Tank like a girl

It makes me feel a little dirty, this guilty pleasure of mine. I…like to raid DPS. Yes, I have said it. I’ve had a lot of playtime on my Deathknight lately, and oh boy, does she kick ass. If I could change one thing about her, I would make her an orc, but other than that, she’s mighty fine. Now, I shouldn’t exaggerate, I have only been on two raids with her, but I kicked butt, I did. My best fights were Loatheb with 3.900 DPS and Patchwerk with 3.700. Not bad at all!

 
DKs are a very peculiar class. You either see real DPS monsters annihilating the meters or you see mediocrity. Which should make it obvious that yes, you can faceroll your way through life and still do decent DPS, but if you learn and understand how to not faceroll, then you can really shine. Which is just the way it is with all classes, I suppose, but none makes it so apparent as the DK class. I originally rolled Hélle to figure out how not to be a faceroller, not just for myself, but fellow guildies.

I sprang some gold on her to grab dual-specs to test all DPS specs on her. Here’s my personal rundown:

Blood DPS:
I leveled as blood for the survivability. I was disappointed that while leveling I was not able to solo most elite quests, unlike on Kadomi, but I am likely just spoiled. When I hit 80, I tweaked her spec to dump some of the survivability aspects (like Bloodworms) and grabbed some DPS boosts from the unholy tree. Blood DPS plays like old-school prot warrior. A very very set rotation that is all about proper execution. If you are blindly poking buttons, you are losing a lot of DPS here.

My rotation:
Icy Touch-Plague Strike-Heart Strikex2-Death Strike-Death Coilx2 or Raise Dead/Dancing Rune Weapon
Death Strike-Heart Strikex4-Death Coilx2, rinse and repeat.

I am looking forward to the DRW change in the next patch. Not having to wait for a full Runic Power bar will be a great help, it means you can always use it within the first cycle already. At the moment I have to wait at times if the RP bar is not full. Common issues that I see from fellow blood DKs is that they do not Heart Strike enough or sit on their RP. Make sure to dump RP in every break while you wait for runes to refresh! Don’t forget to get a ghoul for a temporary DPS boost and use DRW with full RP bar every single cooldown. It’s a fun spec and does great DPS.

Frost DPS:
Aaaaah. The spec I would love to use as main spec. So much fun. I really enjoy the heck out of it whenever I switch to it, but unfortunately I found it does not do competitive DPS compared to blood on bosses. I have talked to my friend at work who has cleared Ulduar-25 as frost DK and he said at my gear level it’s just not feasible to expect it to do more DPS than blood. Like all DK specs, you have a very set rotation, but much like prot warriors and arms warriors you have to watch your procs. It is important to watch them, and I set up several Power Auras triggers to help me not miss any procs. First proc to watch out for is Killing Machine, and Rime procs. KM procs a lot! This can make for some bursty moments as Frost Strike hits hard (at least now, before it gets its 10% nerf). Rime doesn’t proc as much, but free Howling Blasts are cool. Frost feels a lot more dynamic than the other two specs.

My Rotation:
I went for the Howling Blast glyph instead of Icy Touch, and thus went with this 1-disease rotation:
Howling Blast-Obliterate-Blood Strikex2-Frost Strike RP dump
Obliteratex3-Frost Strike RP dump

I had a harder time tracking when Frost Fever falls off, when it does, you need to replace Obliterate with Howling Blast to refresh the disease. Like all specs you do not want your diseases to fall off ever. As this is very dependent on watching procs, you need to add extra Frost Strikes for every KM proc, plus Rime usage. I will admit to not having fully figured out the best use of Rime yet. Always HB when it comes off cooldown? Hold on to them and Obliterate instead? I’ll let you know when I have had more experience with it. I’ll definitely try to improve on it.

Unholy DPS:
This is the spec that I liked the least of all. I know that everyone and their brother runs around with a perma-ghoul, but I just couldn’t hack it. I tried to like it, I tested it in many heroics, and yet always switched back to blood in frustration. My major issue is that it requires too much micro-management. As melee class I had a harder time controlling the ghoul. I think it’s easier as warlock or hunter to see what the pet is doing but in melee range it was just frustrating. The only way I could stand to play was with the ghoul on defensive, and that is problematic at times. Then you constantly have to refresh Bone Shield to keep the damage buff up, also no fun. Nevertheless, it did have its DPS moments and is solid, but it’s just not for me. Like all DK specs, you have a very set rotation, no procs to watch for, but a pet to control.

My Rotation:
Icy Touch-Plague Strike-Blood Strikex2-Scourge Strike-Unholy Blight-Death Coil
Scourge Strikex3-Runic Power Dump

AoE rotation: Icy Touch-Plague Strike-Pestilence-Death&Decay-Unholy Blight

This is bound to change with the next patch as they’re nerfing Unholy AoE capabilities, including changing Unholy Blight completely.

I definitely recommend playing around with all three trees. Every tree feels very different, subtle tweaks for a different experience.

Some great references if you also want to stop button-mashing:

• Skeleton Jack (yo, Bronzebeard represent!)
• Elitist Jerks as ultimate, theorycraft-heavy reference
• DK Wowhead forums

I have been relatively quiet about what’s currently going on with me in-game, but it’s time to break the silence. Don’t want you guys to think I quit playing or something. The name of my blog is a curse in a way, because I do not spend all of my game-time tanking. It’s what I like best (most days), but it’s just not my only focus in-game.

Alts, a discourse:

• I’ve always had alts. No matter what time, I always have to spend time leveling a character to max-level. It’s not that I love questing so much. Especially in Northrend, repeating quests has very little charm. What I do love about leveling is learning to master a new class. The slow progress through levels, training new skills, becoming better and better. Trying different builds. That’s what I love. And so I will keep leveling and leveling, until a WoW killer comes along.
• My current leveling project is a Death Knight. Oh no, not another death-tard! Armory Mining has shown us that Azeroth is filled with DKs and Paladins these days. Rogues and warlocks are a dying breed. Usually I am a defender of the underdog, playing the least played race and least played classes in my guild (orc, warrior and shaman respectively). Just this once, I wanted the easy life. Kinda like the hunter I deleted at 43, because the easy life was a bit too easy for me. Also, I like playing classes that I have seen played not so great, to see if it’s the class or the player (usually it’s the player). So here’s my DK, rocking the craptastic Northrend quest greens, slowly but steadily leveling: Hélle. I originally rolled her as a pair to do the DK starter quests with my partner, and her DK is called Hiwater. Get it? We are teh funnay! Anyway. My partner detests leveling and questing and will likely never have more than one max-level character, ever. I am on my own now!

  Leveling through Outlands was deceptively easy, but in Northrend the cold reality set in. Unless I am doing something really wrong, you cannot kill elites anywhere as easily as a protection warrior can. Squishy in plate, that’s me. Other than that, it’s super-fast leveling, and with the help of TourGuide + Jame’s addon for TG, I just blast through. 80 is not far away. Already I am making Titansteel bars every day, to be fully prepared. Another reason I really enjoy leveling is the gear game at the end. I already have a gear plan for her. I intend to stay blood for DPS, but want to give unholy a whirl as well. I think she’ll be able to do great.

• There’s also such a thing as primary alt, and that spot is firmly held by my shaman. In fact I just wrote a Naxxramas healing guide for my guild. I have done more Naxx clears as healer than as tank. I am proud that I can strongly contribute to 2-man healing in Naxx-10. I love it that I outheal other healers on Patchwerk. I <3 my shaman. Her gear is pretty much perfect for Naxx-10, with maybe 2 upgrades left, and I can't wait to progress with her. She's also very strong in heroics. She's kinda everything I ever wanted in a healer, more than my paladin ever was. Playing a tank makes me a better healer, because I know when to expect spikes, what pulls are hairy, and when I can afford to DPS instead of hanging in the back. I have her ready to spec elemental, with a gear set that finds me hit-capped, and yet I haven't done it, because I want to heal and not DPS with her, much like I want to tank and not DPS with Kadomi. For me, the 'holy trinity' of MMOs still comes in 3 characters.
• I am already contemplating what character to level next. It should be ranged DPS. As I am full on my main server, I have a couple options. Should I level my 73 warlock, or my 72 boomkin? Should I go back and level the 55 mage I haven’t touched in 1.5 years? Or my 43 shadow priest? Ah, decisions. It’s hard. I have no clue. My other leveling project is on my German realm, but very much on the backburner. I re-rolled a warrior to level efficiently. She’s 20 and then my DK started distracting me. I want to finish that guide though, and I really want to try Arms. I wish she was on Bronzebeard, and I really wish Blizzard would raise the character limit to…15 or so. I have a hard time playing on other servers. I keep toying with the idea of joining a bunch of old friends on Doomhammer, but they’re mostly on Arizona time, so that likely wouldn’t work out either. Aaaah.

So, how about my gentle readers? Do you enjoy leveling? Do you have alts? No time for alts? Hybrid specs to be tank/healer/DPS all in one? Share!

A tank is nothing without a healer keeping them alive, so I try to keep myself educated about healing. My own healing experience is as holy paladin, where I healed all of Karazhan successfully, so I appreciate the difficulty and responsibility of the role. I am currently seriously considering going full resto on my druid. I have much love for healers, even if I can’t play them all that well!

As announced by Matticus and Azaura today, some of the big-name healing bloggers have joined forces to create PlusHeal.com. Priests, paladins, druids, shamans, Plusheal has ‘em all. Enjoy.

I played my boomkin druid instead of tanking, and we headed to Heroic Sethekk Halls to kill Anzu the Raven God. Skirting, played by my other half, tanked her first heroic, and it went pretty fabulously. I think only one wipe? Smooth run, good times. The swift flight form is so perty!

Watch me perch, doncha wish your flight form was hot like me?

Namthe from The View from Down Here has posted a very interesting series of articles in his blog, namely what DPS can do to work better with your friendly warrior tank. Splendid idea! He’s offered information for hunters, mages and rogues so far. I agree with all the points he makes, but will try to follow his series and add stuff he didn’t cover but which I find apply as well. Read more »

I saw this forum posting a while back and wanted to respond to it here, but never got around to it until WoWInsider brought it up again when their authors ran out of content (the amount of stuff they snag from other blogs for recycling is like whoa. But then, guess I am doing the same right now, doh).

Once upon a time, there were three tanking classes, and each had its distinct advantages and disadvantages, and my personal views about them.
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