Trying to tankFollow

First off here is the armory link:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mok%27Nathal&n=Monglo

Just dinged 80 a couple of days ago. Invested into a couple of pieces of titansteel armor and I did my best to ding a couple of reps to get some starter defense gear. Anyways in frost presence I have 24khp 62% mitigation and maxed defense. I know freshing dinging 80 and wanting to run heroics is frowned upon by alot of people but I Really did try to put some effort into maxing defense and getting my HP/Mitigation up so I could. Nobody hardly runs normals on my server other then Nexus seems like.

Gear wise should I have any problem tanking heroics right now? I have ran 2 heroics so far. First was heroic UK. I died once to a pathing npc adding into the 4 allready on us (no CC). I was only one who died on that particular pull. Other then that there was no deaths. I know with my mage I have watched alot of tanks die to the final boss in there when he goes into undead form but I don't recall ever going below 50% health. I think the healer was pretty well decked out in gear and we had really good dps. Nobody really said anything negative to me although I don't think they were real thrilled when they saw me loot my first heroic emblem on the boss hehe (achievement).

Later went to Heroic COT4 with a whole other group. About every other wave I was dead fairly quick. Pretty sure it was the Dark Necromancers which I had marked for first kill. Got to the first boss and healer ran out of mana and I lasted about 15 seconds or so after that. OF course after I died we wiped when he was at about 25khp. I am just kinda wondering if I am still not quite geared to be running heroics or was it maybe just not enough dps and/or bad heals. I know the warlock linked the DPS at the end and I was #2 but it didn't show the actually damage per sec it just showed a percent. Had him around 48ish me at 28ish and hunter and rogue between 12 and 18ish percent. I looked at the healer and it was a shaman with about 50% lvl 70 epics (skygear or something or another), couple of greens and around 1400 extra healing. After healer left no others were LFG and it fell apart.

Of course the healer blamed me after dieing to the boss and disconnected. Warlock claimed it was bad DPS, rogue said nothing and hunter said bad heals lol. Boss fight I kinda think it might have been lack of DPS, but in the regular pulls It was like I wasn't being healed enough.

Also how do you start off a fight? I usually deathgrip or frost on single pulls and attack basically. TRy to get alot of bloodboils in as it seems to pull alot of aggression? Multiple pulls I drop a Death and Decay, hit frost and then plague to spread it. Then I use that skill that converts rune to death rune which allows me to hit them with a bloodboil. When I have a dead corpse I throw in corpse explosions. Most of the time this seems to hold aggression but sometimes I get one that gets away from me. Nobody has died from it (yet) but they were more then happy to mention it.

I really wish I had more exp tanking however every dungeon run I ever did leveling up always ended up having a higher level tank so I never got to. Well I take it back I tanked a regular VH at lvl 77 and nobody died but I still lost aggression a couple of times on muliples.

I really need a new weapon but its the only one I can find that has sta and defense right now.

I'm in the same position you are, except I'm not ready for heroics. I'm still new to tanking, so I'm getting my rotations down, getting to know my abilities in a new light, and I'm doing it in lower level instances. I was asked today why I was bothering to run regular AN, and I told the person I was new to tanking and needed the practice :).

I am in no way, shape, or form afraid to tell someone that I'm new to tanking. Most of the time, people are willing to give me some tips on how to improve. I've asked questions some people might find stupid, but I feel the only stupid question is the one I don't ask. I've also got several friends that are great tanks that I can fall on for advice, that always helps.

Not to be splitting hairs here, but the parry is avoidance, not mitigation. It is absolutely essential to get and keep it up since DKs are avoidance tanks, not meat shields.

Dodge and Parry is all we have to avoid getting hit - other than being missed altogether. Everything that doesn't miss and isn't dodged or parried is being mitigated - through armor, talents, or resistance.

540 is for raids (level 78 mobs), while for heroics (level 82 mobs) you only need 535.

While there is no actual "cap" on defense, it's still important to keep an eye on the intended content. Extra defense doesn't hurt, but the item points are simply better spent on other things after reaching crit-immunity.

535 + parry rune > 560 through Gargoyle when you're doing heroics.

not everything, and its based on your healers / dps.
If your avoidance/armor/hp are kinda low dont expect to walk into HoL and ace it.
Likewise, you should be able to (with a good healer/dps) do UK, dtk, vh, and probably nexus.

Its not just about defense, but it is important because crits are lethal.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Blackhand&n=Kouhiko

Any advice anyone can give on gear/talents/etc would be greatly appreciated. I would like to move on to tanking Heroic dungeons but obviously need more experience and want to get on the right track (this is my first tank, my main has always been a priest).

thanks in advance,
~Blacks

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/deathknight/talents.html?tal=0355021533000313200051013503050200030000000000000000000230200000000000000000000000000

What about this build?

You need 5/5/5 as a base for tanking (blade barrier/toughness/anticipation).

I haven't ever used blood for tanking. I know it was bad before the patch, but I think they improved it (not sure if it was improved enough to be useful).

Edited, Feb 10th 2009 12:37pm by Ailitardif

it's Sudden Doom not Death....
Sorry but this is starting to bug me as much as people playing a Rouge. :/

Not gonna lie, but I tanked Heroic CoT in quest and rep blues and did fine.

Level 70 gear some classes keep simply because they farmed the easy T6 content right before Wrath.

My main is a resto shaman and I am having a hard time healing DK tanks. The DK tank generally blames me after the group disbands I am trying to understand if it is me, the tank or some combination thereof. For example, I was running heroic UK the other night and we kept wiping on trash pulls and could not even engage the first boss before the group disbanded. My healing SP after self buff is over 1900 with 450 MP/5. I have successfully ran heroics and got through a lot of Naxx. My main problem is dealing with boss mechanics and a poor UI but I certainly have the fundamentals of healing down specific to my class and I generally do not cause wipes on trash pulls. Anyways, after the last failed group I checked the armory of the tank to gain a better understanding of what the problems could be and his build was 71 in frost, def rating=485, dodge = 9.5%, parry = 11.0% with 19.7K HP. Is this close enough such that a good healer should have made up the slack? I read that tanks (except bears) should shoot for a def of 535. What about %dodge, %parry, HP and Armor? Is going 71 frost a good tanking build?

71 points in Frost sounds like a lazy DK who heard the Frost was the tanking tree (:P) and just ran with it. There are major tank talents in the first row of the other two trees that can't really be skipped by a DK who is serious about tanking. 485 defense is fully inadequate for heroics. That tanks wasn't even 2/3 of the way to where he needs to be defense-wise to be crit immune vs. heroic bosses. Hell...he's 40/45 points shy of what he needs to be crit immune vs. trash mobs in a heroic.

What you were trying to heal was a DK with 20% avoidance who was highly susceptible to crits that could knock off half his health and with a modified defense that low, he'd be getting crit a LOT in a heroic.

A decently geared heroic tank will have in the neighborhood of 35-40% avoidance, be crit immune, and for DKs they should have upwards of 26-28k HP minimum w/ Frost Presence. Anything else and you're just begging for a repair bill.