Bwahahahah. All the other tanking classes are just so… nice. But Blood DKs? We get the job done, and stylishly, and without being all tree-hugger or goody-goody about it. So, if you want to bring some stylish sinister to the tentacles-and-claws party for the Dragon Soul, here’s our Patch 4.3 quick guide to Blood Death Knight tanking, including stats and reforging, gems, glyphs, talent specs, Patch 4.3 changes and of course your actual tanking rotation.
Updated Dec 12th, 2011
Blood Death Knight Tank changes in Patch 4.3
Unlike most of the other tanking classes, Blood DKs have seen some pretty significant changes in Patch 4.3:
- Death Strike now heals whether it hits or misses.
- Blade Barrier now passively reduces damage.
- Bone Shield now gets more charges.
- Blood Presence now offers more armour.
- Veteran of the Third War now reduces Outbreak cooldowns.
However, none of these will significantly change your priorities or gearing – just keep doing what you were doing, and you’ll be fine.
Neither of your Tier 13 bonuses will hugely change your rotation, either – T2 will situationally grant a Death Rune, whilst T4 turns Vampiric Blood into a raid-wide, which is nice!
Blood tanking “rotation”
We don’t have an actual “rotation” – instead, we have a couple of different priority lists. Use the highest ability on your priority list that is currently available.
Single-target tanking
- Top Priority Use Outbreak if it’s available.
- Second Priority Use Death Strike if you have the runes.
- Third Priority Use Rune Strike if you have the Runic Power. If it’s off cooldown and you’re on 90% or less health, use Rune Tap.
- Fourth Priority Use Heart Strike (or Blood Strike if you’re worried about breaking crowd control on other mobs).
Multi-target tanking
- Top Priority Put Death and Decay up. If Outbreak is available, use it.
- Second Priority Use Pestilence if you used Outbreak earlier. Use Death Strike if you have the runes.
- Third Priority Use Rune Strike if you have the Runic Power. If not, use Blood Boil or Heart Strike – Blood Boil if you’re fighting more than 4 things.
Buffs: Make sure you’re in Blood Presence, and keep Horn of Winter up. Use Rune of Swordshattering on your weapons.
Dual Wielding?: Don’t. It’s not really viable for tanking.
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Blood Talent Spec
- This is a good basic build for 4.3 Blood tanking in dungeons.
- This is a good raid tanking spec for Blood in 4.3
Stats, reforging and gemming for Blood
Mastery is our most important stat, followed by Stamina, Parry and Dodge. All other stats are much less important.
If you’re having threat problems, which is very unlikely, Expertise and then Hit to cap (aim for 8% hit and 26 Expertise) are our best threat stats.
Reforging: Reforge anything you can to Mastery. Reforge anything you can’t to Dodge or Parry (aim to keep both equal). If you’re having threat problems, reforge to Hit and/or Expertise.
Gems: Use Austere Shadowspirit Diamond as meta gem. Use Fractured Amberjewel in all sockets unless a socket bonus gives you significant Dodge, Parry or Stamina, in which case match the socket.
Getting one-shot?: If bosses are one- or two-shotting you, swap some Mastery gems out for Stamina gems until you have a high enough maximum health to take a couple of big hits from whatever content you’re doing (check WoWHead to find out maximum damage levels).
DK Tank enchants
Several professions have “superior” enchants – use them if the stats are appropriate. Inscription of the Earth Prince on shoulders from Inscription, for example.
| Head | Arcanum of the Earthen Ring |
| Shoulders | Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz |
| Back | Enchant Cloak – Protection |
| Chest | Enchant Chest – Greater Stamina |
| Wrist | Enchant Bracer – Dodge |
| Hands | Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery |
| Belt | Ebonsteel Belt Buckle |
| Legs | Drakehide Leg Armor |
| Feet | Enchant Boots – Lavawalker (the run speed is very useful) |
| Weapon | Rune of Swordshattering |
Glyphs
- Prime: Death Coil, Rune Strike, Heart Strike. Replace one of Rune Strike or Heart Strike with Death and Decay if doing a lot of AOE tanking.
- Major: Rune Tap, Vampiric Blood, Anti-Magic Shell. Switch Anti-Magic shell for Bone Shield if you like the extra run speed.
- Minor: Blood Tap and whatever else you like.
Links
Note that different guides have different opinions on a number of topics!
- WOW Forums DK Tanking Guide Astonishingly for the official forums, actually excellent. Particularly good sections on understanding the various ability mechanics we have.
- Elitist Jerks DK Tanking Guide – Long, detailed, interesting. Updated to 4.3
- Pwnwear – the biggest and best DK tanking forum. A little quiet these days, but still awesome.
You also might find the rest of MMO Melting Pot interesting – we look for the best articles about WoW and other MMOs and deliver them straight to you. Check out the latest articles .
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{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
pwnwear.com is always a viable resource for DK-Tanking information. Can sometimes get a bit too detailed and “mathy” but still very informative.
shax recently posted..Die Firma – Halt die Fresse Folge 151
Interesting – I nearly added them before, but looking at their forums it looked like they weren’t being updated very often. I shall add them.
nice info, thanks for taking the time
Why use the Glyph of Death Coil, you don’t even have death coil listed in you Spell priority? I’m just curious cause I’m giving one of your builds a whirl.
@Hephisto – One of the main uses for Death Coil as a Blood tank is in combination with Lichborne. Fire off Lichborne, then spam Death Coil targeting yourself. It’s a very powerful self-heal, because when Death Coil is used on an undead target it heals rather than damages, and Lichborne turns you into an undead target (temporarily).
The Glyph of Death Coil increases the damage that Death Coil does, but also – crucially – increases the healing, which actually makes it a viable choice as a Prime glyph. However, using Death Strike / Rune Strike / Heart Strike as your Prime glyphs is a perfectly acceptable alternative (and may actually be better, depending on your gear and playstyle).
If you’re using the LB-selfheal trick (and you should be), you’ll probably want to macro it into a single keybind:
#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast Lichborne;
/cast [@player] Death Coil
First of all thanks for putting out this guide. Pretty solid but I do a couple of things differently so if you dont mind me adding my 2 cents worth, here we go… I dont really agree with “Use rune of Swordshattering” I prefer using rune of the stoneskin gargoyle. I also personally dont use Rune Strike very much since I prefer to have runic power over Mind Freeze’s. Dont get me wrong I do use it just not as no.2 on my priority list.
My priorities are:
Blow horn of winter! Then…
Single target
Open with outbreak for diseases which gives the targets debuffs that help keep you alive.
1) Death Strike to form a blood sheild
2) A couple of Heart Strikes to piss off the target
3) Another Death Strike to heal and renew/reform blood sheild
4) Rune Strike cos I dont have anything better to do
5) Pop Rune Tap and repeat.
Multiple targets:
Open with outbreak – spread the love with Pestillence
tip: if your diseases are getting low on a target, switch targets, pop Pestillence, switch back and pop pestillence again for full diseases on all the targets.
1) Death Strike to form a blood sheild (I dont bother with Death and Decay anymore)
2) Pop Dancing Rune Weapon and Heart Strike away. Giggle as your top DPS charts.
3) Another Death Strike to heal and renew/reform blood sheild
4) Blood boil each time you get a free one froma proc. The mobs love it.
5) Pop Rune Tap and repeat.
For both of the abocve dont forget:
6) If your life is droping faster than a pair of panties on prom night you may want to throw in an Anti Magic Sheild and/or Icebound Fortitude into the above mix to help the healer out.
7) Dont forget to interrupt this list if you want/need to interrupt something, renew your bone shield, pop vampiric blood and blood tap cos you gotta get the job done on your own… The list goes on.
I dont really agree with all your gemming enchanting and glyph choices but thats what healthy discussion is all about. Check out mine on my build. I like my build as it is because it works for me. Best advice for blood tanks is just to read what each thing does and put something in that will work well with their play style and such instead of spoonfeeding peeps with a set of gems glyphs and enchants. It will in the long run be in their own best interests to figure out what works for them and not mindlessly go with whoevers article they stumbled upon.
Great work though. Cheers mate.
Ukufa@Shadowsong
I don’t entirely agree with @Ukufa@Shadowsong here. Runeforging Swordshattering versus Stoneskin Gargoyle is, to an extent, a subjective choice, but mitigation is more important than effective health nowadays, so for most people Swordshattering is actually the best choice. Stoneskin Gargoyle might be useful if you’re already stacking loads of Parry, or if you’re regularly being 1-shotted, but Swordshattering is the best default choice (and if you’re regularly being 1-shotted by bosses, you’ve got bigger problems than your runeforging choice).
Not using Rune Strike just doesn’t make sense to me. Rune Strike is your basic Runic Power dump as a Blood tank. If you don’t use it, you’ll almost inevitably have a full RP bar just going to waste. It’s also a really good threat-generating ability. Since the recent threat changes, that’s not as important as it once was, but it can still be necessary on some fights. Much more importantly than that, though, Rune Strike is the only ability in your regular priority system that will proc Runic Empowerment. Discarding that is discarding a whole bunch of your core flexibility. I do take the point about saving some RP for Mind Freeze, but that only takes 20RP (free if talented), so you can still afford to Rune Strike regularly. If you do get really unlucky and find yourself needing to interrupt with an empty RP bar, throw down Empower Rune Weapon, and then Mind Freeze.
My other point of contention would be Anti-Magic Shell. That ability is not just there “to help the healer out”. With a 45-sec cooldown, you should be using it several times per boss fight. It’s a crucial part of your mitigation toolkit. It’s best to time AMS to when the boss does large amounts of magical damage, but remember that AMS also “prevents the application of harmful magical effects”. That means that you can actually avoid certain debuffs with a well-timed AMS. I’ll agree that Icebound Fortitude is generally more of an “Oh sh*t” ability, but AMS really isn’t.
I do entirely agree, though, that every Blood tank will benefit from figuring out for themselves what sits best with their gear and playstyle -but it takes time and expertise to do that. In the meantime, guides like this are a great help to get you started on the right lines.
Hey Johnnie Ingram, thanks for your well worded comments on my post. Much more constructive than ‘WTF noob L2P’ posts.
After refelecting on your post I have to concede that and that you are correct. I seem to have let some bad habits slip in through time. I am going to definately try to put more emphasis on Rune Strike above Heart Strike and also I am going to experiment with the rune of Swordshattering. Thanks for setting me right.
Blood Death Knights (yes even those who consider themselves old hands) with an open mind can always learn new things from people like Johnnie Ingram, who are prepared to open constructive dialog.
@Johnnie Ingram, could you link your DK mate? Would love to see your gear and gems and such.
Very helpful guide, was doing this research on my Droid while at work, can’t wait to try out the ss enchant, was still stuck in the lich king era with ssg. I do have a question though, what percent should parry and dodge be at?
@yessirr@hyjal – There’s no real “cap” to aim for with Parry and Dodge, as far as I’m aware. You’ll still receive benefits, no matter how high you stack them. Much more important is to try to maintain approximately equal amounts of Parry and Dodge. You’ll probably find that you naturally accumulate more Parry than Dodge – in that case it’s actually worth reforging Parry > Dodge to balance the numbers (only if you can’t reforge to Mastery, obviously).
Parry and Dodge are almost as important a stat for us as Mastery. The weighting scale I usually use puts Parry at 1.0, Dodge at 1.0 and Mastery at 1.2.
@Ukufa@Shadowsong – my gear is actually a bit of a mess at the moment (I’m still in process of upgrading through the new 5-mans), and I generally like to keep my personal WoW play separate to my work here at the Melting Pot. But I can tell you that I’m following this guide pretty closely. The few places I deviate are in taking Abomination’s Might over Sanguine Fortitude (because my raid needs me to provide the buff) and occasionally gemming Dodge over Mastery (because my current Dodge rating is dangerously low). I also recently switched from Austere Shadowspirit Diamond as a meta to Fleet Shadowspirit Diamond, although I’m becoming increasingly convinced that I was wrong about that, and that Austere is the correct way to go (especially with Glyph of Bone Shield providing the speed boost anyway).
If you’re gonna take points anywhere for Abom’s might, Sanguine Fortitude is NOT THE PLACE to take them. That’s a very very very very very very very very bad decision. If you’re gonna take them from anything, take them from Hand of Doom (or take one point out of bladed armor and one point out of improved blood tap if you’re speccing based on the raid spec and you have to take abom’s might for your group).
That said, I use this build: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jfMr0srruszG0oZ0h
This is my subjective opinion on epidemic: Take all 3 points, or take none at all. Ranks 1 and 2 are more or less pretty terrible in value. Diseases last 21 seconds. Epidemic increases that to 25 seconds at rank 1 (1 extra tick), 29 seconds at rank 2 (1 more extra tick), and 33 seconds at rank 3 (2 more additional ticks). That 3rd point offers 1 tick more than the other two, AND it overlaps outbreak cooldown so you can potentially (unless outbreak misses) have 100% disease uptime. 2/3 epidemic doesn’t overlap the outbreak cd so you get a small window without the attack speed or physical damage debuffs.
I completely disagree. Youre only an undead long enough to get one heal off… Honestly, self healing should not be a concern in raids. If youre raising with people who can’t heal, then you may want to reconsider. Death strike glyph all the way. Your raid spec sucks for the same reason. All those wasted points just to turn undead for 10 seconds. What a waste…..
@Johnnie Ingram
@Archous – You’re welcome to your opinion, but the general state of the art in raiding would suggest that self-healing and mitigation, particularly on challenging content, are more important than additional threat.
To quote one of the more recent WoWHead commenters on Glyph of Death Strike, “This will do nothing for survivability. It’s a marginal threat boost if you’re one of those dk tanks with threat problems…”
i can’t keep dodge up with parry my parry is higher then my dodge parry at 19% were dodge is at 16% and i have done everything to keep them around the same is this bad
@James – Don’t worry about it too much – that happens sometimes. Try and keep them as equal as possible using reforging – although you should always reforge to Mastery first if possible – but it’s not a disaster to have them a few points apart.
thanks
@Archous – “self-healing should not be a concern”? For a Death Knight? Are you serious? Self-healing is what we do. I’ve seen DK tanks beat healers on the HPS meter on some fights.
The Lichborne/Death Coil trick is a valid technique. The healing you’ll do is not insignificant, either – it’s certainly worth the GCDs and the runic power in a tight spot. You can get more than one Death Coil off. Lichborne lasts 10 seconds. If you’re only managing to hit one Death Coil every 10 seconds you’re doing something wrong. My quick back-of-an-envelope probably-way-off calculation tells me I could get five DCs off if I had a really fast trigger finger and all the runic power I could eat. Certainly, you should be able to get in three DCs (after which you’ll start to see diminishing returns on your heals anyway).
Even without the Death Coil self-heal, Lichborne is a useful survival talent. Maybe not a mandatory one, but definitely not a waste of points. I’m not saying speccing into Lichborne is the only valid choice, or that you shouldn’t ever contemplate putting any points into Unholy – Desecration, for example, is a great talent and a potential alternative to Lichborne. Of course there are valid builds that spec Blood/Unholy, or even Blood/Frost without Lichborne. All I’m saying is, it’s not “a waste” for those who choose to take it.
EJ agrees with me on this, incidentally. Both of the EJ recommended raid specs take Lichborne. Quoting Gravity‘s 4.x tanking thread:
I have a question what is with DK’s not having any hit or exp….on forums I see that there is a need for one if not both for threat but no one has them…so in that what gives dk’s their threat. thank you
@Cyn – Blizzard made some changes to the way tanking works, meaning that you should essentially have enough threat to hold aggro in almost all circumstances, even if you have no threat stats at all aside from the Strength your items provide.
@Archous –
I use this spec a good bit, and on a full bar I can usually pop 3 DC’s and go from less than 25% health to over 75% health. Not a bad feat considering I’m sitting at roughly 180k unbuffed right now.
Thank you for answering my question makes sence now@Hugh Hancock -
As far as the swordbreaking vs stoneskin argument goes, stoneskin definatley comes out on top, mitigation over avoidance in cata is obvious. The armor increase it gives you helps a decent amount with all white hits, which is most of the damage you take considering you have cd’s for magic damage or large mechanics. Also, the extra stam increases the heal your death strike does, which in turn increases the amount of your blood shield, since death strike is most often healing for a percentage of your max hp.
Sorry, you deliberately sacrifice your shield wall, and its cooldown so that your raid can get the AP buff? What sort of setup are you running when one of the tanks needs to gimp himself almost completely (GL surviving anything beyond Heroic Morchok) to get that buff? Take a point out of something less devastating to your spec if you have to man.
(PS gemming dodge ”because its too low” is still worse point for point than gemming mastery, which is linear.)
Ive been following your specs and class info for all my toons in Cata, and I have found them extremely helpful. Thanks for the quick breakdowns and descriptions. Ill be returning for sure.