Revised 3.2 Death Knight Tank Specs
I took another look at the specs I put up yesterday and have made some minor changes. I’m going with a Blood tank spec and a Frost tank spec myself. Keep in mind these specs are for raid tanking specifically. You may want to adjust them if you’re doing 5mans or soloing old world content and the like. Wowhead still has the 3.1 talent calculator so the links here go to Mmochampion.
This is the spec I’m using as my primary build. Given that I only run 10mans I need to keep those 3 points in Imp. Icy Touch to ensure the melee slow stays on the boss at all times. Our MM hunter isn’t always around (and by that I mean he’s around, he’s just lying on the floor dead over there in the corner) so I’m keeping points in Abom’s might. No one else in my raid brings Hysteria so I pick that up too. In this build Heart Strike is your go-to ability for damage and threat so the 9% crit there is going to be better than the points in Sudden Doom.
Glyphs are a bit of an option too. Glyph Vampiric Blood. I strongly suggest glyphing Death Strike as well. I go with the Rune Strike glyph as my third but your mileage may vary.
In my Frost spec I put 3 points into Scent of Blood but that turned out to be a little overkill I think as I didn’t suffer from a lack of runic power. 2 points in Frost are floaters and I’ve put them in Merciless Combat. You may want the fear break from Lichborne but that seems very meh to me.
For me, this spec is about trash tanking and heroics. I was beyond irritated that the AH didn’t have a single Glyph of Howling Blast last night because that glyph is quite fantastic for this spec. You can adjust your rotation to drop Plague Strike with it even, check out Elitist Jerks for more info on that.
The insane aoe threat has indeed been gutted from Unholy but its still great at handling magic damage and does just fine in most encounters. The point in the perma-ghoul is a floater but again, the convenience of a perma-ghoul is really handy. Ok, ok, the real reason I take it is because I get so attached to little Ratthief.
Glyph Unholy Blight for a nice boost in single target threat which is this spec’s weakness. Definitely glyph Bone Shield or don’t bother tanking as Unholy. If you’re using this spec for aoe tanking you can use a Glyph of Death and Decay and maybe drop the Rune Strike glyph but you may feel more effective at aoe threat with Frost.
I had spent some time staring at that sudden doom in your original post and reflecting upon life, universe and everything.
You give threat generation its proper due, and your choices are clearly informed by experience. As the target (read: flailing, hitting random keys wildly, going back to beartank mid-instance) audience of introductory blood tanking tips, I’m trying to get away from dumping everything I can into survivability talents. It’s very difficult.
[Reply]
Shayzani Reply:
August 5th, 2009 at 11:38 am
I’ll go over that in my next post.
[Reply]
Soli
5 Aug 09 at 9:30 am
[...] EDIT – CLICK HERE TO SEE MY REVISED 3.2 TANK SPECS POST [...]
3.2 Death Knight tank specs at 2fps
5 Aug 09 at 9:41 am
[...] posted examples of Blood tanking builds in previous posts, now I’m going to go into more detail about each of the talents and why they’re in the [...]
Breaking down Blood, pt. 1 at 2fps
5 Aug 09 at 1:04 pm
I have a lvl 75 Tank trying to find the best rotation I am duel weild but I do keep 2h sword/axe / mace up also you never know. I am really wanting to tank Heroic instances when I get to 80 so If I had rotation that I could practice along the way would be great. I like looking at your posts and I am reading and appling it to my toons any imput would be greatly appreciated
[Reply]
CajunBlood
1 Oct 09 at 8:44 am
In Unholy, glyph of icy touch is a better choice than unholy blight for single-target threat. I tested it.
[Reply]
Shayzani Reply:
November 28th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Yes sir. I haven’t done any followup support for these specs since posting them more or less off the cuff so there are a few flaws. I’m tentatively planning to do a more polished post for 3.3 and then keep them up to date.
Truth be told I’d do a lot more rigorous testing with Kahorie’s simulator if I had more time to spend but creating specs and character sheets with the simulator is extremely time-consuming.
[Reply]
Gravity
27 Nov 09 at 3:49 am