World of Warcraft: Tanking with the New Class: Death Knight

Death knight is a complex class, as they can tank or dish out the damage with any spec, it really just depends on their playing style and skill in the World of Warcraft game overall. However, I would suggest frost spec if you're planning on doing a lot of main-tanking. This article will specifically be about how to tank with a death knight, as well as how to control your tanking when there are other "tanks", potentially, in your group.

AOE

AoE attacks are going to be very effective at keeping targets on you. Make sure to always keep your Death and Decay on cooldown, and always do your best to keep diseases on all targets, as this will decrease the amount of damage you take, as well as increase the amount of damage all of the targets near you take. Keeping frost fever on all enemies attacking you will decrease the damage you take by 15% or so, because it will decrease the melee attack speed of the mobs around you by about 15%, as well as cause damage to all of the affected targets. Plague strike also works nice, when followed by a pestilence, to spread both diseases to all targets. Make sure to always keep the mob in your death and decay, as this will cause lots of threat.

Presences

Always stay in frost presence as a tank. If you're ever not in frost presence, you're going to lose your ability to tank significantly. While in frost presence, you have an awesome amount of armor added, and you also generate more threat, as well as take less damage from spells. Make sure that all other death knights near you are either in blood or unholy presence, because if they decide to throw up frost presence as well, they will be causing additional unnecessary threat and won't be able to do as much damage either.

Other Death Knights

As I've already stated, you're going to need to make sure that all other Death Knights do not have frost presence enabled, and you will need to. Also, other Death Knights should NOT be using AoE/Death and Decay unless they absolutely know what they are doing, or have a threat meter to make sure that you hold the aggro. Also, no other Death Knights should be pulling. The use of death grip and/or taunts are strictly prohibited from the non-tank death knights, and any sign of this should be warned immediately, because it could cost the healer tons of mana trying to heal off-tankers.

Self-Healing

Make sure to take advantage of the ways you can heal yourself if it gets down into a situation where you really need to save yourself. If you're at least level 64, you can summon your ghoul (if you don't already have him) and sacrifice him for 40 runic power, restoring 40% of your maximum health immediately. This is a great save for the case in which you need it. Also, you can death strike a diseased target to gain some health back. Activate your tanking cooldowns as well, as this might just keep you alive enough for the healer to regenerate enough mana to heal you, or for the mob to die off from the dps. The death knight really does have more "oh crap" buttons than most players believe. Use them.