dk-tank
Latest
Lichborne: DPS stats for tanking death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. So Rossi bought this up in his last column, and I feel like it is a valid question. If haste is a valid gearing strategy for Paladins, why shouldn't it be for the other tanks? The idea of haste and critical strike as being valid, even desirable stats for a tank seems almost anathema, but as of Mists, especially, it's worth a look. Paladins even have a gearing strategy built around haste. Are they the only ones? Should death knights be considering haste and critical strike rating? Should Blizzard be looking at ways to make haste and critical strike rating more desirable for tanks? We'll consider those questions this week.
Lichborne: You can tank your way to level 70 as a death knight
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. I've actually seen more than a few questions lately about tanking as a lowbie death knight. People want to know if it's possible, how to gear, and if there's any special tips or tricks you should watch out for. Combine this with Alison Robert's resurrection of her lowbie tank project, and I have to admit, lowbie tanking has been on my mind. There's no denying that tanking at level 60 is an entirely different beast than tanking at level 85, but there are enough similarities that practicing at 60 can help you develop a lot of the tools you'll need to soldier through those level 85 heroic PuGs on the way to those Satchels of Exotic Mysteries. This week, we'll take a look at the average level 58 death knight (58 being the level your average death knight is upon leaving the starting experience), and figure what you can do to get in gear and get yourself tanking all the way through to level 70.
Lichborne: Gearing for new level 80 tank death knights
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly source for tips, tricks, guides and discussion for the death knight class. So you've just dinged level 80, and you're ready and willing to take on one of the toughest jobs at the end game, that of the tank. But how do you get prepared and geared so that you have a decent chance of grabbing a slot in a 10- or 25-man ICC raid so that you can see the Lich King die before Cataclysm? Let's give you a few tips and a list of gear to shoot for to get you in top pre-raid shape.
Lichborne: Frost tanking 101
Welcome to Lichborne, WoW.com's weekly death knight column. This week on Lichborne, we're looking at yet another endangered death knight play style: frost tanking. Frost tanking is one of those strangely misunderstood specs in that many players consider it to be the only tanking spec, or at least the only viable one. This is based on the old pre-beta outline of the death knight class that dedicated frost as the tank tree. Blizzard decided to allow all three trees to tank well before even the alpha was over, but the myth of frost tanking supremacy persisted. Now, there really will be only one tank tree, but instead of frost, it's going to be blood. That means that if you want to experience the original death knight tanking tree, you only have a few more months max to do it. That's why we have this guide. This a 101 guide, so the usual disclaimers apply. This is meant to get people well on their way to being a viable frost tank, but it's not a be all, end all guide, so there are additional tricks and talenting tweaks experienced tanks will know and pick up. These are just the basics.
Thoughts on the death knight tanking change
I actually entertained the possibility of blood becoming a solely tanking tree in Cataclysm about a month back, so I was somewhat pleased and only slightly surprised to see the announcement that that's exactly the route the developers will be taking in Cataclysm. Certainly, there's a bit of bittersweetness and regret to see the great death knight experiment come to an end. But at the same time, it's worthwhile to ask: Is this truly for the good of the game? Is it for the best that we give up some reach and flexibility in return for solid ground and ease of balance? Let's chat a bit. Why one tank tree? Balancing death knights has pretty obviously been a constant battle. There's essentially been six different trees to balance for both PvE and PvP, a tall enough order that almost every major patch has included a large handful of death knight tweaks. Not only did the devs have find a niche for dual wielding, but they had to balance tank talents against PvE talents on the off chance that the interaction would overbalance or underbalance a certain spec in the right combination. They had to squelch diseaseless specs and one-button DPS specs, and Unholy alone took them until Patch 3.3 to get to some semblance of balance.
Why am I suddenly so popular?
Right now I have two level 80 tank/DPS hybrid toons in epic gear. Now, when I leveled my Warrior to 80, and for the first few months, it seemed like everyone and his or her mother was a tank. There were Druid tanks everywhere, every Paladin and DK was a tank, and of course there were plenty of Warrior tanks to be had. There were so many tanks, in fact, that I figured that after my months of service to my BC guild, I could take a vacation and be DPS for a while on my Warrior. Sure, it ended up requiring me to learn a whole new set of skills, but I got to be the Titan's Grip DPS Warrior I'd longed to be ever since I saw my wife romper stomp her way through Diablo II. Fast forward a few months. Ulduar is more or less on farm, the new Argent Tournament raid and five man are in effect, and I've leveled and geared out a DK for both DPS and tanking. Based on my experience as a Warrior I wasn't expecting to have many opportunities to tank. Instead, not only is the DK in crazy demand for tanking, I'm constantly being asked to tank on the Warrior as well! Since I like tanking, it's not a major concern, but what confuses me is, where did all those Warrior, Druid, DK and Paladin tanks from launch go?
