In this guide I will cover most of my knowledge about Blood DK tanking as of patch 3.2.2
Blood tanking is considered the best MT - Single target (Boss) tree of the 3 tanking trees of DKs.
I will put here the key concepts in tanking with Blood spec which is
52/8/11 including glyphs (You can switch glyph of Disease with glyph of Rune Strike for more threat)
Please note that I choose Corpse explode over 1 point in Necrosis as it helps my AoE threat when I'm required to OT.
But.... I will be honest and say... I really like to explode corpses after they die, especially boss corpse :/
Anyhow....
IT - Icy Touch
PS - Plague strike
HS - Heart strike
DS - Death strike
RP - Runic power
DC - Disconnect (Death Coil really)
Pest - Pestilence
BT - Blood tap
DnD - Death and decay
AMS - Anti magic shell
IBF - Icebound fortitude
Hys - Hysteria
BB - Blood boil
VB - Vampiric blood
Key Tanking Abilities
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Icebound Fortitude - 20% + %based on defense damage reduction skill for 12 secs. 2 min cooldown.
Anti-Magic shell - 5 seconds of 75% damage up to 50% of the DK's health absorb from spells which regenerates RP
Vampiric blood - Increase the DK health by 15% and all healing effects by 35% for 10secs.
Death Strike - Heals the DK for 5% of max health for each disease (usually 2) plus 50% due to blood talents
Death Pact - Sacrifice your minion to regain 40% of your max health
Hysteria - Although a friendly unit major buff, it can also be used on self for large increase in threat generation
The art of self healing
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Since Blood Tanks self-heals are pseudo mitigation and not mitigation (occurs asynchronically with received damage),
Blood Tanks has the biggest health pool of the 3 tanks (given similar stats),
And demands a smart timing of Death Strikes.
A blood tank should always have a DS ready to use in a time span of 2 GCD when building initial aggro (including tricks like Blood tapping, Empowered runic weapon)
and usually leaving a DS ready for immediate use when have sufficient aggro.
If considering DS as pseudo mitigation, we are talking about a 7-9k self heal per strike and around 10-12k self heal per strike while VB is on.
And the idea is not to waste that on overhealing (of course sometimes it is unavoidable).
Example:
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Boss is about to gain serious damage buff in an encounter.
RP is high and a DS is available.
-> A good decision would be to use Death Coil and wait for that coming strike in order to pseudo-mitigate its damage with a well timed DS.
Example:
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The boss just knocked out everyone and you are out of range from healers.
Your health is not that amazing and at risk of going critical if a hit lands.
-> Use one available cooldown (IBF or VB) and immediately start spamming DS while using empowered runic weapon to being able to keep concatenated DS.
-> If empowered runic weapon is not available and you are still in danger, raise a minion and sacrifice it immediately.
Knowing the encounter well and having a good control over self heals and cooldowns can make a blood DK much more durable than other tanks on OH S$@#! situations.
The art of absorbing
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Anti magic shell is one of the best tanking abilities in the game.
Where other tanks might suffer horrible amounts of magical damage (anything which is not physical), A DK can lol that out by just activating his AMS.
But again, the effectiveness of using AMS is only determined by its timing.
Not only AMS absorbs, but usually pushes your RP to full, allowing you to spam DC while keeping your RP at full.
It is crucial to activate it 1-2 seconds before the actual damage occurs.
I will give example for DPS situation as well just to show how AMS can be utilized.
Example:
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Emelon : Both as DPS and as Tank, you can without worries, stand infront (or behind) Emelon while he is doing his lightening Nova.
The little damage taken is easily restored with a concatenated DS and you even have a full RP.
Example:
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Legion Flames : Why run away when you can stand in flames (and even other's flames) and absorb some nice damage ?
Example:
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Twin Valkyrs : Missing some RP ? AMS !
Rune Strike
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Rune strike should be macroed into all abilities so it is used immediately when it is available.
Example : /cast !Rune Strike()
/cast Plague Strike()
Pulling
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a) Pulling a group of mobs is usually not recommended with death grip as it creates no real threat and the death grip goes on a long cooldown.
It is better to keep death grip for situations of overaggroing players.
Pull with IT when possible or DC if you still have spate RP. Or just use Dark Command as last option.
b) If the group has a caster, it is then wise to death grip him into a DnD area as it will also interrupt his casting or just Choke him, but that will cost a rune.
c) Use dark commands and death grip to pull mobs from different directions while standing near a DnD area (Like the adds on Noth).
Rotations
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Single Target Rotation - IT-PS-DS-HS-HS DS-HS-HS-HS-HS RP DUMP = RS/Deathcoil
Multi Target Rotation - DnD-IT-PS-Pest-(TAB-BT-BB/DS/BB) RP DUMP = RS/Deathcoil/CorpseExplode
ToDo
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Upcoming chapters:
-Enchants/Gems
-Stat weights
-Addons
-Macros
