So I’ve always healed and rarely dps for years now. Never really got around to tanking but it looks like ton of fun. I’ve always liked the idea of being self sufficient in a way and blood dk play style seems to suit me. Question I have is, can you level as blood dk from lvl17-50 only by doing dungeons? I guess I know the answer and it is a yes, I should maybe ask what challenges I will face and what I should do or know as a blood dk leveling only by dungeons. I’ve watched ton of vids for endgame tanking as blood but I won’t have majority of my abilities until lvl40 or so. Just wondering how painful this will be for me. I don’t want to quest as I want to start learning how to tank in dungeons. Thank you
I wouldn’t count on it considering blood is actually pretty terrible without it’s full kit
Edit: I thought you meant soloing them lol
Yea you’d be fine using groups
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You’re right, yes. Every spec can fully level by dungeon crawl and I know because that’s how I level. It will be harder at 40-50 like all specs, but not significantly harder like arcane gets due to the huge loss of power from insane OPness at level 10.
I would recommend the TBC dungeons. The mechanics are not too complex, and you get grouped with twinks every now and again. If you can keep aggro with twinks in the group, you can keep aggro with anybody. Whenever you get it, try to keep up at least 5 stacks of bone shield (you get this by casting marrowrend) at all times.
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You can absolutely level a tank solely via dungeon crawl. It won’t even hurt that bad because most low level dungeons are just a big zerg from beginning to end anyway. You won’t learn much of anything about tanking for a group until you get into keys, because everything before that is going to be 99% overgeared alts who won’t even wait for you to zone in before they’re pulling groups.
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DKs are usually okay to level, as much as any other class with tanks but IMO, I wouldn’t EVER dungeon crawl until you have your AOE abilities, namely Death and Decay, which typically is early on anyways for most specs that can tank. Which is why it hurts me so much to see a tank that joins a dungeon even before level 15 and realize they are sorely incapable because DPS will have ways to pull more than what the Tank can.
With that said. I’d say go and figure out Blood DK and piece together what their AOE abilities are that will make holding aggro together. I also know at least for them, they NEED to be still and stand for their Death and Decay to benefit from not ending up killing your group because of the need to hold aggro off your team. It isn’t like Demon Hunters or Guardian Druids where they can run around, and swipe freely and group them all in neatly and freely. You’re as grounded as Protection Paladins, they need to slap ground AOEs and sit still. So, they’re slower overall but pretty tanky on their own.
I personally cannot say from experience since I hardly touch DKs but I have seen them in action while leveling and this is usually how they are.
Why do you think you couldn’t?
The better question is it an efficient way to level. The answer to that is…it depends. Chromie time? Do Cata and spam vanilla dungeons and absolutely. Even BC and Wrath are ok. Actual Cata and beyond dungeons are not worth the time to XP and questing will be faster (and questing is faster in general too if you are good at it).
I wouldn’t quest as blood though willingly. Without super high haste, DKs are super bad and slow. Sure you won’t die, but neither is frost or unholy who both get free massive deathstrikes per kill easily keeping them topped off against leveling damage. You can easily do as big as pulls as blood can and just faster as either DPS spec.
Thank you for the replies guys. DND is now at lvl1 and BB is at lvl17 for aoe tanking. That should hold threat but I am more concerned about low haste and RP generation for DS. I guess I will try it and see how it goes.
Dude… how much time do you spend in queue?? Oo
Please don’t torture yourself by doing 45 min dungeons with mechanics that new players will bomb consistently.
BFA dungeons are well designed, not too hard mechanically, and lots of newer players in the same boat as you since they have no choice but to play bfa
You won’t have any issues leveling, but it must be said that end game tanking, which is to say doing keys and raids, requires more know-how and what your main challenge becomes is both learning the content and learning your limits.
Be ready to take advice, but never EVER be afraid to try just going for it. You’ll learn with persistence.
The heck? There is only 1 dungeon in Vanilla I think that can possibly be that long and I don’t think it is. LBRS. Actual Cata dungeons are mechanically hard and punishing. Vanilla dungeons are all toothless freebies chock full of quests and bonus bosses often requiring minimal to no route divergence to boot.
I also argue that BfA dungeons are good for lowbies. Mechanically the trash and bosses are MUCH more difficult and weren’t designed around players with disparate spellbooks. Also the simple fact you are much more likely to have more freshies who likely are objectively bad at the game gives you a much higher chance for runs to be longer and/or more overly difficult.
I’ve leveled many alts recently for guild achievements and for funsies I picked different chromie time expansions. I’m not basing my opinions blindly. I can all but guarantee I can out level via questing someone trying to spam dungeons in WoD+. I’ll out level someone in Cata dungeon spamming if I can get instant queues than someone trying to quest in the Azeroth zones until actual cata content at which point the questing will easily take over.
It isn’t a question on “if” something can be done rather than what is the best way. OP is free to do it however they want.
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im thinking itd be optimal actually.
as a tank your queues will probably be so fast you wont have time to really fit in quests between 2 anyways.
what i like to do is queuing up for both dungeons and battlegrounds and do some quests in the downtimes (which you wont have much of as a tank i assume)
Ur right, i was thinking of tge cata dungeons not the vanilla ones, my bad
I check emails and post on the forums while I’m in queue. I have 5000 posts on here so a lot, I guess. 
To be fair I also use the forums on the bus
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