Downranking is for Noobs and Masochists. (I appear to be a masochist.)

As I've mentioned, I've also been playing a healy-Priest alt on the side. Even though this lesson was learned on a non-DK, it applies to us all.

If you're levelling and you learned Dual Talent Specialization before level 80, when you train your new spells from levelling up, it will not update your non-active spec's actionbars. I just realized that after healing heroics, Naxx10, Naxx25, OS10, OS25 and Ulduar25 that I've been running around with my healing spells two ranks below what I could have had them at, effectively halving my healing.

So remember, check your spelling, particularly right after you ding 80! No reason to be running around with a half-power Unholy Blight.



As to why you wouldn't want to use downranked spells, it has been rather a while since downranking was beneficial; all spells cost the same regardless of rank. The only difference is diminished effect.

On Tanking Weapons (And Why DPS Shouldn't be Allowed to Roll on Them)

As I mentioned last time, it's time for a rant about DK tank weapons. When DK's were created, we shook things up just a bit. Long story short, we tank with two-handed maces, swords and axes mostly, and the trouble was, they don't make tanking two-handers. So, instead of retrofitting a ton of old content to accomodate Death Knights, they decided to simply keep rolling out DPS two-handers and give us Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle. This works out well enough, but you still need something to put the rune on, and some things are better than others.

So what should be the vessel for your runeforge? Let's look at the stats 2h weapons can have.

Strength - Helps your DPS, and thus your threat. Grants parry rating via Forceful Deflection, scales well with certain DK talents.

Stamina - Every weapon has this. However, the more, the merrier. Also scales to DK talents and Frost Presence.

Agility - Although not specifically boosted by our class, this gants a sizeable chunk of Dodge and some Armor, as well as Crit for threat. Better than Strength for mitigation/avoidance, usually worse for threat.

Intellect/Spirit/MP5 - No. Go unarmed before you use one of these, it'll be funnier and about as effective.

Expertise - A nice boost to threat and a small drop in incoming damage due to less parryhaste. Try to get around 6.5% total, but it's ok to go past that. About twice as effective in the hands of a tank than it would be used by an intelligent DPS.

Hit - It sucks when your aggro moves miss. Get to 9% total (remember to include talents) ASAP, but there's not much reason to go past that. A dead stat if you're already capped.

Crit - A percent mod to threat... if your moves can crit. Not as useful in my Unholy spec.

Armor Penetration - Solid for a Blood tank, rather worthless for other specs, which deal primarily magic damage.

Haste - Useful, but go for something else. It only reduces the GCD on your non-weapon attacks, and speeds up your melee swing. It does not, however, increase the rate your runes come back, so even if you use mostly spell attacks, it will just increase your downtime. Generally worse than crit.

Attack Power - Ups all your threat. No mitigation bonus.

Resilience - No. Not unless you're just gearing up and not yet Defense capped, and even then, this will be worthless post-3.2.



Now, there's a slight problem. You may understand, and I may understand that a Strength/Stamina/Agility/Expertise item is exceptional for tanking, but there are legions of DPS out there that can also use your loot. And it will be a valid upgrade for them too. They want it. They'll get it, toss aside their old blue junk, and then replace it a week later. If you are leading a raid, or have any say at all, make it perfectly clear that Joe Roflstomp getting the Inevitable Defeat over the local tank DK is like Mr. Rogue Lolstab getting the Skyforge Crossbow over your Hunter. Yes, they can use it, but is everyone really stupid enough to put it to such a waste? Unfortunately.

Here are some recommended tanking items found between just dinging 80 and just breaking into Ulduar.

Crafted(Blacksmithing) - Titansteel Destroyer, because it is really easy to get.
Heroic DTK - Mojo Masked Crusher
Heroic HoL - Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver
Heroic Naxxramas - The Jawbone
Heroic Naxxramas - Inevitable Defeat
Heroic Ulduar - Worldcarver

Obviously there are others you can use, but these are some of the ones that I feel really should be used by a DK tank.

CC 201: Intermediate Crowd Control for Tanks

Now we're getting into slightly more advanced tactics for tanking. In many 5man dungeons, it seems like the mobs are positioned just perfectly so that controling them is about as difficult as it can get. In today's post, I'm going to give some of the examples of places in Northrend that can be the most difficult in that regard, and how to overcome these challenges with the abilities you have.

The Nexus
In the left-hand hallway with all the frozen mobs, the combination of ranged attackers as well as the melee fighters with an AoE knockback can make it a royal pain to keep all the mobs in range of your attacks so you can keep threat. Genrally, your goal when positioning mobs is to keep them in front of you where your Parry and Dodge mitigate against their melee attacks, and keep them all tightly packed so your AoE spells can generate threat while your group's AoE can kill them all.

Approaching the pulls in this hallway can be handled in a couple ways, but my favorite is to Death Grip the archer to the group, while marking the berserker with the skull so it will die before it can scatter the group. Generally, killing a problem mob before the others is a great way to ensure that it doesn't harm you as much as it otherwise might. Use marking to your advantage, and get rid of the headache. Just remember, any DPS will make the skull dead in short order, but after that, it's a crapshoot, don't try to rely on more than one mark, as there isn't a real standard for kill order after skull.

The other technique to be learned from this, is that if you have an annoying mob that just won't stand where you want it to, Death Grip lets you choose where it will stand for yourself. It is a fairly long cooldown, however, so next example will cover an situation where a single Death Grip isn't enough.


Anh'kahet: the Old Kingdom
In the second and third rooms, there are mob packs which consist of four mobs of varying types. Alone, these packs can be quite dangerous, as the mage mobs hit upwards of 12k on heroic, and !6k on regular. Additionally, of the three melee mobs, one roots your party in place, and there are pats making it fairly likely that you will get two groups at some point.

Whenever you are aware of a patrol, (and aren't in combat,) it is best to aggro it as soon as possible so it can't come in at a less opprotune time later. Always grab patrols first unless you have a good reason not to.

Once you get one of the groups, it is advisable to find some way to control the Darkcaster in the pull, because it will easily hit over half your health in a single attack. Contrary to my previous advice, I do not recommend using Death Grip to bring it into position, save that for the Darkcaster in a pack of adds if you get one, instead, utillize the various walls and stairs nearby to get out of its line of sight, forcing it to run to you. This 'LoS pull' is a great technique, because it's free, has no cooldown and can be used by any class. Once it is in range, use Mind Freeze to prevent its spell from casting. Mind Freeze's cooldown is short enough that you can interrupt all its attacks alone.

If you should get a group of adds, you can use Death Grip to interrupt the first cast, and Strangulate for the second. By that point, hopefully the first Darkcaster will be dead and you can go back to Mind Freeze. If not, your options are Anti-Magic Shell/Zone, Arcane Torrent, (for Blood Elves) War Stomp, (for Tauren) or burn a precious cooldown, which, in the case of adds, is probably already in short supply. Failing those, you can hope one of your DPS, or, god forbid, your healer, is smart enough to interrupt the spells.

Just member, prevention is better than compensation, try not to get adds, pull groups absurdly far back until you're more confident, and make sure to grab patrols early.


Ulduar: Halls of Lightning
In the first room, the five large platforms include archer mobs known as Skybreakers. Not only will they run out of melee range, but their ranged attack has a large knockback, and one of the other mobs will debuff you with a spell that deals nature damage if you move (including due to knockback.)

The technique I recommend for this mob is the same as I recommended for the berserkers in the Nexus, kill it first. Now, you still have the problem of not being able to keep it in melee range... but is that really a problem? It's a little known fact that, unlike other tanking classes, Death Knights can hold threat at a range without a real problem. Mark it up with a skull, throw a D&D under it and let the DPS get to work. In the mean time, you can focus on the mobs that are in melee range, spreading diseases around them and interrupting the Welding Beams (they do that effect that hurts you when knocked back. You can also block the knockback effect by bracing your back against the railing.


Ulduar: Halls of Lightning
Hey, same place. In the large room immediately after Ionar, the pulls can wipe an unprepared group and are positively brutal on Heroic mode. Crowd Control isn't just about positioning your mobs, it can also be what it was back in BC: Sap, Sheep, Hex, Cyclone, Freezing Trap, etc. Ask your group to control one or two of the mobs, it will make the fight much easier. (Incidentally, this technique works in the Ulduar raid as well.)

The Runeshapers in this room don't pose much threat to you, but if their whirlwind isn't interrupted (and it's considered to be a nature spell, so silence and spell interrupts work too) it will almost definitely kill the rest of your group. If you have a Rogue, they can easily stunlock a Runeshaper, but you can take it into your own hands, Mind Freeze is sufficient to control a single one.

The other seriously dangerous mob in this room are the really tall ones. (They see stealth, by the way, don't send a rogue to Sap near them.) They will charge random members of your party knocking them back, and have a powerful poison, also randomly targetted. There's not a lot you can personally do to help your party, (unless you have Anti-Magic Zone,) but, particularly when there's two of them, just try to make sure the healer doesn't need to spend GCDs to heal you also, throw a cooldown and start Death Striking.


So, in recap, recall that you have the following abilities at your disposal:
Raid Target Icons - The skull will die, quickly.
Death Grip - Not just a taunt, but also forced movement, and potentially a spell interrupt.
Fight Selection - Pulling a patrol now means those mobs will not be adds later.
Mind Freeze - A defensive ability that can easily prevent 15k+ damage when used properly.
True CC - It may not be used much, but it's just as powerful as it was in BC.
Death Strike - Healing incoming damage can be as good as preventing it, and this can convert Empower Rune Weapon into health when you need it.

Next time I'll discuss DK tank gear in detail, and particularly how to gear up for breaking into tanking Heroics.

Stacking Mechanics, Attack Tables and Item Levels

Last time, I explained which stats protect you and how, in this post, I'll be explaining how they interact with eachother, and what stats you should stack in your tanking gear.

The three basic evasion abilities, parry, dodge, and miss chance, stack additively. That is to say, 5% miss chance, 20% parry, and 25% dodge means only 50% of enemy attacks will hit you, not 57% if it were multiplicative like most people think.

The conventional wisdom that most people assume is that the game first rolls to see if an attack would miss, (5% miss, 95% continue on in the above example) then of those that do not miss, the game might check to see if those get dodged, (5% miss, 23.75% dodge, 71.25% continue) then of those neither missed nor dodged, it would roll parry (5% miss, 23.75% dodge, 14.25% parry, 57% hit).

But this is not how it actually works. Instead, they stack additively, making your chance to parry, dodge or be missed exactly the listed number on your character sheet. So this leads to the question of what happens if the numbers add up to more than 100%. If the total chance exceeds 100%, things start falling off the bottom of the attack table.

The attack table for melee attacks looks like this:

Miss
Dodge
Parry
Glancing Blow (Usually irrelevant, only when a player attacks a higher levelled mob)
Block (Irrelevant for Death Knights)
Critical Hit (Irrelevant when defense capped)
Crushing Blow (Usually irrelevant, only when a mob 4+ levels above the player attacks)
Regular Hit

Without the irrelevant lines, your incoming hits should look like this:

Miss
Dodge
Parry
Regular Hit

So, what implications does this have? If for some reason your Miss + Dodge + Parry is greater than 100%, nothing will ever hit you with a melee attack. If Miss + Dodge + Parry + Chance to be Crit is greater than 100%, the mob will never land a regular hit on you, only crits. This applies to your outgoing attacks also, by the way, so it is possible to have so much crit that you are crit capped, because there isn't any more room at the bottom of your table to fit crit into, in which case you would need more hit and expertise rating.

For spells attacks, the table is a lot smaller:

Miss (Which is displayed by the game as Resist)
Critical Hit
Regular Hit

And ranged attacks:

Miss
Critical Hit
Crushing Blow (Irrelevant: Only when attacked by a mob 4+ levels over the player)
Regular Hit

So what this means is parry and dodge are useless for mitigating ranged and magic attacks (excepting Spell Deflection).

So how does Spell Deflection work? After the spell hits (or crits) it rolls to see if your spell deflection procs, and then ruduces the damage as appropriate. This is typically how all damage reduction effects work, and they stack multiplicatively, so order does not matter. As an example, if spell deflection reduces a hit by 45%, and Frost Presence reduces it by another 5%, then the actual hit does 52.25% damage. Armor and resistances are also applied in the same way.

After rolling to hit and applying damage reduction, then shields (such as Power Word: Shield or Anti-Magic Shell) take damage, and any leftover damage beyond the shields' capacity hits the player's health.

I do not know when non-percentage damage reduction effects (like Unbreakable Armor or Lesser Absorption) take place, but I may run an experiment to test it at some point. Currently, my guess is that they apply before shields, but after percentage reduction.




Now, for a word on a different kind of stacking. You are probably familliar with the concept of item levels, and that higher level items are usually, but not always, better than lower levelled items.

When the designers creat an item, the level assigns the item a certain budget of item points, which are used to 'buy' stats for the item. The price of a stat varies by which stat it is, and by how big the stack of that stat on the item is. As an example, an item with 100 stamina would have the same item level as an item with two separate stacks of 66 stamina and 67 stamina (although usually you don't see multiple stacks of the same stat on an item, it does happen.)

As a rule of thumb, you can get more stats per item level if the stats come mostly in smaller numbers and if there are more separate stacks of stats on the item. This is because the price of a stack is multiplied by the size of the stack raised to the 1.7025 power. So 100^1.7025 is approximately equal to 66^1.7025 + 67^1.7025. So if you were to find an item that would otherwise be useful, but has maybe 30 points of Haste Rating, (which Death Knights do not care about,) worry not, those points are nearly free by virtue of being in a small stack, and should not prevent you from wanting and rolling for the item.

Note, that since you have complete control over which gems and enchants go on your gear, you should not care about what item level an enchant or gem would be worth, and only care about the effect you get out of them.




And one more type of stacking:

You may have noticed that Blessing of Wisdom and Mana Spring Totem will not work at the same time. That is because of one last type of stacking to confuse with the others. For each stat that you could concievably boost in some way, it can only be boosted once by each type of boost. For any buff you have, it falls into one of several categories.

Spell buff is the category the above example would have fallen into. Blessing of Wisdom will stack with an Elixir of Mighty Mageblood, because it is a Guardian Elixir, but not with Mana Spring Totem because it is also a spell buff.

The categories that I know of are:
Spell Buff
Stance/Presence
Battle Elixir (limit 1 battle elixir)
Guardian Elixir (limit 1 guardian elixir)
Flask (will not stack with any elixirs) (limit 1 flask)
Potion
"Well Fed" Food Buff (limit 1 food buff)
Holiday Item
Talents (stacks freely with eachother)
Equipment (stacks freely with eachother)
Movement Speed Buff (irregardless of the source, all movement speed buffs fall into a single category except mounted speed buffs, one at a time of which will stack with a mount. Movement buffs on items that are overwritten will not be removed from the item, but will stop working until the new buff goes away.)
Mounted Movement Speed Buff
Movement Speed Debuff (stacks additively with a movement speed buff. Ex: 15% slow + 10% haste = 95% speed overall.)
...and there may be others.

When multiple buffs of the same type come into conflict, one of a few things will happen, but the most powerful buff for that particular stat will always be the one that remains.

If a new buff is more powerful than the other, it will overwrite it. Casted buffs will not dispel an aura/totem, but will stop it from working on the affected player.

If a new buff is weaker than the other, it cannot be cast. For DK tanks, this can be problematic when a shaman has (improved) Strength of Earth active, you may find yourself unable to even cast Horn of Winter, preventing you from using it to generate runic power.

And finally, if the buffs are of equal strength:
If both are the casted, the spell with the longer duration remaining will be considered more powerful.
If both are auras/totems, both will be active, but only one will affect each player in range.




So, hopefully now you know way more about stat stacking than you ever wanted to, and can properly understand why 1% parry is way more effective when you have 30% dodge than if you had 5% dodge.

Passive Mitigation: How and Why

Last time, I covered the various defensive cooldowns DK tanks have at their disposal. This time, I'll be explaining how to make it so you don't need them in all but the hardest fights. I will also explain what is meant by 'uncrittable', 'uncrushable' and 'defense capped'.

Cooldowns are 'active mitigation'; they mitigate damage after you activate them, and can only be up part of the time. 'Passive mitigation', by contrast, is the defenses you have all the time, and do not need to be activated.

Death knights have 7 basic types of passive mitigation, they are: parry, dodge, miss chance, armor, resistance, damage reduction, and magic damage reduction.


Parry is increased by collecting gear with parry rating or defense rating on it, and thanks to our class' passive ability, Forceful Deflection, every 4 points of Strength on our gear grants us 1 parry rating. Parry causes melee attacks made from in front of the death knight to do no damage, and when it does, it makes our next melee attack come 40% sooner. This 'parry haste' effect can allow more casts of Rune Strike, but also applies to enemies; if they parry your or the DPS' attacks, it can increase their attack speed on you. When combined with Spell Deflection, a tier 4 blood talent, you can also parry spells (even from behind) to take only partial damage from them.


Dodge can be raised via dodge rating, defense rating, agility, and the tier 1 unholy talent Anticipation (which I recommend for all DK tanks.) Dodge, like parry, causes melee attacks made from the front to do no damage, but has no side effects. For two-handed weapon users, there are no good weapons with tanking stats on them, so agility, for the large amount of dodge it grants, is a great second choice for a tank weapon, (followed by Strength, Stamina and Expertise, not necessarily in that order.)


Miss chance comes from the frost talent Frigid Dreadplate, (for melee attacks only,) and defense skill, which comes from defense rating. Each point of defense skill beyond 400 grants .04% parry, dodge, and miss, (and reduced chance to be crit) for a total of .12% mitigation per point. Miss chance functions mostly the same as dodge, except it applies to spells, ranged attacks and attacks from behind. The Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle grants 25 defense skill, not rating, by the way.

The reduced chance to be crit component of defense converts hits that would have been crits back into regular hits (which can then be mitigated against normally by parry, dodge and miss chance.) Raid bosses have a 5.6% chance to crit, and thus 140 defense skill over the base 400 for a level 80 will prevent a raid boss from ever landing a crit (which is why tanks are called 'uncrittable'. This does not apply in PvP unless the opponent also only has a 5.6% chance to crit.) This is what is known as the 'defense cap', because additional defense beyond 540 skill will not reduce your chance to be crit any further, however, it will still increase your parry, dodge, miss chance, and the effect of your Icebound Fortitude. As a side note, the reduced chance to be crit from resilience stacks normally with that from defense, and can be used to make becoming uncrittable easier for beginning tanks. Note that for 5man heroics, only 535 defense is needed to be uncrittable.


Armor reduces the amount of incoming physical damage by a percentage, which can be found in your character sheet. The math of how armor converts to physical damage reduction is a bit complicated, and I do not fully understand it, however I can say that armor suffers strongly from diminishing returns, making it less and less effective per point, and caps at 75% reduction. Armor typically comes from the plate items you wear, but can occasionally be found on other items (note that the armor on non-plate items and armor from enchants does not get boosted by talents or buffs.) The tier 1 frost talent Toughness and Frost Presence both increase armor by a very large amount, and I strongly recommend both for all DK tanks.


Resistance, like armor is complicated, and unlike armor effects only magical damage of the correct school of magic (holy magic cannot be resisted.) Resistance reduces magic damage of the correct school by .18% per point, and caps at 75%, or 415 resistance. Unlike armor, resistance to a specific school is nearly worthless for a DK tank, and should not be collected on gear. The resistance granted by the frost talent Acclimation, however, applies to all schools (and, indeed, can apply to multiple schools at the same time) and grants 150 resistance, or 27% damage reduction, when fully stacked. The one caveat is that Acclimation will only function if you are constantly taking hits from that type of magic, and will not work if you are just taking a hit here and there.

The complicated part of resistance, is when a spell would apply a debuff, the resistance can convert itself into a resist chance, which works like miss chance. Assume that, on average, the resist chance will lead you to taking the advertised amount less damage (ignoring the debuff's damage, if any).


Death knights can also gain general damage reduction that applies to all incoming damage from Frost Presence, Improved Frost Presence, and Blade Barrier. This reduction is self-explanatory.


Likewise, Magic Suppression grants magic damage reduction. Also self-explanatory.




As promised, I am also going to explain what is meant by 'uncrushable'. When a player is attacked by a mob (including hunter pets, but not other class' minions) that is at least 4 levels higher than them, that mob has a chance to land a crushing blow on the player for 50% extra damage. Back in BC, 'uncrushable' meant that a tank had so much miss chance and parry and dodge that every crushing blow would simply miss, (or be parried/dodged,) and thus, they could not be hit by a crushing blow. In WotLK, this does not matter, because our raid bosses are treated as level 83, and are not high enough level relative to our tanks to land a crushing blow at all. Uncrushable is meaningless in WotLK. Now don't forget it.


Next post I will cover attack tables and stacking mechanics. Until then, may your gear scores go farther in keeping you alive.

Defensive Cooldowns and You

In the previous Mechanics post, I explained how to hold threat for beginning DK tanks. In this post I will explain how to stay alive through the tight spots you will undoubtedly get yourself into.


The basic and most important cooldown that DKs get is this blog's namesake, Icebound Fortitude. This spell is available at a trainer at level 62 and is the one-spell-fits-all answer to bad things happening. Unimproved, it reduces all damage you take by 20% for 15 seconds and is on a 1 minute cooldown (soon to be 2 minutes in 3.2). Deep frost DKs can improve it by up to 6 seconds of duration with the Guile of the Gorefiend talent, and for the rest of us, the Tank-T7 four piece bonus increses its duration by 3 seconds. Additionally, it scales to your Defense skill, gaining about 0.107% damage reduction per defense skill beyond 400, making it 34.98% if you are defense capped at 540 defense.

Using icebound fortitude couldn't be simpler, it is an instant cast, and requires no runes, only runic power. As long as you haven't been spamming Death Coil or similar, you should almost always have the resources to cast it whenever you need. Since the cooldown is so short, usually you do not need to worry about saving it for the perfect time to cast, since it will probably be back up by the time you need it again. It is best used to give your healers a few moments to react to big shifts in your incoming damage, and many appreciate you announcing about 5 seconds before your Icebound will end, so they can be ready for the damage to spike to where it would have otherwise been.



The other cooldowns that will be important to you will depend on your build. Frost DKs have the excellent Unbreakable Armor which, unlike Icebound, reduces damage taken by a fixed amount, making it incredible for tanking large crowds of adds, or enemies that hit very quickly for small amounts of damage per hit. Additionally, Unbreak increases Strength by 25%, increasing your threat output and your parry rating.

Lichborne, also in frost, is rather useless. It has recently been nerfed to no longer add a miss chance to incoming attacks, and only makes you immune to Sleep, Fear and Charm, none of which are common in current raids.

Hungering Cold can also be considered a defensive cooldown, but is typically only useful for dealing with trash or a boss's adds. It freezes all targets within 10 yards, preventing them from killing you or your raid members for that long.

In blood, Rune Tap is often overlooked, but can be very useful when fully talented and glyphed. Unimproved, it is a 1 minute cooldown that heals 10% of your Heath for 1 blood rune. It is an instant cast, and is not on the global cooldown. But, with Improved Rune Tap, this becomes 20% of your health on a 30 second cooldown, and when glyphed it heals 22% of your health, and heals everyone in your group for 10% of their health. When used properly, it can save you long enough for a heal to get off, or save your party so you don't end up trying to solo.

Mark of Blood is pretty meh, but well worth the one talent point. When cast on an enemy, the next 20 times it deals damage, it will also heal its target for 4% of their maximum health. In a 5man, this can be a lifesaver if cast right before the boss does an AoE or a DoT. In raids, it is usually not quite as useful.

Vampiric Blood in deep blood is a powerful cooldown, which increases your max health by 15% and increases your healing recieved by 35% for 20 seconds. Unlike Icebound, it doesn't allow your healers much longer to react, but can be great to chain off the end of another cooldown, allowing your healers to heal through damage much more effectively.

Anti-Magic Shell is pretty meh even when talented in deep unholy. Normally it reduces incoming magic damage by 75%, protecting a maximum of 50% of your max HP. When talented with Magic Suppression, it is still capped at 50% of your health, but does block all incoming magic damage. The other half of Magic Suppression reduces all incoming magic damage by 6%, all the time. For tanking fights with a lot of magic damage, the talent is worthwhile, but the cooldown doesn't have nearly the impact of the others you have available. What it is good for is not mitigating damage, but protecting you from debuffs. The other half of the spell makes you immune to harmful magic debuffs while the spell holds. This can be great for causing a stacking debuff to fall of of you, or prevent a particularly annoying debuff from applying in the first place.

If you do go deep enough in unholy to talent AMS, you can gain access to Anti-Magic zone, basically giving you a second AMS. It too absorbs 75% of magic damage, and is capped at about the same amount of health (but it scales to attack power, not HP). The other benefit of the zone is that it can be used to shield raid memebers from AoE.

Also in unholy, Bone Shield reduces all damage taken by 20% for the next 4 hits. With the glyph, this becomes 6 hits. Bone shield is also pretty meh, as it tends to end very quickly, but can be great in conjunction with parry or dodge boosting cooldowns, as they extend its duration. The other nice thing about bone shield, is that it lasts for up to 5 minutes, but the cooldown is only 2 minutes, allowing you to enter battle with it already active, and also ready to cast.

And finally, Army of the Dead, which is possibly the most powerful defensive cooldown you posess after Icebound. For the 6 seconds while you channel it, it will reduce all damage you take by an amount equal to your parry plus your dodge chance. For me, this is around 55%, which is greatly more powerful than Icebound Fortitude. Additionally, the ghouls you raise can taunt and tank any trash in the area, preventing it from killing you or your raid until the ghouls die. This spell can even be used to build threat, if you taunt a mob that the ghouls have been taunting back and forth, it will skyrocket your threat to several hundred thousand above anyone else. The trick is that it requires one of each rune, and is on a 20 minute (10 when talented) cooldown, and can definitely only be used once per fight. Use it wisely, and be sure you have your runes ready for when you plan to cast it.

The Basics of Threat

This is my first Mechanics post. These posts will explain how to tank as a DK for beginners, because I'm tired of people assuming I'm a bad tank because of the rest of you.


Threat, for those who don't know what it is, (and trust me, I've seen plenty of tanks that don't know what it is) is a hidden number that each mob you face keeps track of for all players fighting it. Whenever anyone attacks the mob, or heals one of its enemies, this number goes up. Spells like a rogue's feint, pets' cower, or a priest's fade reduce this number. When a player dies or uses a spell like vanish, their number on the list is removed, and will restart at zero if they reenter combat. Whichever player that mob has the highest threat number for is the player they will attack.

Frost Presence increases all threat you generate by 45%, always tank in frost presence.

As a beginning death knight, you cannot tank successfully until you reach level 60, at which you learn your most important threat spell ever: Death and Decay. The short story is, cast Death and Decay early and often, and preferrably under where the enemies are going to be standing. Mastering D&D alone will catapult your threat gain to newfound levels of competence. It has a very sizeable threat bonus attached to it, covers a decent area, and can be targetted at a range. Furthermore, it can be improved with the tier 2 Unholy talent, Morbidity, which can increase its uptime to 66%, up from 30% for a mere 3 points (assuming that all sane DK tanks already have 5 points in Anticipation.) I can strongly recommend Morbidity to all DK tanks. In addition, the glyph of Death and Decay increases its damage (and thus, its threat) by another 20%. Also, D&D (like most DK spells) scales its damage to your attack power, so all that Strength on your gear is put to even more use.

D&D does have some problems, which you must compensate for with your other abilities. One of the most obvious problems is that, even talented, once cast, you cannot use it on something elsewhere for the next 15 seconds. Should a single mob break free of your Death and Decay, Death Grip is the perfect answer, not only gaining maximum threat on the mob, but also relocating it into the D&D cloud, ensuring that you will remain on top of its threat. In the event of a small group of adds, pestilence off your main target, or Howling Blast for frost tanks can serve as a great way to fill the space of time when you can't get D&D to cast.

The other obvious problem with D&D is that it requires 1 Unholy, 1 Frost and 1 Blood rune. In onrder to cast it, you must make sure not to ever use two of the same rune in the final 8 seconds before the spell refreshes. During long boss fights, you will have enough of a threat lead that missing a D&D (or indeed, even not bothing with it at all) is not a problem, but when tanking trash with the possibility of adds, you must carefully ration your runes to make sure your D&D will be on the ground as frequently as possible, because if you do get adds, you can only really be sure your threat is secure when they've stood in your Death and Decay.


If D&D is the meat and potatoes of your threat arsenal, then diseases are the fires that do the cooking; without them, including the meat in your meal will soon be a painful experience. D&D kicks your threat into high gear at the start of a fight, or when adds first aggro, but diseases keep you at the top of the Omen display so you can pay attention to incoming adds, burst damage and other hazards. Diseases currently do a very decent hunk of damage, and are getting another 15% buff in 3.2. When combined with the threat bonus from Frost Presence, they can free you to devote attention to other mobs for 10 global cooldowns at a time, giving you plenty of breathing room. To gain the maximum benefit from your diseases, be sure to cast Pesilence about as often as D&D, and be sure Blood Plague and Frost Fever are on your primary target before you do so. The glyph of pestilence increases the range of pestilence and only costs a minor glyph slot and a few gold. The glyph of disease is a bit more expensive, but refreshes your diseases on your primary target when you Pestilence, freeing up a frost and unholy rune, perfect for a Death Strike to help heal yourself with, or take the edge off burst. It also frees up two global cooldowns, which would otherwise be used to reapply your diseases.



So, if you are beginning down the road of DK tanking, here is some homework until next time. Try to master the use of D&D in securing threat on new mobs. Make sure all 10 seconds worth tick out on the mobs at the start of a pull, and keep it ready to control new adds.

In the next Mechanics post, I will go over the basics of defensive cooldowns.