I never heard of this but now I want to try it! I should probably make a macro though to prevent myself from going splat.
I macro Rune Strike to all my abilities (Icy Touch, Plague Strike, etc) when I’m tanking and I haven’t really seen any problems with my RP. Then again I tank as blood so I don’t have to think about using Frost Strike, hopefully a Frost tank can pop in with some suggestions.
Fun times in the BDL raid last night. My first time tanking ICC on my DK and it was a lot of fun, looking forward to next week.
I don’t macro Rune Strike to my abilities, but I should (and will next time I log in). I pretty much hit it every time it lights up and apart from the first pull of the day (or the first pull after a pause) rarely feel short of runic.
Future me was an effective huntard, which makes me wonder how much of a huntard he is. He just did melee DPS the entire time and I think he was matching my ranged or even hitting harder.
I know everyone says hunters have no reason to try and keep their melee skills up, but if I’m stuck in a cramped space at least I’m not insta-dead.
I just did my first battleground PvP yesterday, and mostly I’m just amazed at how having a coherent 4-man group in a 40 can lead to your side dominating the crap out of everything you queue for.
First Wintergrasp was also fun, in a very different way. Happiness is locking down and killing the asshole shadowpriest who is shadow word: pain camping the fortress graveyard. Wind Shear for the win!
I have Rune Strike macro’ed into most of my major abilities (in my case Plague Strike, Heart Strike and Death Strike), though I also have it on a separate key with a Power Aura to show when it’s active so I can hit it manually when I want to. I usually have such an overabundance of runic power that I never worry about not having enough. It works well for me.
I dunno who’s telling you that but it is not true at all if you pvp. Being able to land my melee snare was key to my survival in most arena matches.
I was having some threat problems tanking Sindragosa Heroic last night, and I had a quick question re: DK tanking and threat. Do you guys use Death Coil at all? I’m thinking that I’m burning through my RP by using DC when my runes are all down, and thus miss a Rune Strike. Maybe just letting it build up and never Death Coiling (unless at 100 RP maybe) is a better idea? I do use RS macros on all abilities, so as long as I have RP it should go off.
Probably also doesn’t help that the fire mage that kept pulling is geared like crazy and I’m still using a 251 weapon.
Also, am I wrong in thinking that Sindragosa is a really bad fight threat-wise? She seems to melee so slowly that I get Rune Strike procs much slower than on a faster-hitting boss.
Finally, multiple 5-8% wipes makes me sad.
Yeah, go ahead and get that skill up. There’s no reason not to - it’s a relatively small time investment.
Also, try out a “/cast Wing Clip, /cast Disengage” macro (if you’re not already). Slow + Disengage = kiting fun.
Rune Strike is your primary RP dump, especially if you’re having threat issues. I use DC whenever I’m full on RP, because I generate it so fast that it seems like I literally never have to worry about having enough except at the very beginning of the fight.
Also, try to fire off an additional Icy Touch whenever you can, especially at the beginning of the fight. For Sindy, I do Empower Rune Weapon, pull her with Death Grip (it doesn’t pull her in, of course, but it does give me two seconds of free aggro while I get my diseases up), and then fire off two quick Icy Touches before I do Plague Strike while I’m getting her in position. That usually gives me a pretty healthy threat lead.
You might want to to consider taking Improved Icy Touch if you haven’t already–IT is one of your best bets for snap threat.
Finally, there’s nothing at all wrong with asking your DPS to hold off for a couple of seconds. It’s their responsibility to be watching the threat meter and making sure they don’t pull. This is especially important if they outgear you. Just tell them to sit on their hands for five seconds or so, and you should be fine.
I only use Death Coil to pull trash, never even think about it during a fight. Then again I’ve only tanked the first few bosses on my DK.
Don’t forget that Sindragosa puts a debuff on you that slows your attacking speed by 50%, so not only are you losing out on Rune Strike procs you’re also attacking slower than normal.
Thanks for the information. I do usually “double up” on Icy Touch at the beginning of the fight (at the expense of a Death Strike). Hadn’t considered using the fixate effect of Death Grip for a few seconds of “free” aggro. Only lost aggro once, but it caused a wipe and was embarrassing.
I do have IIT. Everything I’ve seen for tanking implies it’s pretty much required (part of the 5/8/5 base talents).
Yeah - I was always secretly happy when he got Unchained at the start and couldn’t cast for awhile. 
In the end he started calling for a Salv and it was no longer a problem. But still, any room for improvement needs to be examined.
Yes, but I can almost always avoid the Frost Breath debuff by using AMS at the right time. I still need to get more consistent with it, but I’m avoiding the debuff most of the time. Still something good to keep in mind (seems avoiding that first application is critical as far as building initial threat goes - I probably screwed up the AMS timing on the pull where I lost aggro).
Thanks again for the help and ideas.
Mind if I ask why you’re gemming Strength when you’re tanking ICC hardmodes?
Yup. The more people online, the more data the server sends your client to keep track of, even when it’s stuff that’s not in your current LOS.
If the damned raptor doesn’t drop by then… :fistshake:
Hope you had fun, and good luck on the road!
Congrats! That’s still a pretty PITA drop to get–I have a friend who’s been grinding it pretty religiously since she opened the daily, and she still hasn’t gotten her bear (while in the mean time, a friend of ours has gotten two or three -_-).
Yup. Non-tank specs just won’t have the same tools for survivability and threat as tank specs.
What is that I don’t even. I hope you called him out on it in party chat.
I don’t play DKs, but I can tell you that I’d 100% advise you to never do the same with the Warrior version (Heroic Strike/Cleave). Based on the advice you’re getting from the DKs here, though, that might not be exactly comparable.
I don’t have any DK-specific responses, but my one piece of advice will be to echo something **winterhawk11 **said: it’s the DPSs’ job not to pull off you. It doesn’t matter how much damage they dump out in the first few seconds of the fight if that means they peel the boss off you and kill themselves–and that goes up by an order of magnitude if the boss is one like Sindri, who has cleaves and breaths that can easily wipe a raid if she’ll pulled onto it.
Remind that Mage that their DPS face-down on the ground is 0. There’s probably some work you can do to step up your threat generation, but until that happens, it’s the Mage’s job to back off and stay below 130% of your threat (110% if they need to be in melee range).
Oh, he completely took responsibility for the wipe. Even whispered me to apologize. So it’s not at all an issue of him (or anyone else in the raid) blaming me. I just want to get better, if possible, that’s all.
I think another factor is that he used to be arcane (until like a week ago) and is still getting used to the way his threat works in the new spec (more delayed than with arcane, I think - his threat will spike well after he’s actually cast his abilities). Also, I think the Arcane damage reduction talent is 40%, while for fire it’s only 20%, so that might be part of the difference too.
Okay, good. I didn’t see your followup until after I posted my response, and I wasn’t sure if more than one of those wipes was because of threat issues.
This cannot be emphasized enough. Playing my BoomTree in healer mode, twice over the long weekend I went Gunnery Sgt. Hartman on DPSers. Once, a mage…a level 51 mage, no less, kept bitching at the tank to hold aggro so he could unleash his uberosity. That doesn’t fly when the healer just happens to be an 80 mage on his main toon. The other guy was a Pally. Guy kept pulling aggro off the other Pally who was actually tanking. Didn’t respond well to subtlety. So I had a “sudden lag spike” that just happened to cause his heal to go off about a second too late, and he face planted. Then I had another “sudden lag spike” and he face planted again. Then he left the group, called us all noobs, etc.
Sigh.
Answer #1: 'Cuz I can? (Seriously, I have had pretty much zero issues with healers complaining about my survivability. Even while main tanking LK HM 10 last night for four hours).
Answer #2: Because I use it for DPS too, and while re-runeforging is easy and free, re-gemming is expensive and annoying.
Answer #3: I also have Ramaladni’s Blade of Culling 264 and Cryptmaker, both gemmed with 3 Stam gems. If I need the extra 900 health (or the extra Expertise from Ramaladni’s) I just swap to those.
Don’t be subtle, and don’t be passive-aggressive. Be up-front about why someone is wrong and why you won’t heal them, or they’ll never learn.
There ya go, then. Must be nice to be able to turn your nose up at 90 Stam. 
“Aggro is a group responsibility” Rule #7 on the tank commandments.
Oh, hey, don’t get me wrong. I’d love to have the extra Stam. But Shadowmourne is just too good a DPS weapon not to make it available for DPS use. And since I do have the others (and will probably pick up a 277 Cryptmaker one of these days–they drop like candy for our raid and I don’t think anybody else needs it anymore), I have the option of swapping if I need the extra.
Besides, my DPS needs all the help it can get. 