gnomeDK – Your Pink Haired Guide to All Things Death Knight

There’s a great “so you wanna be a tank” article I read on WoW Insider. It is from their Tank Talk column and is titled Do you feel lucky, punk? The article goes over the ten questions anyone who is looking at tanking for the first time needs to ask themselves before they get started. A couple of the questions death knights are immune to, a credit toward Blizzard’s attempts to make tanks more viable in general PvE, but most of them are something anyone looking at rolling a death knight but who has never tanked before should ask themselves. You can spec frost and call yourself a frost mage in plate all you want, but eventually someone is going to ask you to tank and probably to do so regularly.

“1. How often can you realistically be at raids?”

Straightforward question to answer. Either you’ll be there most of the time and can tank or you won’t at which point you need to discuss being rostered as a DPS.

“2. Do you have the time and undivided attention even for boring trash clears?”

As a 3-4 button spamming rogue I don’t know if I’m looking forward to this or not. Either way it is a definitive question for all tank classes to answer.

“3. How comfortable are you with the notion of wiping the raid because you made a mistake?”

Ha! I do that all the time already! Wait… I mean…

Seriously, be ready to apologize as necessary and move on. No game is worth losing sleep over.

“4. Are you OK with the idea of spending time doing content with no real benefit to you?”

This is the classic “zomg Dedbitt just logged on, come tank for us!” situation tanks run into a lot. Obviously you should help your guild mates, they helped you and by making them better you’re making your job in raids easier. That being said you also need to be willing to say no once in a while, as we all need a little solo time. Maybe your ghoul can go with them instead?

“5. On that note, how much do you enjoy respeccing?”

Respeccing should be one of the negatives concerning tanking that death knights can mostly avoid. Obviously the dual-spec system will solve this for most tanks, but that is at least one WotLK content patch away so you can’t count on it during early raiding. Luckily death knights were designed to allow tanking and DPS viability in any tree. We can grab tank talents from the top of all three trees, go deep into the tree of our choice, and pick up a couple more tank talents along the way while maintaining solo PvE viability. Granted our tanking specs won’t be as good at DPS as a pure DPS spec, but we’ll have nothing to complain about compared to protection warriors and paladins and even hardcore bear druids.

“6. Can you afford to tank?”

Repairs are only the start, though they are a big part. For death knights we don’t block so we’re getting hit directly a lot, which means so it our armor’s durability. Instead of a lot of durability loss on one item (i.e. a shield) we take a spread out durability loss all over. Gems and enchants for your many gear sets (at least weapon enchants are free for us). You’ll need to be constantly using elixirs or flasks, especially when main tanking, plus plenty of heal pots. Respecs shouldn’t be a big cost, even before the dual-spec system is in place, but you’ll still probably respec a bit more than you would as a DPS.

“7. Are you ready to be expendable on certain fights?”

This might be an issue for death knights, but I’m thinking it’ll be less of one if it is at all. Again we aren’t locked down to a single “tanking” talent tree so our DPS output should still be pretty good. If your guild is into min/maxing during progression and has pure DPS players available a death knight tank will still be weaker than the alternatives, but again it shouldn’t be as big of a problem as tanks have had to deal with in the past.

“8. Fancy spending DKP, badges, honor, and gold like a drunken pirate?”

The article goes on to list the specific, expensive stuff: resistance gear, badge gear, PvP gear, offspec gear, gems and enchants.

The gold part goes back to question 6: respecs, repairs, consumables, gems and enchantments.

We have anti-caster abilities, we’re going to tank a lot of magic fights and thus need as much, if not more, resistance gear than the rest of the tanks. Caster tanking was our official tanking niche in the beginning. That is less true now, but we still have more anti-caster abilities than other tanks.

Badge gear was for itemization issues. Blizzard has been trying to change that in Wrath. That being said, even if we don’t need badges for tank gear it’ll probably be our best avenue for DPS gear.

PvP gear was mostly for itemization issues with feral druids. Of course there may be an equivalent to [Medallion of the Alliance] or [Medallion of the Horde] that we’ll need to get.

Offspec gear is big. One, you’ll want a DPS set for anything you’re doing which doesn’t involve tanking. Two, unless you are your guild’s main tank you’ll have times in raid where you are DPS. You can’t change your spec until the dual-spec system is in place but you can and should change out your gear to make yourself more useful. Just be grateful we don’t also need a healing set like druids.

Gems and enchants should be something any serious end game player tries to maximize. It is vital for tanks but I think everyone should get into that habit now, whatever their spec and role. The downside for tanks is with multiple gear sets comes double the gem and enchanting cost.

“9. Can you maintain a good, or at least cordial, relationship with your healers, your DPS, and the rest of the tanks?”

You can’t yell at the healers each time you die, just like you wouldn’t want to be yelled at each time the raid wipes. DPS is as DPS does. Yes, their own threat is their responsibility but the better you are with threat generation the more they can open up, making your job a shorter one. As a death knight you’ll also be the new tank in the group, so you should want advise from the more experienced tanks in your guild.

“10. Are you willing to do your homework on the encounters?”

Tanks need to know everything that is going to happen, because when the fight starts their view is very limited. Next to the raid leader you need to be the most knowledgeable person concerning the encounter.