Most of the reasons you'd use these cds are on predictable timers, which means it's not very hard to fit them into your rotation without breaking much of a sweat. Outside of that, yes ERW is an option, as is Blood Tap. The later is much more useful for generating the single rune necessary to pop most blood cds, and has a shorter cd itself.

I often find that the only cooldown I really need to use is Vampiric Blood; I usually keep blood tap ready in the event that I need vampiric blood up instantly.

The HP that Mark of Blood returns pales in comparison to the amount that bosses actually hit for, (4% of 50k is only 2k per hit, where some bosses swing for 20k+). Yes, it's certainly useful sometimes, but if you're about to be gibbed, it's not something that will save your life.

Rune tap is off GCD, so it's not a big deal to fit into the actual rotation, barring you have the blood rune up. Sometimes your blood rune won't be up; you can use blood tap for this, but you won't have rune tap for the next minute in case you need to put up VB. ERW is certainly an option if you're about to be gibbed, but generally your healers should be on top of things and keeping you up.

I hate to be brutal, but... you are terrible. This spec is terrible. I barely know where to begin.

1) You did not take Ebon Plaguebringer. You are denying your guild a raid damage buff, especially if you do 10-man content and a Boomkin is not a certainty for attending. Rectify this.

2) You haven't taken Rage of Rivendare. You are denying yourself threat, and as Unholy you are going to have threat problems anyway. Rectify this.

3)You're unholy main and you already have a good spell-damage eating gimmick. Spell Deflection is beyond pointless. Drop it.

4) You have a bunch of imcomplete talents. Fill out Improved Icy Touch (which actually is a good talent for a tank to take, so credit for that at least), drop Rune Tap entirely as it will give you more points to fill out things elsewhere. Ditto Scent of Blood, if you have Dirge you don't need it.

5) You have two-handed weapon specialization. You are dual-wielding. Why are you specced into this.

6) Don't tank with a resilience trinket. It gives you no avoidance at all.

7) You need an asston more Expertise. Your attacks are being parried and dodged like crazy right now and it will keep your threat low. More hit rating would also help.

8) Don't gem for parry and dodge - you'll get plenty of that on your gear. Focus on hit stats or on pure stamina/defense.

And finally, of course, the big overshadowing one:

Don't god damn dual-wield while tanking. It eviscerates your threat, you don't actually require the extra defense rating from the weapons to reach uncrittability, and you are roughly tripling to quadrupling the chance that the boss will parry, thus hitting you at an accelerated rate (and with your low expertise, this is even worse.) And at the very least, if you absolutely insist on dual-wielding despite all the drawbacks and despite the fact that the developers themselves have said they intend for DKs to tank with two-handers, at least do yourself a favor and main-hand Stoneguard so your specials do more damage. I'll be honest, I really hope you didn't take that from a Warrior or Paladin who could have used it as an upgrade...

Read over this thread. Read over Suno's Fireside Chat. Get yourself a proper two-hander, preferably one with lots of threat or expertise. Use the wealth of information available here. Learn how to cause threat properly, learn how our stats work and learn to tank properly. It will make your own game experience, and the experience of those you raid with, more pleasant.

Now, all this being said:

Hey now, Unholy has 99 problems but Bone Shield ain't one. It lasts a fair amount of time with avoidance, it scales wonderfully to content, and it can be applied before a pull. It's much more useful than Unbreakable Armor, which doesn't effectively scale to content. Plus there's the improved Anti-Magic Shell + AMZ, which while a gimmick can be a useful gimmick in a few places.

As far as cooldowns go, I'd rank it Frost<Unholy<Blood, if only because Unbreakable Armor has never really been good and Lichborne got eviscerated in 3.1. Bone Shield, as a tanking cooldown, is acceptable.

To be fair, she has more HP than that in Frost Presence; even if you log out in FP, the Armory doesn't render the HP buff. She'd have something like 27k HP all told, which is still pretty low (although I managed - barely - to offtank the Siege and the Antechamber with that much. I've been trying to gear up like hell before I really attempt to tank anything beyond Auriaya, though.)

She still needs to correct a lot of problems (and you pointed out some that I didn't touch on), but these aren't really issues.

First time poster, been lurking for a while.

This may have been discussed already and maybe I just have not searched the forums thoroughly enough, but I am interested in seeing some more discussion about the impact on DK tanking from the changes that are coming to us with the next patch. I have my own ideas about what may happen, just curious what other people are thinking at this stage.

For example, what the dominant tanking spec will be. How will we compare to the other tanking classes. The impact to DK tanks on survivability/viability given the reduction to stamina and armor (veteran of the third war, toughness). Also, any other thoughts that more experienced players than myself may have would be very interesting.

Wait hold the train here. I have always been led to believe that Resilience only plays a part in PVP. are you trying to say this is also a factor in Tanking? if so how does this scale w/a tank that is already critt immune from the standard 540 D Cap?

If this is the case where is the priority of resilience fall in line with other tanking statt factors IE D rating, Dodge, Parry, Stam?

Resilience works in PvE exactly as it does in PvP, currently anyway. It's faster from a ratings point perspective at making you uncrittable, but it's an undesirable stat for two reasons:

First, it provides no other benefit other than uncrittability. Defense gives you avoidance; resilience does nothing else.
Second, it's not found on gear with tanking stats. Resilience is only found on PvP gear, so you're getting a load of stamina, some resilience, some strength, and maybe some attack power or crit or haste. No expertise, not much hit, no avoidance.

The only pieces of resilience gear a DK tank should use are the pvp weapons for the massive stamina bonus along with the sockets, and the 10,000 honor pvp shoulder enchant if they are maxing stamina, as it gives 30 stamina and 15 resilience. I use the shoulder enchant, so it effectively lowers the 540 defense cap to 536. Now normally I am much higher than this anyway, but for some fights, like Hodir for example, I switch around gear to gain frost resistance. Right now I sit at 537 defense for Hodir, and remain uncritable due to the 15 resilience from the shoulder enchant.

Hello! First time poster here. I am having a lot of trouble with AOE threat. I realize that this is an area where a DK should excel, but I am having a lot of trouble. I dont know if it is just me, or I am using a bad rotation, or what. I have no idea, which is why I came here... for help!

Example: Thorim

I was assigned War Bringers, and I had a VERY tough time. Granted, it was my first time ever tanking a 25 Thorim (I am trialing in a guild) but I felt like I was just doing terrible. I was having a lot of trouble grabbing initial aggro on the WBs. Unless I had a DnD down, it seemed like my initial aggro was more or less, useless. Do you guys have tips for picking up initial aggro when my DnD is on CD? I also had problems FINDING my targets, as well as maintaining them. I think I was going overkill on threat before I dropped one WB to find another.

I have a lot of trouble with adds, whereas I tank bosses a lot better. Is there a macro for finding the different WBs (ones I am not already targeting)? Is there a way to practice holding adds? I do fine when I have DnD down, but IT>>PS>>pest>>BB OB and RS with HB doesnt seem to work for me very well.

Thanks,

Tay

Replace your glyph of Icebound Fortitude that is useless for a tank with the glyph of Howling Blast, then, do a rotation like this one:
HB -> OB -> FS -> BB -> BB -> FS.
You just have to time your HB for each wave of small dwarfs.

@Tay

Like you I tank warbringers during thorim so maybe i can give you some advise.
Zoom your camera pretty far out and turn it up. you should be able to get almost the entire arena in your view by watching from above thorim's head. This lets you select and taunt every single warbringer that comes before they reach the center.
Dark command when they land, and hit em a few times should give plenty of aggro to make sure they die before you lose them.

Also dont care to much about a loss small dwarf now and then. there non elite and even cloth should not have issues surviving them.

@Tay
If you want fast aggro then it's a good idea to start with HB like Afabar said. I'm not a fan of OB but it's one way to
go. If you're tanking non-elites then skip Pestilence altogether. For elites it may be a good idea, depending on
how long the fight is going to be. BB is good and with Blood Tap you can do it even three times in a row if need be.
When you've used your boils then it's not long till your HB is ready again. After that not long till DnD.

About your talents: Icy Talons and also the improved version is usually not needed when raiding because there
probably is a shaman around with Windfury Totem (or some such) that overrides Talons making it useless.
I'd put them in Virulence and Bladed Armor, or just the latter. Two handed weapon specialization doesn't help aoe either.
It's not bad but for (at least the pre-patch) frost build Dark Conviction (+crit for all dmg) is better than 2h spec.

Glyphs: Icebound Fortitude is a PVP glyph (semi-good at that) when you want to have some defense regardless
of having a high dps build. Obliterate is ok but that's for single target encounters. As a tank you just want
to keep aggro first and dealing damage is fine but secondary. You have FS and RS for that too.
DnD and HB for major glyphs and Blood Tap for minor (instead of either Raise Dead or Horn of Winter).

Once you have your flock around you and you start aoeing it will be very hard to pull them off you.
Things may get hard if you have trigger happy dps behind you but it's ok to tell them to wait till you've collected
all the dwarves together. If one manages to escape your aoe then use Dark Command or better yet Death Grip.
Just don't spend too much doing that or otherwise you'll lose the whole group because of interruption in aoe
damage. Grouping with random people for heroics it's often hard for when someone uses
Army of the Dead suddenly or starts pulling before tank. In guild raids those things shouldn't be a problem though.
Also your gauntlets could use that +2% threat +some parry enchant, can't remember the name
Your gear is quite good otherwise, there's plenty of avoidance and stamina.

Your gear and spec are fine for heroics (I'd take hungering cold for emergency CC but that's me)

There's not all that much of a rotation as frost for tanking trash. DnD -> glyphed HB, blood boil.. should give you all the threat you'd ever want, save a KM proc from the previous pull for HB on the next pull. The endgame tanking thread contains a pretty solid rotation. Frost strike spam on bosses, pull 2.5k dps as the tank in heroics.

Blood's AOE tanking is pretty meh. Tanking ulduar trash for me is relatively easy with DnD -> IT/PS/pest then DS/HS spam with a pest tossed in here and there to keep diseases up, but it does require pretty good gear to succeed and you're more or less constrained to using DnD on every single trash/AOE pull.

I don't see, why should waste a MJ Glyph on a spell you can only use every 30 seconds while playing as Frost DK. Glyph of DnD only enhances its Damage by 20%, maybe that's nice as Unholy tank, but seriously even then I prefer Glyph of UB over that one, because it's still useful in Single Target encounters whereas DnD is not. It's still very debatable if you should Glyph or even spec for only a single encounter. In my opinion that's not necessary, at least when it comes to Thorim. You can drop your DnD when it's ready, so it will aggro the little dwarves on every second wave. Granted that they don't have that much hit points, they'll usually die within a matter of seconds anyway and don't pose that much of a threat even to clothies. And apart from that there isn't really anything for what you need AoE-Threat. The Champions are being picked up by another tank and the Evokers are usually focused by melee and their damage is neglegible. So the only ones you really want to keep sticking to you are the Warbringers. You taunt them, you put your diseases up, Pest them, OB them and RS/FS them. You keep this rotation up until the next one arrives, so Glyph of OB is still very useful and a good one to keep.

If you are frost tanking Thorim arena it should be a joke. KM -> glyphed HB -> focus warbringers/evokers/champions/however your raid divides tanking them with ST attacks to keep them on you, use DnD when up.

Every single wave should have a KM and/or rime proc with glyphed HB waiting for you to press a button and gain an instant 8k threat on every mob.

If doing hard mode you may actually have to specifically target and taunt warbringers when MC ends so your priests don't get gibbed by them, but otherwise frost should almost be /afk for arena it's so easy.

My earlier post was more generally about aoe aggro. I don't know about Thorim because I haven't joined raids much and never as a tank.
I understand blood is generally considered to be better for a MT. DnD is good if you need plenty of aoe aggro.
Agreed that it's not often when the dps in your group will cause more threat but it just makes things easier for me.
For damage purposes and boss tanking OB glyph is better. After patch maybe even more so with changes to FS.
Anyway, currently both are good depending on the situation. A few days I grouped with an Ulduar geared dps person
(moonkin I think) who did 50% of all the damage in that heroic instance, my share was 20% and 15% each for the other
two dps. Still threat wasn't a problem there.

If I had my way even raids would have more use for HC and other situational tactics, even randomness (instead
of fixed mob locations and more or less fixed spawns). I figure a frost tank would do well in such situations.
Smaller raid groups, faster group gathering, more casual. Call them super heroics maybe But that's a subject for another discussion.

Quick question: As a tank how concerned should I be with reaching my HIT cap? I recently replaced a number of gems to ensure I was at HIT cap. My concern was to ensure I always had the highest threat possible. Would I be better replacing them with stam or mitigation gems or perhaps expertise? And if so what is the expertise cap?

What is the ideal gem stacking order for a frost DK tank?

Thank you in advance

I must have searched through 30-40 pages before i gave up. I am curious as to properly enchanting gloves.


The available enchants are:

18 = 180HP
2% Threat/10Parry = ?? / 0.11%Parry

How can i rationalize the 2% threat off of Armsmen compared to 180hp?

EDITED: Due to bad spelling on my part .

Right, it matters how much you value threat (which depend's on guild's dps skill).

6.5% is the soft cap for Expertise (26), after that you only remove parry from the swing table.

Hey, assign a hotkey to a targeting macro. I use a single macro for all of my targeting needs in Ulduar. I do the gauntlet, but have done the arena on Thorim before, so I'll add the mob you want to it. Basically, just spam the macro and it'll target the Warbringer as soon as it jumps down.

Can change the other names for your specific assignments -- Snaplasher to Storm Lasher, etc. None of these targets conflict with eachother, so this macro will work for just about everything you'll need to target quickly in Ulduar.

Snaplasher = Freya, Storm Lasher and Ancient Water Spirit are the others.
Strengthened Iron Roots = Freya + Tree
Bomb Bot = Mimiron
Void = Vezax Trash (The things that spawn at 50%)
Life Spark = XT Hard
Clockwork Mechanic = Mimiron Trash, Frost Turret guys that spawn out of the robots.
Dark Rune Warbringer = Thorim Arena. Dark Rune Champion is the other.

Just put this into a macro and assign it to a hotkey: