The Ultimate Blood Death Knight Tanking Guide

LF1M need Tank! Instead of looking for a tank, you can tank and have high damage as a blood death knight! Get in on heroic content and raids every day. The Ultimate Blood Death Knight Tank Guide, will show you how to get there fast so you too can be a level 80 tank and still have top DPS for soloing and PVP.

Why Blood?

A Blood Tank has more survivability unholy and deals out more damage than frost. Blood death knights last a long time alone against bosses because of mitigation and self healing talents, even without a healer. Blood tanks can give the group powerful buffs: Abomination's Might, Aura of Blood and Mark of Blood. A Blood Death Knight can even heal the party for 10% of maximum health with the Glyph of Rune Tap. A blood tank is also powerhouse in PVP because they take little damage, self-heal and are hard to kill.

The Death Knight Class Is Undergoing Major Changes in Patch 3.1, read the official patchnotes, here and undocumented changes here.

Blood Tanking Single Target Rotation:

Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Heart Strike, Heart Strike, Obliterate or Death Strike

Use Icy Touch on the monster that needs to die first, follow with Plague Strike immediately so that you cause blood plague. Follow with Heart Strike twice followed by obliterate. When you have excess runic power, use Death Coil.

Blood Tanking Multiple Target Rotation:

Death and Decay, Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Heart Strike, Pestilence, Blood Boil, Death Strike.

Start with Death and Decay to immediately pull all monsters to you and to generate high threat, then disease all the targets with icy touch and plague strike. Follow with heart strike, then use pestilence and blood boil to generate threat on the remaining mobs and use death strike and death coil when you have extra runic power.

The Build: The Vampire Knight (58/5/8)

The Build: The Vampire Knight (58/5/8) on Public Test Realm.

Blood: Blade Barrier, 5/5, Bladed Armor 5/5, Rune Tap 1/1, Dark Conviction 5/5, Improved Rune Tap 3/3, Spell Deflection 3/3, Bloody Strikes 3/3, Veteran of the Third War 3/3, Mark of Blood 1/1, Bloody Vengence 3/3, Abomination's Might 2/2, Bloodworms 3/3, Blood Aura 2/2, Sudden Doom 5/5, Vampiric Blood 1/1, Heart Strike 1/1, Will of the Necropolis 3/3, Might of Morgraine 3/3, Blood Gorged 5/5, Dancing Rune Weapon 1/1

Frost: Toughness 5/5

Unholy: Morbidity 3/3, Anticipation 5/5

The Vampire Death Knight tanking build focuses on providing survivability through single target DPS, self-healing, spell damage avoidance and mitigation. The build also has points for a dancing rune weapon which adds significant DPS. Morbidity from the unholy talent tree adds additional DPS and helps to get the most out of sudden doom procs.

How Specific Talents Help You:

Toughness: Increases your armor value from items by 15% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 30%. The extra armor is damage mitigation and increases the amount of attack power granted from Bladed Armor. You will also spend less time snared and slowed. To see the added effects you must wait 30 seconds when changing to frost presence, then check the tool tip and you will see that your attack power is increased.

Heart Strike: Heart Strike is the blood death Knight's signature attack and deals out punishing damage. Blood Death Knights rejoice, in patch 3.1 Heart Strike will hit not only your target but the target's closest ally also.

Anticipation: Increases your Dodge chance by 5%. Anticipation boosts your ability to completely avoid attacks and avoid damage, a must for tanking. Again, this talent also will give you more opportunities to use Rune Strike.

Blade Barrier: Whenever your Blood Runes are on cooldown, your Parrychance increases by 10% for the next 10 sec. Parry is a vital ability for the Death Knight tank because it completely prevents an incoming attack. Blade Barrier and Anticipation together will help you not only avoid damage but also get more chances to use the Rune Strike spell: Strike the target for 150% weapon damage plus 0.15. Only usable after the Death Knight dodges or parries. Can't be dodged, blocked, or parried. This attack causes a high amount of threat. Blade Barrier also improves Spell Deflection and reduces the damage you take from direct spells by reducing spell damage by another 10%. After Patch 3.1, this talent will no longer effect parry but will instead reduce damage taken.

Rune Tap: Rune Tap lets you convert one blood rune into 10% of your health, with the glyph you will receive an extra 10%. If you use Vampiric Blood before you use rune tap you could get back up to 55% of your health. In dire situations, for example when you are in a heroic and your healer is dead, this talent can keep you alive long enough to kill a boss.

Bloodworms: These disgusting little worms heal you and are nice to have, just be aware that you can't control them and they can and will attack random mobs. The healing and extra damage the worms do helps keep you going strong. Bloodworms are going to heal more after patch 3.1.

Blood Aura: Blood Aura allows your party to heal for 4% of the damage they do. This talent is useful for reducing the burden on the healer and keeping DPS characters alive. After patch 3.1 having blood aura will no longer effect the party but will allow you to keep the healing benefits of blood aura while you are tanking in frost presence.

Mark of Blood: This is another talent that helps to keep the party alive in tough situations by healing someone immediately for 4% of their health after the marked target strikes them.

Dancing Rune Weapon: The rune weapon adds straight up DPS at the cost of runic power and while it's active the rune weapon will do as you do. The rune weapon will apply additional diseases and attack exactly as you do. In patch 3.1 this power is being changed to do less damage but the cooldown is being reduced from 3 minutes to 1.5 minutes.

Sudden Doom: Sudden Doom will trigger a free critical Death Coil 20% of the time. Note that until patch 3.1, you still have to cast Death Coil when the power procs. After patch 3.1 Death Coil will go off automatically, even if you don't cast it.

Glyph Choices:

Glyph of Death Strike Your Death Strike's damage and healing increase by 2% for every 5 runic power you currently have. The runic power is not consumed by this effect. Death Strike is going to get buffed in patch 3.1, with talents it will do an extra 30% damage and 6% critical strike. After patch 3.1, the Glyph of Death Strike will also be buffed, causing 2% extra damage for every point of runic power you have. As an emergency healing move, Death Strike is powerful already and will be great after the patch for DPS and saving your healer's mana.

Glyph of Vampiric Blood Increases the duration of your Vampiric Blood by 10 sec.

Minor:

Glyph of Horn of WinterHorn of Winter lasts 60 seconds longer. Although you will quickly get into the habit of refreshing your Horn of Winter for every pull because having the buff is essential, having this glyph makes refreshing the horn less of a priority during long fights.

Glyph of Raise Dead Your Raise Dead spell no longer requires a reagent. This minor glyph is great for any Unholy death knight, you will save hundreds if not thousands of gold over time on reagents.

Leveling as an Blood Tank:

Death knights are a great class for leveling, you will start at level 55 with rare gear and an epic mount. To make a Death Knight you must have one character that is level 55 to start. You can begin tanking right away in level 60 instances such as Scholomance, Stratholme or Hellfire Ramparts to see what your new Death Knight can do. Because Death Knights are tough and can push incredible amounts of DPS and leveling is not much of an issue, you will progress rapidly and be able to solo most group quests. Just be aware that you will not be doing as much AOE damage as an unholy death knight. As a blood death knight you heal constantly and you won't need potions, food, bandages or to slow down to use them.

Add Ons for Leveling:

The Best addons for this method of leveling is Carbonite. Carbonite keeps track of all of your quests and shows you where to go in order to complete them in game. This addons is now free, perfectly legal to use in World of Warcraft and not to be confused with 3rd party autobot programs. When an addon is just modifying your interface or providing information and not automating the game, generally it is safe to use it with World of Warcraft. If you have any doubts about this there is an official Blizzard forum just for addons and macros that you can go to and ask questions and you can also ask a gamemaster ingame if you have any lingering doubts.

Cartographer and and MobMap are available on Curse.com MobMap is available through the developer's website at MobMap.de Both of these programs are good alternatives for Carbonite. Questhelper was once the add on of choice but was discontinued after Blizzard announced changes to it's policies about how developers can request donations.

Leveling Process:

Questing will take you a bit longer than being run through instances but will also yield nice gear and achievements for your new characters. I love Jame's guides because he tells you in a logical way how to plan what your doing in each zone to minimize the time you have to spend leveling and what items to pick up before you leave town. Jame keeps his guides updated and I have used his website for years.

Jame even has a new addon that you can use in game. Jame's guide is free, has a community that tests and supports it and has detailed information on how to complete the harder quests. I am so crazy about Jame's guides that I will not attempt to reinvent the wheel, just use his site if you need help with questing. Ten Ton Hammer has an excellent guide for the Death Knight starting area, if you would like an overview.

List of Zones

55-58 The Scarlet Enclave/Acherus

58-60 Plague Lands

60-62 Hellfire Pennisula

62-64 Zangermarsh

64-66 Terrokar

66-68 Nagrand

68-71 Blade's Edge or Shadowmoon Valley or Netherstorm

71-72 Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord

72-74 Dragonblight/Grizzly Hills

75-76 Zul'Drak

76-78 Scholazar Basin

78-80 Ice Crown

You will want faction gear, be sure to earn Reputation with the Kirin Tor, Argent Crusade, Oracles or Frenzyhearts and Knights of the Ebon Blade

Gearing up your Death Knight

Death Knights begin with rare gear which is hard to improve on until you are in Northend. Gear becomes more of an issue as you begin to tank in Northend's dungeons. Kaliban's Class Loot List has a complete list of all Death Knight gear available from quests and dungeons.

Gear Pre-Level 80: Regular Dungeons

At level 70 you can get a complete set of Cobalt Armor from a blacksmith which will be suitable for Utgarde Keep and the Nexus. You can immediately get four tanking upgrades if you complete the following Dungeon quests:

Utgarde Keep:

Disarmament: Woven Steel Necklace

Ingvar's Monolithic Cleaver is also a good choice for new tanks

Nexus:

Have They No Shame: Tundra Pauldrons

Postponing the Inevitable: Gauntlets of the Disturbed Giant

The Quickening: Boots of the Unbowed Protector

Azjol-Nerub:

Don't Forget the Eggs!: Expelling Guantlets

The Signet of Arachnathid Command is another upgrade you can get in Azjol-Nerub.

To tank for Heroics you need about 485 defense and 22,000 hit points and Raids you will need 540 Defense and 25,000 Hit Points. This is the generally accepted benchmark, some groups will kick you out if you don't meet this standard. It is also desirable to have 2,500-3000 attack power, and +hit and crit as high as you can get it without sacrificing defense. It is also a good idea to have a DPS offset; most raids will expect that you will do at least 1,800-2,500 or more DPS at all times.

Fortunately almost all tanking armor has strength; strength contributes 2 attack power per point of strenth which makes having high attack power possible. Getting the right mix of defense and stats is a long term project, for a list of all the options, visit Loot Rank.com and Tank Spot. Congratulations on reaching level 80, see you in Naxxramas!