DK tanks can feel squishy compared to block-tanks in 5-mans. You can offset a lot of this through skill. We have a pretty impressive arsenal to use.
Here are some important pointers which are often overlooked by new DK tanks. It’s a good checklist.
Tank tree cooldowns
Use your tree’s big cooldown a lot: [Vampiric Blood], [Unbreakable Armor] or [Bone Shield]. They’ve got short cooldowns. Use them on trash.
I use UA on trash very happily, it’s ideal for that purpose. BS is just awesomeness and AMZ can be very nice but most Unholy DKs will have spec’d into threat instead of that talent.
Many padawans tanks save all their cooldowns for bad moments then end up struggling on trash. On a boss fight, of course, you should save them for the damage spikes you know about. On trash though, use them on the pull to reduce initial damage or if you get to 50% health during the pull. Don’t do 10 minutes of trash and never use your cooldowns.
VB isn’t so great in 5-mans, as its more a throughput talent that’s for raiding, so in 5-mans its better suited to oh-shit moments than the other two trees. That said, blood has Rune Tap which can be used liberally.
Icebound Fortitude
Think ahead, and don’t waste [Icebound Fortitude] if you are going to need it on the boss who’s coming up, or a huge pull of AOE adds, but otherwise use it liberally.
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There’s a maturity cycle that tanks progress through. One of the marks of a mature, experienced tank is they know the encounters and they plan ahead. Newer tanks are usually focused on their action-bars and rune cooldowns, on the mechanics of acting. Mature tanks handle the basic threat actions without much conscious focus, and instead expand their awareness to the whole game field, and planning for what’s coming up next.
One thing paladins enjoy is a fairly consistent action
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A lot has been written about why you should not keyboard turn (it’s too slow), and that you should keybind. I wrote about how PvP improves your raiding too. I’m going to skip that preamble and just talk briefly about keybinds.
Yesterday the little survey I did on myself included a snippet which Perditio commented on, saying he had the same binds! Spooky because they’re not the most obvious ones.
Movement
I move with ESDF. If you are still on WASD I recommend you spend the next month getting your muscle memory into ESDF instead; you gain QAZ as keybind options.
Take your time with keybind changes, you need muscle memory to set in before you move onto the next change. Do one thing at a time; this could take months. Movement keys particularly took me ages to get used to.
Rebind non-combat actions set by the default UI to shift or alt equivalents (alt is better since it’s usually an awkward key to use in an action binding). So you’d change ‘reply’ to be shift or alt R. Rebind ‘open all bags’ to alt-B, ‘open character panel’ to alt-c, ‘pvp panel’ to alt-h and so on.
Bindings
Binding rule:
Near your hand, bind actions which you hit very often or need to get to very quickly
Emergencies: Blood tap and ERW should be easy to get to, since you will use them for an emergency tank cooldown or a snap DnD.
I have shift-1 is blood tap, shift-2 is ERW (all rune reset).
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I get a lot of questions like “what’s the rotation for that spec?” Rotation is like Death Knight basics, and since I write on more advanced tanking questions, it’s not content I usually include. Besides, a DK should think in terms of priorities and not rotations. More on that distinction later.
But then I started writing this, and realised… there’s some of subtlety here. I’ve played a DK since they WotLK was released, so it’s second-nature, but if you are new to the class there might be some crucial info in this post.
So, here are the answers which I can then refer people to for what’s the frost/unholy/blood rotation or priority.
Important context on being a DK
Parry/dodge: As a DPS, you attack the boss from behind and have enough hit and expertise so you do not miss. Tanks face the boss, so generally can be parried. This difference alone means a tank rotation has to be flexible because you will re-do a strike once in a while after being parried. DPS DKs, when well-geared, do not have this problem and can use a very tight rotation.
Priority/rotation: Tanks need to think in terms of a priority system. Rotations are a stepping stones towards achieving those priorities. The best DKs do not stick to a rigid rotation, they stick to a priority system. If you have to run away from a boss to avoid his Big AOE thing, then run back in, your rotation will be meaningless if the diseases have fallen off. DK damage requires diseases, so your first priority is to put them back up.
Unholy presence: some DPS specs use unholy presence to they can stuff more attacks into the 20 second rune recharge cycle. If you’re using such a spec, you must know the rotation too, since they’re intimately connected, or you’re ruining your own dps. I will not cover any of those rotations here.
Frost or blood presence: the rotation/priority are the same for dps and tanks, you just use different presences. The below details will work for both.
Tank specs: use my tank specs launch page to find frost, unholy and blood tank specs.
Blood runes and blade barrier: a tank needs to always have blood runes used up or recharging. Even if they’ve become death runes, spend them asap. You need that for blade barrier. A DPS DK does not have that priority. The priority systems written below have an overriding principle of keeping blade barrier up, but there isn’t a hard and convenient rule I can give you.
I do whatever I can to keep blade barrier up. I have it as a watched buff. I’ll notice its remaining duration. Even if the boss has no diseases but barrier is about to expire, I’ll spend blood runes on blood strike/ pestilence/ blood tap /rune tap / obliterate (whatever) to get barrier back up. Exception is if you’re just starting the fight, you’d open by running in with an icy touch, plague strike in melee range, then use blood strike twice.
Runic power dump: frosties use frost strike, the others death coil. Tanks keep 20 RP at all times; save that much for rune strike or IBF. Don’t use it on a dump. If you have a spare GCD and nothing to do, hit horn of winter for some free RP.
In my last column for pwnwear, I discussed the mindset of the DPS DK stepping into the role of OT. Today, I wanted to follow that up with a simple summary of fights that require offtanks, and what your role will be. I won’t review Naxx, as that content is being pugged on most servers and isn’t really a ’serious’ raid any more, but Ulduar and T9 content certainly is. I’ve offtanked (25 man) and/or maintanked (10-man) almost all of these fights (except Algalon – we haven’t faced him, and some heroic fights), so let’s take a look and see what we have!
If you get called on to OT in Ulduar/TOC/Ony, what will you be doing? Often fights have several viable strats and I won’t be covering them all. I’ll mention the main adds that need to be OT’d and what to expect. Variations are up to your raid leader. I’ll often skip hard modes as you’ll likely know the fights well if working on those. I also assume some familiarity with these fights from a dps perspective. Warning! This is a fairly long post. 
Ulduar
resist gear is not needed in Ulduar, so OTs should concentrate on the best mix of survivability and threat stats/gear. Exceptions – maybe – would be frost resist on Hodir or Thorim hard mode.
1. Flame Leviathan: no tanks
2. Razorscale: Three tanks typically. Usually, the MT will pull the Sentinels off to the side for range to kill. OTs gather the other Dark Rune dwarves together for aoe, making sure to stay out of fire. As OT, you’ll need to be ready to taunt Razorscale when she stays on the ground and the other tank gets 2 stacks of Fused Armor. Kite her facing away from the raid and out of flame patches.
3. Ignis: We do the burn method of tanking Ignis in the water and kill him fast, but in any case 1-2 OTs should grab the constructs when they spawn and kite them through scorched areas, then to water when they turn molten (10 stacks). Be careful, they hit hard, which is why some guilds use a hunter to ‘tank’ the constructs. If you’re within 10 yards when the construct is blown up, you may die to the aoe.
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Here’s a guest post from a reader, who became a regular commenter, then blogger! – G
I AM DPS, HEAR ME ROAR!!!!!
(meow)
I started my wow life as a rogue and loved putting up the huge dps numbers throughout the Burning Crusade. I found that as I progressed through BC raids and the expansion cycle, I enjoyed doing max dps with every class I tried and was really very good at it, whether I dps’d as rogue, lock, or enh shammy.
Along came LK and Death Knights. As I discuss in my blog, I wanted to have a class capable of tanking, but really, I just loved the mechanics and playstyle of DKs, so I became a DK convert. The guild I was in when LK dropped had a good number of tanks and I did top dps, so I was never asked to tank, and frankly, tanking made me very very nervous. I knew I was good at dps, but I also knew that at least initially I wouldn’t be stellar at tanking, so I never really ended up doing it. I still amassed some tanking gear when it would have been de’d otherwise though.
Lo and behold, when I returned to the game and found a new guild, they needed me to tank!
Now what?
Oh, shit…… they need me to tank.
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