Death Knight Tanks

This is a guest article submission on Death Knight Tanks.

Although Blizzard had claimed that the death knight is a hybrid tanking/DPS class, there are very little information on how death knights can serve as tanks. When coming to tanking, death knight are often looked down by other tanks. If you roll a death knight tank, you must keep in mind that a druid, paladin or warrior will often be selected by the group. One of the reasons is that you have less experience tanking. Besides, you are not equipped with a shield.

The tank has three important functions. Firstly, they must be able to create more threat compare with the healer on all targets. The thread is the number which is the priority on the agro table. The character located on the highest level on the agro table is central focus of the mob. When the tank is being healed, the healer will cause threat on the foes so the tank must protect the healer from the foes by staying in front of them on threat. Secondly, the tank and healer must survive. The tank will protect itself by dodging off hits, easing the severity of the damage coming in its direction and create a lot of hit points. In order to survive, the tank and the healer must work together so that the tank will require less healing and stay longer in the battle. Thirdly, the tank must generate threat on the primary target so that the damage dealers can kill it effectively. It is important to note that the tank’s responsibility is not to generate thread but to remain below the threat.

The first two functions are of utmost importance because if they are unsuccessful, they will perish and the group will be wiped out in a very short time.

Death knight possess only one threat generating ability which is the Rune Strike. The Rune Strike creates a next melee swing hit for 150% of normal damage, and 175% bonus threat which sum up for 262.5% of the thread of a normal attack. Generally the death knight utilizes a similar rotation as the DPS death knight but there are some exceptions.  When aiming at more than one targets, the death knight can use death and decay because it provides a lot of bonus threat.

The frost presence is essential while tanking because it can increase the total armor by sixty percent and the total stamina by six percent. In addition, frost presence will generate 2.0735x bonus threats for each of the damage released to the enemy. Frost presence gives the death knight ability to tank without requiring a shield just like in the Druid’s Bear form. Due to the fact that death knight can attain a large numbers of armors without a shield, the death knight can use two hand weapon. As a result, they can significantly increase the damage release to the Prot warrior or Prot Paladin.

All death knights are equipped with certain survival abilities including icy touch, mind freeze, death strike strangulate, death pact, icebound fortitude, anti magic shell and chains of ice. Each of this survival ability will protect the death knight in their unique way so the death knight can do his or her job of holding agro.