Death Knights – Tanking Intro

The Death Knight is the newest class added to wow, it is labeled as a “hero class” since you need to have leveled a character to 55+ in order to create one. It is a unique class with its rune system and the fact that you start your character at lvl 55 instead of 1. DK tanking is a great experience. At the moment all 3 trees are viable for tanking, no other class can say that. In fact, most classes only can use 1.

If you are familiar with tanking, then slipping into the DK shoes will not be much of a problem once you know the basics. Tanking with the Death Knight is a lot like being a DK dps. With all three trees being viable, the difference in dps vs tanking is very small compared to the other classes. For beginners with less than average gear, I would suggest tanking as blood first; it’s not a requirement but more of a suggestion. Blood feels much more forgiving than frost or unholy when first starting out.

Your rotation is just like a DPS one with some small changes. You will want to dot up 1 mob and spread disease to the rest. A good idea would be too start off with a D&D to get initial threat from all mobs, if there is only one than don’t bother. Once done you should use blood boil with every blood rune until you need to re dot and spread. Using Death Grip to pull mobs to you that lose agro is nice. The mob will be forced to attack you for 3 seconds so be sure to get the threat back during that time.

Be sure to always be in frost stance otherwise you won’t generate enough threat. Like other classes you will want 540+ def cap so you don’t get crit. There really isn’t much to it. The rest is just practice, knowing when to use those defensive cooldowns and just being aware of your surroundings and everyone’s threat levels. Keeping an eye out for adds so you can pick those up is a tank must.