mess with your runes and their respective cooldowns, as it would keep the converted Death Rune for more than it’s single usage. I’ve listed this macro here with the threat generation as it’s part of what I consider a threat tool as well as a survival one.

Your threat is generated by damage done in Frost Presence, so you need to get several things prioritised for your damage, firstly – getting the mobs beating on you. If you get the pull right, that will set you up to be able to continue tanking, so you can get your diseases up on the mob(s). Depending on your spec/glyphs you may find you have Frost Fever up on the mobs before you even start getting beat on, and needing threat, so it’s just a simple case then of getting Blood Plague up, and spreading with Pestilence.

Once you hit level 67, then you start getting the joy of Rune Strike, which is your ultimate tool for single target threat, and you ideally want it to be used every time it’s up.

So – for this you’ll want a macro that casts the spell/skill you would do normally in your rotation, and then if you have a Rune Strike proc, will automatically hit Rune Strike on your next swing.

Set up a macro that looks a little like this, but for every skill/spell you use in your normal priority list:

#showtooltip
/cast Icy Touch
/cast !Rune Strike

What this will do, it cast (in this case), Icy Touch and then if you have the RP and the proc, use a Runic Strike on your next swing. The ! before Rune Strike prevents it from being toggled off.

If you ever get a spare Global Cooldown, use Horn of Winter in the lull while waiting on RP/Runes to come back up. Even if you’ve got plenty of time left on Horn of Winter buff, you can really benefit from squeezing the extra Runic Power out of your rune downtime.

If you’ve saved Death Grip and pulled with Icy Touch/Death and Decay etc, if you get a mob that wanders or leaves you, you can easily Death Grip it back to you, and have hate on it. This will save many bad dps lives over the course of a Death Knight tanks career.

If you use Trinkets with a /use effect, put them on your toolbar/macro them and save them to use as an extra cooldown.

Tree specific tips and tactics:

This is by no means a complete list of all the tricksy pokery that you can play, but will get you started down the road to being a threat monstrosity.

Blood Specced:

For large pulls 5+ mobs, once the DnD is down, and the mobs are beating on you, once diseases are up and ticking, use two Death Strikes to convert Frost/Unholy Runes to Blood, and then follow with 6 back to back Blood Boils. Yes, they might do less damage than Heart Strikes, but with 2 diseases ticking, they will secure hate on you well past the point the mobs health runs out. Once you hit level 75, you can make this faster by popping Empower Rune Weapon to refresh your runes immediately.

When facing medium pulls of 3-4 mobs, tab between targets to heart strike and refresh your diseases onto the other when the diseases on your current target are nearly ran out then tabbing to the next. You’ll lose a fraction of your AoE threat on one target, but will have much more time to cast Death Strikes/Heart Strikes.

Don’t use a Death Coil to dump spare Runic Power unless you’re at or over 65 RP. The reason for this is so that you will keep the damage from Death Strike maxed out unless you follow a Deathcoil with Rune Strike immediately, but can be restored back up to max Death Strike damage again with two Heart Strikes or a Icy Touch/Plague Strike combo.

Frost DW Specced:

For single target fights, don’t Howling Blast unless you’ve got both a Killing Machine and Rime proc. Obliterate and Frost Strike will be far more effective at threat generation/damage dealing.

For large pulls 5+ mobs, prior to the pull, pop Unbreakable Armour before the pull, then DnD > Howling Blast > BB then Horn of Winter in the lull. Once you have the pack attacking you, spread all diseases around and drop another DnD onto the pack, the damage/threat will be greatly increased from a regular DnD.

For medium pulls of 3-4 mobs, Howling Blast can be dropped as soon as it’s off of cooldown, or if you get a Rime Proc.

Unholy Specced:

For single target fights – when in a long battle, change your spell order from Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Scourge Strike etc… past the first rotation to Plague Strike > Icy Touch. This will make a small, but effective increase in your damage/threat.

For spiking some threat against bosses. If you have a ghoul out, and are in a bad shape, use Death Pact to sacrifice a minion to heal yourself up. Doesn’t work if you’re at full health though. This also works with Army of the Dead to my best knowledge. This won’t however give you continuous threat, but may help in a pinch.

Don’t use Deathcoil as a Rune Dump unless you are over 60 Runic Power, the Rune Strikes and/or Mind Freezes are more important.

Cooldowns and you – your armoury against dying.

Each tree has one major tanking cooldown, and they share two and a half cooldowns – Icebound Fortitude and Anti Magic Shell (the half cooldown is Army of the Dead, which I’ll go into a bit later). Prior to the heavy nerfing of our cooldown timers increasing them, they were regularly used against packs of trash, as well as against bosses, now they need to be used a little more carefully – but still have a lot of relevance against trash, but some should be saved more for the “Oh shiiiii!” moments you’ll get as a tank.

Blood has Vampiric Blood as a tanking cooldown, it gives you 15% bonus health, and increases the healing done to you by 35%, and is best saved for times when you’re going to take a lot of unavoidable damage or if the healer has died and you need to survive by using Death Strike to heal.

Frost has Unbreakable Armor, which increases your armor by 25% and gives you 10% bonus strength for the duration, while it will reduce damage taken, it’s best saved for those points where you need to generate threat, like dicey pulls where threat is going to be initially sketchy, and you don’t want to lose threat on a mob to a healer.

Frost also has Lichbourne which while not a damage reduction cooldown, can be used to avoid fear/charm etc.

Bone Shield in Unholy is not brilliant against packs of trash as it’ll disappear very quickly, but can potentially be kept up a fair while against bosses.

Now, onto the shared CD’s.

Icebound Fortitude is primarily used as a damage reduction tool, so if you get a big pull by mistake, you can lessen the incoming spike damage, but if you know a pack of mobs are likely to stun you, cast it prior to the pull if you have the RP, as when you’re stunned, you lose all avoidance, and that can be very very fatal when you’ve got a large pack of mobs wailing on you. Even when fully buffed, I’ve literally been instagibbed with 45k+ health in Heroics with an unlucky stun, because I was being cocky about my survival, knowing the mobs should be dead in seconds and making very large pulls.

Anti Magic Shell has two effects tied into it’s ability. The first and foremost is to reduce incoming magical damage/debuffs, which if you have the cast bar enabled for your target, you can see what is incoming and plan around it.

The second effect, is to generate runic power from the damage absorbed – and this can fill your RP bar instantly if timed correctly, therefore increasing your damage output/threat.

Now onto the half a CD as I think of it… Army of the Dead.

This is a fun CD to use. The duration of the channel used to be longer, so it’s harder to use now as a damage reduction cooldown. It can cause as many, if not more problems than it can solve, so… learn when to use it well. Basically – the points when NOT to use it are: When the mobs being targetted by AotD have directional AoE, when there’s a chance they can pull more packs than you can handle, when they would interfere with important crowd control (i.e. sheep, fear, hex, etc).

Times when it’s good to use, pre-charge at the start of a boss fight, to give you time to get your threat up against dps, as the Army will be taunting the mob no end, but be warned – the boss can and frequently will dance around if you’re unlucky, so the dps will have to follow it around.

Spell interrupts and the art of not dying to magic.

This is about using Mind Freeze and Strangulate to stop casters and channelling mobs in their tracks, and not being the brunt of some very nasty spells, particularly things like Rain of Fire, Blizzard, Fear, Mind Control, etc. These are spells that can genuinely mess up a party, and can be really hard to heal through, especially when they can be countered so easily.

Keep these spells readily available on your toolbar and always try and keep 20 RP available to dump a Mind Freeze on, unless you’ve got the Endless Winter talent from Frost.

Mind Freeze can only be used in melee range and has a 10 second cooldown for 20 RP, and Strangulate can be use at range, but has a much longer cooldown of 2 minutes and uses a blood rune.

A commonly used macro for countering casters is:

#showtooltip
#cast Strangulate
#cast Mind Freeze

This macro can be used through general melee with casters and if you use Strangulate on pulls to force casters into range, although I tend to use seperate keybinds for Strangulate/Mindfreeze as I prefer the control over what I use when.

If both Mind Freeze and Strangulate are on cooldown, and you need to soak a spell/magic effect, this is when I would recommend using Anti Magic Shell, which will then fill your RP bar, so you’ve then got RP.

It’s a short section, and simple, I know – but very important to keeping a party running smoothly. The better you are at controlling the casters you face, the easier a time the healer will have, and the quicker your party will run.

Gearing for tanking:

Once you’ve got the techniques of tanking down, and you’re starting out in the basic dungeons in Outland/Azeroth, you’ll start to improve upon the basic gear you’ve been equipped with. If you can get your gearing upgrades right, then your survival will go up nicely and you’ll be a piece of cake to keep healed, as well as being a threat monster and holding hate in all the right places.

Firstly, I would strongly recommend against using an Heirloom weapon if you’ve got an 80 alt who can supply one. The lack of a Runeforging is pretty harsh as the enchants can really make a huge difference, and the gap between power levels between the heirloom and what can be quested/looted is next to nil. Heirloom Shoulders/Body though are really good choices to use to speed up the levelling process.

Tanking Runeforges should be Swordbreaking/Swordshattering until you can get Stoneskin Gargoyle/Nerubian Carapace. Not only are they functional, but Swordshattering looks amazing. If Frost DW, you can use one Razorice/Swordbreaking runes instead.

The Swordshattering/Breaking will help Rune Strikes proc at this is your main single target threat tool.

Next, as much as they might seem like a great idea, unless you’ve got the money to spare, you don’t need to buy epic quality gems for your gear as you level up – you will end up replacing the gear you’ve got very very quickly. Putting in green quality gems from WotLK though will serve you very very well until you hit 78-80ish when you’ll want to start working towards gearing for the various caps and floors needed.

I would recommend gearing for Str/Stam/Defense/Dodge/Parry/Hit Rating and gemming for Stamina/Strength and Hit Rating initially, as criticals aren’t as painful until you hit the 80 Heroics, when you get to 80, start by gearing to get 535 defense (as shown on your character sheet), then start to work towards 540 defense for raids. Then work on getting Expertise/Hit Rating/Stamina up. But you can read more about this on places like EJ/Ensidia guides etc who’re about endgame material.

Spellpower and Int/Mana stats are useless. Avoid them. I know, you probably know this already, but still, avoid them.

Avoid resilience as a tank, it really doesn’t benefit you in PvE. So don’t use it or gem for it.

When looking at weapon upgrades… the dps on a weapon is your prime stat to look for if it’s a 2handed weapon with the slower speed on it the better, so quick polearms won’t be as good as slow 2h maces/axes, for DW Frost, you want to use Slow weapons in your main and offhand, even if you can use a “tanking” one hander, it’ll be fast, and subsequently, you won’t generate the same amount of threat with it. The only exception to this is DW Unholy, but it’s not a common spec to use, and other threads on EJ go into this.

For Sigils, try and pick up ones that will benefit your most used skills, but these you won’t encounter until Northrend.

This mostly covers another small area that some slip up on.

Will of Iron:

Last thing I really want to mention, is not about gearing or skill use, but – more mental attitude. Being a tank, isn’t an easy role to play – especially if you join pickup groups. You as a tank, carry the group forward on your shoulders, and it’s by your skill (or lack therein), that will frequently determine the party’s success or failure. There will of course be times when things are entirely out of your hands when it all goes down like the Titanic, but often you’ll still be blamed, frequently – by the person responsible for the screw up. So, you do need a modicum of self belief and confidence.

This isn’t a message to say be an arrogant jerk who’ll upset people for the sake of it either, but you need to have the confidence to not take the abuse you will get and have it make you miserable. You will *always* get people saying you don’t have enough health, or good enough gear or what not. Sometimes that may be the case, but more often than not in today’s game, it will be more down to people’s now lack of skill and needing to overgear the most trivial of content. Just stick with it – it’s the most rewarding role in the game in my opinion (which isn’t humble), and once you get hooked on tanking as a Death Knight, you won’t look back.

Conclusion:

Basically – some stuff in here will get outdated as you level up, some won’t. There are things that I recommend for a starting tank that I wouldn’t use when sat at 80 raiding, and there’s things written here that is still used by many many tanks today. If you learn stuff here, and can use it, then great, if it’s completely below you – then it wasn’t written for you, and you need to be hitting the big boy sites. Have fun, get hit in the head, tank mobs, die spectacularly!

~The Dork.