Death Knight Tanking Rotations

This is a guest article submission discussing Death Knight Tanking rotations.

Tanking rotation is different than damage rotation because the spells that is used will be different. One of the disadvantages of the tanking rotation is that it is very hard to establish a rotation because of the different tanking situation. Tanking death knight has two important roles which is surviving and producing the highest threat on the enemies.

Passive defensive abilities are always kept at the highest level so you don’t have to worry about anything.

Active defensive abilities will help to increase your life span but they must be placed on the spell bar. It is difficult to place the active defensive abilities in a predetermined spell rotation because they are only used when you cannot be healed. Good tanking death knights will protect their healers and keep them alive. The cool down of the spells will stop them from being up throughout the time.

Offensive abilities are used by the tanking death knight to cause damage in order to hold the agro. Single enemy tanks uses power that are very similar to the damage spell rotations. The situation will become difficult when you are tanking several groups of mobs.

After you have applied the diseases on the Icy Touch and Plague Strike, you will use the pestilence ability. The pestilence ability will cause 65 – 79 shadow damage on the foes located within 0 yard. This ability will also spread the diseases on the targets to other enemies. The diseases that are applied on the enemies will last for a full duration. The pestilence ability is useful as an aoe disease refresher.

The blood boil had the ability to boil the blood of the enemies within 10 yards. It can also cause the 180  - 220 shadow damage. The blood boil is used after you have spread the diseases on the targets with pestilence. With the blood boil ability, you will be able to cause a lot of agro. After using this ability, you must reapply to other diseases.

The dark command will command the target to attack you. The dark command will put you at the top of the threat list when are unable to overcome the mob. Before the dark command spell end, you should first build on the threat.

The strangulate ability will strangulate the enemy and keep him silence for 5 seconds. This ability will also deal with 180 shadow damage at the end of the spell. The strangulate ability is suitable for tanks that are tanking caster mobs and need them to come to you. When you use this ability, the diseased mob will run to you to perform the melee. The bonus of the strangulate ability is that it will offers a small amount of damage after the silence has ended.

The rune strike ability will throw off your rotation and limit the threat generation when the mob resists on your abilities. Rune strike should be used whenever you are starting a threat on the enemies.

The death and decay ability is used in multiple mob tanking. Although it is expensive, the 30 second cool down allow you to perform many other task in between the cast.