Heya guys!! I betcha never thought I would get around to it did you? 
Well here it is, a post all about Death Knight tanking. They don’t exactly remind you of those toy tanks you played with as a kid…but then I played with real toys like GI Joe, He-Man, and Transformers. None of those sissy “army” toys. Pfffttt….
Heh. So what do we talk about here? Well we get into spec viability, glyphs, rotations, itemization, etc… It’s the standard breakdown with one caveat. PLEASE remember that while I started off as a tank in WoW, I’m no longer an expert on the subject matter. That being said, let’s jump right in to it eh? 
Tank Specs
Blood
You guys have so got to be tired of hearing this by now… /sigh Blood tanks stink. Yeah, yeah, yeah…broken record I know. Blood is just a non-ideal spec right now in WoW. Lots of classes have seen this over the years. Multiple specs available, but one tree always seems to get the short end of the stick. Blood just doesn’t offer the same level of tools and utility as the other trees do.
Frost
Frost offers the highest level of mitigation/avoidance possible for a starting out Death Knight. Especially if you have itemization issues (aka Blue gear), this spec is going to offer more leeway room for your healers. Whether or not you spec into Icy Talons is really more dependent upon whether you will have Shaman in your raids. Ideally if you have a Shaman you will not spec into it.
Unholy
- 5/5/51 (base template for Unholy tanking – 10 points unspent)
- 9/11/51 (arguably the best mitigation/avoidance spec possible)
- 10/5/54 (the natural progression from 5/5/51 if focused on TPS – 2 points unspent)
If you have itemization issues, healer issues, or you progress into more difficuly content later then you really want to go 9/11/51. If threat however if your goal, then the basis of 10/5/54 is the way to go. Realistically you could move a few points here and there, but this will basically get you where you are going.
Tank Stats
Diminishing Returns
OK, first off lets talk about Diminishing Returns, or DR. For those of you who are not aware, Blizzard put in a secret nerf debuff on all players in BC in the Sunwell. This reduced everyone’s dodge by 25%. Basically, Feral avoidance was so high that the entire raid would have been trivial otherwise. Now, in 3.0+ the fix is DR, which first popped it’s ugly head up in PvP. DR basically means that if 200 rating = 10% dodge, that when you get 400 rating, you will actually have less than 20% dodge. This way numbers don’t become obnoxious and people don’t overstack any one stat.
The penalty for DR from one stat applies only to that one stat. So if you have 1000 dodge rating and 100 parry rating, the dodge rating is suffering far more from DR than the parry rating is. All avoidance gained as a base part of your naked character does not affect DR at all, nor do any racial abilities. Only avoidance gained from items is affected by DR.
So what do the tank stats do for you?
- 4.91850 defense rating = 1 defense skill
- 41 defense rating = 1% avoidance (parry, dodge, and miss combined)
- 39.34799 dodge rating = 1% dodge chance
- 49.18499 parry rating = 1% parry chance
There is a lot of complicated math involved here, and quite frankly even I don’t get all of it. But, to simplify things here is what you do. Go download the mod Rating Buster. This mod will automatically break down the DR for new items gained. It’s built in already. So you can use this to do all of the math for you.
As far as how to pick your stats, always avoid Parry rating unless the item in question is overall an upgrade. Do not gem parry rating ever. Defense should be capped, and then you should pick Defense and Dodge rating when possible. You should have roughly 3 Defense rating for every 2 Dodge rating (a 3:2 ratio). Why? Again…math you don’t wanna hear. Basically with how DR works, this will net you the maximum amount of avoidance possible. Because Defense pulls the avoidance from three pools (miss/dodge/parry), it suffers far less from DR. Initially Dodge rating offers more, but once in epics Defense rating will offer more total avoidance.
What is this Defense cap you speak of?
The defense cap is 540 Defense *skill*, not rating. This makes you uncritable by bosses. This is paramount to achieve as a tank. This is not negotiable. Do it.
So which stats do I go for?
You also need to go get this mod, Tank Points. This will show the increases in Effective Health (how much time you will live before your hit points reach 0) and Mitigation/Avoidance from gear. This will make your life *so* much easier when it comes to examing loot.
The major stats are fairly straight forward however:
- Stamina
- Defense
- Dodge
- Expertise
- Hit
That is roughly the correct priority list for which stats to take and in what order. When slotting out gems you should be going for Solid Sky Sapphires always in every slot pretty much once you are fully Defense capped. However don’t knock Expertise and Hit. This is your threat, or TPS (threat per second).
Glyphs
Major:
Minor:
Dual Wield (DW) versus Two Handed (2H) Tanking
The main reason everyone screams why DW tanks are bad is because of parry haste. Long story short, if a boss parries your attack his next attack is hasted. So if he parried enough attacks, you could potentially take a spike of hasted burst damage that your healers can’t keep you alive through.
If you Expertise cap as a Death Knight then the boss will not parry.
The Expertise cap is 15 as Blood and 21 as Frost/Unholy. If you’re at this range, then that arguement is null and void. So the next one that comes in is TPS. Basically the way Dual Wield is designed for Death Knights is that it is very gear, haste, and proc dependent. Something which tank specs tend to have very little of. Also most of the DK abilities strongly favor the use of 2H weapons for instant cast strikes.
The flip side however is that there are multiple 1H weapons with tanking stats. If you wish to DW then you need a slow MH and a fast OH weapon. You should focus on weapons that are heavy on tanking stats, and you should also Expertise cap. This will reduce your total TPS and DPS as a tank spec, for only a minor tanking avoidance/mitigation gain. I cannot find any numbers to truly suggest this is a real increase. However if you have no dps players who are ever threat capped and you’d like to find a way to increase your survivability this would be an alternative option.
Rotations and More!!
Rotations are really mostly the same. DK’s tank and dps pretty much the same as far as which attacks to fire off. And, I’m short on time before my raid starts. So you’ll have to live with what you guys got!! I’m off!! I hope this has helped you budding tanks out there!! 
Tags: Specs, Tanking
