Blood Death Knight Tank Guide
How to tank as a Blood Death Knight in WotLK 3.3.5a: Icy Touch threat, the survival toolbox, our raid tank build, caps to reach and boss notes.
The Blood Death Knight is the best end-game tank in Wrath of the Lich King, and the tank most raids ask for first. It heals itself, it has the biggest survival toolbox of any tank, and the four-piece Tier 10 bonus makes it even harder to kill. It is also the tank that punishes lazy rune play. This page is the practical guide: how you hold aggro, which spells and talents keep you alive, when you press your survival buttons, which numbers to reach, and where the mistakes are.
Our recommended build is 43/23/5 from our talent calculator (open it here). Hover or tap a coloured spell, talent or glyph for its tooltip. Want the other classes too? See Which Class Should You Play?
Stand in Frost Presence. Keep Frost Fever and Blood Plague on the boss. Spam Icy Touch when you need threat. Heal with Death Strike. Use your cooldowns one at a time, on the hits that hurt.
1.Threat: how you hold aggro
Your main aggro spell is Icy Touch. When you need a lot of threat quickly, spam it. Everything else in the rotation keeps your diseases up and keeps you alive. A tanking Death Knight stands in Frost Presence: it gives you the extra threat and the damage reduction. Blood Presence is for damage-dealing Blood Death Knights, not for tanks.
- Icy TouchYour main threat, and it applies Frost Fever. Spam it when you need a lot of aggro.
- Plague StrikePuts Blood Plague on the boss.
- Blood StrikeYour Blood Rune spender and part of your threat.
- Death StrikeYour heal and your damage. The Death Runes it leaves behind feed more Icy Touches.
- PestilenceRefreshes your diseases on the boss, and spreads them to the adds.
- Rune StrikeSpends spare runic power with no global cooldown. It is usable after you dodge or parry.
Frost Fever and Blood Plague on the boss, every second. Do not rely on Rune Strike or Death Strike alone for threat: they are your dump and your heal.
Get your diseases on before the raid starts, so nobody pulls threat off you in the first seconds. Death Grip brings a loose add back to the group.
Dark Command is your taunt for the swap. The Glyph of Dark Command in our build makes the taunt 8% more likely to land.
Pestilence spreads your diseases to everything around the boss, and Death and Decay keeps adds on you. Do not use it on targets that are crowd-controlled.
Mind Freeze interrupts a cast, and Strangulate silences a caster for longer. Learn which boss casts you can stop.
Empower Rune Weapon gives you all your runes back. Use it when you are stuck without runes on a hard tank-swap, not just for damage.
2.Your survival toolbox
You have more cooldowns than any other tank. That is the strength, and it is also the trap: do not stack all of them for one hit. Time them, and put them where the damage is. With four or five buttons you can cover almost every heavy hit of a fight, if you plan the order before the pull.
Your emergency button. You become immune to stuns and take a lot less damage, and the reduction grows with your defense. Use it on the hardest hits, together with your trinkets.
More health and more healing received for a short time. Combine it with your trinkets and with the raid healers' cooldowns. The health goes away when it ends, so do not use it at the very end of a fight.
A quick self-heal for a Blood Rune. Cheap, so use it between two hits when the healers are busy.
Your answer to magic damage. It absorbs the spell and stops the harmful magic effects, and its short cooldown means you can use it several times per fight.
The last-resort button when everything else is on cooldown: the ghouls taunt and tank for you while you channel.
Restores your runes and your runic power. Good when your rotation has run dry, or to press Death Strike twice in a row.
Unbreakable Armor (a Frost spell) and Bone Shield (an Unholy spell) are used by other tank builds, but they are not part of our 43/23/5 split, which spends its points on the talents below. If you switch build in the talent calculator, you can add them.
Damage that would take you under 35% health is reduced. It is the buffer between you and the killing blow.
Whenever your Blood Runes are on cooldown, you take 5% less damage for a while. It is nearly always on, if you spend your Blood Runes.
More strength, stamina and expertise. Your health and your expertise cap both depend on it.
Gives you a chance to take much less damage from a direct spell hit.
The extra survival button described above, and the reason why you also hold the Glyph of Vampiric Blood for five more seconds.
Your main threat spell hits harder, and your Frost Fever slows down enemy attacks more.
Death Strike hits harder and crits more often, which means a better heal.
Turns your armor into attack power, which helps your threat.
Pestilence now refreshes your diseases on the boss back to full. It saves you a Plague Strike and an Icy Touch.
Your taunt is 8% more likely to land, which is the difference on a boss with a lot of resistances.
Vampiric Blood lasts five seconds longer.
3.The numbers to reach
This makes you uncrittable by raid bosses. Do not take a raid tank slot before you have it.
After the defense cap, stack stamina and armor. Then your hit and expertise caps.
26 stops dodges and 56 stops parries. Parry haste is dangerous on Sindragosa and Halion, so reach the parry cap or use a two-hander for those fights.
Your taunts must not miss. The Dark Command glyph helps, but do not skip hit.
A tank flask that adds health, a stamina food, and both on the same character every time.
A potion for armor for the big physical hits, and a healing potion for emergencies. Do not save them for "later".
Runeforging: the Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle adds defense and stamina, and it is the standard tank choice.
Put it on yourself and the raid before the pull. It also gives you runic power.
4.Bosses where the Death Knight matters
Stack the princes together in a strong group. With your cooldowns, the raid cooldowns and Anti-Magic Shell you survive Keleseth's big hits, even without the dark nuclei on you. See the Icecrown guide.
For every Soul Reaper you need two big cooldowns, for example Icebound Fortitude with a trinket, or Vampiric Blood with another. See the Lich King guide.
Build threat on him with Icy Touch before the fire begins, and in phase 3 hold both the boss and the add at once. See the Ruby Sanctum guide.
Reach the parry cap, and line up your cooldowns with the Frost Breath, one after another.
Swap with Dark Command when the Rune of Blood lands, and pick up the Blood Beasts that the raid does not kill.
Hold him while the raid handles the Burrowers, and keep the Pursuing Spikes phase in your notes. See the Anub'arak plan.
5.Common mistakes
Using only Rune Strike or only Death Strike instead of keeping Icy Touch on the boss. Letting your diseases fall off. Using your defensive cooldowns too late, or all at once. Ignoring the defense cap and the expertise caps. Standing in Blood Presence on a boss with heavy melee damage.
Look at the log after the wipe. Was it a cooldown you did not use, a swap that came too late, or a mechanic you stood in? Most tank deaths are a plan that was never made, not a tank that was too weak.