DK Blood Tank: Annihilation, DRW, TPS, and DPS

[Vitandus]

I created my DK alt as a tank for heroics to give our normal raid tanks a break and allow them to play DPS toons more often. I am now tanking heroics and have done OT/MT for Obsidian Sanctum and Vault of Archavon 10 man. The current build works but I believe as I run more raids a change may be in order.


My current build was designed with these thoughts:

• Rune Tap and Improved Rune Tap were chosen since we often PUG healers on these really late night runs. I don't know how many times I've been in the middle of a boss fight, not getting heals, and see the priest casting Smite.
  
• Hysteria is an awesome buff for the melee DPS we bring.
  
• Blood Aura was taken for the ambient heals.
  
• Blood Gorged is more damage as long as I am healthy  - that is, if we bring a guild healer - which means more threat. The expertise is nice as well.
  
• Will of the Necropolis - I see a lot of Blood DK tanks without it, but the benefits are wicked. Coupled with Vampiric Blood, the Blood tank has nice coverage during those "Oh, noes!" events.
  
• Dancing Rune Weapon was suggested to me by a Blood tank in another guild. He is their MT, and they've done all of the 25 man content. He claims the DRW adds to his threat. I am unsure since I have read mixed reports. I do find it to be a nice runic power dump.
  
• Morbidity was taken for the reduced cooldown of Death and Decay.
  
• Epidemic is nice for the increased duration. I am unsure about this talent since I do not spam Obliterate.
  

Since I have started running more raids, I am considering this build. It is very similar, but with Improved Rune Tap and Dancing Rune Weapon dropped from Blood, and Morbidity dropped from Unholy.

• If in a raid setting, I should expect better healing, making Improved Rune Tap less important. That said, any self healing helps ease the pressure on the healers.
  
• Dancing Rune Weapon and Death Coil are the only real runic power dumps for a Blood tank. As an OT, I am often called to DPS, so that potential dump for more damage is not present. That said, I don't think the loss of DRW is a big deal.
  
• In this build, I took Annihilation. It was part of my standard Blood DPS build. It is more involved now that I have to watch disease timers and ensure I can pop Obliterate and then reapply Frost Fever and Blood Plague.
  

Questions:

• Is Obliterate as part of the normal rotation, rather than at the end of a cycle, as huge a boost in TPS and DPS as some claim?
  
• Does Dancing Rune Weapon add to threat?
  
• Any other comments?
  

[Dave]

My roommate's DK has been a tank since day one, and most of what I'm going to say is based off my experiences healing him, and the rest of based off my melee dps experience with my blood DK.

Most of a DK's survivability comes from gear. A DK is an avoidance tank, and avoidance comes from their gear, as well as their Tier 1 talents. That being said, I've healed him as every spec imaginable, and I noticed that there was never a drastic difference to the way he received damage, no matter what spec he was. These days, his avoidance is at about 55% in combat, and the rest is mitigated by armor and IBF when necessary. His gear is a mix of heroic blues, heroic epics, and some Naxx gear. I've told him once that as long as he has 5/5 in Blade Barrier, Toughness, and Anticipation, he could put the other 56 points anywhere into any tree and I still wouldn't notice a difference in the damage he takes.

To focus on the Blood tree though, things like Rune Tap are pretty situational, but they're great when used in conjunction with mitigation abilities. Plus it's something that scales with your health. I've never been a big fan of Blood aura, even with the huge buff it got after the last patch. 4% of damage as healing isn't a lot, especially in a raid setting where raid members take sporadic burst damage rather than constant ticking damage. If a damage dealer averages about 3000dps during a fight, that's still only about 120hp/s regen. Health can't really be treated like mana, where every little bit of regen contributes. At the same time, healers never benefit from the aura.

Since threat is damage nowadays, no matter what tree you decide to go deep into, at least get one of the strikes available to the tree (heart, frost, scourge). To me it seems like Blood would get the most benefit in terms of threat for a single target raid boss. Heart strike does more damage per rune than any other death knight attack. And at the same time, it produces more runic power per attack. To answer your question about Obliterate, I personally only use it to create Death Runes for use later with Heart Strike. Blood specs definitely use a lot of blood runes, so having death runes at your disposal makes the most of your available abilities. My standard dps rotation is somewhat along the lines of:
IT, PS, Ob, HS, HS, DC, Ob, HS, HS
I change it up all the time depending on what runes are available, whether or not my diseases are up (nescrosis is useful since your diseases are up 50% longer per rune spent), or whether or not another DK is in the group (I don't use pestilence when other DKs are around since their pestilence cast spreads my diseases as well. Better to save two runes for an Ob or HS). I also have points in Sudden Doom for the free crit. I use Death Coil as my standard runic power dump, and I've also never been a big fan of DRW, and am even less of one now that the clone can't cast AotD. But again, it's situational. Best use I can see for it is to front-load threat on a threat wipe. That only if its threat counts towards yours. That's one aspect of the spell that I don't know about.

DKs are still new at tanking, but it's pretty easy to figure out what they can and can't do. But it all comes down to the player, and the people he/she is playing with.

[Vitandus]

In the short term, I have serious issues with Morbidity in a raid setting. I am going to take Improved Icy Touch in the meantime.

[Dave]

There doesn't seem to be a fix for that yet. I haven't seen it myself. But there are ways of getting around the longer cooldown. Cycle in another set of diseases + pestilence and blood boil. Make sure you have pestilence glyphed, and everything should be alright.

[Vitandus]

I ended up keeping my build - I still have issues with Morbidity in 25 man content on occasion but the newest beta nVidia drivers helped a lot.

I know the healers who have been tasked with keeping Vitandus alive have been shocked to see how quickly I can drop down to the 35% health level. It is funny to see that I can stay there for quite a while, then pop Vampiric, Rune Tap, Death Strike and be back up again. It is a lot of fun and different than the masses of Unholy DKs.