A Basic Guide to Death Knight Tanking

With the image of a frost armor adorned Arthas Menethil and his bad-ass runeblade ‘Frostmourne’ etched in their minds, legions of WoW players rolled Death Knights the minute Blizzard released World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King last month. As it turned out, this melee/caster, tank/DPS class isn’t easy to master and to this day most of the Death Knights I’ve met struggle with everything from ability/spell rotations while tanking, to understanding how to keep aggro on single or group pulls while tanking. Through this guide, I hope to simplify things and equip new Death Knights with the basic knowledge they need to better themselves.

First off, let me tell you a little about my experience with the class - I’ve played a DK since the minute the expansion released, like most of you (I’m a little obsessive that way), and I’ve tanked everything from Ramparts to 10-man Naxxaramas. I don’t claim to be the best tank around or even close, but I’ve read up quite extensively about how the class works and experimented enough to have a good idea of what works best, at least for me. With that out of the way, let’s get started…

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The Basics:

The first thing any Death Knight needs to understand is that your class is heavily dependant on cooldowns of abilities as well as runes - both of which are far too precious to waste. This means that it’s really important NOT to spam abilities or spells, else you’ll run out of runes/runic power/cooldowns and will be left sucking your thumb while mobs one-shot your party mates. You need to understand that abilities that cost a ton of runes (read: Death and Decay) should be used sparingly.

Another important thing to remember, is that gear plays a vital role in tanking. If you don’t have the required amount of damage mitigation, you’re going to be hit for a ton of damage and won’t survive the tougher instances. You NEED to take tanking seriously and work hard on accumulating gear, else don’t even bother with tanking. Getting your defense up to 540 should be your first goal, and there are quite a few pieces of gear that can help you with that.
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Basic Tanking Gear:

You’ve probably come across a ton of plate drops in WotLK, and only a few of them are viable for DK tanks. To help you out a little initially, the Tempered Saronite gear is highly recommended. This consists of four pieces that can be crafted cheaply by most Blacksmiths, namely the Tempered Saronite Helm, Tempered Saronite Breastplate, Tempered Saronite Gauntlets and Tempered Saronite Bracers . These four pieces rack up a good 253 defense rating and give you that little boost you need. I recommend it to all beginner tanks since it’s cost can be covered by a few hours worth of farming at most.

Another bunch of gear that’s great for new DK tanks, is the rep rewards you get from the Wyrmrest Accord. Before you bother with grinding reputation for any other faction, I recommend that you go all out with dailies and the Dragonblight quest chains to get to revered with Wyrmrest Accord, since they give you these fine pieces - Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions at Honored; and Breastplate of the Solemn Council, Sabatons of Draconic Vigor at Revered - all of which will last you through Naxx.

Apart from this, I suggest you get the Seal of the Pantheon which drops in the Normal Halls of Lightning. All this gear should form the backbone of your tanking set, and just pick up the rest from normal dungeons initially, and Heroics later. Once you stack up about 520+ defense, you can give the following Heroic instances a shot until you hit your defense cap - Violet Hold (if you read up on boss strategies, this place is easy), Gundrak and Drak’theron. If you farm these on a daily basis, you should have enough Emblems of Heroism to pick up your T7 Tanking pieces.

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Rotations:

Now that you know the basic gear you have to aim for, let me run you down through some basic rotations while tanking. First off, I recommend the following spec, since it’s the easiest to use and I’ve found it incredibly effective -

Feel free to swap skills around to personalize the build for yourself.

Using this build, my rotation is usually as follows -
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On multi-mob pulls -_
Death and Decay -> Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Blood Tap -> Pestilence -> Blood Boil -> Howling Blast etc….

This rotation is only possible when Blood tap isn’t on cooldown. When it is on cooldown, you skip casting Death and Decay, since it has a rather high price (three runes - one of each kind).

On single-mob pulls -
Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Blood Strike -> Howling Blast, etc…

A few additional tips:

Remember to use Rune/Frost Strike as a filler whenever you can, since its a good amount of extra threat with no runes required. With the changes coming with patch 3.0.8, Rune Strike should get roughly 50% more threat generated, so feel free to bring it up the priority list in your rotations.

Ensure that you don’t use Death and Decay when your rune pool is low, else you’ll handicap yourself badly.

Be sure to use Icebound Fortitude right in the beginning during larger pulls. This ensures that your healer gets some breathing room in case you get hit badly.

Most important of all - remember to watch loose mobs (mobs that are aggro’d on other party members - and I don’t mean off tanks). For such mobs, you’ve got 2 low cooldown Taunt abilities - Dark Command and Death Grip, which should allow you to draw them to you easily. Also, with the buff Dark Command’s going to get in 3.0.8 (30 extra cast range), it should become far easier to use.

In the mean while, I recommend that you check out our top DK add-on picks to give you that extra edge.