Lichborne: Gearing up to tank Naxxramas, Part II
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Jan 18th 2009 at 9:00PM
Belt
So you've been running Heroics for a while now, right? Do you have 40 emblems? Okay, buy the Waistguard of Living Iron. Trust me. It's really for the best. Then you can get an Eternal Belt Buckle on that thing, stick a few gems in, and you'll probably be set even up through 25-man Kel'thuzad, it's just that good.
Legs
This is another slot where you can probably get away with your reputation gear. The Special Issue Legplates should be a solid choice for a beginning Naxx tank, especially with the gem slot and all. However, if you want to go the extra mile for the upgrade, try taking down Cyanigosa in Heroic Violet Hold.She drops the Bolstered Legplates, which are essentially a turbo-charged version of the Special Issue Legplates, right down to the red gem slot.
Be sure to slap on a Frosthide Leg Armor kit on your pants before your first Naxx run while you're at it.
Boots
Once again, you probably won't be too bad off sticking with the Sabatons of Draconic Vigor from Revered Wyrmrest Accord, but if you can stand to lose some defense rating and hit rating and feel like you need more avoidance and stamina, consider the Greaves of Ancient Evil off Heroic Herald Volazj. They're a nice upgrade from the sabatons, with more strength and stamina and some dodge rating in exchange for less defense rating and no hit rating.
A good solid and relatively cheap enchantment to put on those boots would probably be the Greater Fortitude Enchant. You might also consider Tuskarr's Vitality if you don't have Unholy Presence, but it's pretty restrictively expensive right now.
Neck
Ok, so you bought the belt, right? Do you have another 25 emblems saved up? Great, go ahead and grab the Chained Military Gorget. It has plenty of defense, dodge, and hit rating in addition to a healthy service of strength and stamina.
Back
The Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions from honored Wyrmrest Accord is probably going to remain your best bet for tanking in Naxxramas. If you're looking for an alternate look, though, you might consider the Cloak of the Enemy from Heroic Nexus. It's essentially a sidegrade, but it does have a few extra points of armor and stamina, and it definitely looks better.
Rings
If you're willing to spend a bit of extra gold to get geared up for tanking, strongly consider purchasing a Titanium Earthguard Ring. It really is a pretty amazing tanking ring, plus it has a very nice blue socket waiting for a gem.
For drop options, check out the Woeful Band from the Maiden of Grief in Heroic Halls of Stone, or the Band of Torture from Heroic Oculus, both of which provide a good bit of defense rating and some sizable avoidance and stamina as well. If you feel like you could some extra expertise, you could also dig all the way back to normal Gundrak for Gal'darah's Signet, which compare surprisingly favorable to your heroic options overall.
Trinkets
In yet another instance where you'll want to leave behind the Heroics for a bit, consider running normal Halls of Lightning for a bit. The Seal of the Pantheon is the only 5-man defense trinket you'll find in Northrend, and it's pretty good anyway.
Beyond that you'll probably want to shoot for the Essence of Gossamer, which drops off Hadronox in Heroic Azjol-Nerub. While it has no defense, it does have massive amounts of stamina and a nice damage absorption proc - which luckily doesn't worry us, since we don't need to get hit to generate runic power.
Weapons
For weaponry, Consider buying or gathering the mats for a Titansteel Destroyer. The massive amounts of strength and hit rating will provide both plenty of threat and some extra parry rating.
If you don't want to spend the money on the Destroyer, you have a couple other options. The Sword of Justice from Heroic Halls of Stone has plenty of strength and stamina and a gem slot besides, one of the only 2-handed weapons in Northrend that even bothered including a gem slot.
The best dropped tank weapon pre-Naxxramas, though, is probably the Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver off Loken in Heroic Halls of Lightning. Lots of strength and agility equals lots of threat and avoidance, and Orcs may even prefer it to the Titansteel Destroyer due to their racial bonus.
As far as which enchant to choose, for now it's probably Rune of Swordshattering, but come 3.0.8, that's going to be a bit more difficult to choose. Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle's 25 defense skill (not rating) and +2% stamina will open a lot of new gearing avenues, and you'll probably have to decide if you want the avoidance from Swordshattering, or the freedom to be more flexible with your gear from Stoneskin Gargoyle. In the end, it may be that you'll make up any avoidance gap from eschewing Rune of Swordshattering via the extra avoidance on your gear and that extra 2% stamina from the enchant.
Still, don't discount Swordshattering completely, especially if you're a Blood tank with Spell Deflection. Once you're flush with defense gear, you may end up giving it a second look.
Welcome to Lichborne, the new class column on the new WoW class, the Death Knight, where we discuss speccing for solo DPS, Gearing up in Northrend's starting zones, basic defense gear for the Death Knight tank, and basic Death Knight statistics and mechanics. You might also want to check all the other articles in our Death Knight category and our Death Knight directory.Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Instances, Guides, Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Dia Jan 18th 2009 9:36PM
You forgot the Horn-Tipped Gauntlets from Heroic Gal'Darah.
Ozymandias Jan 18th 2009 9:40PM
It looks like I have a lot of rep grinding to do.
Vasco Jan 18th 2009 10:35PM
I feel like this: /script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Shift-click this to place a link into a chat message: \124cff0070dd\124Hitem:37108:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0\124h[Dreadlord's Blade]\124h\124r"); is also a good tanking weapon. It can be picked up in regular CoS.
blackfriar Jan 18th 2009 11:20PM
This is great stff for tanking Dks! Personally I'm much more interested in the DPS side of the class and i'd love to see a similar article for us who like doing damage but don't like getting hit in the face :)
Poxx Jan 18th 2009 11:23PM
I hope the aforementioned gear hits the 540 defence cap.
I hope the Naxx mobs are merciful.
If it was me and I wanted to tank Naxx.
Get all the crafted plate defence gear you can get then go back to Shadowlabs and get the Adamantine Figurine.
Then go back to the Dimensius quest and get defence item from that quest line.
Then you might (with all the defence enchants you can get) get close to the 540 defence (not defence rating) that you need to be uncrittable.
Grand Widow Faerlina wont be as forgiving as some.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Grand_Widow_Faerlina
foobar Jan 19th 2009 5:44AM
I don't agree with you. I started tanking Naxx with 540def and without Adamantine Figurine and mostly with gear mentioned in this article. And not all enchants was +def rating. I just had to use legplates and bracers from BS, cause they had a lot of def rating.
Anyway, I would suggest one thing. If you do a lot of HC or you started doing Naxx already, spend your emblems on chest and gloves t7 tokens.
Negator Jan 19th 2009 2:31AM
2 easy to get items that you forgot to mention:
Shoulders: Crusaders Square Pauldrons (BoE) drop like mad in heroic CoS.
Waist: Waistguard of the Risen Knight (BoE) drops in normal Drak'Tharon.
Garviel Jan 19th 2009 1:14PM
I think this may only drop in Heroic version now, which was where I got mine.
Mainstay Jan 19th 2009 4:08AM
Absolutely no mention of dual wield tanking -.-
Aldheim Jan 19th 2009 4:11AM
For much the same reason that articles about good gear for Warrior and Paladin tanks don't talk about two handed weapons: you aren't supposed to tank like that.
Xoshe Jan 19th 2009 7:18AM
That's not true. DW tanking is a more then viable spec, especially at the moment since you can DW tanking weapons for a pretty big Def Rating boost that going 2H just can't make up at the moment. That's what the new Runeforge enchant is for.
Robert Jan 19th 2009 9:39AM
You get parry-gibbed too much from attempting to DW tank its a healers worst nightmare. you would have to spend too many enchant/gem slots on expertise and sacrifice other stats severely in order not to get gibbed so badly. Your just not supposed to tank like that, the bit more def just doesn't justify it.
Arkeband Jan 19th 2009 6:27AM
Two above me: Looks like someone has failed to read up on why dw tanking is a bad idea. (and if you've ever ran with one, you will know. :| )
Sawzz Jan 19th 2009 8:00AM
DW tanking is not the monster everyone makes it out to be. You need to understand the mechanics of the game, from there its just math. Frost tanks as an example have 4 attacks that cannot be parried (all DKs have three) Most every attack from a Warrior, druid can be parried. Also one of our abilities replaces the next auto attack and cannot be parried rune strike. Anyway, it works out to be about 7% increase damage from parry haste. This of course does not factor in the the added benefit of avoidance you will gain fro two tanking weapons also you can prolly re-gem a good bit also for the same reason.
Sawzz DK Area 52
Horixon Jan 19th 2009 10:07AM
I've been Unholy tanking for a while now, and I tried out Frost this last week. While the spell resistance talents are very nice for Saph and Kel I was disappointed with the threat-gen. Unholy just seems to generate much more threat while granting you more situational awareness. And parry gibbing wasn't too bad, but it is definitely still a factor.
After tanking Naxx and Obsidian Sanctum as Frost I decided to go back to Unholy, and I noticed right away how much more threat I was generating and how much less damage I was taking. It was still a viable tanking spec, but for my playstyle I just prefer Unholy...and so do my healers lol.
Fizzle Jan 19th 2009 10:21AM
You should probably mention the Saliva Corroded Pike as weapon option. It's DPS isnt the best, but it has good stats and more importantly, it's easy to get even if you're not Def Capped since it drops in Violet Hold heroic.
DeathPaladin Jan 19th 2009 11:25AM
The problem I see with dual-wield tanking is two-fold.
First is gearing. As a dual-wielder, you need a lot more hit rating. Otherwise you miss a lot, which is threat you could have had, but don't get. As a tank, you also need to stack more expertise, since you will be standing in front of the boss and therefore need to eliminate parries and dodges. And obviously, as a tank, you have to get defense capped. Then you need to stack strength and stamina with what little item points you have left. Wielding a two-handed weapon eliminates the need for extra hit, which allows you to stack more tanking stats.
Second is the talent build. The talents that improve dual-wielding are not necessarily the same as the talents that improve tanking, and so they will be competing for points. After a cursory fiddling with a talent calculator, it seems to be slightly less problematic with Unholy tanks, but the result was a fairly ugly build. With Frost tanks there really aren't enough points to go around, since if you don't go deep enough into Unholy to get Necrosis and Blood-Caked Blade, you might as well just spec two-handers and be done with it. I didn't even bother with Blood tanks, since that is very much a two-hander tree.
tl;dr version: Something's gotta give. If you try to hit cap yourself, you lose tanking stats in your gear. If you don't, you lose threat generation through missed swings. When speccing, the same problem arises, with DW and tanking talents competing for points.
Garviel Jan 19th 2009 1:15PM
Sorry, meant to add "the waistpiece"
Cameron Jan 19th 2009 5:11PM
I disagree with your guide, You need to get the Horn-Tipped Gauntlets from Heroic Gundrak.. It's much better than what you have, The weapon, No.. just no.. DK tanks do not need that much Agility, Hardly. They need stamina and strength, Which is why the Salive-Corred Pike out of Heroic Nexus is the best choice. Other than that, It seems to be good enough, You also left out the fact that you can go to Heroic Azjol-Nerub and pick up the girdle from there, Lot's of Dodge, Armor, and stamina if you don't wish to waste the badges on the other one, I don't see the other one as that much of an upgrade. I would strongly suggest researching this a little bit more before you make a guide.
Bewbath- Moon Guard
Valkry Jan 19th 2009 7:39PM
You don't really need to spend any points on strength if you are duel wielding, you get extra dps from having 2 weapons (and extra parry if they are tanking weapons). The parry insta-gib isn't so much of an issue anymore due to mobs 3 lvls higher not crushing the tanks anymore.
The main 2 problems with it is the talent points and the expertise needed. I'm hoping that with better gear in the next contenet patch (tanking gear with expertise or something) dw tanking might become more viable.
Also, with duel wielding, you will use the parry rune forging enchant whereas 2h will be using the def+stam one, meaning that 7% extra dmg becomes only 3%.
I will admit it's not completely viable atm, but here's hoping.