My DK is like a quilt - HELP!

[Kelaan]

I got rocked on trash. LDW adds were hitting pretty hard.

Do you mean trash before her, or trash that spawns in her fight?

One thing I like about Blood is that Death Strike is something I plan to use regularly. At times I will DS to self-heal rather than do 2x Heart Strikes, for example -- it's a threat loss but that's rarely been an issue. Best of all, you frequently end up with 4x death runes (rather than 2), which means you can either IT spam or you can kite enraged adds with chains of ice.

On LDW's in-fight adds... casters die ridiculously fast. Kite (via tank swap or chains of ice) the melee adds when they hulk up. Other than that, I didn't notice them hitting significantly harder. Part of it may be that the groups I run with nearly always have everyone kill adds, and then everyone hit the boss, rather than trying to use the whole spawn time for adds to die. The side effect is, casters get gibbed, and melee then get splattered (and kited if necessary), so damage on tanks is less-so. Also, in 25s, if they are dying fast then the casters often are "tanked" by melee dps, which would further lower damage on you.

DW frost looks to be very good threat too, though -- if I were to use two 2.6 speed ilevel 232 weapons (HoR mace + nighttime), I'd do more damage than with my 251 claymore... well, I would as DPS and assume I would as tank, if I did that as Frost.

[Gracerath]

Why is everyone a blood tank anymore? Go DW FROST!

It comes down to cooldowns for me. I prefer Vampiric Blood and Rune tap over UA. While I miss having burst threat for the AE trash packs, 2T10 + Glyph of Death and Decay is generally plenty AE threat.

[Shoju]

Why is everyone a blood tank anymore? Go DW FROST!

It comes down to cooldowns for me. I prefer Vampiric Blood and Rune tap over UA. While I miss having burst threat for the AE trash packs, 2T10 + Glyph of Death and Decay is generally plenty AE threat.

I guess at some point, I'm going to have to give up Howling Blast, and Dual Wield, generally playing the frost tree, but I just don't have a good enough 2h'er to go blood.

[Nikachelle]

Why is everyone a blood tank anymore? Go DW FROST!

It comes down to cooldowns for me. I prefer Vampiric Blood and Rune tap over UA. While I miss having burst threat for the AE trash packs, 2T10 + Glyph of Death and Decay is generally plenty AE threat.

I guess at some point, I'm going to have to give up Howling Blast, and Dual Wield, generally playing the frost tree, but I just don't have a good enough 2h'er to go blood.

I'm a 2H frost tank on my DK and not at all looking forward to giving it up in Cataclysm.

[Kelaan]

Why is everyone a blood tank anymore? Go DW FROST!

Out of curiosity, what specifically is it that you like about Frost's playstyle that you don't find in Blood, or what is it about Blood that you dislike which Frost doesn't have? (I haven't played Frost in over a year, since my DK was ~70 and they made it a DW-favoring tree, so I am pretty out of touch with the playstyle of Frost.)

I don't mean to disparage Frost, merely to turn the question around. We clearly have several who feel that Frost is much more fun to play, or better, or something. If your answer is "it just does more threat", that's valid, but I'm also hoping for something more interesting, because I haven't felt like Blood's been underpowered in the threat department.

[Shoju]

Why is everyone a blood tank anymore? Go DW FROST!

Out of curiosity, what specifically is it that you like about Frost's playstyle that you don't find in Blood, or what is it about Blood that you dislike which Frost doesn't have? (I haven't played Frost in over a year, since my DK was ~70 and they made it a DW-favoring tree, so I am pretty out of touch with the playstyle of Frost.)

I don't mean to disparage Frost, merely to turn the question around. We clearly have several who feel that Frost is much more fun to play, or better, or something. If your answer is "it just does more threat", that's valid, but I'm also hoping for something more interesting, because I haven't felt like Blood's been underpowered in the threat department.

Heart Strike. I !()*@$&@#_%^(*!@#*(&$!@#_^*(&!@#()%*&!@#$)(&*-ing hate Heart Strike. I don't know what it is, but I just seem to get 'lost' in the Heart strike portion of the rotation, and keeping diseases up, and Death striking for runes. The rotation IMO is too 'big' or 'long' or something. With frost, outside of HB procs, The rotation is small, and intuitive.

This might be the fact that I have NEVER been blood for a very long stretch. I was blood from 67-71 or so to finish off the group quests in tbc for enchanting mats. at the time, my dk was alliance and on a different server, so i had to do something to get it leveled.

Then shortly after I dinged 80, I was blood dps and hated it. I went back to frost dps. Once I got the money for dual spec, I was a 2h'd frost tank until I got 'decent' 1h'ers to go DW frost.

I love Dual Wielding. It is just one of those things that I personally get some enjoyment out of. It was one of the reasons I tried a rogue first. i just found that I hated my rogue as time went on, so when frost dk's were able to legitimately DW, it was right up my alley.

I think there are far more options available for a DW tank.

Need more threat? Sport dps weapons.
Need some survivabilty? Sport a tank weapon in the Off hand
Need even more survivabilyt? Sport two tank weapons and lean on IT a little more (I don't personally like this, but it is possible)
Need some hit? Grab a 1h'er or even 2 of them with hit on them. Don't need as much hit? Go back to weapon(s) without hit.
Need expertise? Same thing.

The problem with 2h'ers for tanking IMO, is that the stats are there, and they are in huge quantities. With a 2h'er, your threat stat options are more feast or famine. You get a 2h'er with a metric ton of hit, or expertise, but never both.

Sure, Re-forging will be a little nicer about this, but It was one of those things that I enjoyed.

My Dk tank right now has 9 1h'ers in his bag, some are duplicates of others, but it is the options that I enjoy. Honestly, if they weren't changing the Death Knight class so dramatically in cataclysm, I might have switched to it as my main.

[Flex]

2 trees use Blood strike to set up the FU attacks
1 tree uses the FU attack to set up the Heart Strike.

I sort of enjoy that design decision.

[Korola]

I like howling blast.

I don't like to follow the mainstream. 85% of my server has blood DK tanks. Been in 25's with 3 blood tanks and 4 blood dps.

I like the option to dual wield or 2h tank. I have one spec for each depending on how I feel.

If frost had MOAR HPS talent, then I predict there would be MOAR FROST TANKS.

I didn't like watching procs and lining them up, but damn if it isn't freaking exciting to me to smash a free HB just as KM procs.

Burst agro is pretty damn good. Need more agro - more IT.

It seems that the more I play it, the more I like it.

[Kelaan]

Heart Strike. I !()*@$&@#_%^(*!@#*(&$!@#_^*(&!@#()%*&!@#$)(&*-ing hate Heart Strike. I don't know what it is, but I just seem to get 'lost' in the Heart strike portion of the rotation, and keeping diseases up, and Death striking for runes. The rotation IMO is too 'big' or 'long' or something. With frost, outside of HB procs, The rotation is small, and intuitive.

This might be the fact that I have NEVER been blood for a very long stretch.

It's likely the unfamiliarity -- similar to how I've clung to Blood. I used Blood for tanking and for soloing hard stuff (which I found harder to do as Frost, at 70-ish). For me, Heart Strike is filler. I put diseases up, try to use my FU runes on Death Strike when I can, and then mash my HS key until it's time to either refresh diseases or get more Death Runes. While tanking, that tends to go out the window, as I use D&D more, or use Death Strike for self-healing more often, but Heart Strike still is (conceptually) filler for me.

I like that the DPS and tanking rotations are basically the same. I realize that many people would HATE this.

I love Dual Wielding. It is just one of those things that I personally get some enjoyment out of.

You have some really great points about the versatility of gearing with dual wield, but I've never really liked it. Perhaps it's because on my hunter (my first toon), 2H was significantly better in some ways (and worse in others), and in ways that I liked. (Go go raptor strikes from slow weapons! ) I don't really see Dual Wield as much different from 2H, aside from needing twice as many drops. What is it about DW that is so appealing to people? It doesn't let us use our main abilities faster [aside from autoattack-based procs in Frost tree, that is]. I really never understood it.

Really great points about "feast or famine" in 2H itemization, though. I hate being 3% over hit cap in blood spec.

I think that what I mainly like about Blood (rather than Frost) is that I can play it without needing to watch procs. With Frost, some argue that you can, but there's the general feeling that if you don't do it, you're being suboptimal. I like having rhythm-based button mashing, rather than whack-a-mole. (And yet, I love the 2x T10 proc on Divine Storm. Odd.)

[Levantine]

Heart strike makes me want to kill myself, pretty much.

[Nikachelle]

I really dislike how they're forcing the frost tanks out with the expansion. I have no desire to go Blood to tank with and I'm not keen on leveling and dungeoning as dps frost since a) I've never done it and b) I'd rather tank.

[Levantine]

I just lucked out that A) I love frost dps B) I'm good at Frost DPS and C) I like how DK's are playing on the beta for some strange reason. I'm sure as hell never tanking on her again though.

[ulushnar]

I guess I'm lucky that I liked Blood Tanking (well ever since Unholy lolAoE was nerfed) and I actually really liked Blood DPS, but I don't think it'd survive a post-ArP world. Unholy's pretty fun and I don't have a real problem with the 2H Frost build they're playing with in Beta, although I dunno how it'd hold up in raids.

[Shoju]

I just lucked out that A) I love frost dps B) I'm good at Frost DPS and C) I like how DK's are playing on the beta for some strange reason. I'm sure as hell never tanking on her again though.

from everything I have seen, DK's play well in the beta. I'm stuck in limbo on getting into the beta. Guild won the contest, we sent our email back with names, but only half the list is in so far.

I'm more of an unholy DPS person now that I've toyed with it, but man i love frost tanking. I will try new blood tanking, but I'm not sure I will be as excited about it.

[Gerunna]

I did the DW frost tank thing for a good while, but apparently I was doing it wrong since I actually have less trouble making aoe aggro as blood. Probably because I was able to get 3/3 in Morbidity, Corpsekaboom, and the DnD glyph in my blood build. I can't wait to see how much 2T10 amps my threat up.