DK Tanking

Reference:
IT - Icy Touch
PS - Plague Strike
BS - Blood Strike
OB - Obliterate
SS - Scourge Strike
DC - Death Coil
FS - Frost Strike
RS - Rune Strike
Pest - Pestilence
BB - Blood Boil
HB - Howling Blast

Basic Rotation: Single Target

IT > PS > BS > OB(SS) > BS > RP Dump(DC,FS,RS) > OB(SS) > Repeat

- If you have points in the unholy tree to extend the duration of your diseases, this rotation can be re-started at BS > OB(SS)... until diseases need to be refreshed.

-Frost spec uses FS and RS to dump runic power, Unholy uses DC and RS.

Basic Rotation: Multiple Targets

IT > PS > Pest > BB > HB(Frost only) > RP Dump > Repeat


DPS Rotations

DPS rotations are almost exactly the same as the tanking rotations. The only difference is the presence. Blood Presence (15% damage bonus healing 2% of the damage done) is great for stationary fights, or nearly stationary phases of fights. Unholy presence is perfect for fights requiring multiple target shifts or covering large distances during a battle. Not only does it give the 15% movement speed boost but also reduces the global cooldown on all DK abilities. Be careful staying in this presence for extended times on target, you can run out of runes very quickly.

The main difference in DPS rotations from Tanking rotations are the uses of runic power. Unholy dps has Unholy Blight and Summon Gargoyle for RP dumps, as well as DC. Gargoyle is the highest dps of the 3, and is the preferred dump if the target will survive the full duration of the summon; otherwise use deathcoil and use Unholy Blight for AoE.

(Note: The length of a summon gargoyle is determined by having available RP to sustain the summon. Be careful using DC while a gargoyle is active.)

If you're specced into unholy far enough to have a ghoul pet, make sure it's up as often as is possible. That pet alone, with the glyph and other talents is an easy 400-600 dps. Keep Horn of Winter up all the time too, it's dps and well worth the 10 RP it costs (with the glyph).

Blood Strike

Not only is blood strike used to dump extra blood runes, if talented properly (dps and tanking specs), blood strike also converts blood runes to death runes. Having death runes available every other rotation allows for the use of more unholy/frost spells for higher damage (OB,SS). Dump Blood runes for Death runes with blood strike whenever available.

That's all I can think to add for now. Post any questions if you have them, i'll try to find some quick answers.

Nice thread man, but one quick comment.

I respecced frost yesterday to start getting used to it early. I've been playing around with HB vs OB, and it appears as though HB does a bit more damage on single targets as well. This could ultimately due to having one of my AP trinket buffs up at the time, but I do seem to get around 3k crits with HB, and about 2.8k crits with OB. Another thing to note is that I put Razorize on my wep, so I can get an extra 5% frost damage off on targets with a full stack of the debuff.

Other than that, regarding the AoE tanking, what happened to D&D? Is it too high a rune cost? I figured that the base threat in it was quite good (just from the tooltip). Also, within the rotation you have, replace HB with Unholy Blight? I realize though that the costs are different between the two (1F1U vs 60RP), but something to possibly consider for Unholy tanking as well.

Edit: Forgot about the RP dump right after HB on the aoe tanking, but it could possibly be done earlier with Unholy...guessing you'd open with D&D then proceed with the rotation you have above.

The thing u have to check, Chrono, is the armor of ur targets. In the beta, after a few balances, it settled down to Oblit doing more on lower armor targets, w/ HB hitting more on the highly armored targets, due to being magical damage. They might have rebalanced it, but it does warrant the question; how well armored were ur targets?

Did this against Northrend mobs and the level 70 test dummies within the DK starting area, but that is something to look into. Also, guessing it has a great deal to do with the weapon as well, though I do have the...Axe of Frozen Death? It's from the chain in Borean. But yeah, still curious but I'll probably see it much better after tanking a few dungeons.

I usually open with D&D if i can spare the runes. It's very hard to work into a rotation simply because you have to wait for one of each rune to cool down. While waiting it's possible to lose aggro or lose the 10% parry from blade barrier. I just don't really find myself using D&D often in the middle of my rotations.

Aus is pretty spot on about the HB/Oblit differences. When it crits, HB hits for more than my Oblit crits do. Oblit seems to do more base damage when it doesn't crit than HB does.

I am however not running razorice for the extra frost damage, i've got swordshatter going for the extra 4% parry. HB might hit harder with the razorice bonus.

As for the UB vs HB comparison. I think you could throw UB in place of HB in an unholy rotation, just understand that the damage mechanic is much different. HB is a large amount of instant damage while UB is a moderate amount over time

Aus? When did Aus say anything >.> lol Are u mixing up ur druids?

Ah yeah, that's right, due to the fact that Frost was going to be using the same gear as Blood and Unholy, and spells get so much less from crit than melee attacks, they buffed the modifier up, b/c they thought that Frost would inevitably fall behind if they didn't. I forgot all about that...

3.1 Ulduar Update:

DK Tanking

Not too much has changed in 6 months on the tanking front. Aside from a few re-shuffles of talents and some nerf/buff (mostly nerf) tweaks.

Notable changes:

• Blade Barrier is now a flat 5% damage reduction instead of +10% parry.
• Our magic damage reduction from frost presence was decreased to 10% from 15%
• Threat component of Rune Strike was increased
• IBF damage reduction now based on defense

All in all, some strange changes for a class that was intended to be an avoidance tank at the outset.

For a reference:
Buffed, Riiven sits around 42-45% avoidance, 36k health with 30-32k armor (62-64% reduction before blade barrier). (I'm doing this at work, so these #s might not be completely accurate, grain of salt).

I originally intended on pushing avoidance as high as I could get it. But with the blade barrier/IBF changes, I decided to go the mitigation route. I dropped my 4% parry weapon enchant for Stoneskin Garg. and usually run the Unfaltering Knight sigil for added defense.

This is a choice i'd like to get some feedback on. There's quite a bit of room to maneuver with Defense this high. Before the Sigil proc Riiven is at a passive 574 defense. (Overkill I know) This is without gemming for defense at all. (We used to be so strapped for Def, now it's everywhere). I could trade gear like I do now for threat and avoidance... or stack stamina and armor through the roof. I think both would be fun to try with the right funds.


From what information I've been able to obtain Frost is still the preferred tanking tree, followed very closely by Blood, with Unholy far away screaming like a little girl. Frost just has more tools and tricks than blood with tanking in mind. Blood tends to end up with more HP and possibly slightly higher single target threat per second (untested) but ends up lacking in most other categories.

Most current frost specs are variations on:

12/51/8

The variations being mostly between bladed armor and the 2nd tier unholy talents.

The AoE tanking ability of this spec is particularly impressive. HB + D&D is just fun.

And i'm starting to realize I haven't seriously thought about tanking in a while, so I'm drawing blanks. I'll revisit when I'm a little more educated

'Til then'

Whats the preferred AOE damage rotation for blood dps spec? Single target I have down pretty good but I think I am doing something wrong with aoe.

I use the standard rotation for blood single target and just replace all my heart strikes with Pest and blood boil.

IT > PS > Pest > BB > DS > (DRW or DC dump) (DRW gives massive AoE)
DS > BB > BB > BB > BB > (DC dump)

I'm not sure if this is the absolute best rotation, but it's easy to remember and does some great AoE damage. It also keeps you in a similar rotation to your single target just in case you need to switch back to single target dps in a hurry (ex. hodir arena).

In that model, replace Pest and BB with heart strikes and you've got my single target rotation .

In light of recent changes... this needs an overhaul. I'll get on that ASAP