srsbusiness

Basic Training
Welcome to the srsbusiness guide to Death Knight tanking. As tanks, our job is to piss things off and live to talk about it. But if you’ve come here, you already know that. I’ve compiled the information in this guide to give beginners and veterans alike a source for meaningful information and analysis pertaining to the intricacies of our job.

Acknowledgments
This guide would not be possible without the work of other like-minded enthusiasts, for their varied contributions I would like to thank each of them.

+ Gravity of Pwnwear
+ Satorri of Tankspot

Guildies, for their support and advice
+ Martei of Face on Fire
+ Threedrakez of Face on Fire
+ Zelthas of Face on Fire

+ Introduction to The Death Knight
The newest tank and WoW’s first Heroic class, Death Knights borrow greatly from several classes. Death Knights are particularly heavy on resource management however, so keep this in mind if you are considering becoming one of these powerful plate wearers.

Due to the complexity of the Death Knight’s abilities, and the broad toolset available to a DK tank, there is a lot of terminology to familiarize yourself with. For brevity sake, these terms have been abbreviated, the key to these abbreviations is provided below.

+ Common Acronyms:
BS = Blood Strike
PS = Plague Strike
IT = Icy Touch
OB = Obliterate
DS = Death Strike
RS = Rune Strike
BB = Blood Boil
DnD = Death and Decay
DC = Death Coil
BP = Blood Plague
FF = Frost Fever
Pest = Pestilence
IBF = Icebound Fortitude
AMS = Anti-Magic Shell
AoD = Army of the Dead
RP = Runic Power
ERW = Empower Rune Weapon

HS = Heart Strike
SoB = Scent of Blood
Vot3W = Veteran of the Third War
MoM = Might of Mograine
WoN = Will of the Necropolis
B-G = Blood-gorged

HB = Howling Blast
FS = Frost Strike
HC = Hungering Cold
NoCS = Nerves of Cold Steel
CotG = Chill of the Grave
KM = Killing Machine
BoN = Blood of the North
ToT = Threat of Thassarian
GoG = Gift of Gorefiend

ScS = Scourge Strike
CE = Corpse Explosion
UB = Unholy Blight
AMZ = Anti-Magic Zone
RoR = Rage of Rivendare

+ Rune System Terminology:
Rune Set = 2 Blood, Frost, and Unholy runes, the 6 runes available to all Death Knights
FU Pair = 1 Frost and 1 Unholy rune, frequently used together for moves.
Rune Blackout = when all 6 runes are on cooldown and are not available

+ General Game Jargon/Terminology:
Mob = an enemy, monster, or computer controlled non-player character (npc).
Proc = a spell, talent, enchant, or glyph effect that triggers from some set of conditions usually providing a buff or ability.
Tank = the designated character in a party or raid who gears to be strong on survival and takes the primary attention of enemy targets.
DPS = short-hand for damage dealers. I will use the lowercase “dps” to short-hand for damage per second.
Pop = slang for using a spell or ability.
Cooldown (CD) = the period where a spell or item is unusable because it is refreshing.
Global Cooldown (GCD) = the game is built with a base cooldown for the player client of 1.5 seconds. This keeps the player from being able to use most abilities less than 1.5 seconds apart. Some abilities can be used without triggering the Global Cooldown, while for certain classes, the Global Cooldown can be reduced in length with certain stats or abilities.
Internal Cooldown (ICD) = a cooldown hidden in a talent, set bonus, trinket, or gear proc. Cooldown is not visible to the player, but the ability won’t be able to proc again until the cooldown is finished.

Acronym and Terminology Key taken from Satorri’s Guide

PISSING THINGS OFF: The Basics of the Blood Rotation
One major concern for tanks is maintaining aggro and building threat. Aggro means that the mob is aggressive toward you. When you and a group of people are fighting a mob that mob has a threat list. Your job is to be at the top of that list, do everything you can to prove to that mob that you are the biggest threat on the battlefield (whether that’s actually true or not is irrelevant).

For the purposes of this guide we will assume a full 3 points in Death Rune Mastery, so each alternate set will have 2 Blood and 4 Death Runes.

» Set 1 ( IT – PS – HS – HS – DS )

» Set 2 ( IT – IT – HS – HS – IT – IT )

This rotation is for maximum threat, with the threat coefficient attached to Icy Touch you should be generating massive amounts of threat. The alternative would be a more DPS oriented rotation as shown below…

» Set 1 ( IT – PS – HS – HS – DS )

» Set 2 ( HS – HS – HS – HS – HS – HS )

A Quick Note on Death Runes
In both of the rotations listed above you have a little wiggle room, specifically in each Set 2 where you have 2 BR and 4 DR available. The biggest reason to have these four abilities separately instead of in a castsequence macro is to offer versatility. Depending on your situation you may opt to use Death Runes for survival abilities (Rune Tap, Death Strike, or Vampiric Blood, and in Cataclysm for Bone Shield). Knowing when and what to use in these situations can mean the difference between a wipe and loot, as a rule of thumb set yourself a threshold (say 50% health) if your health drops below that point heal yourself.

Remember always, healing yourself is absolutely not a waste of resources… live tanks are doing their jobs, dead tanks are not.

When and Why?
When tanking bosses you’ll want to lead off with the threat rotation, this will establish an early threat lead (especially when combined with Misdirect and Tricks of the Trade), you can then switch to the DPS rotation. However, it is important to keep tabs on your threat relative to that of the other raiders, as well as allowing for fight mechanics – though rare threat resets during a fight are not unheard of.

Runic Power and Your Rotation
As in life, when you are tanking… sometimes you just have to take a dump. Each of the abilities listed in the rotations above generates Runic Power. Some of your other abilities require this resource to function as well, so depending on the fight you will want to adjust the amount of RP you have on reserve. If you have 60+ RP you should dump with Death Coil. The main consumer of RP however will be Rune Strike, and should be used anytime that it lights up. Both of these abilities will add threat as well as damage, but due to their nature they are not “technically” a part of your rotation.

TLDR VERSION: If left with the choice, use RS over DC. And you may want to keep enough RP around to cast Icebound Fortitude of Mind Freeze (depending on the situation).

Managing Cooldowns
Both Blood Tap and Empowered Rune Weapon are powerful tools in your arsenal, here I will discus the practical application of each.

» Blood Tap (hereafter referred to as BT) – Supplies a quick Death Rune, this I consider mainly for use with Defensive abilities which we will cover in the next section. But the primary reason for this, is it keeps your rotation in tact while allowing you to use abilities like Vampiric Blood or Rune Tap.

» Empowered Rune Weapon (hereafter referred to as ERW) – This ability finishes the cooldown on all of your runes, it has a five minute cooldown itself though. Which may cause you to want to save it, myself I tend to blow it after Set 1 at the beginning of the fight for a quick burst of early threat. Typically it’s available again before the boss is dead, and generally toward the end of the fight when I might want to blow everything just to survive.

Macros
I use four basic macros in my rotation, each is set up to que Rune Strike, turn on auto attack (in the event I don’t have any runes), and to clear any errors associated with mashing the macros. Likewise, I’ve added some modifiers to two of these macros to save me some action bar real estate.

Icy Touch + Death Coil
/cast [nomod] Icy Touch
/cast [mod:alt] Death Coil
/cast Rune Strike
/startattack
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Pressing the button will cast Icy Touch, and if conditions are right will que up Rune Strike for your next white swing. If you hold down Alt while pressing the key you will cast Death Coil instead of Icy Touch.

Plague Strike
/cast Plague Strike
/cast Rune Strike
/startattack
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Very simply casts Plague Strike and ques up Rune Strike for your next white swing, assuming conditions are met.

Heart Strike + Blood Strike
/cast [nomod] Heart Strike
/cast [mod:alt] Blood Strike
/cast Rune Strike
/startattack
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Pressing this key will cast Heart Strike, holding Alt while pressing the key will cast Blood Strike instead.

Death Strike
/cast Death Strike
/cast Rune Strike
/startattack
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

And finally Death Strike with the usual Rune Strike addition.

LIVING TO TALK ABOUT IT: Mitigation and Avoidance
What is Mitigation? And what is Avoidance? Which one do I need?
The difference between mitigation and avoidance is that mitigation lowers incoming damage, avoidance attempts to avoid damage entirely. Mitigation tends toward a passive reduction whereas avoidance is dependent on RNG or a % chance to succeed. Both are very important to the continued success of the tank and by extension his group.

Mitigation: The first stat a new tank will be focusing on is their Mitigation, the primary objective is to reach 5.6% Crit Avoidance. This can be achieved through Defense or Resilience (15 Resilience = 0.18% Crit Avoidance, 22 Defense = 0.18% Crit Avoidance). The real difference is that Resilience only affects your Mitigation and Defense affects both Avoidance as well as Mitigation, thus making it useful even after removing Criticals from the combat table. Beyond this, tanks will be working to lower incoming damage through armor, resistances, set bonuses, etc.

Avoidance: Avoidance is the second stat a new tank will be focusing on, you want to aim for a 50% or higher Avoidance. As a tank you should be focusing on Dodge rather than Parry. And with reason, the short version being: Dodge does not suffer from the overtly debilitating DR that Parry does, so it’s just not worth your time to focus on it unless there is a radical change in the way Blizzard’s combat mechanics handle Parry Rating. The easiest way to track your avoidance is through the TankPoints AddOn, which can be downloaded here.

Effective Health and Hit Points: Effective Health is a formula that shows the amount of damage a tank can take (without heals) before dying. This will give you a general idea of what you can tank, for simplicity state I recommend using the following website to calculate your EH. After getting Crit Immune and getting your Avoidance to around 50% your next goal should be to increase your EH as much as possible. You can never get it too high so just keep pushing for higher numbers while maintaining your threat stats.

+ Effective Health Calculator
+ More information on the mathematical formula behind this can be found here.

THREAT REVISITED
Expertise: All tanks need to actually hit a mob to generate threat and effectively hold aggro. One way of ensuring this is to get Dodges off of the combat table, to do this a tank would need 26 expertise to negate a boss’ dodge chance, and 60 expertise to prevent parries.
Hit: Similarly, your hit rating is important to reduce misses. Tanks will need 263 Hit Rating (223 with Hit food) to not miss with auto or special attacks. Unfortunately, some abilities (most notably Taunt) are considered spells, and thus the hit cap for these abilities is actually different from the melee hit cap. The actual cap can vary wildly depending on certain conditions (class, race, buffs, talents). Tanks are advised not to push past the 263 threshold, going beyond this level is likely to eat into your item budget, and simply isn’t worth it. If you are that worried about missing a taunt, I would recommend getting the 8% taunt glyph instead of gearing for hit beyond 263.

STATS: the TLDR Version
These are my general rules for stats for both threat and survivability, these rules govern my choices for gear, gemming, and enchanting.

+ Threat
a 220 hit (260 after food) and a 26 Expertise. With parry haste being a non issue I don’t recommend going beyond the Expertise soft cap.

+ Survivability
540 Defense and 50% Avoidance, higher is better but after this point I begin to really focus on Stamina and Armor.

TALENTS: Building a Better Tank
I’ve been tanking with my Death Knight since the release of Wrath of the Lich King, initially I was Unholy but since the release of Ulduar I’ve been Blood. Blood is strong in single target threat, and overall survivability through powerful self-healing abilities that scale with gear. Death Knights are also capable of AoE threat but it does require a bit more thought and finesse than say a Paladin.

Recommended Spec(s):
+ Survival / Progression Spec
+ Threat Spec

Recomended Glyphs are provided with the spec link listed above, however if you are drastically below the hit cap you may opt for Glyph of Dark Command.

+ Key Abilities:
+ Vampiric Blood This is the Blood DKs signature defensive cooldown, it’s easy to dismiss this talent as a watered down Last Stand. The difference is the bonus healing component attached to this ability, it’s similar in function to a priest cooldown increasing ALL healing received by the tank by 35%. This ability alone will make healers love you. Additionally, you can macro this along with any temporary health trinkets such as Juggernaut’s Vitality for an even bigger gain. Since VB does require a Blood Rune macroing it along with Blood Tap is recomended so as not to interfere with your rotation.

+ Rune Tap For those who played back in the days of MC and BWL, you will remember when multiple healing potions could be (and were) used in combat. RT manages to not only bring that back, but better than before. Where a Runic Healing Potion can only heal a flat amount, fully talented RT will heal the tank for 20% of their maximum health, with a 30 second cooldown and at the cost of only a Blood Rune. Again, it’s important to note RT heals a % of your maximum health, so it is effected by better gear and buffs. And though the threat of heals is divided by the number of target, RT provides threat comparable if not better than a single Heart Strike (against a single target).
Note that Rune Tap does not share a cooldown with Healing potions or Health Stones so it is possible to use all 3 along with a Death Strike in quick succession for those OH SHIT moments.

+ Mark of Blood A somewhat controversial talent, there are those who will say this talent is completely worthless. However, it is situational in it’s use. Helping to even out damage from bosses in high risk situations. I tend to use this one in fights where tanks are taking turns taunting off each other to ease the transition. If timed right, it can also be helpful in situations where a boss will incapacitate you. The healing effect will persist while you are immobilized and may just save you.

MACROS: Yes, More Macros
It’s important to note, the spammable rotation buttons below are no substitute for good resource management. These will however work fine for levelling up, grinding quests, etc.

Oh Shit Button
#showspellbyname Icebound Fortitude
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Icebound Fortitude

Uses both trinkets and casts Icebound Fortitude.

Hysteria
#showspellbyname Hysteria
/target Soandso
/cast Hysteria
/targetlastenemy
/w Soandso Hysteria ON YOU!

Casts Hysteria on your focus target without losing your current target.

Focused Taunt
#showspellbyname Dark Command
/cast [target=focus] Dark Command
/targetlastenemy

This will taunt your focus target without losing your current target.

Focused Death Grip
#showspellbyname Death Grip
/cast [target=focus] Death Grip
/targetlastenemy

Casts Death Grip on your focus target without losing your current target.

Focused Strangulate
#showspellbyname Strangulate
/cast [target=focus] Strangulate
/targetlastenemy

Casts Strangulate on your focus target without losing your current target.

Note: The Focus macros above require you to have either a Set Focus macro or set Focus to a Keybind, personally I set my focus to the ~ key. These focus macros are great for tanking and pvp, their primary use is that you do not have stop hitting your primary target to use these abilities on your focus. If you’re off tanking, you can toss an emergency Strangulate to interrupt a boss, etc. Also quite useful for encounters where tanks are switching tanking duties because of a debuff, like Kologarn.

THE ARMORY: Enchants and Gems
This section is all about being prepared. It’s not as simple as saying “gem and enchant for Stamina”. You need to be able to look at your options critically and decide what gives you the most benefit. If you’re just starting out your primary concern should be Defense, Defense, and more Defense. If you’re not at the 540 Defense point (unless you’re a Druid) you don’t have enough. So get it where you can, as your gear improves you’ll have more Defense naturally than you know what to do with. But for a beginning tank, pile it on till you reach the cap. Then, start working on your health, until you can reach the EH minimums for the encounters you’re facing. Past that, it’s time to start working on rounding out your stats, and making the tough decisions as noted below.

Are you hit/expertise capped? If not, then how is your threat? If you’re having problems there, then you might consider pushing for a little extra hit and expertise. If you’re not having problems there, then how’s your avoidance? Are you at the point of diminishing returns? If not you might consider getting a little Dodge where you can. If you are both hit and expertise capped, and dodge capped. Then you have the option of piling on more expertise or more EH. Past a certain point, tank gear will give you enough of those basic stats by default, that’s when you really can start piling on Stamina with near impunity.

+ Enchants
Head:
[ Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector ]

Shoulders:
[ Greater Inscription of the Gladiator ] – Effective Health
[ Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle ] – Avoidance

Cloak:
[ Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Mighty Armor ] – Effective Health
[ Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Titanweave ] – Avoidance
[ Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Major Agility ] – Avoidance

Chest:
[ Scroll of Enchant Chest - Super Health ] – Effective Health
[ Scroll of Enchant Chest - Greater Defense ] – Avoidance

Bracer:
[ Fur Lining - Stamina ] – EH +Leatherworker Only
[ Scroll of Enchant Bracer - Major Stamina ] – Effective Health
[ Scroll of Enchant Bracer - Major Defense ] – Avoidance
[ Scroll of Enchant Bracer - Expertise ] – Threat

Gloves:
[ Heavy Borean Armor Kit ] – Effective Health
[ Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Armsman ] – Threat/Avoidance
[ Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Expertise ] – Threat
[ Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Precision ] – Threat

Legs:
[ Frosthide Leg Armor ] – Avoidance/Effective Health

Boots:
[ Scroll of Enchant Boots - Greater Fortitude ] – Effective Health
[ Scroll of Enchant Boots - Icewalker ] – Threat

Ring:
[ Enchant Ring - Stamina ] +Enchanter Only

Misc:
[ Vindicator's Armor Kit ] – Avoidance
Note: When you’re starting out, hitting the defense cap can be tricky. It’s absolutely essential that when you begin running heroics to gear up that you are able to hit the cap, these BC era kits can sometimes fill in the gap until you’re getting better gear overall. You will definitely want to dump these kits by the time you start hitting raids however.

[ Eternal Belt Buckle ]
[ Socket Bracer ] +Blacksmith Only
[ Socket Gloves ] +Blacksmith Only
Note: All tanks can (and should) use the Eternal Belt Buckle, if you’re a smith then you definitely should be using the Bracer and Gloves sockets as well, you can add these sockets without interfering with enchants in any way. Since these sockets are colorless they also give you a lot of flexibility. If you don’t want to give up socket bonuses but still want some extra Threat, Avoidance, or EH this is the most painless way to get it.

Weapons:
[ Rune Stoneskin Gargoyle ] – EH
[ Rune of Swordshattering ] – Avoidance

+ Gems
Meta:
[ Austere Earthsiege Diamond ]

Blue:
[ Solid Dragon's Eye ] +Jewelcrafter Only
[ Solid Majestic Zircon ]

Red:
[ Guardian's Dreadstone ] – Threat/Effective Health
[ Regal Dreadstone ] – Avoidance/Effective Health

Yellow:
[ Vivid Eye of Zul ] – Threat/Effective Health
[ Enduring Eye of Zul ] – Avoidance/Effective Health

Consumables
Flask: [ Flask of Stoneblood ]
Food: [ Indestructible Potion ] or [ Runic Healing Potion ].
Food: [ Worg Tartare ] for hit or [ Rhinolicious Wormsteak ] for expertise.

Final Word on Enchants, Gems, Etc:
There are definitely points where it’s more attractive to go for something for one stat over another. The point is, this is a guide and should be treated as such. When you reach a point where you’re questioning the enchanting/gemming strategies listed above you shouldn’t need me to tell you how to do it, experiment and adapt.

With Cataclysm on the horizon, much of this guide will surely change if not be entirely rewritten. I will however continue to be a tanking DK in Cata, so for those that read the blog regularly you can definitely expect more information as I have it available. Thank you for reading, and I hope at least it was entertaining, if not informative.