In his first submission to MMORPG.com, Darry Huskey writes this guide to Dark Knight Tanking in Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

So, you've purchased Wrath of the Lich King, you've created your Death Knight, and you've finally completed the trek to level eighty. Now what? Well, lying before you, you have a choice : DPS or tank?

This article is for those of you that chose tank.

Tanking as a Death Knight is unlike playing any other tank class in the game, so even if you have tanked before, it can be somewhat disorienting. Death Knight tanking can be even more odd to a first-timer, who is expecting a different sort of experience, something in line with a Warrior.

Read Death Knight Tanking Talents

I can't comment on the Frost and Unholy specs, as I haven't spent much time playing either build, but I have to comment on the "blood tank" and how absolutely wrong it is.

If your healer is not healing the tank, there is something wrong. While there are a few skills in the Blood line that are useful to tanks, the key ones are used to "back up" your normal DK abilities. The healing skills in blood are useful in those "oh crap" moments, but not during a regular fight by any means, and certainly won't help a tank on anything that hits for more than 2K.

The only reason you should get Improved Rune Tap is if you're leveling. It's not something to "blow every time it's up," because again if you are, then your healer is lacking for whatever reason. Vampiric Blood pairs up well with Rune Tap, but again, it's an "oh shit!" ability.

Bloodworm??? Are you still leveling? No? Then don't use them. Their healing is so insignificant that you're wasting points, and they don't help you tank in any way, shape or form.

What's funny is you talk about taking Mark of Blood, a very questionable skill as a tank (and an outright useless one if you're DPS), yet you scoff at puting points into Blood Aura, something that helps EVERYONE in a group or raid and is a LOT more useful than 20 seconds of slightly stronger healing. Not only that, but its "mileage" won't vary after patch 3.0.8... it's getting a very nice buff that'll make it twice as useful in a group or raid.

If the Frost and Unholy guides are even a fifth of how wrong the Blood guide is, then those sections are useless as well.

Seriously MMORPG, is this the best you can do?

I can also only relate to the blood guide and it is wrong in a lot of ways.  The prior poster pretty much summed it up.   I suppose if you are still leveling it is ok, but any Death Knight trying to use the build in the article would get laughed out of our guild.

What is with these articles lately that we get such misinformed authors?

...sigh...

I wonder why there are so many bad death knights I come across, and every day it becomes more obvious.  Most are very, very misinformed.  If you read further in the article, it states that Bone Armor is prmairly a dps talent.  I don't even know what to say about that.  Nevermind that it mitigates 40% (20% after the patch) of ALL damage.  Partner it with Blade Barrier (5% parry) and high Dodge and Parry, and Bone Armor can stay up 30-45 secs, because we're not getting hit.

I run with a 5 / 13 / 53 build that has Blade Barrier for 5% parry (keep your blood runes on CD, ftw), Imp Icy touch for a total of 26% mob attack speed reduction, Toughness for 15% armor bonus, 4/5 Black Ice (for increased threat with Icy Touch since my frost runes are almost always ready to use), Lichborne (+25% chance for mobs to miss for 15 sec), and Bone Armor (40% damage reduction as long as there are charges, glyph for Bone Armor and get your evasion up and this one lasts for a while).  Add to this combo Icebound Fortitude (50% reduction of damage from all sources for 12 secs, 1 min CD), and you have the best in mitigation from all sources.  The unholy talents I have are for AoE threat generation.

I've been wondering how people keep coming up with some of the garbage that's out there, and I've come to learn there is a monumental pile of disinformation coming out about DKs every day.  Most of it (Bone Armor is primarily a DPS tool?!?!!?!?!??!) could be avoided by using that squishy grey mass between your ears.  If you really thought hard about Bone Armor, you'd realize that it's not even a DPS tool insomuch as it is a threat generation tool. 

Bone Armor and Death and Decay should be up at the beginning of every pull for unholy DKs, and considering that a vast majority of our threat is gained over time (all diseases, death and decay, unholy blight) or take time and preparation to be effective (pestilence, blood boil, wandering plague), most of our front end abilities can't push us very high in the threat meters.  So, the 2% damage bonus from BA is basically a 2% threat increase for the first 20-30 secs of a fight....  Seems more in keeping with the tanking spirit of that talent that it would help to front-load threat by increasing the DKs damage during the precious first stages of combat than a 2% overall "DPS talent".  If you're kicking 3k dps out, 2% is a whopping 60 dps.  Yeah, it's nice, but it's not the primary purpose of that talent.

Bone Armor isn't a DPS tool? But I thought those swirly bones popped up so that my character would grab one of the bones and hit the monster over the head with it!

I have to agree though... it's people like the one who wrote this article who are giving DKs a really bad name, which is too bad since DKs, in the right hands, can be extremely solid DPS and tanks.

what does it matter if your not looting a corpse of a player your a pve'r .......

end of line______________

Can we get a mod to remove this article before the terrible DK's multiply more...

No really, if people follow this they will have a wrong clue on top of a no clue.

Speaking from the POV of a healer I have not seen one good or even half way decent DK tank spec Blood for more than Blade barrier and never more than 15 points in blood. Now I have seen plenty of wipe fest tanks spec deep blood but I usually leave group before I set foot in the instance if the DK is tanking blood now.

The 5/5/5 rule is the only hard rule for DK tanks but from there most mixes of Frost and Unholy work well. I do prefer deep frost spec tanks but have been with plenty of great unholy tanks that out DPS the crappy dps'ers. (a totally other issue)

Anyway, don't spec blood for anything other than soloing and normal 5 man runs. Anything heroic or raid you really need to be something other than blood to tank.

I wanted to go on the record as the author of this article, and I wanted to talk about some of these points.

First and foremost, the article is written from an introductory stand point. I appreciate that people may want to read an article that is written with a hardcore raider in mind, but this, I thought, was pretty obviously an introduction to DK tanking talents. Hence comments like the discussion on Bone Shield. To you, it seems obvious that this is a tanking talent. Someone else might say, "Why would I take this if I only get four shots?" I thought I explained the reasoning.

Second, there probably won't be a consensus on some of these talents. Someone mentioned Bloodworms as being a "leveling talent" and Blood Presence as useful raid utility. I happen to disagree.

Third, this article doesn't condone any one tree over the others. The purpose of the article is to introduce different talents by tree. It isn't an article with the philosophy of, "Here's what you take for Frost, here's what you take for Blood." Regarding Blood in specifics, it was a challenge to showcase the tree without leaving it at saying, "Take Veteran of the Third War and whatever else to get there." Rather than saying, "Unbreakable Armor is good, take that," I had envisioned walking through the tree's "theme". There are talents along the way, and the idea is to showcase the tree as a whole. With 3.0.8 a lot of people may be speccing down to Will of the Necropolis and wondering what to take.

Finally, regarding the Blood hate, I don't really understand it. I know plenty of good Blood tanks. I myself am not one of them, but I don't feel comfortable with my gear speccing for that role. For the purposes of whomever may be reading it, ready to tank their first heroic or what not, it's fine. By the time it comes time to tank Naxx, they'll probably have figured out what's best for them.

Regardless, thank you for the criticism, I do appreciate reading this sort of stuff and thinking about things differently or learning something new.

Well, I'm used to guides like this on this site, I just read them to have a small laugh before going to bed.

Guides should not be made (On the website that bares the name of the genre.com) by casual players who did not do what's REALLY important, what you'll REALLY do in this game, Raiding.

Btw, frost tanks are not "Versatile" they're "Survivalists" they're just good for raid buffs and very nice clickies, but they're the worst DK spec for DPS/Leveling, a deep Frost DK will ALWAYS be beaten by a deep Unholy in DPS... not so "Versatile" eh? :P

Originally posted by streea

I can't comment on the Frost and Unholy specs, as I haven't spent much time playing either build, but I have to comment on the "blood tank" and how absolutely wrong it is.

If your healer is not healing the tank, there is something wrong. While there are a few skills in the Blood line that are useful to tanks, the key ones are used to "back up" your normal DK abilities. The healing skills in blood are useful in those "oh crap" moments, but not during a regular fight by any means, and certainly won't help a tank on anything that hits for more than 2K.

The only reason you should get Improved Rune Tap is if you're leveling. It's not something to "blow every time it's up," because again if you are, then your healer is lacking for whatever reason. Vampiric Blood pairs up well with Rune Tap, but again, it's an "oh shit!" ability.

Bloodworm??? Are you still leveling? No? Then don't use them. Their healing is so insignificant that you're wasting points, and they don't help you tank in any way, shape or form.

What's funny is you talk about taking Mark of Blood, a very questionable skill as a tank (and an outright useless one if you're DPS), yet you scoff at puting points into Blood Aura, something that helps EVERYONE in a group or raid and is a LOT more useful than 20 seconds of slightly stronger healing. Not only that, but its "mileage" won't vary after patch 3.0.8... it's getting a very nice buff that'll make it twice as useful in a group or raid.

If the Frost and Unholy guides are even a fifth of how wrong the Blood guide is, then those sections are useless as well.

Seriously MMORPG, is this the best you can do?

Mark of Blood is a good talent to have for either role (DPS or Tank), because it will end up healing in the neighborhood of 40% of a tanks hitpoints before it's finished. How many spells and how much mana does it take to heal around 18k hitpoints as a healer? Well, the healer can use that on the DPS taking AoE dmg or it could make healing bosses that much easier. It's not a useless talent, for anyone. I took it as Blood DPS and I don't regret being able to help contribute to the tanks survivability.

I guess you have to defend your own article.  I read it again this morning, just to make sure I wasn't crazy, and your defense that it's an introductory guide to tanking talents and nothing more just doesn't hold water.  The major reason is the very final conclusion of the article that once you get your talents, it's time to build your skills and learn the bosses.  That seems to imply that the preceeding article was a go to guide for talents.

It's not.

As we pointed out before there are some really, really blatant flaws that you don't have to be a "hardcore raider" to figure out.  Nice of you to try to strawman that on me, though.  As if my observations of the critical flaws in your analyses are less valid because I'm a "hardcore raider" (btw, I'm not.  I'm a casual player who hates hardcore raiding)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a statement:

EVERY PLAYER OF EVERY CLASS IN WOW SHOULD WANT TO LEARN ENOUGH ABOUT THEIR CLASS THAT THEY UNDERSTAND THE BASIC GD FUNDAMENTALS OF HOW THE CLASS OPERATES - NOT JUST "HARDCORE RAIDERS".

That being said, Bone Armor is not primarily a dps talent, and any guide that says so is crap.  Some people take to heart the "guides" they read, because they're trying to learn how to play a new class, and since this guide is published on a large-scale blog like MMORPG, they'll assume that it is an informed guide about the class, and the misinformations spreads.

Have some responsiblity and accountability in your articles.  Don't come in after the fact claiming that it is the equivalent of a noob guide and shouldn't be trusted.  If we're supposed to ignore the noobish parts of your article, why even write it?  Or, you can qualify it from the beginning and say, "Hey, this article is really not well-informed, I really don't get anything good in it other than the basic 5 / 5 / 5, and after that you're screwed.  Now enjoy."  At least if you do that from the outset, people know not to take the rest of the guide as any sort of....oh, I don't know...."GUIDE".

Now, you may criticize me for not writing a blog myself, and say, well, it's easy to complain when you're not doing it.  Problem is, I don't write one because I don't want to make mistakes that eff up the DK community any more than it already is.  Day in and day out, people complain about how bad DKs are, how we suck as a collective body, we're not as good tanks as wars, pallies, or druids, etc.  I spend my time in game proving them wrong.  I go back to hellfire and run groups with DKs to show them the right way to use Death and Decay and Death Grip together.  I work my butt off to make sure we're not looking like idiots in game.  I'd link to my blog, but until I'm happy with it, and what I'm saying in it, I'm doing what I wish 98.5% of the other authors who think they know what they're talking about when it comes to Death Knights would do, and keeping it to myself until it's ACTUALLY FACTUAL AND CORRECT INFORMATION.

But, yeah, keep using the "what-I-actually-wrote-was-garbage-but-I-hoped-nobody-would-notice-before-the-editors-picked-my-article defense."  That one always looks classy.

I like articles like this. As a new DK, it helped me establish a base way of thinking, and, why I still love this site even when the articles may be misleading, all of these informative, opinionated comments were left. Without the article, I would never have found all this information made so simply accessible to me.

Thanks to all who have posted, and the the author, because your effort spawned others to give a broader base of opinions. And as to the idea that the article may create more poor DKs....well...if they can't read the forums, or don't want to put the time in to getting multiple opinions, they are either going to be a poor player anyway, or they are going to be good at figuring the class out for themselves, and either way is neither helped nor hurt by this article.

Originally posted by Haugr

I wanted to go on the record as the author of this article, and I wanted to talk about some of these points.

First and foremost, the article is written from an introductory stand point.

Don't you start off with the sentence that says:
So, you've purchased Wrath of the Lich King, you've created your Death Knight, and you've finally completed the trek to level eighty.

If this is to talk about the DK intro to tanking (while at level 80), what else should it be about other than raiding?

I'm not a raider myself so I'd be interested to read thoughts on tanking pre-80.

here is the build that will dominate DK dps as of patch 3.0.8:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/deathknight/talents.html?tal=2305000000000000000000000003150535000500010301000000000230200315003105003100000000000

This will allow you to do this rotation:

Plague Strike

Icy Touch

Howling Blast

Blood Strike

Blood Strike

Howling Blast

Howling Blast

Howling Blast

Toughness and Bladed Armor are a great AP increase, and when you add in Impurity you get even more spell damage for howling blast

on top of that, you get a ghoul pet and necrosis and blood caked blade are amazing dual wielding dps talents

the real "versitile" build is a deep unholy build that lets you do the same thing with Scourge Strike and Death Strike that you did with Howling blast. Spamming Death Strike like this actually gives better health regen than someone speccd as deep blood, and works very well when soloing and pvping BUT it is often better to use death strikes and scourge strikes, depending on how much damage you are taking

tanking is typical unholy tanking with this build, but spamming SS gives a lot of single target threat when in Frost Presence.

if you have all of your disease up, you will get healed for 150% of the damage dealt from a death strike

if you only hit for 300dmg with DS, you can get 1.2k hp back with the rotation

Plauge Strike

Icy Touch

Blood Strike (x2)

Death/Scourge Strike (x4)

when using this build you WILL want to use a 2h weapon, as it increases the damage dealt and healing recieved from your strikes.

at the time being, speccing deep into blood is pretty useless except for solo leveling, and unholy still tends to do better when you can use so many Death and Scourge Strikes

With dps/pvp gear you want as much AP as possible so you can get more healing back from death strikes as well as do more damage. Tanking gear is simple. Avoidance and stam for survival and str/ap for threat generation.

Originally posted by metalshelf

I like articles like this. As a new DK, it helped me establish a base way of thinking, and, why I still love this site even when the articles may be misleading, all of these informative, opinionated comments were left. Without the article, I would never have found all this information made so simply accessible to me.

Thanks to all who have posted, and the the author, because your effort spawned others to give a broader base of opinions. And as to the idea that the article may create more poor DKs....well...if they can't read the forums, or don't want to put the time in to getting multiple opinions, they are either going to be a poor player anyway, or they are going to be good at figuring the class out for themselves, and either way is neither helped nor hurt by this article.

metalshelf,

It seems that you have received what the writer was trying to accomplish, a general idea on all tanking talents offered for DK's. If you're anything like me, you prefer to think for yourself and choose talents based off of what you logically think is most valuable for what you're trying to do. The only time I tend to look at elitistjerks.com or deathknight.info is when I'm not sure how much a particular talent is worth in a build.

There's a lot of hardcore gamers that have put the time and the math into analyzing each talent for a particular build (DPS/Tank) and have figured out ways to maximize your gain and minimize the trash talents for your build.

These guys that are flaming the hell out of the writer either are stringent followers of the cookie cutter builds and want to flex their knowledge on this forum, or they truly don't appreciate what it's like to want to think and decide on talents yourself.

That's one reason why I always liked TenTonHammers talent guides, because they didn't tell you which build to go with, they just analyzed each talent, so you know how good it is in relation to what you're trying to do. That way you can choose your own spec, using your own brain. You may end up with a cookie cutter spec, like I have, but at least you know you got that spec through your own deductive reasoning and not from blind faith of following someone elses build.

Originally posted by Samhael

Originally posted by Haugr

I wanted to go on the record as the author of this article, and I wanted to talk about some of these points.

First and foremost, the article is written from an introductory stand point.

 

Don't you start off with the sentence that says:
So, you've purchased Wrath of the Lich King, you've created your Death Knight, and you've finally completed the trek to level eighty.

If this is to talk about the DK intro to tanking (while at level 80), what else should it be about other than raiding?

I'm not a raider myself so I'd be interested to read thoughts on tanking pre-80.

Anyone who thinks a person is not a newb still after reaching lvl 80 needs to think again. The difference between a brand new lvl 80 and a lvl 80 who has done the instances, heroics, and some raids to death are night and day. For one, most 80's eventually try all spec variations and become skilled in all of them to the point where they know which spec is best for which situation. For two, their team based skills and knowledge of the fights are much better, so they don't cause wipes. For three, their gear is much better, so they have the stats to back up their skill and knowledge they've gained since getting lvl 80.

As for tanking pre-80, the BEST way to go is UH, because it not only offers you some good tanking talents (aoe dmg for aoe tanking/threat generation, boneshield), but also allows you to still solo pretty effectively.

Disagree with the raiding aspect. If there is one facet of the game and of the community in wow have have grown to dislike over the last 4 years it is the raiders. Not all but it seems a very large majority of them take the game way to seriously.

I don't know much about DK tanks so I can't comment on it much except for the bone armor thing (enough has been said about that anyway) but saying that you can tank patchwerk when he's enraged is just wishful, big-headed thinking. nobody, no tank alive that isn't cheating the game, can tank patchwerk when he's enraged. you can pop all the cooldowns you have and might survive 3-4 hits, but then you're dead.