I am looking to find out if I know or understand how Deathknights tank in WOTLK.
For some context, I played my DK through all of MoP and WoD and tanked Heroic Raid content and a few mythic fights.
My guild from Cata reformed and I need to make a choice of what to tank on. I know I enjoy the warrior, that is the class I’ve tanked the majority of mythic content on, however I loved the DK during MoP and have been thinking about playing it again.
My question: Is tanking on a DK in WOTLK similar to tanking on a DK in MoP? Were there significant changes to the way the class functions or the rune system? What changes were there?
TLDR: Is tanking on a DK in Wrath the same as MoP?
I’m pretty sure DK tanking in wotlk is frost spec, which in my experience is regarded as the most fun spec to tank in. So the experience will be different than MoP, and DK is expected to be the best compliment with a pally tank.
That or blood, but by 3.3.5 it was mainly blood… the talents we’re being given, chances are blood is going to be the best tank spec for death knights.
It’s close enough to MoP that you should be fine. Certainly a lot closer than the current blood DK. Stats are pretty different, and there’s definitely some changes (no aoe grip, for one) but heart strike cleave, death strike heal (and costs runes, not rp), rune strike as a spender (or death coil). 3 diseases, pestilence spreads, blood boil deals damage.
It’s a bit more “knifes edge” without mastery.
Warriors are a lot stronger in wrath too, so also a decent choice.
Naxx, mostly. They gave a raidwide frost resist aura (frost aura, changed for improved frost presence) and howling blast was good for aoe. Plus frost presence being the “tank presence” likely leads players to thinking frost is tank tree.
Blood being squishier also probably didn’t help. The more geared they got (over the expansion) the more the self healing self sustaining side shown through.
Ok so lets set a few things straight, biggest of which is DK tanking in wrath is not at all similar to MoP blood.
First lets go over what the tank meta was at the time. Raid bosses on 25 man difficulty could kill a tank in 2-3 hits, so tanks were stacking stamina to increase thier effective health. Blood had higher EH than the other 2 specs so most were blood, with the occasional maverik playing frost. Blood’s self healing was irrelevant and didn’t scale with damage taken. The only time it actually mattered was on general vezax.
My recollection in Wrath is that generally speaking, blood is the better spec for ST tanking and frost is the better for AoE tanking.
So if you’re the guild’s MT, blood is probably better for you; if you’re the OT picking up adds, or just want to do heroics fast and easy, frost might be the better choice.