Lichborne: Patch 4.0.1 death knight mailbag
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Oct 26th 2010 at 6:00PM
Since we're all winding down from BlizzCon, I figured this week would be a good time to sit back, take it a little easier and just sort out some questions I've been seeing about some the subtle nuances of the new milieu bought to use by patch 4.0.1. So today, I'll be answering various comments and questions sent via email and the comments of the last few Lichborne columns. Let's get to it.
Max asks:
I was wondering how leveling as a tank was looking for DKs in Cataclysm. Would you spend your justice points on a DPS or tank set in the coming weeks to prepare for leveling in the expansion?
Honestly, Max, I think the best answer here is simple enough: It doesn't matter. Honestly, by Deepholm, you will probably be replacing most of this stuff, so you shouldn't sweat too much about what to buy in preparation for Cataclysm.
If you do want to plan ahead, though, I'd say go DPS if you plan to solo quest. Even if you are questing as blood (and I think a lot of death knights will be doing just that, with good reason), having DPS gear will make the enemies die faster and shouldn't affect your survivability too negatively while soloing.
If you want to level by entering the random dungeon finder as a tank, though, then you probably do want tank gear. That said, this method will probably be slower than leveling via questing, be a lot more frustrating in the age of more difficult dungeons, and cause you to miss a lot of fun quests and dynamic story.
In short, I'd strongly suggest you grab DPS gear, spec blood, and level via questing through the new zones.
BAHilll asks:
The Glyph of Death and Decay is going to be a lifesaver for you in just about any AoE situation. The base spell has a threat modifier and more targets, so having it up more often means better threat for you. That said, the Glyph of Heart Strike still has a place, but I would have it replace the Glyph of Death Strike. I chose Glyph of Death Strike for my example build because you will be using it a lot in Cataclysm, since in theory, you will be fighting a lot more single-target battles and you'll want to activate Blood Shield as often as possible. That said, Heart Strike still provides a very nice amount of damage and a useful cleave for three-mob groups, so it might be worth it to apply in place of that glyph if you're doing a lot of mixed-group fighting.In your example blood tanking build, I noticed that you have Glyph of Death and Decay as opposed to the Glyph of Heart Strike, which is what I had thought would be a better choice. Can you help explain why the Glyph of Death and Decay is a better choice?
My second question is regarding the choice of Blood Parasite vs. another talent. Does the 10 percent proc occur often enough to justify two talent points, and when the blood worms burst, how much healing are they doing for you and/or the group?
As for Blood Parasites, don't confuse them with Wrath-era Bloodworms. These are the real deal. They will heal you for thousands of damage over their lifespan, and they do spawn a good amount. They'll offer some real relief to your healer as well. There are some places where you can save points in the blood tree, but I would strongly, strongly advise you not to skip Blood Parasites for any solid tanking build.
Charlie asks:
Having 2 full of anything is definitely a bad idea, which is why one of your top-priority moves in the unholy rotation is, in fact, to use Festering Strike if both sets of blood and frost runes are up. This will normally only happen at the start of a battle, or possibly if you got an incredibly lucky streak of Runic Corruption procs. At that time, you want to use a couple of Festering Strikes specifically to make sure you don't have those runes full, so they can take advantage of procs and not stay filled too long. After you do that, follow the priority list, and simply use Festering Strike after you've used Scourge Strike, whenever you have a single blood and frost rune set up.I'm confused about this line: "Use Festering Strike if both sets of blood and frost runes are up." So are you saying that I should have all 4 runes powered up before I use this? I thought having 2 full of anything was a bad thing.
In other words, you can cast Festering Strikes one at a time as the runes refresh, but if they're all refreshed at once, you want to get them on cooldown as soon as possible.
Sarapalin asks:
With the changes in blood, will dual wield tanking be a thing of the past?
In short, yes. While you can feasibly create a blood tank build with Nerves of Cold Steel, the fact remains that Nerves of Cold Steel itself will not be enough in and of itself to make dual-wield tanking viable. Since you'll only use your main hand damage for all of your weapon strikes, you just won't have the single-target threat to keep up with any competent, well-geared DPS unless they artifically throttle themselves. If you want to be working at 100 percent efficiency, you will have to pick up a two-handed weapon in order to tank.
Multiple people have asked:
Should unholy death knights be getting Scarlet Fever? The extra disease will let us hit harder, right?
Sorry guys, it doesn't work like that. Scarlet Fever doesn't count as a disease for damage multiplication purposes, and the 10 percent physical damage reduces the target's damage dealt, so he doesn't take any extra damage for having it on. It's not a completely useless thing for DPS death knights to take if they want to add some extra utility, but chances are your tank will have that debuff covered anyway, and it doesn't do anything extra for us. Besides, it's administered via Blood Boil and therefore may turn out to be too much of a crowd-control-breaker to use.
We have advice for everything from PUG etiquette and buttons you should push more often to Icecrown loot and gear stat weights. Check out WoW Insider's DK leveling guides, and visit Lichborne every week for more death knight strategies and tips.Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Kuro Oct 26th 2010 6:15PM
Sooooo.. I pulled one my fifteen or so lvl 58 Death Knights out of storage and dusted him put him in shiny heirlooms, and got him to lvl 60. Now, I've leveled 3 healers and 2 dps up through LFG, and don't want to repeat the dps queues.
How would one tank as a level 60 DK? What buttons to push, glyphs, and talents?
cartoonheroii Oct 26th 2010 6:38PM
What a coincidence, I pulled out my lvl 60 DK and wanted to learn to tank with him. So I queued up and ran Ramps twice as the tank. I had no clue what I was doing (as a DK or a tank), but we made it through with only one wipe between the two tries. All I did was mash buttons and click targets. No strategy at all. But I would definitely like a short tutorial on what works and how to really play a DK tank at 60+
Rob Oct 26th 2010 6:44PM
Hopefully others can add, but you want to be blood presence and blood spec. I'm sure there are cookie cutter specs out there (and even discussed in this article), but just go through, read everything, and get whatever looks 'tanky'. Also I think death and decay doesn't show up until 62, which makes tanking sucky until then. My advice is just keep leveling for the brief two levels until you get DnD. Then your rotation looks like this. DnD, icy touch, plague strike, pestulence, then on cooldown bloodboil x 2, then repeat from icy touch. If you only have a few adds just use hearth strike instead of BB.
Kesh Oct 26th 2010 6:50PM
1) Death & Decay. The threat gen alone is worth it, especially with tanking a group of mobs.
2) Apply diseases. If tanking a group, hit Pestilence.
3) Blood Boil, even if it's a single-target. You should have the talent that makes BB reduce your targets damage output.
4) Death Strike often to regen health
Outside that, it's situational. Those 4, though, are your bread & butter.
Tom Oct 26th 2010 9:08PM
I recommend not bothering with diseases in AoE situations, or at least not opening with them. Sure, your Blood Boil and Heart Strike will be weaker, but you'll have much better initial threat. You'd be looking at D&D->BB->BB to establish initial aggro instead of D&D->IT->PS->Pest->BB, and the former works WAY better in quick AoE situations, such as what you'll have with level Outland/Northrend DPSers champing at their bits. Of course, keep using your diseases on single targets (though *after* an initial DS).
I feel dirty recommending disease-less tanking, but it's really quite good for groups. There's a very enlightening threat about it over at http://pwnwear.com.
Aceman67 Oct 27th 2010 1:45AM
Speaking as a Lv80 ICC10 Heroic geared tank, Do not do what Tom says. A vast ammount of your threat is generated via your Death and Decay and your Diseases, especially on multi-mob incounters, and until you get Rune Strike at lv67, DnD and your Diseases will be your primary form of threat generation.
Experience has taught me that it is a good idea to get your Diseases up as quick as possible, its simple as IT -- PS -- Pest. It WILL make your life easier, and people won't be calling you a Death Knoob.
Boobah Oct 27th 2010 3:19AM
All of that sounds reasonable, although I'm not so sure about waiting to spread diseases; DnD gives you a nice head start on threat and most leveling DPS (in my battlegroup, at least) is far better about not playing stupid DPS games the way far too many people do at the level cap.
If you've tanked before, one thing to keep an eye on is that you don't get your actual taunt (Dark Command) until level 65. On the plus side, you do have Death Grip, but it's got a fairly long cooldown; until you get Dark Command pulling with it is risky, because when you do get that loose mob on the healer DG will still be on cooldown.
transientmind Oct 27th 2010 9:37AM
I strongly recommend making a trip to pwnwear.com - it's a site dedicated exclusively to DK tanking.
As far as speccing - just start building the optimal 80 tree, as you get the talents. It's not going to matter too much, level-by-level, as to which two talents on the same tier you get in which order.
BASIC DK TANK PRIMER:
Your basic rotation and strategy when tanking at 60 is going to be pretty much the same for your entire career. All the higher-level abilities just give you some utility options. At 60 you have Death and Decay. Open with that when you can, to lock in threat. Apply diseases to a primary target and spread them (Plague Strike, Icy Touch, Pestilence). Switch targets to whatever else the DPS might be threatening to pull off you. Snap off a blood boil to apply scarlet fever so you're taking less damage, then a death strike to put up your shield.
Dark command and death grip should be saved for whatever starts to break away from the pack - don't pull with it unless you're yanking a caster into range (pull melee with icy touch). Always yank casters into range unless someone's CCing them. (eg: Priests shackling undead casters.) Pop survivability cooldowns as needed, adjust your threat-strikes to whatever runes you have up. Runic empowerment (level 68) will eventually start tossing bonus runes your way when you spend runic power, so get used to improvising. Don't let runic power fill up overflowing the meter. Runes take a little while to recharge, you can spare the extra second or two.
Everything after that initial pull is about mashing rune strike whenever you can (high threat + damage) and heart strike/death strike combos. Or blood boil instead of heart strike if you have more than 3 targets. If the fight goes on too long and you're not in a party of crazy DPSers, you'll probably need to reapply diseases once. (If by 61 you've taken crimson scourge, this gives you the bonus of a free blood boil.)
If you're moving with crazy good DPS, you won't have time to drop a DnD on every single pull, just every other pull. This is fine, if you make everyone aware that you want 2-3 seconds of threat before they start blasting. You should be able to apply diseases and spread to a single main target, then taunt the 2nd one (which is by now invariably peeling off toward DPSers) and use your heart strike, death strike and rune strikes on it to lock in the threat. After that you'll probably want to go back to your original target because good dpsers will have been nuking it while you were busy.
Try not to bother with dnd for single or dual-target pulls. It's best with 3 or more.
Tom Oct 27th 2010 1:06PM
Aceman, as an Heroic ICC 25 tank, I think you should set your e-peen aside.
Diseaseless AoE was much worse pre-patch than it is now, but let's look at what happens either way.
With Diseases:
D&D (affects all mobs), IT (low damage, full-strength disease, attack speed debuff, single-target), PS (low damage, full-strength disease, single-target), Pest (all other targets taking half damage from diseases, all targets affected by attack speed debuff), Blood Boil. Here's another way to look at it: GCD1 - threat on all mobs; GCD2 - low threat on one mob; GCD3 - low threat on the same mob again; GCD4 - nothing, but low threat on all mobs next time the diseases tick; GCD5 - threat on all mobs.
Sans Diseases:
D&D, BB, DS, BB (and you still have a Frost rune left over!). D&D is unaffected by diseases, Blood Boil isn't as strong here as it is with diseases but you have two of them, DS is unaffected by diseases and does more threat than IT+PS (not to mention healing and Blood Shield!). This way gives you more threat and gives it more quickly. If the DPSers are /assisting you're better off without diseases, and if they're AoEing willy-nilly, you're *still* better off without diseases! If D&D is down, skipping diseases becomes EVEN BETTER than it did before!
There's only one downside - you'll be without the attack speed debuff provided by Icy Touch. So, whenever tank death is even kind of a concern, at least spread Icy Touch. Also, on bosses, by all means use Icy Touch.
Right now, diseases are simply not worth their runes or their GCDs in AoE situations. This could very well change by 85, and when we get Outbreak things'll be different as well, but for now, in AoE situations you are way better off without diseases. Here's the thread on pwnwear about it: http://pwnwear.com/forum/diseaseless-blood-t710.html
Tom Oct 27th 2010 1:07PM
To quote Futhark (also from pwnwear):
If mob shalt die during Death and Decay
then save thou diseases for another day
Gravity Oct 27th 2010 10:36PM
Thanks for that link (and others in the past), Tom, you must be a very active pwnwear member.
I also agree with your assessment.
Tom Oct 28th 2010 12:14AM
Thanks, Gravity! I recommend the site a great deal, and I hope people have been checking it out. It's really easy to play a DK poorly, but when played well, man do they shine. Your blog and forums are absolutely the best place to really get into DK tanking.
I wasn't eager to try diseaseless tanking, especially since I've been playing my second, far-worse-geared DK since the patch, but I'm very glad I did.
Shaverdian Oct 26th 2010 6:20PM
Good to know about the scarlet fever thing.
I'm a frost DK, but still.
Vereonix Oct 27th 2010 5:24AM
No questions about Frost DPS as its just awesome.
Oriflame Oct 26th 2010 6:47PM
so ask some questions! :)
Oriflame Oct 26th 2010 6:48PM
(which is to say I don't know where to start with frost! halp!)
richardplex Oct 26th 2010 6:51PM
what vereonix says.
Uxjwetr Oct 26th 2010 7:22PM
@Oriflame
I'm still playing with this myself, but my first reccomendation is pick up glyph of howling blast then don't touch icy touch again unless you're pulling agro on multi-mob fights. After that you should plague strike to put up your other disease. Then obliterate, if rime procs, hit HB again, from there dump your runic power into frost strike. If you have a killing machine proc unload it with a frost strike as your mastery will up the damage from that quite nicely.
Brett Porter Oct 26th 2010 7:29PM
I haven't had the chance to dual spec my blood tank to frost dw as the off spec; how does that play after the patch? Is it pretty similar to before?
TheBigFatMuffinMan Oct 26th 2010 8:55PM
Frost DPS, while not exactly the same as pre-patch, is still beautiful. It's my new Blood DPS. Hitting with 11k Frost Strikes, 10k Obliterates, and a very high (I'm not sure how high) damage number on HB. Plus now 2-handed Frost DPS is as good as DW Frost (I think) so I don't have to switch gear anymore between my two DPS specs. (Yes, I have 2 DPS specs. I hate tanking.) Your rotation is going to look something like this (but not really) with the Prime glyphs of Obliterate, HB, and FS.
1. Apply diseases, using Howling Blast first and THEN PS.
2. Obliterate.
3. From here on in it's a jumble accounting for procs and Runic Empowerment, what runes come up, your personal stats and preferences, as Mastery will affect how much your FS will hit for, and with a Killing Machine proc, it'll be a crit. For a better way than I could ever put it, go here: http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t105701-frost_dps_cataclysm_countdown/
Have fun! :D