If you missed out on the Beta test, or you didn't get to play that much, I have some advice that might help you understand the way a Death Knight tank is going to interact with your group.

Trash:

It takes a few GCDs to establish threat on a trash pack. The Death Knight is likely going to open up with an Icy Touch and a Plague Strike on the "main mob". This will apply Frost Fever and Blood Plague (and Ebon Plaguebringer if he's Unholy). The Death Knight will then Pestilence to spread the diseases from the "main mob" to the rest of the mobs. The remaining three runes will likely be used on Death and Decay. Death and Decay can be used before the Pestilence combo for a little better initial threat, but if you spread diseases first it will hit harder.

What does this mean for a healer?

Give it a couple of GCDs before you drop a heal. Don't HoT the Death Knight up before the pull, or you're going to get agro on everything but the "main mob". When you see the Death and Decay go out you can likely begin healing. The Death Knight will probably use a short cool down defensive ability to mitigate damage at the onset of the pull anyways.

What does this mean for a DPSer?

If you're doing single target DPS you need to wait until the "main mob" has at least both diseases on it. If you're doing AOE DPS you should wait until everything has both diseases on it. Remember that Death Knights do not have an AOE Taunt so if you pull threat on multiple mobs they have no reliable way of grabbing everything off of you right away.

Bosses:

It takes about one rotation to establish threat on a raid boss. In that time the Death Knight will use Icy Touch and Plague Strike again, and follow that up with two Blood Strikes, and an FU ability (Obliterate, Death Strike, or Scourge Strike). This rotation will likely give the Death Knight enough Runic Power to use a Death Coil, Frost Strike, or Rune Strike as well. Healers should be able to heal right away, and DPS should probably wait until near the end of the first rotation to begin DPSing. After the first rotation threat should no longer be an issue. Misdirection and Tricks of the Trade add even more threat in a raid setting.

Cooldowns:

Death Knights have a lot of defensive cool downs. Unbreakable Armor, Lichborne, Bone Armor, and Icebound Fortitude to name a few. These are on short timers, and one of them will be up for every trash pack in an instance. They can be stacked which means during a strong Frenzy or Enrage the Death Knight will not take as much damage as you might expect. In combination with trinkets that provide mitigation cool down effects a Death Knight could theoretically "roll" all of his cool downs in to the next one so as to always have one up. Likewise the Death Knight can stack these for increased survivability with reduced uptime.

Hopefully this very brief overview helps you in future groups with Death Knight tanks.

Well there's about one more week to go until Death Knights are unleashed on Azeroth. I finally have all of my preparations complete:

• Materials for 1-350 Blacksmithing
• Materials for 1-350 Jewelcrafting
• Quest turn-in materials for Light's Hope Chapel
• Quest turn-in materials for The Blasted Lands
• Quest turn-in materials for Zangarmarsh
• Glyphs for grinding ready
• RAF account leveled to 60

There is a bit that I have to do still:

• Go to the grocery store and buy food for a week
• Tell my friends not to worry if they don't see me for a week
• See my parents before Wrath

I have decided to spec Unholy for leveling. I leveled as many different specs during Alpha and Beta, and while I thought Blood was decently fast and efficient while I was specced that way, I had a more enjoyable experience leveling as Unholy.

Here's the spec I am hoing to use most likely:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2055020500000000000000000000...

A couple notes on this spec:

• On A Pale Horse: Don't underestimate the benefits of increased travel time on grinding. This is amazing.
• Unholy Aura: This gets me 15% movement speed while I level in Blood Presence. Excellent talent.
• Master of Ghouls: I really love the permanent ghoul. It will be even better with the Glyph and Orc racial.
• Gargoyle: For those difficult encounters (2-3 person) that you attempt to solo.
• Unholy Blight: I don't see any benefit to having this while grinding.
• Night of the Dead: I've not used this too much, but being able to sac my ghoul and get him right back out for a heal is nice.
• Reaping: Death runes rarely have use while grinding. Many things die in your initial rotation.
• Blade Barrier: I mostly grabbed this because Subversion is 'meh' for Unholy.

Whats my plan when the expansion goes live?

• Quest to about 57.95. Should be in Orgrimmar at this point.
• RAF gift myself 3 levels. Should be near 61.
• Turn in the final DK quest to Thrall, and Death Gate back.
• Do the trainer quest in Ebon Hold if I decided to skip it.
• Fly to Light's Hope Chapel and turn in those quests.
• Fly to Stonard and ride to The Blasted Lands to turn in those quests.
• Ride through Hellfire grabbing the Thrallmar and Falcon Watch flight paths.
• Begin questing in Zangarmarsh.

As soon as I hit 68 I'm going to drop all quests in my quest log, and head to Borean Tundra.

Enjoy your last week of freedom!

 It's been a while since my last blog post. I have, however, been pretty busy. I have tanked every 5 man and most of the Heroic dungeons. I have also Main Tanked a few Naxx 10 runs, a CoA 10, off-tanked a Naxx 25, and a CoA 25. I have been a few variations of Unholy, and Frost throughout this.

The sum of my experiences is that I enjoy boss tanking as Frost more than any other spec. I'll link my proposed spec and Glyphs.

Let's take a minute and analyze talent by talent a spec I think has some potantial in the next push to be a great tanking spec.

BLOOD

Blade Barrier (5/5): After your initial 6 runes go on cooldown and proc this, every rune thereafter is considered your last rune as long as you use it before the next rune comes up. What this means is that once you get your rotation going Blade Barrier has a near 100% uptime. 10% parry is amazing for tanking. This talent is a must have.

FROST

Improved Icy Touch (3/3): More damage to a core rotational ability, more speed reduction on Frost fever, and required for Icy Talons. Need I say more?

Glacier Rot (2/2): Everything you fight should have at least Frost Fever on it, so a 10% damage increase to your core Frost abilities for 2 points is a great investment.

Toughness (5/5): 15% armor. Standard tanking talent. Grab this.

Black Ice (5/5): 10% damage to all of your core Frost abilities, and your disease damage. Not much better at this point to spend points on.

Icy Talons (5/5): Icy Touch should be in your rotation, so this is like a permanent 15% haste buff. This will lead to more threat, and more Killing Machine procs.

Lichborne (1/1): 25% miss, and fear immunity for 30 seconds when you need it. Great burst mitigation talent.

Annihilation (3/3): If you use Obliterate in your rotation, which you probably should, this should ensure that in most cases your Frost Fever stays on the target. Even if it doesn't, Obliterate should be at the end of your rotation anyways. 3% crit on specials is nice as well.

Runic Power Mastery (3/3): Extra Frost Strike damage, extra Hungering Cold freeze duration, and extra mitigation on Icebound Fortitude all in one talent? Definitely a good pick.

Killing Machine (5/5): With Frost Strike replacing Death Coil in a Frost rotation those melee crits are going to be fueling Frost Strike crits, which mitigate armor already. This will really make your Frost Strike a heavy hitter. Also helps for a crit Howling Blast when Deathchill is on cooldown.

Deathchill (1/1): Free crit Howling Blast, Frost Strike, Obliterate, whatever you need at the time. This should help burst threat. Crit a Howling Blast on a fresh pack of mobs, or crit a melee special on a boss in your first rotation to bump up your initial threat.

Merciless Combat (2/2): 60% extra damage on Frost for the end of a fight. This should  cover the same abilities that Deathchill does meaning your rotation has 3 abilities doing 60% more damage at the end of the fight.

Howling Blast (1/1): Amazing AOE threat and damage ability. One point investment, and your instance buddies will love you.

Frost Aura (2/2): Two points for 6% more HP. I'm not so sure about the Frost Resistance, but we don't know what the raid bosses are going to be like yet. I would imagine in a cold themed expansion quite a few things will throw frost damage your way.

Blood of the North (5/5): This allows for a lot more liberal rotations. Your second round could have two Obliterates which should be subatantially more damage and threat than the Blood Strikes the extra Obliterate replaces.

Unbreakable Armor (3/3): Ghostcrawler has stated this ability will function as an on-use burst mitigation ability. It will be off the GCD as well. I'm not sure if it will still be 3 talent points, but an off the GCD burst mitigation ability is something I don't want to pass up.

Acclimation (3/3): Death Knights are supposed to be proficient at tanking spellcasters or bosses that deal spell damage heavily. If anything in the fight is resistable, this should help you and your party quite a bit.

Frost Strike (1/1): Hits harder than Death Coil, has many talents in the Frost tree that will amplify its damage, and it is a melee swing that ignores armor. This is a must have, and will replace Death Coil as the Runic Power dump at the end of a rotation.

Guile of Gorefiend (3/3): Massive critical strike damage buff to three abilities you will use in nearly every rotation, and an extra 6 seconds ever minute on Icebound Fortitude assuming you use it on cooldown. This is a 50% increase to the potency of Icebound Fortitude. Way too good to pass this up.

Tundra Stalker (5/5): 10% damage increase to Frost Fevered targets. Since we'll likely use Icy Touch every rotation this could be considered a flat 10% damage increase.

Hungering Cold (1/1): Spreads Frost Fever now. An amazing mitigation tool in a 5-man, or on trash to apply Frost Fever quickly, and synergizes amazingly with Howling Blast for AOE threat.

UNHOLY

Anticipation (5/5): 5% passive dodge. Need I say more?

Unholy Command (2/2): Reduced cooldown on both of the Death Knight taunt abilities. This should help immensly on any trash and 5-man packs, but also on any "taunt rotation" oriented fight.

--------

So with these talents in mind let's talk about what your rotation on a boss might be like.

U - Unholy Rune
B - Blood Rune
F - Frost Rune
D - Death Rune (Universal Rune)
R - Runic Power

Rotation 1:
1F - Icy Touch - Applies Frost Fever
1U - Plague Strike - Applies Blood Plague
1B - Blood Strike - Bonus Damage for 2 diseases - Creates 1D
1B - Blood Strike - Bonus Damage for 2 diseases - Creates 1D
1U1F - Obliterate - Bonus Damage for 2 diseases
50R - Frost Strike

Rotation 2:
1F - Icy Touch - Applies Frost Fever
1U - Plague Strike - Applies Blood Plague
2D - Obliterate - Bonus Damage for 2 diseases
1U1F - Obliterate - Bonus Damage for 2 diseases
50R - Frost Strike

You would rotate between 1 and 2 for maximum threat. I am not sure if the Frost Fever and Blood Plague will persist through two sets of rune cooldowns, but if they did you  could possibly use 3 Obliterates in the second rotation.

This rotation can be sustained indefinitely with the exception of perhaps you might not have enough Runic Power to Frost Strike every rotation. What this means is that you can be a static threat machine at any level of content without worrying about being rage starved nbecause you don't get hit hard enough, or running out of mana because the fight took too long and you didn't need that much healing. All of our abilities scale off of Attack Power, and our Parry scales off of our Strength, so as our tanking gear gets better (STR goes up) our threat will scale with that.

I think with this talent setup you have the best setup for raid tanking, and you'd do pretty darn good in a 5-man instance as well. It will be interesting to see when these changes push to the beta realms how much improved our tanking will be.

- Myrx (Mayong) -

First I'm going to start with an introduction of myself.  Tenko was the first character created by me on Nov 23rd 2004.  I have played her non stop since then.  I have only 1 other character that made it to 70 and 2 others to 60 (both pre BC).  I will always play my lock until i decide to not play this game any longer.  I have raided, pvp'd and now Arena.  I've been on one of the top 5's teams on the BG6 for the last 2 seasons, continuing to do well this season.  My 3's teams have finished 10th, 14th, in season 1 and 2 runnig the same comp (resto shaman, warlock, mage) and were gladiators again in season 3.  This will be an attempt  to explain whats strong about the warlock class, whats wrong and dispel the myth we are the overpowered class.