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Information below is outdated. Some talents and abilities have been changed significantly.

While Blizzard claims that Death Knights (DKs) are designed as a hybrid Tanking/DPS class, there is painfully little information out there about the ways in which DK’s can operate as effective tanks. This article will serve as a primer for Death knights as tanks, and a starting point for discussion and insight.

How others see you as a Tank

Death knights are often looked down upon as tanks, especially by other tanks. If you do roll a death knight tank remember that often a group will chose a druid, paladin or warrior over you. Some of the reasons for this are that because of the level 55 start, you will have less experience tanking than, lets say a prot warrior, who has been (probably) tanking since the early 10-20 level instances. In addition, you don't have a shield so all possible block avoidance is gone right off the bat.

Don't let that put you off though - as long as you grasp the basic concepts, follow the advice given in this article, apply some logic and sound thinking and have to confidence to get out there and develop your own style you'll be tanking as well as any Warrior, Paladin or Druid. Just be aware that Death Knights still carry the stigma of 'Death Knoobs' AND the mechanics of the class are still relatively unknown to the player base and it's something you'll have to break.

Tanking Basics

Main article: Tank

A tank has to do three things to be an effective member of a team. First and foremost, they must generate more threat than the healer on all targets. (Threat is the numerical value which is used to establish priority on the aggro table. The character at the top of the aggro table will be the focus of a mob’s attention.) The healer will generate threat on all enemies when they heal the tank, and it's the tank's responsibility to keep the enemies off the healer by staying ahead of them on threat. Second, they must survive. Survival is (at minimum) a two-person job; both the tank and the healer are responsible for survival. For the tank, survival comes either by avoiding hits, reducing the severity of incoming damage, or establishing a vast pool of hit points (thereby increasing their longevity in battle). Survival and out-threating the healer partially go hand-in-hand - with better mitigation the tank will require less healing, which means less threat for the healer. A tank's third responsibility is generating extra threat on the primary target to allow the damage dealers to kill it effectively. Note that it is not the tank's job to generate more threat than the damage dealers, it is their job to stay below the tank's threat.

The first two of these are the most important as if they fail at them then the tank or the healer will die and the group will wipe very shortly after. The third is also important in the long run, as if the damage dealers have to hold back then the enemies will die too slowly and the healer will run out of mana.

Another issue that many DK tanks have is the desicion to dual wield tanking swords or use a DPS 2-Handed Weapon. Originally, before patch 3.3 the only real DK tanking enchant available to runeforging was Rune of The Stoneskin Gargoyle, which enchanted 2-handers, making 2H the DK tanking weapons. However, with Patch 3.3, Rune of the Nerubian Carapace was added, giving a near equivalent enchant to 2 1-handers. Essentially, either works, but when dealing with hit-miss ratios and threat building, it is recommended to use a 2 hander.

Generating Threat and Holding Aggro

Main article: Threat

Unlike other tanks, death knights really only have one tank-exclusive threat-generating ability: Rune Strike. This is an on-next-attack ability that makes the next melee swing hit for 150% of regular damage and deal 175% bonus threat, for a total of 262.5% of the threat of a regular attack. This makes Rune Strike by far the strongest single-target threat ability, and should be used whenever possible.

A death knight tank will generally use the same rotation and abilities as a DPS death knight (itself dependent on spec) except that:

On multiple targets, Death and Decay should be used whenever possible, because it deals significant bonus threat.
Because of the constant Rune Strikes using up Runic Power, Death Coil and Frost Strike will be used less.

Frost Presence should always be used while tanking. The Presence increases armor contribution from items by 60% and total stamina by 6%.. The key dynamic is the increased threat generation. Frost Presence grants 2.0735x threat per 1 damage done (multiplied by the bonus threat from Rune Strike and Death and Decay). Frost Presence is the lynchpin of DK tanking. The dynamic allows a DK to tank without a shield (similar to a Druid’s Bear form). Because a DK can achieve high armor without a shield through Frost Presence, DKs can equip two-hand or dual-wield weapons, and thus significantly increasing their damage output relative to a Prot Warrior or Prot Paladin. It is this increased damage output that helps to generate threat (via damage) without the benefit of tree-specific talents possessed by Warriors and Paladins.

There are a few other abilities important to tanks: • Dark Command is a standard taunt. It commands the target to attack you, but has no effect if the target is already attacking you. Its short cool down (8 seconds) means that it can be used often. • Death Grip draws the target toward the DK and taunts the enemy, focusing its attacks on the caster for 3 second, as well as interrupting spell casting. As one of the signature abilities of the class, it's tempting to use this ability whenever possible. But Dark Command is the bread-and-butter taunt, because it has a much shorter cooldown. Use Death Grip if Dark Command is on cooldown or if you need to pull a caster mob into melee range. • Strangulate is a ranged silence. It will make a spellcasting mob run into melee range with you. • Mind Freeze is a standard interrupt. While DPS classes should be interrupting spells, too often they will forget, and the job will fall to you. • Army of the Dead summons ten ghouls to fight by your side for one minute or until killed. In 5-mans, a lot of Death Knights use this on bosses, but this is a gimmick, and a somewhat dangerous one. The ghouls will repeatedly taunt the boss, spinning it around and potentially exposing other party members to cleave or AoE attacks from the boss. There are two situations when the ability is actually useful: on very tough multiple-target packs, and to prevent a wipe. In either case, the ghouls will distract the enemies for a good 20-30 seconds, allowing your healers time to top everyone off and you to build up enough threat.

Survivability

A DK needs to survive in order to do his/her job of holding aggro. Not dying is always a plus, and since a tank earns his/her pay by getting beat up, let’s take a look at how a DK can best mitigate damage.

All DKs (regardless of spec) have some abilities that help survival:

• Icy Touch chills the target for X Frost damage and infects them with Frost Fever, a disease that reduces ranged, melee attack, and casting speed by 15% for 12 seconds. Every tank should get Improved Icy Touch, increasing the reduction to 20%.

• Mind Freeze is a spell interrupt. Useful on mobs that have a powerful attack with a long cast time.

• Death Strike deals 60% weapon damage plus X and heals the Death Knight for a percent of damage done for each of <his/her> diseases on the target. Core ability for Blood, occasionally useful for Frost and Unholy.

• Strangulate silences an enemy for 5 seconds. This is an instant cast with a 30 yard range and a two minute cool down. Very useful for drawing casters close.

• Death Pact sacrifices an undead minion, healing the Death Knight for 40% of his/her maximum health. Needs to be prepared in advance, since no tank should have a permanent ghoul.

• Icebound Fortitude freezes the Death Knight's blood to become immune to Stun effects and reduce all damage by 20% for 12 seconds. The amount of damage reduced can be increased by Defense. At 535 defense (which every tank should have), damage is reduced by about 45%.

• Anti-Magic Shell surrounds the DK with a shell that absorbs 75% of the damage dealt by harmful spells. Damage absorbed by shell energizes the DK with additional runic power. Lasts 5 sec. Useful for mobs that use a long-cast-time PBAoE spell, obviating the need to run away from the attack.

• Chains of Ice Shackles the target with frozen chains, reducing their movement to 5%. The target regains 10% of their movement each second for 10 sec.

Each of these abilities helps the DK to survive in one way or another, either to reduce the damage that he/she sustains, or to replenish some of the health that the DK has lost. DK’s combine the mitigation/avoidance with health replenishment in their survivability mechanisms.

Tanking Talents

Blizzard decided to do something completely different with Death Knight talents. Instead of grouping the tanking talents all into one tree, they are spread out throughout the 3 trees. There are tanking specs for each of the trees.

Even though each of the 3 trees is capable of tanking, that is only true if you have the appropriate talents within your tree. Tier 1 tanking talents are available to everyone: Blade Barrier, Anticipation, and Toughness (once you've filled out your tree, be sure to grab these). Then, depending on what tree you specialize in, you can pick up additional tanking talents such as Vampiric Blood, Bone Shield, or Unbreakable Armor.

Tanks are asked to work in one of two potential scenarios – tanking trash and tanking bosses. The player will need to decide where he/she would like to specialize, because the three talent trees emphasize different aspects of tanking. Frost DK’s are a bit better at tanking single targets, while Unholy DK’s are a bit more effective in the AoE tanking role (akin to the differences between Warrior and Paladin tanks). However, and this is important, DKs in any tree can serve as main tanks, regardless of the foe!

One final piece of information worth considering: in Patch 3.3, Blizzard introduced the Looking For Group tool. This tool has spawned an incredible interest in 5-man heroics for badges and emblems, which in turn has put a premium on tank availability. As you look at different tanking abilities, consider which abilities work better for smaller groups and bosses in heroics versus which abilities work better in larger 10 and 25 man raids. Strategies, specs, and talents DO vary from 5 man groups to raids, and one size - or spec - does not fit all.

Frost Tree Talents

The Frost tree specializes in mitigation. It offers a number of defensive talents that will help a DK survive in the tank role. Tank-specific frost tree talents are:

• Toughness (5/5, +10% armor). Every tank regardless of spec should take this ability.

• Improved Icy Touch (3/3, +6% attack speed reduction). A requirement for every tank unless you have another group member providing the debuff.

• Lichborne (1/1, +25% miss chance and immune to charm, sleep, fear for 15 seconds) Allows you to self-heal with Death Coil. Of marginal utility, this is really a PvP talent.

• Improved Frost Presence (2/2, While in Blood Presence or Unholy Presence, you keep the 6% stamina from Frost Presence, and damage done to you is decreased by an additional 2% in Frost Presence.)

• Frigid Dreadplate (Reduces the chance that melee attacks will hit you by 1/2/3%.)

• Howling Blast (Deals Frost damage to all enemies within 10 yards.) Good for AoE threat. This ability makes Frost tanks the only spec with decent burst threat.

• Unbreakable Armor (1/1, +25% armor, +10% strength for 20 seconds)

• Acclimation (3/3, When you are hit by a spell, you have a 30% chance to boost your resistance to that type of magic for 18 sec. Stacks up to 3 times). Seldom worthwhile.

• Guile of Gorefiend (3/3, increase the duration of your Icebound Fortitude by 6 seconds). More useful for the threat benefit.

• Hungering Cold (1/1, freeze all enemies within 10 yards for 10 seconds) Offers some crowd control while fighting adds or trash, just advise the party/raid of its use for any damage to the frozen enemies will break the effect. Most frost tanks skip this talent.

Many other excellent talent are available in the Frost tree which will help the DK add to his/her lethality, thus helping to hold aggro.

Frost DKs offer excellent mitigation and avoidance as well as good burst threat. They have less stamina than Blood DKs and less sustained AOE ability than Unholy.

Unholy Tree Talents

The unholy tree specializes in AoE aggro. Unholy tanks also have a number of talents that allow them to take on the tanking role. Tank-specific Unholy tree talents are:

• Morbidity (3/3, reduces the cool down on Death and Decay by 15 seconds) Hugely useful in heroics, decent in raids.

• Anticipation (5/5, increases dodge rate +5%) Every tank regardless of spec should take this ability.

• Epidemic (2/2, increases the duration of Blood Plague and Frost Fever by 6 seconds). Useful for sustained threat generation, best when combined with Pestilence and Glyph of Disease.

• Unholy Command (2/2, Reduces the cool down of your Death Grip ability by 10 seconds) Very marginal. Remember that you have two taunts, and Dark Command has a much shorter cooldown.

• Corpse Explosion (1/1, Causes a corpse to explode for shadow damage modified by attack power to all enemies within 10 yards.) Situationally useful, but not a core tanking talent.

• On a Pale Horse (2/2, The duration of all Stun and Fear effects used against you is reduced by 20%). A PvP and leveling talent, marginal for tanking.

• Magic Suppression (3/3, You take 6% less damage from all magic. In addition, your Anti-Magic Shell absorbs an additional 25% of spell damage.) Especially useful in 5 man heroics when you face a lot of magic damage and a healer that is not necessarily reliable. Skip for raiding.

• Anti-Magic Zone (1/1, Places an Anti-Magic Zone that reduces spell damage done to party or raid members inside it by 75%. Lasts 30 seconds, or until it absorbs [10000 + 2 * AP] spell damage). Useful if your party is heavy on melee DPS, as it provides shielding for party members. Situationally useful on bosses like Ionar and Loken, allowing the party to remain in place to deal damage.

• Bone Shield (1/1, The DK is surrounded by 3 whirling bones. While at least 1 bone remains, the DK takes 20% less damage from all sources and deals 2% more damage with all attacks, spells and abilities.) This talent improves as avoidance improves.

• Crypt Fever (3/3, Your diseases cause Crypt Fever, which increases disease damage taken by the target by 30%.) Also makes your Death Strikes heal more.

• Ebon Plaguebringer (3/3, Your Crypt Fever morphs into Ebon Plague, which increases magic damage taken by 13% in addition to increasing disease damage taken. Improves your critical strike chance with weapons and spells by 3% at all times.) Highly useful for increasing the damage of caster DPS and boosts crit. This improves your tanking spells such as Death and Decay and Wandering Plague.

• Wandering Plague (3/3, There is a chance equal to your melee critical strike chance that diseases will cause 100% additional damage to the target and all enemies within 8 yards.) Ridiculous AoE damage.

Unlike Frost talents, which focus on damage mitigation, Unholy tanking talents primarily focus on strengthening the DKs AoE effectiveness (although, again, exceptions to this exist). This allows the DK to remain the focus of a number of mobs at once with great effectiveness – in early testing, Unholy DKs have demonstrated the ability to deal AoE damage more effectively than any other class or build in WoW.

However, because Unholy DK tanks lack much of the damage mitigation that Frost DKs possess, the must instead rely on avoidance to a greater degree than Frost DKs (avoidance is the act of creating missed attacks upon the DK by the mob, as opposed to mitigation, which involves absorbing the hit, and simply taking a small amount of damage from it). This is somewhat similar to the way Rogues survive — they create ‘misses’ from attacks made against them.

Tanks that rely on avoidance are more difficult for a healer to work with, because damage is dished out in an “all or nothing” manner against the tank (as opposed to mitigation, which is a more “steady stream” of damage). Avoidance is “spiky” damage, and is more difficult for a healer to predict and deal with. This means that Unholy DKs will be a tougher chore for a healer, although not terribly so.

Blood Tree Talents

The Blood tree specializes in increasing healing done to the tank (you). Tank-specific blood tree talents are:

• Blade Barrier (5/5, Whenever your Blood Runes are on cooldown, you gain 5% damage reduction for 20 seconds.) Every tank regardless of spec should have this ability.

• Veteran of the Third War (3/3, Increases your Stamina.)

• Vampiric Blood (1/1, Increases the amount of health generated through spells and effects by 35% and increases health by 15% for 20 sec.) The tooltip is misleading: all healing done to you benefits, not just your own.

• Will of the Necropolis (3/3, When you have less than 35% health, your damage taken by any attack is reduced by up to 15%.)

The Blood tree is filled with many PVP talents, do not get the PVP and Tank talents confused. Bloodworms, Mark of Blood and Rune Tap are PVP talents. A Blood Tank should not have these talents at all. A Blood Tank spec should have lots of DPS talents to increase single target threat for Raid Bosses. Talents like Hysteria do work well as most Threat comes from Rune Strike and Heart Strike, the Hp drain is nothing for a tank who is getting healed by a healer and Death Strike helps that too.

External Links

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