by Daniel Whitcomb
Whether you’re a DPS DK considering going tank for shorter queue times, or a 5-man DK tank newbie looking to up their game, this column’s for you.
Talents and Specs
The death knight tanking spec in itself is a mysterious concept to many. There’s those who hold on to the outmoded pre-Beta idea that Frost is the only viable tanking tree. There’s those who assume that “DKs can tank in any tree” means they can tank in any spec. We know the truth. You can tank in any tree, but you really need a specific spec to tank.Luckily, dual speccing makes it much less painful for most of us to tank on a tanking spec (Sorry PvP and PvE DPS specced death knights, though, you need to make a choice).
The start to a good death knight tank spec is 5/5/5. That’s Blade Barrier, Toughness, and Anticipation. These are three basic defense skills that will start you off on the right foot to survival. Sure, every once in a while someone will put forth some esoteric spec that skips one or more of them for some strange reason, but those builds almost never last more than a patch, if at all. Besides, we’re just trying to get in shape to tank 5-man PUGs, not reinvent DK tanking, so let’s stick with the basics and start with 5/5/5.
Once you got that in place, move up the tree of your choice, grabbing the defensive talents and cool downs. Don’t forget a few DPS talents too, you’ll need to be able to hold threat. Of course, while basic tank builds, from my way of thinking, are pretty intuitive, it doesn’t hurt to spell it out too. Here’s a look at 3 possible builds, one for each tree.
This Blood tank spec gives you most of the bells and whistles of Blood, while also delving into Frost and Unholy for some extra slowing power on Icy Touch and a cool down reduction for Death and Decay. With this build, you’ll have solid single target threat, and Spell Deflection will let you laugh in the face of casters. You’ll be slightly weaker at AoE threat than the other two trees, but your Blood Boil and Death and Decay will still be potent. You’ll also have extra self-healing from using Death Strike as your main Frost/Unholy strike, which will help if you drew a lackluster healer. Of course, in return, you won’t have as much purely reactive damage soaking ability as the other two trees. Even Vampiric Blood requires you to be healed to reap the full benefits.
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