dk-tanking

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  • Lichborne: You can tank your way to level 70 as a death knight

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    06.14.2011

    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

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    06.01.2010

    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

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    05.25.2010

    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.