Blood is not effective for AOE tanking. That’s why I always liked frost. Simply use a 2h without the 1h talents. Can use death strike over obliterate as well. https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent-calc/death-knight/0055001-32505051050233012000200131351-0052
This is the last build I used for tanking before retiring the role for good.
Pick up Heart Strike, it’s only one talent point. Don’t bother spreading diseases with pestilence, the mobs die too quickly and you need to build a small threat lead very quickly. On packs of 4 or more mobs, you drop DnD and tab between them hitting Icy Touch, Heart Strike, and Plague Strike. Macro Rune Strike to all of your abilities so it goes off automatically as you tab between the mobs.
One more tip: If you’re tanking as Blood, you can throw out some Death Strikes on the last mob in a pack to convert your runes to Death Runes. The next pack you pull you can open with a bunch of Icy Touches.
Make sure you grab the glyph that causes Howling Blast to apply Frost Fever to everything it hits.
I wish more people knew this, had a Boomie who outgeared my blood DK by 1k GS.
Tanking H FoS, guy would start AoE before all the mobs were even in my DnD.
Was aggroing off me every pull on trash.
Then has the nerve to tell me “you should learn how to tank…”
Now of course I realize he’s the idiot without game knowledge, but still…
Unfortunately you won’t find a ton of Blood DK tanking guides that are updated/relevant for wotlk in 2023. Most people defer to Frost tanking but I would advise against it because you are a lot squishier and it’s not actually better at AoE unless you generate a ton of Howling Blast Procs. Blood can generate a significant amount of AoE threat, if built properly, but it’s not well known.
Here is what I would recommend as a talent build for tanking as blood. For reference, this build is what I use for solo tanking Heroic LK in 10man where the AoE threat is much needed.
(https)://wotlk.evowow.com/?talent#j0ErVh0Isbofsot0xxZ0gh:Ipo0mV
You generally Icy Touch 1 enemy, drop Death and Decay, Plague Strike the same enemy, then Pestilence to spread diseases. Follow it up with Blood Tap into Blood Boil and you’re usually good on threat. If more than 3 targets Blood Boil spam. If 3 targets or less, heart strike spam. I would then recommend not tunneling into 1 enemy, just tab target in between a Heart Strike/Death Strike.
You should use a 2 hander with the fallen crusader rune. You should also macro Rune Strike into all of your abilities as it is a significant threat generator. Also, if you are 5k+ gear score use Deaths Choice and Greatness as trinkets, you don’t need excessive stamina for dungeons.
If you pick up pretty much all DPS talents, you’ll see a big increase in threat:
Blood is kind of a trap in that it smooths out damage taken by a lot, but gives up a bit of threat unless you explicitly spec for it. I even resorted to using DPS trinkets to add more threat. It works out really well.
Frost tanking feels a lot better though in dungeons. I wrote an entire guide about it on Wowhead for P1 since everyone was so up in arms that Blood was the only way to tank despite the only fight needing to be Blood realistically was Sarth + 3.
