First DK Tanking Experience
Last night I logged on and was basically minding my own questing business in the still almost sparkling new (for me) Howling Fjords when I get a tell asking me if I were willing to tank Utgarde Keep.
After trading standard disclaimers (First time in instance, first time tanking on the DK and I don’t actually have anything resembling tanking gear, you guys still OK with this?), I took advantage of the DK’s almost unique flexibility, death gated to Ebon Hold, changed runeforge enchant to add 4% parry, and then went ahead and respecced to a more tankey build for good measure. I stuck to an unholy base build because I’m used to 18-second disease cycles by now and changing that right before trying out a new role was, well, not really a good idea.
And off we went on our merry way.
The group was quite spread out, level-wise. I was the lowest, followed by a 71 mage, a 72 priest, and a 72 and 77 rogue.
And how did it go?
Not that well. Compared to the paladin, DK tanking is a strange affair. First and foremost, I felt a lot more squishy than what I remembered from the tankadin (haven’t actually tanked on that guy for ages), and while gear obviously accounts for a lot (I had 475 defense and 89% avoidance last time I checked), the shield and holy shield with their 45% additional avoidance really do make a difference in terms of how in control you feel.
Speaking of control, the next hurdle is controlling a fight. Long essays have already been written on the relative ease of tankadins, and if you haven’t tried out tanking on a DK yet, let me tell you, there’s a real difference right there. Oh, with an unholy leveling build, you do AoE mobs all right. In a normally well controlled setting. In this UK run? Not so much. I felt, for instance, as if I were almost constantly with runes on cooldowns and no buttons left to push. For all the fuss over Righteous Defense, when you’re lacking a snap AoE spell like consecrate to pick up things like Prince Keleseth’s adds (I have either Death & Decay, using 3 runes, which is a rare commodity in mid-fight, or Unholy Blight, dependent on having some RP left), having a 3-mob taunt would sure have come in handy.
Then there’s the other thing which just became quite worrying in the patch notes, the nerf to Icebound Fortitude is something which would bug me in the future. The oh crap button this represented to give me a small health cushion when stuff started to get hairy will definitely be missing once it’s down to 20% instead of 50%.
In short, lots of room for improvement in my gameplay, and quite some adjustments I need to take. I’m quite frankly wondering whether I should just make sure to now level the paladin and the DK pretty much in parallel and use the pallie for tanking on invites and postpone any further experiments on the dead guy till endgame after collecting some decent and appropriate gear for the task.
On the other hand, I’m no quitter. We’ll see where this leads.
And how did the run go itself? Trash to first boss, no real problem. First boss: 1 rogue disconnects, we attempt to 4-man it, wipe, get another rogue, healer disconnects, get a balance druid accepting to heal, wipe a second time then kill the bastard. Next boss pair, the mage remembers that you need to kill both pretty much simultaneously after we wipe. We call it a night. A blue cloth hat dropped for the mage.
Funny factoids:
- After summoning, one of the rogues and my DK are found unguilded (since Steptoe isn’t back to actually invite my toon to our 2-man operation). 5 seconds later and our PUG has become a guild run
- To my surprise, one of my brand new guildmates remarked that I was the first DK who’d actually accept to tank since the release. That’s really unexpected. Oh, sure, there’s the non-tank rerollers who might not be too keen on experimenting while leveling, I can understand that. On the other hand, before I started to lag behind the leveling curve, you barely couldn’t take a step in Outlands without treading on another DK’s clown shoes. For some reason I just can’t fathom that nobody else would have taken the chance, tried it out and then stuck to it. Heck, before dual specs, no other tank can change enchants and respec as conveniently as a DK. I’m really surprised here.
I guess you don’t need me to come back then
And here I was preparing for my triumphant return
Well I’m glad to see you tried out DK tanking. The one set that will net you about 140g for 6+ pieces is the Cobolt set. Crafted blue plate armor with defense on it. At lvl 74 the boy had I think 16k health and more than 470 defense. I’m not exact on this but it was great to see him tanking as unholy and really enjoying it. Maybe check your AH for these pieces or find a BS to make ‘em! DK tanking can really be enjoyable with the right gear. Don’t give up!
Quick correction, the cobalt set is a green craftable (also spelled Cobalt, not Cobolt)
Boots: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39088#comments
Wowhead has the entire set there to check out.
Yeah, I had the gloves on that run, it’s definitely good kit to have to tank. Not really sure I want to invest that money on two tanking toons at this stage though. The mechanisms were certainly interesting to try out, that being said, my current quandary is picking between a toon which I’m very comfy tanking with and still has more than enough defense for the next couple of leveling dungeons, or one which has no gear to speak of and feels, at present, a lot more difficult to handle.
I also think most of the difficulties came more from the lack of practice and ill-timed AoE spells on cooldown at the wrong moment than gear issues proper. We certainly never wiped from the healers going OoM, it was more about handling adds (and ice trap) properly where I had issues.
Choices, choices…
Yeah, I was a little ticked off when I saw that the cobalt stuff was mostly superior to my 100g apiece felsteel set (I’m not a blacksmith so didn’t get the strength bonus from the set).
I have some to the conclusion, DK’s are poor tanks no matter what. What sets a tank apart is mitigation, not just wearing plate, having high health and the ability to taunt things. I just don’t see DK’s ever having enough of it to compare to pallys, warriors, or Druids.
That’s very harsh, Fish. I remember the same being said about anything but warriors when TBC got released, and about tankadins until roughly 2.2. From a first glance, I think it’s rather going to be quite complicated to tank well as a DK. One of the areas where they could potentially shine compared to all the others is that they’ll never be in a situation where they cannot generate enough of their primary resource (rage or mana) to keep aggro, contrary to the three other tanks. They’ll certainly make better offtanks than pallies for instance (at least pre 3.0.2 tankadins, still need to try out the new prot)