Bloody Tanks

Contact info

2011-10-13T14:37:00.000-04:00

I finally got around to creating some contact info for myself (While I have freely given out my character name, I am somewhat hesitant to just hand out my personal contact info).

So for those interested, you can email me at bloody.DK.tanks@gmail.com (Yes, oddly enough bloody.tank and bloody.tanks @gmail.com were already taken), or you can leave me a voice mail @ +12345643422. (This is a Google Voice number, and as I have my personal phones already assigned to my personal GV number, this one does not have a physical phone connected to it to ring. But I will get voice mail (or SMS text messages) emailed to me, and will be able to respond to you, or even call you back.)

I've added the contact info in the side bar, and included a QR vCard for those that are so enamored with me they want my contact details in their cell phone.

In unrelated news, I am taking online college courses in addition to a regular job and family life, and this semester's workload has been a lot higher than in the past so I have not had much time to finish up the next post, let alone play much WoW. (I think I played all of 60 minutes in the past two weeks).
The rotation post is almost done and just needs polishing up and links to all the spells and abilities.

Update: I have also created a Google+ profile. Not sure if I will end up doing anything with that, and it will really depend on how many people Circle me.

Class Feedback

2011-09-21T10:27:00.001-04:00

Blizzard has sent out a mass request for class feedback on the class forums. I think this is great, and will supply my comments here, and post them on the forums, and I hope each of you will also provide constructive feedback to Blizzard to enable them to improve us to be Bloody Tanks. When you do, please take to heart their guidelines, as this is not a place to whine about our class.

I've perused the DK forum and gathered some of the oft-recurring requests for the Blood spec here, to get an idea of what other people are looking for:

Death Strike missing (Though this is slated to be "fixed" in patch 4.3)
Spiky damage (Limited avoidance through Parry and Dodge only, no Block, relying on Death Strike heal/bubble reactively instead).
Bone Shield improvement (20% reduction in the first 8 seconds is nice, but it's no Shield Block)
Raise Ally costing 50 Runic Power, and only returning with 20% health and mana.
Great AOE damage.
Being parried/dodged (This often happens to me on Plague Strike)
Runic Empowerment is too random, and we do not want it refreshing Blood Runes.
Enjoy active mitigation, and being able to self heal and survive longer than other tanks.
Using Raise Dead just so you can Death Pact is very anti-climactic.
Remove Death Runes for Blood Presence or Spec
Parry/Dodge counter the value of Mastery (avoiding an attack means no damage received for Blood Shield)
Death and Decay cooldown too long.

There were many many more points, but those were the main ones that seemed to be repeated more than once, or caught my eye. Below is what I posted to the thread as my comments.

What type of content do you focus on?

I focus solely on PvE using Blood spec.

If PvE, what type of PvE?

Heroic 5-mans (ZA/ZG mostly)

If PvP, what type of PvP?

No PvP at all.

What are your biggest quality-of-life issues? For instance, no longer requiring ammo could be considered a quality-of-life improvement for hunters.

A great quality-of-life improvement was changing Raise Ally into a battle rez.

Death Runes are a horrible quality-of-life issue. Keeping up Blade Barrier while maximizing Death Strikes is a challenge.

What makes playing your class more fun?

I love the way Blood DK plays. It's unique compared to the other tanking classes.

- We hit with a big two hander.

- We heal ourselves.

- We have a nice bunch of damage reduction and self healing cooldowns (Icebound Fortitude, Lichborne, Death Pact, Rune Tap).

- We have a battle rez that we can use while tanking (unlike bear tanks for example).

- If needed, we can solo quite a bit if we know the healer is unable to heal for some reason.

What makes playing your class less fun?

- I have to worry about not wasting a Death Rune on Blood Boil or Heart Strike. (Unless I specifically want to do some AoE). But the rune baby-sitting is not something I enjoy about tanking. That's not what being a tank should be about.

- I have to either hold on to my FUD (Frost, Unholy, Death) runes until I get hit a lot so I can get a big heal and shield at the offset of not doing as much DPS, or play them as they become available and risk taking a beating and aggravating my healer or wiping the group because I can't Death Strike to recover.

- I have to be very careful with when I use Raise Ally. I don't want to rez someone right in front of the boss, or in an AoE, as their 20% health isn't much to go on. Especially if it's the healer they will have a task of healing themselves and me back up with limited time and mana.

- Mind Freeze is a conundrum. On the one hand, 5-man dungeons rely on interrupts, which is why all tanks got one, and I actively use it. On the other, I cannot take the chance that I have no Runic Power for a Mind Freeze on a fight like Corla for example. So I am forced to spec into Endless Winter. While that goes alright with a Lichborne built, it does limit the ability to spec into Epidemic, and rules out Morbidity. A mandatory tanking talent should not be on the second tier of the Frost tree.

How do you feel about your “rotation”? (Rotation is the accepted order in which abilities are used to maximum efficiency.)

As above, the only three "real" abilities are Rune Strike, Death Strike and Heart Strike (and occasionally Blood Boil for some snap aggro). Which in a way is fine, as we have Mind Freeze to worry about for interrupts, Dark Command for taunts, and maybe Outbreak/Icy Touch & Plague Strike for diseases on bosses. Add to that positioning, keeping an eye on the group, checking for adds, etc, we've got enough on our plate. Which is why the rune tetris as it's been called is such a hurdle. We actively need to check if we have a Blood rune, so we can get rid of that ASAP (for Blade Barrier), while making sure we don't waste Death Runes by accident on Heart Strike/Blood Boil. If Rune Strike were removed from Runic Empowerment, I believe it would make a lot of Bloody Tanks very happy. (Though I do use Death Coil on occasion, like the Amani Kidnapper during the Akil'zon encounter in Zul'Aman)

In short, our rotation is fine, if it weren't for those pesky Death Runes.

Some people mentioned the cooldown on Death and Decay, but I feel with a 15 seconds (glyphed) uptime and 30 second cooldown it is plenty for 5-man dungeons.

What’s on your wish list for your class?

- Many of the things mentioned by Ghostcrawler in his Watercooler post.

- Allowing Death Strike to always heal & shield, regardless of hit/miss.
- Improving our Mastery to take into account the damage we dodged/parried.

- Making Bone Shield more of a "big hit" reduction, only reducing a hit that would do more than 50% of your total HP of damage. (Or however that would be implemented). Granted, the 20% reduction at the start of the fight is nice for positioning and ramping up, but would be more useful when a big damage spike comes in.

- Blade Barrier could work ok (though as a Bloody Tank, uptime should be 100%, so why even link it to the Blood Runes being down), but with Runic Empowerment's chance at refreshing a Blood Rune, and Heart Strike's chance of using a Death Rune, it really reduces our Quality of Life to that of glueing our eyes to our rune bar. At the cost of being environmentally aware.

What spells do you use the least?

- Dancing Rune Weapon. I know it's our 31st point talent, but at the high cost, and with a GCD, it is never available when I need it, or I'm too busy hitting other buttons. What is it really used for? Extra threat at the beginning of a fight (Glyphed)? We won't have the Runic Power. It just doesn't seem to fit in well, as much as I would like it to. If it were to cost no Runic Power, it would be used more (the 1.5 min cooldown could be increased to 3 minutes offset this if needed)

- Anti-Magic-Shell. This is probably a personal shortcoming as I should be using this. The occasions are just so rare.

- Dark Simulacrum. I have no idea what to do with this. I know it's my level 85 skill, but it's use is so vague that I am not sure if it's really a PvP only talent, or if it was meant to be used in 5-man instances as well.

HowTo: Pulling

2011-09-07T14:42:00.000-04:00

I've been running my level 70 Mage through some random (Utgarde Keep) Lich King dungeons, and finding that around 75% of the tanks I get are DK's. Which should make me feel good that DK's are up and coming, but many have no real idea what they are doing, or are very early in their learning stage. So here is the first of the HowTo guides to help people figure out how to tank as a Bloody Tank.
Pulling is where any fight starts, but some preparation work comes before that. In below end-game dungeons, or even end game dungeons when you overgear the instance, crowd control is no longer an issue. But if it is, CC should be the first thing you settle when you are facing a trash pack (or some bosses, like Hex Lord Malacrass in Zul'Aman). Mark them, or, if you have a good working group, the DPS will initiate their own CC. If you use CC, figure out where you are going to take the fight. Unless the CC is unbreakable (Banish, etc), you do not want to be too close to the CC'd mobs to accidentally break them. (Anecdotaly, I have put a DnD down on a Hexed mob, without it breaking throughout the full duration more than once. But this is not what you should aim for)

When that is done, make sure your buffs are up. Bone Shield should be up and whirling, unless it's on cooldown from the previous fight. Horn of Winter should also be up. Recast it right before your pull to give yourself a free 10 Runic Power. If you have a Warrior in your group (and no Priest), make sure they use Commanding Shout, and not Battle Shout so you can get both the Strength & Agility buff as well as the Stamina buff. Remind your group's Warrior every time he uses Battle Shout. Some need multiple reminders, or have Battle Shout macro'd into one of their moves. In return, make sure you maintain your Horn of Winter buff, as the Strength bonus makes them very happy.

The most important rule in pulling, and the one I see newer Bloody Tanks break the most in lower level dungeons, is DO NOT PULL WITH DEATH GRIP. Yes, Death Grip is cool, it's awesome and amazing, and leaves your party staring at you in awe as the mob just comes soaring towards you. However, if you end up Gripping one of the melee out of a group, and a ranged mob remains behind, you are left defenseless at his long-range attacks, and with a good chance at having your healer pull aggro from them if one of the DPS doesn't step up to CC it. Death Grip has a base cooldown of 35 seconds, which is roughly the duration of a single fight. Why would we waste one of our more useful tools at the start of the fight when we can utilize it better further on during the fight.

If you do not use CC, the best thing to do is just run into the pack, and drop Death and Decay down as soon as you get close enough for them to notice you. (Or maybe a little sooner, so that a HoT tick from a healer doesn't make them run for the healer before you get a chance to do anything). Once in their midst, hit a Blood Boil to get some quick aggro on all of them. Blood Boil does not have a limit on how many targets it can hit, nor what direction they are in (front/back), making it superior for getting threat on packs of more than 3 mobs. If there are only three, follow up with a Hearth Strike, if there are more, hit another Blood Boil. This should bring both your Blood Runes on cooldown and activate Blade Barrier.

If you do use Crowd Control, pick a spot not too far away from the mobs where you intend to tank. Target one of the non-CC'd mobs, and hit it with an Icy Touch to get it, and the rest of the pack, running towards you, and then drop a Death and Decay at your feet (or between you and the mob if you're still running towards your spot). When they get near, hit Blood Boil again. With it's unglyphed radius of 10 yards, it can provide some spot threat before they fully reach you. Again, make sure you use both Blood Runes in those first few seconds to activate Blade Barrier.

That is basically your initial pull. You now have some aggro on the mobs, Blade Barrier up, and are ready to position and tank the mobs so the DPS can take them down. There are some exceptions to these pulls, like boss fights, or some packs where a bit more effort is needed, or where we do actually need to use Death Grip during the pull. I will go into those in future posts.

Dev water cooler

2011-08-31T16:05:00.000-04:00

Ghostcrawler posted a new Dev Watercooler which focused a lot on Bloody Tanks and what they are envisioning for us. If you haven't read it yet, I would definitely suggest you read it.

Ghostcrawler listed three methods of active mitigation, which could be used to push Prot and Feral tanks more towards playing like Bloody Tanks. However at this point in time there is no clear path, and they may even decide to choose a fourth completely different path, or design each class with a model of their own. So I will let you draw your own conclusions for now and not comment until more information becomes available.

What is interesting though is the impending changes that Ghostcrawler announced for us in patch 4.3, which make me wish they would hotfix it in, or hurry up and do patch 4.3 already, even though I'm still not finished with the current content.

The first change Ghostcrawler promises us is a reduced cooldown of 30 seconds on Outbreak. This will put both our diseases on the target for 21 seconds. Leaving us with only 9 seconds of down time on the diseases without having to spend Runes. The ultimate effect of which will be that we will no longer use Icy Touch and Plague Strike, allowing us an extra two or three Death Strikes every minute. I can't really complain about more healing and shielding while keeping our debuffs up. The only issue is that Outbreak can still miss if you're not hit-capped (which you should not be), and with a 30 second cooldown, it leaves you vulnerable for 9 seconds. What Ghostcrawler may be implying is that as Bloody Tanks we should be spending our talent points on Epidemic, and forgo getting Lichborne as a cooldown.

Next Ghostcrawler makes a vague promise to do something with Blade Barrier in patch 4.3. Currently we need to babysit our runes and use Rune Tap or Heart Strike whenever one of our Blood Runes is off cooldown to keep the Blade Barrier up. At the same time being careful not to spend a Death Rune on them, as those are better used for Death Strikes. From the wording it sounds like they will make Blade Barrier something that will always be on, or possibly something along the lines of it being up for 20 seconds after you use Death Strike. This is all speculation at the moment, but if they do it right, we may need to do less babysitting of our Runes.

Currently Death Strike can miss. This is an issue, but one we are forced to work around as stacking for Hit and Expertise is not realistic and would cost us too much in Mastery and avoidance stats. Ghostcrawler is suggesting that even if our Death Strike misses, we still get the healing and shield. He does note that this is likely an interim change until they can do a major overhaul of all the tanking specs and align their mitigation towards the Bloody way of life. But hallelujah, if this becomes a reality, even for the duration of patch 4.3 to the next expansion, it would make our healing and mitigation a lot more predictable.

Ghostcrawler also talks about our Bone Shield, and suggests ideas they may implement to make it more useful. At the moment, Bone Shield is only good for 8 seconds (the first 4 hits with 2 second intervals), however Ghostcrawler suggests it may be better used as a spike mitigation and only use up a charge whenever a large hit occurs (say a hit that takes away more than 40% of your total health). Prot tanks have additional mitigation through Block, which prevents large damage spikes, for which Bloody Tanks have no equivalent. We get hit more, and we take more damage. A good tank can recover from that quickly with a Death Strike or two and some help from the healer, but it could swiftly kill a beginning tank. I am assuming the "20% less damage while at least 1 charge remains" would change into a reduction of a single big hit which will consume a charge. But we shall see, dreaming about an "always on" 20% damage reduction is nice.

Lastly Ghostcrawler talks about Blood Shield. He cautions this as being a long term change, and provides very little information on what they actually plan on doing with it. They like the fact that we can heal ourselves and give ourselves a nice large damage shield after getting hurt a lot. But if you used your Death Strike right before a damage spike, or you miss (not so much an issue if the previous "always heals & shields" change goes live), you lose out on a lot of mitigation. Time will tell how they plan on tackling this, and I am looking forward to their design ideas on this model. I love getting Blood Shields for 100K or more, but getting them is rare, and very hard to do.

So far I am looking forward to patch 4.3 and what it will do for our tanking. Time will tell what will happen, but always remember Ghostcrawler promised us a pony.

Minor Glyphs

2011-08-26T10:54:00.001-04:00

As the last part of this Glyph series we will be looking at Minor Glyphs. While these are often cosmetic and of little importance, there are a few that can make a difference for us.

Glyph of Blood Tap: This is a minor sustainability of life improvement. Blood Tap costs base health, which isn't very much (around 2500 hp) compared to our total health pool. But could mean the difference between life and death if things are going south.
Glyph of Death Gate: Faster Death Gates. Not a huge deal, unless you often respec or upgrade our weapons.
Glyph of Death's Embrace: As we generally do not heal our Ghoul, this is pretty useless. It will not refund Runic Power for Death Coils cast on ourselves while under the Lichborne effect.
Glyph of Horn of Winter: Horn of Winter should always be up. Even if there's a Warrior in your group using Battle Shout, Horn of Winter gives you some Runic Power. Use whenever possible. The longer uptime helps on longer fights if we forget to renew.
Glyph of Path of Frost: This reduces fall-damage by about 30%-40%. If used at the right time, you could survive bigger jumps than you would otherwise (or kock-backs/explosions which cause you falling damage). You do not need to land in water for this Glyph to work.
Glyph of Resilient Grip: Useful if you accidentally Death Grip the wrong target (a target that turns out to be immune, say an elemental that's Banished), so you can use it again.

In short, none of these Glyphs are mandatory, but I would recommend at least taking the Glyph of Resilient Grip and Glyph of Horn of Winter.

Major Glyphs

2011-07-28T10:55:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since we looked at the Prime Glyphs. A three week vacation, and a weekend trip as a graduation party for my son kept me away, but I'm back with the next part in our Glyph series: Major Glyphs available for Bloody Death Knights.

Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell: This Glyph increases the duration of our Anti-Magic Shell from 5 to 7 seconds. I must plead guilty to not using Anti-Magic Shell in Heroics. If you do, you may find the extra 2 seconds worthwhile.
Glyph of Blood Boil: This Glyph increases your Blood Boil radius to 15 yards. While this may sound great, if you have CC targets nearby, you could break CC with the additional range. Use with caution.
Glyph of Bone Shield: This increases your movement speed by 15% while your Bone Shield is up. I used to find this invaluable in Violet Hold to get from one portal to the next. In Cataclysm Heroics it helps get to the next group a bit faster, or if your group wiped to run back through the instance faster.
Glyph of Chains of Ice: This will cause some additional damage to a target when using Chains of Ice, but the damage is not worth spending a full Glyph slot on.
Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon: Adding this Glyph will give you 50% more threat generation. Very useful if the DPS is right behind you to give you a boost. The downside is that Dancing Rune Weapon costs 60 Runic Power, so you often can't pop it at the beginning of a fight.
Glyph of Dark Succor: This Glyph only works if you're in Frost or Unholy presence. Great for solo questing to heal yourself a fair chunk between fights, but useless for tanking.
Glyph of Death Grip: This Glyph increases the range of Death Grip from 30 to 35 yards. It has some situational use while tanking, but you should be able to position yourself 5 yards closer if need be.
Glyph of Hungering Cold: Hungering Cold is a Frost talent that a Bloody Tank can't get.
Glyph of Pestilence: This Glyph increases the range of your Pestilence to 15 yards (50% increase). Quite nice if you are tanking trash with diseases and have a caster standing further off. But overall of minor use.
Glyph of Pillar of Frost: Pillar of Frost is another Frost talent us Bloody Tanks can't get.
Glyph of Rune Tap: Healing your whole party for 5% of their maximum health every 30 seconds is nothing to sneeze at. Definitely a must-have Glyph for Bloody Tanks.
Glyph of Strangulate: Increases the silence duration to 7 seconds. However as Strangulate has a 2 minute cooldown, there really is no use for this Glyph in Heroics.
Glyph of Vampiric Blood: This Glyph is a double edged sword. On the one hand it increases the Vampiric Blood healing bonus from 25% to 40%, which is very nice. On the other hand, you no longer get the temporary 15% maximum health boost to buffer yourself until the next heal lands. In both cases, your Rune Tap lands for roughly the same amount. (Both heal about 14% of your total health, unglyphed Rune Tap doing slightly more at 14.375%). If your healer is still alive, this Glyph will give you a huge boost. If your healer is dead, you may be better off without the Glyph.

In summary, there are about 5 good Glyphs and 2 situational Glyphs that Bloody Tanks can benefit from. Again in the age of Cataclysm, there are no wrong choices in those 7 Glyphs (the other Major Glyphs ARE wrong choices).
I would suggest at the very least to take Glyph of Rune Tap. Beyond that, take your pick from Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon, Glyph of Vampiric Blood, Glyph of Bone Shield or Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell.

Prime Glyphs

2011-06-22T07:00:00.000-04:00

Glyphs are an easy way to increase our abilities and utility, sometimes on the fly with some Dust of Disappearance. Often you can come by most popular Glyphs for around 20-50 gold on the Auction House, so it is definitely within everyone's reach to get their Glyph slots populated with something that helps us do what we do best: Getting attention while taking a beating for the group.

Glyph of Death Coil: If you are specced into Lichborne, this Glyph will increase your healing by 15%, which is not a bad deal. If you are not specced into Lichborne, the value of this Glyph is very limited. Our Runic Power would be better put to use in Rune Strikes.
Glyph of Death Strike: This Glyph has some situational use. When your Runes are on cooldown, you should be using Rune Strike on every GCD for the additional threat and damage it offers. However, that being said, this is basically free damage to an ability we use a lot, so definitely a solid choice.
Glyph of Death and Decay: This turns our staple AoE threat from 10 seconds into 15 seconds. With a 30 second cooldown, that means it could be up 50% of the time. While its damage isn't great, the threat from DnD cannot be beat, and is often enough to stay ahead of DPS on AOE fights.
Glyph of Frost Strike: This has absolutely no use for us as only Frost DKs have this ability.
Glyph of Heart Strike: Heart Strike is a staple of our rotation, especially on trash with multiple mobs. This is basically a free 30% damage
Glyph of Howling Blast: Again useless to us as only Frost DKs can spec into this.
Glyph of Icy Touch: This Glyph increases the damage of Frost Fever (even applied through Outbreak) by 20%. If you tank with diseases up on trash and use Pestilence to spread them, you may find some minor use from this. But it pales in comparison to the value of Glyph of Death and Decay for threat.
Glyph of Obliterate: This Glyph is great for DPS if you're Frost, however as Blood we should use our Frost and Unholy Runes on Death Strike, not Obliterate.
Glyph of Raise Dead: This Glyph is great for Unholy DKs who have a permanent pet. But for the limited up-time of our pets (often to be sacrificed for Death Pact), this is not worth it.
Glyph of Rune Strike: Great Glyph for Bloody Tanks. Rune Strike is a large part of our rotation, and what we spend most of our Runic Power on. More crits equal more threat.
Glyph of Scourge Strike: To follow the Glyphs for Frost and Heart Strike, this is the Unholy's signature Strike. Has no value for us at all.

To sum this up, there are five Prime Glyphs that provide value for us, and none of them are really the wrong choice. For running Heroics, I can highly advice the Glyph of Death and Decay and Glyph of Heart Strike for the additional multi-target threat. DPS isn't always considerate on what target to attack, nor do they ever all focus on the same mob.

That leaves Glyph of Death Strike, Glyph of Rune Strike and Glyph of Death Coil, all of which are good options. Though you may get more overall use out of the first two than the latter, which is very situational.

Patch 4.2 for Bloody Tanks

2011-06-18T07:00:00.005-04:00

Patch 4.2 will be upon us soon (MMO champion pegs it at June 28th and Boubouille is usually on the mark), so let me summarize what will be in it for Bloody Tanks.

General
There's a new daily quest hub in Hyjal called the Molten Front which, after many hours and weeks of doing dailies, will provide three vendors with some nice tanking gear. The vendors can be unlocked using 125 Marks of the World Tree. I'll leave it to other sites to give you the full lowdown on how to unlock these.

Dalek Bloombeard

Ricket's Gun Show, Parry/Mastery bracers
Masterwork Elementium Deathblade, two-handed sword with Mastery/Haste that can be crafted by Blacksmiths. (So you need to buddy up with a Blacksmith for one of these. Unless you are a Blacksmith, you don't need to unlock this yourself)

Ayla Shadowstorm

Moonwell Phial, a trinket with Stamina and an on-use Dodge

Varlan Highbough

Nemesis Shell Band, a ring with Dodge/Expertise
Lylagar Horn Ring, a ring with Parry/Mastery
Relic of Tortolla, a Relic with Parry and Expertise

As you can see there's some nice iLevel 365 items to be had for us Bloody Tanks. Though I wonder about some of the itemization (I'm looking at you Relic of Tortolla. In patch 4.2, Relic of Khaz'goroth will be available for Justice Points, and provide more value with its Mastery)

Classes: General

Many crowd control abilities no longer cause creatures to attack players when they are cast. The creature will not attack the player when the crowd control wears off, and nearby creatures will not become hostile to the player either. However, if a visible player gets too close to the target creature, the creature will remember and attack the player when the crowd control effect wears off. The intent is to make it easier for dungeon groups to manage crowd control assignments and pulling packs of hostile NPCs. The abilities affected by this change are: Hibernate, Entangling Roots, Wyvern Sting (will still cause hostility when it begins to deal damage), Freezing Trap, Polymorph, Repentance, Shackle Undead, Blind, Hex, Bind Elemental, Banish, Seduction.

This change is great for those PUGs where you can't count on the DPS to know which end of their weapon they should aim towards the mobs. Mage sheeps before the Hunter's trap has armed? Mark hex, and Shaman goes into action before other marks are assigned? No aggro, no problem. So CC can set up their stuff, and when all is said and done, we are free to pull the group. Hardcore players are complaining about the game dumbing down, but unfortunately these scenarios are all too common in LFD.

Death knights, paladins, and warriors no longer receive any bonus to their chance to Dodge from Agility. Their base chance to dodge is now a fixed 5%.
Death knights, Paladins, and Warriors now receive 27% of their Strength bonuses as Parry rating, up from 25%. This conversion still only applies to Strength above and beyond their base Strength.

I've discussed this before, with patch 4.2 Agility will become completely useless for us. (And vice versa, Strength will become next to useless for Druids, giving only 1 AP instead of 2 AP like Agility)

Dungeons & Raids

A host of dungeon information is now built into the user interface via the all-new Dungeon Journal. This feature can be accessed via a new button in the Navigation tray from anywhere in the world. Boss background story, encounter details, abilities, and loot can be viewed with the Dungeon Journal for all bosses which have been integrated into the new system (this includes bosses for all Cataclysm dungeons and raids). Additional dungeons are planned to be incorporated in future updates.

This will help out with naming abilities for bosses when you want people to move or interrupt. And it's an easy Atlas Loot replacement for boss loot.

Zul'Gurub
All cauldron buffs are now usable while mounted.
High Priestess Kilnara's death now turns off the flaming tiki mask gauntlet.
High Priest Venoxis's death now removes the poison from the plants at the start of the dungeon.

These are some nice quality of life improvements for ZG. Nothing game breaking or nerfing; just making it easier to get back in after a wipe.

Items

If a player wins a Need roll under the Need Before Greed system on a Bind on Equip item, the item will become Soulbound to that player. The item will remain unbound if won via a Greed roll.

This'll be great for those ninjas that roll Need on a BoE, only to auction it off later for a tidy profit.

As you can see, there are no specific class changes for Bloody Tanks, which may be just as well, because as it stands, we're doing pretty good and any change would just as likely be a nerf.

Talents: Unholy

2011-06-14T07:00:00.002-04:00

To wrap up the series of talent posts we're going to look at what the Unholy tree has to offer for us Bloody Tanks. Unholy seems to be the preferred tree for many Blood DKs to go into for the extra talents, and there's some sweet deals to be had here.

Tier 1
We start off with Unholy Command, an old favorite of mine I had to do away with when I changed into Lichborne and Endless Winter. Death Grip is useful on casters that do not want to come into range, or when you accidentally lose threat on a mob and it starts heading towards a DPS. Or in any situation where you need an extra taunt (The four crocs during Lockmaw in the Lost City of the Tol'vir being on the healer for example), the lower cooldown makes Death Grip available sooner. Definitely not a bad talent to take.

Next up is Virulence, increasing your disease damage by 10% per talent point. If you are religious about applying diseases, and spreading them on trash packs, this talent will be worth your while. The extra damage translates into more threat, keeping you far ahead of the DPS.

Last in the first Unholy tier is Epidemic, which increases the duration of our diseases. Again, if you're tanking with diseases (which you should be doing on the boss regardless), having them last an extra 12 seconds is nothing to sneeze at. This will allow an extra Death Strike rather than having to re-apply your diseases.

Tier 2
There are three options in the second tier of Unholy, but only one of them is really worthwhile for Blood tanking. Morbidity increases the damage of your Death Coil and Death and Decay. Death and Decay is something you should use on every pull with more than one mob as it provides some really good AOE threat . Death Coil is great when you are at range and have some spare Runic Power. I try and shoot a few Death Coils towards the Invoked Flaming Spirits during Drahga Shadowburner in Grim Batol.

Desecration creates a circle under the target of your Plague Strike, slowing them by 50%. While it has its uses, it's not worth spending talent points on for tanking. Being a melee class, I like to be in the thick of it, rather than have mobs chase me slowly; I can't build much threat when I'm ranged.

Last in this tier is Resilient Infection, which gives you free Runes if your diseases are dispelled. Which for instancing should be almost never, so don't waste your points here.

And that concludes my look at the Bloody Tank talent options. As you can see there is quite a bit of play in where to spend your points. Do you want to have your interrupts always available? Or do you want your diseases to last longer? Or maybe spend all your talents in the Blood tree to get the optional items from there.

Good luck spending your points, and leave a comment if you have any questions and I will address them.

Talents: Frost

2011-06-10T11:15:00.000-04:00

Now that we've spent at least 31 talents in the Blood tree, let's look at the other trees to see what goodies we can snag to assist us in tanking. Again I must note that I'm doing this from a 5-man instance perspective and not a raiding perspective. This is not the raid spec you are looking for *waves hand*

As the minimum needed for the Blood tree is 31 points, I'll go into Frost up to ten points. However more often than not, you will spend a few more points in Blood, or split your points between Frost and Unholy, so adjust accordingly. This is the age of Cataclysm; there is no one cookie-cutter spec. There is only the one right spec for you and your play style.

Tier 1
Let's get the last talent out of the way first. Nerves of Cold Steel does nothing for us. We're a two-handed weapon kinda tank. Going to two one-handed weapons will not work for us. (There is some debate ongoing and people looking at it but don't, just don't. Leave that up to the Elitist Jerks to figure out)

Our next option is Runic Power Mastery. This talent increases your Runic Power pool from 100 to 130. There is no huge need for us to grow our Runic Power pool beyond 100, however there is a niche use in a 2nd tier talent that makes having 120 Runic Power quite powerful. Consider this a filler talent to reaching the 2nd tier in Frost.

The final option in Frost is Icy Reach, which increases the range of Icy Touch and Chains of Ice by 10 yards, allowing us to pull from 30 yards away. I prefer opening with an Icy Touch to get some threat started as the target walks towards me and I can engage in melee. Definitely not a make-it or break-it talent, but useful in its own way.

Tier 2
Annihilation does absolutely nothing for us. Obliterate should not be part of your tanking rotation at any point in time. Your Unholy and Frost runes should be saved for Death Strikes. Skip this talent.

Next is Lichborne which is an interesting talent for Bloody tanks. While the immunity to Charm, Fear and Sleep effects make this sound like a PvP talent (which it may be for others, I do not dabble in the arcane arts of PvP), for us tanks it could mean another defensive cooldown. If you save up 120 Runic Power (here is where the extra Runic Power comes in handy) and hit Lichborne, followed by three Death Coils targeting yourself, you will heal yourself for a fair amount in those 10 seconds. Assuming around 7000 Attack Power, each Death Coil will heal you just short of 11K. Vampiric Blood and the Glyph of Death Coil could boost this to around 15K. Nothing to sneeze at in a pinch.

Next up in the second tier is On a Pale Horse, which reduces movement-slowing effects a little bit, and increases mounted speed. The mount speed increase is slight, as most people are in a guild of at least level 3 which provides Mount Up. Don't bother with this talent for any tanking reason.

Lastly in Tier 2 is Endless Winter, which makes Mind Freeze free. With the current instances being what they are, and the odds of finding a DPS that knows how to interrupt and doing so at the appropriate time being slim to none, this one is almost mandatory. It's not that we cannot afford the 20 Runic Power, especially with 130 Runic Power at our command when we're topped off, but rather we cannot afford to find ourselves with less than 20 Runic Power when the crucial time for the interrupt is there. If you're going to use LFD for random dungeons, please take this talent and take care of the interrupts for the group.

That sums up the Frost tree for this post. My current spec goes into Lichborne and Endless Winter for the added utility. However next post we will look at what the Unholy tree has to provide, as there is plenty utility there as well.

Talents Part III

2011-06-06T14:30:00.000-04:00

Time to look at the final three tiers of Blood talents to get our tanking build setup.

Tier 5
We start tier 5 off with a strong talent, Rune Tap. Converting a single Blood (or Death) Rune into 10% of your health is nothing to sneeze at, even with a 30 second cooldown. Use that at every cooldown when you're not at max health; your healer will appreciate it too.

Next up is Will of the Necropolis, a three point talent. It's initial function, and what I use it for mostly, is to reset Rune Tap's cooldown, and make it a freebie for 8 seconds when you dip below 30% of your max health. In addition to that, it reduces damage taken by 25%, which slows your untimely demise. When this procs, hit Rune Tap immediately to boost your health. If your healer is struggling, use the next talent first to boost the heals from your healer and your Rune Tap.

Vampiric Blood is our equivalent of the Warrior's Last Stand. Except we only get 15% instead of 30%, however in return we receive 25% increased healing, allowing our healer to bring us back up with less heals. Extremely useful when things are going south. Hit this, then Rune Tap if it's off cooldown or if Will of the Necropolis has proc'd it. And maybe try and get a Death Strike in there for some healing with a nice Blood Shield.

Tier 6
Tier 6 starts off with Improved Death Strike. Death Strike is a staple of our rotation, especially with this talent increasing the damage output by 90%, and providing 45% more healing. (Note that the 45% more healing is only on the 20% of damage taken in the last 5 seconds. If that doesn't exceed 7% of your health, you still only heal for 7% of your health, and not 10%)

The other tier 6 talent is Crimson Scourge. I personally like the 40% damage increase for a bit of spot threat in the beginning of a trash pull on all the mobs. That helps especially if the DPS are targetting a different mob than you are. The 10% freebie chance only matters if you are using diseases (more on this in a future post), so you may not get as much use out of that. In a boss fight this may result in a few free Blood Boils. Needless to say this talent is optional. Most people choose it, but you may not find it beneficial for your play style.

Tier 7
Last in the Blood tree is Dancing Rune Weapon. This is a staple of Blood tanking; having a second blade do the same attacks we do, and gaining an additional 20% parry chance is a great dps boost or defensive cooldown. With the glyph, this is also a great fight-opener; you get the extra threat, and the additional parry allows your healer a few seconds to position before you get pounded.

That's the Blood tier. Next post we'll look into spending some of our extra points in Frost or Unholy for some extra goodies.

Talents Part II

2011-06-03T18:03:00.000-04:00

Last time we looked at the first two tiers, and spent around 12 talent points. So now it's time to look at tiers 3 and 4 and see what we must take, and what options are available to us.

Tier 3
There are two big items in tier 3, and we'll start with our staple Bone Shield. This is pretty much a mandatory talent for any self-respecting DK tank. Pop this up about a minute before a big fight (If it's off cooldown, I usually put this up at the end of a fight in preparation for the next), and for the first few hits, but for at least 6 seconds (thanks to a 2-second cooldown in between charges), you will get 20% less damage. During boss fights, this should be used as often as possible to save your healer some mana.

Next up is Toughness, which just like the Paladin and Warrior talents increases our armor. Not much to say on this, as this is one of those obvious talents that cannot really be skipped.

Also in the third tier we have Blood-Caked Blade, which is a freebie hit for 25% weapon damage plus 12.5% per disease. While no talent is wrong in the Cataclysm era, this one is hazy at best. To get any real value out of this, you would need to keep your diseases up on the target you are attacking (including trash packs), and then it only adds about 1-2% DPS to your total for the fight. If you have points to spare, and religiously use diseases, this is an option, but skip it otherwise.

Lastly in this tier is Abomination's Might, which increases the Attack Power of all party/raid members by 10%, and your own Strength by 2%. This buff is shared with Paladins, MM Hunters and Enhancement Shamans. I used to run with this, but I removed it in my most recent build. It's a nice buff that's not always provided by the group and the 2% Strength, which is personal only and not provided by others in party, adds Parry & AP and thus DPS and threat. If you have two points to place somewhere, it won't hurt you to do so here, but it isn't mandatory.

Tier 4
We've now spent around 16-1 points and can move into tier 4 where we start off with Sanguine Fortitude. Icebound Fortitude is a great defensive cooldown, and increasing the damage reduction to 50% is something you cannot in good faith turn down, costing no Runic Power is a nice freebie. Think last phase of Admiral Ripsnarl when he starts summoning vapors constantly, this can save your group from you wiping.

In the middle of the fourth tier we have Blood Parasite, which could provide for some freebie heals during longer fights. The opinions on usefulness of this talent vary, but most people take it as the heals can be quite nice, and heal anyone nearby. The downside is that you need to be in combat for the Bloodworms to pop and heal. If you are out of combat, they will just despawn when their 20 seconds are up. In general I would pick this talent, unless you are desperate to spend points elsewhere.

Last in tier 4 is Improved Blood Presence, which is mandatory to become crit-immune. We can thank Elune for no longer needing to stack defense to become crit immune. This talent has taken that place, and you cannot skip on this as a tank. The rune regeneration is a nice bonus which gives us faster Death Strikes.

Talents

2011-05-31T14:01:00.001-04:00

I figure if I am going to provide all manner of information, I'd start at the basics, the talents, and build up from there.

The Elitist Jerks forum for DK tanking goes into detail for raiding, but leaves the heroic DK tank in the dust:

Discussion here should be on DK endgame raid tanking, both 10 and 25-man, biased to progression tanking (as opposed to taking a more casual attitude to your tanking role).

As I'm sure the raiding DK tank can read through that and follow that, I want to focus more on us bloody tanks who stick with Heroics.
I will split this out into three parts for the Blood tree, and then another for Frost/Unholy, and once I'm done I will combine them into a one-page guide for easy reference.

Tier 1
In the first tier we have one mandatory talent, Blade Barrier. You want this, and you want to keep your Blood Runes on cooldown all the time. Use Heart Strike or Rune Tap if it's available and you're not at 100% health. 6% damage reduction is nothing to sneeze at, and there is no cooldown on this aside from runes refreshing. With practice you should be able to keep this buff up 90% of the time.

To get to the next tier, we have two more options, Butchery and Bladed Armor. Butchery is pretty useless, even in fast paced heroics. The runic power regeneration (2 per 5 seconds) means it would take you one minute and 15 seconds to get one free Rune Strike. Gaining 10 RP after killing an enemy, especially on trash packs, could mean you start the next fight off with full RP, but it builds up fast enough normally that this talent has very little value.

Bladed Armor gives us 6 Attack Power for every 180 armor we have, which is a nice synergy for a tank. We get as much armor as we can, which gives us more AP, which in turn helps our DPS and implicitly our threat. Go ahead and put 3 points in there to get to the next level.

Tier 2
Here we find Improved Blood Tap, reducing the cooldown of Blood Tap from 60 seconds to 30 seconds. Blood Tap will refresh one of our Blood Runes as a Death Rune and Activate it immediately. Useful in a pinch to fire off a Rune Tap if it's available, or a Death Strike if there's another Frost, Unholy or Death Rune. Well worth spending two points on. (Though thoughts on this talent are mixed, and you will find many Blood tanks who do not have this. If this is not something you use, you could skip out on this talent)

Next up is Scent of Blood, which allows our melee swings to generate Runic Power. Dodging and Parrying is what we do for a living, or at least try to do as often as possible. There is some discussion around how many points to put in here, but most settle on 2 points. It should be up often enough to gain maximum efficiency from two melee hits rather than three. If you feel you are short on Runic Power, or that your Dodge/Parry is on the low side (below 20% combined), you could put a third point in here.

Scarlet Fever is our next option, and well worth investing in for Heroics where we can't always count on others to provide this debuff (Warlock, Warrior, Hunter pet (Bear, Carrion bird)). I will go into trash packs later (where we can tank diseaseless), but for the boss, taking 10% less damage is a must. So keep that Plague Strike up on the boss.

Lastly there is Hand of Doom, reducing Strangulate cooldown. I don't know any Blood DK that would spec into this. The reduction is from 2 to 1 minutes, so it's still a hefty cooldown for a ranged interrupt/silence, in addition to it costing a Blood Rune. Mind Freeze, with a 10 second cooldown, is our main interrupt, which suffices most of our Heroic needs.
I must say that on occasion (High Priestess Azil in The Stonecore's Force Grip) a ranged interrupt could be useful. But not enough to spend two talent points on.

I'll move on to Tier 3 and 4 next time. If you have any comments or suggestions so far, let me know.

Agility

2011-05-26T13:26:00.003-04:00

From http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2723732#classes:

Dodge: Death Knights, paladins, and warriors no longer receive any bonus to their chance to dodge from Agility. Their base chance to dodge is now a fixed 5%.

Parry: Death Knights, paladins, and warriors now receive 27% of their Strength bonuses as parry rating, up from 25%. This conversion still only applies to Strength above and beyond their base Strength.

So as of patch 4.2, Agility will be totally useless for tanks. If you're trying to get that BiS weapon or other item with Agility now, don't bother, and go for the 2nd best with Strength on it instead. For me personally (with a measly 173 Agility), this won't make a huge dent. I think I will lose out on about 0.4% dodge.
In return for my 3332 Strength (less 194 base Strength), I will gain 0.02 * 3138 = 62 parry rating, which amounts to 0.35% parry.
So overall I'll lose 0.05% avoidance before diminishing returns.

However as all DK tanks probably have an abundance of parry. the net effect will be a bit larger due to diminishing returns. We should really have more dodge gear options. Overall though, I'm happy with this change. We get compensated through our Strength on the loss of dodge from Agility. And Strength has the added benefit of providing us attack power, which means more DPS, which means more threat.

This does bring one question to mind though. Will the tank leg enchant (Charscale Leg Armor) get its Agility component removed and replaced with something more useful? Physical DPS already pick Dragonscale Leg Armor, so there really is no use for Agility on the Charscale enhancement.

Spectrum

2011-05-25T18:53:00.003-04:00

Varanos is my main tank. I figure I'd be up front about that so you can check out how I spec, and what I'm wearing. It may not always be the best; I experiment with gear, so what my armory profile says may not always be what I tank with.
You will notice I am not wearing any raid gear. I gave up on structured raiding during the second half of BC. Dedicating three to four hours a few nights a week was not something I could justify towards my family anymore. I enjoy playing, but family comes first. I am no longer in a big guild either. FDIC is our family banking guild, and we are slowly leveling it up to guild level 4.
Which means I spend most of my time in the LFD tool with PUGs. My wife and oldest son have 85's, and my daughter is in her upper 70s, so grouping with each other happens whenever possible. But for the most part, we rely heavily on the LFD tool to give us a group that doesn't fail. More on that later.

My gear level is at 351 now, and I feel I have reached a stamina level where I can gear into things besides stamina. (Unbuffed, I clocked in around 154K). I'm currently playing with Mr. Robot to see what it is telling me to do. Unfortunately one of the items it wants me to acquire is Seliza's Spear, a two-handed pole-arm with agility, crit and mastery. And that is where my quest for DK tanking information started. There's Elitist Jerks information, and pwnwear forums, but I grew up a Hunter with BRK and now WHU. I like that style of information, and I am hoping to convey Death Knight tanking the same way on this blog.

So my next post will be about agility and what the true value of it is for Death Knights. My initial personal reaction was to scoff at being told to wear an agility item. But I want to make sure my instincts are correct, and not lose out on being a better tank just because I didn't listen to others.

First post

2011-05-25T15:46:00.001-04:00

Just posting something to get things rolling. After much Googling I was unable to find any useful information on Blood DK tanking in blog form, so I am stepping in to try and fill the hole.

Comments are fully open. If you stumble upon this site, feel free to leave me a comment