LOL 
Thanks for the answers, all! I won’t worry about taming lots of pets.
My warlock dinged 74 in The Nexus last night in one of the most enjoyable runs ever, everyone knew there roles and the chat and compliments were common. I’m really enjoying the WOTLK dungeons on my lock at the moment every group I get seems competent and, more importantly, nice.
Ok so as my Warlock gets closer to the cap I am looking at what to do next as I still can’t commit to raiding. So I’m going to try a DK for the second time after failing on my previous attempt to be drawn in, I need an enchanter too to help my other toons so this seems like a good idea. As I’m enjoying the WOTLK dungeons I’m thinking of making a tank (half hour queues the norm for my lock at the moment, no thanks) and all I’ve read is that every DK spec can tank is this really true? Is one easier than any other? I’d not like to be stressed out and just enjoy the ride to be honest.
Yes, at the moment all three specs (as well as hybrid builds) can tank and all three can DPS, it’s a matter of picking specific skills and of changing which ones you use. Frost is based mostly on having better defense, blood in better/more healing, I haven’t tried unholy tanking.
The plans for Cata are that Blood will become the tanking spec.
While in theory you could do an Unholy tank, in practice I have never seen anyone do it. Blood is generally better for survivability and single-target threat, and tends to be favored as a raid tank; Frost is much better at dealing out area of effect threat, which tends to be more useful in heroic dungeons. If you do Frost, there’s also the question of whether you want to use a single two-handed weapon or dual wield; I understand that dual-wield builds are more common now, and they actually let you use weapons designed with tanking in mind, which would be nice. My DK tank is a Frost spec with a single two-hander.
In other news, played with (Hell)fire for the first time on my Affliction warlock yesterday, while running through the Monastery. Boy is that fun – drop 3 or 4 corruptions as you run up to the tank, and let 'er rip, with the life gain from the corruptions offsetting the hellfire damage.
From what I understand (I have never tanked as Frost, only as Blood), Frost dual-wield is better when you’re getting geared up, because it has a higher threat generation that’s quite useful in 5-mans (especially randoms where you can count on your DPS to let ‘er rip the second they see a mob, your threat notwithstanding (“Omen? What’s that?”)) Blood is better at higher gear levels, and also for raid tanking. I used to have trouble with threat generation in my Blood spec in 5-mans, but nowadays I blow through them with no trouble at all. I never had any trouble raid tanking in Blood. Blood is also extremely nice for soloing (my DK can solo most of Molten Core, with the exception of the bosses that put curses and other nasty debuffs on him, as well as several other level 60 and low-70 raid bosses and heroic Magisters’ Terrace).
I believe that the Frost tree was actually designed with dual-wielding in mind. That’s not to say you can’t tank with a two-hander (obviously you can, since you are! 
) but I think the talents were set up to make dual-wield tanking more optimal.
Thanks the issue would be threat probably so maybe try frost as long as I’m not gimped too much while soloing. I like the idea of dual wielding too.
Well, you have to drop 6 talent points into dual-wielding to make it work out; I spent those points elsewhere mainly because I specced into Frost pretty late and already had a 2-hander I liked. I did just pick up the PoS tanky sword in our last guild run; might toy around with switching my spec around later.
I spent last night trying to wring Loremaster-counting quests that I missed out of Kalimdor. Managed to get about 12 thanks to some BFD quests I missed and searching out item-started quests on WoWwiki. I’m only 19 down now.
I’m going to get the old-world Loremaster achies before Cataclysm. It may drive me crazy, but I’m going to do it…
As far as I know (unless something changed really recently), you don’t want to be using that weapon (or any “fast” tanking weapon) as a DW Frost tank. You want slow, harder-hitting weapons with the +DEF runeforge to make up for it. Something like Nighttime from FoS or Black Icicle from HoR.
You’ll possibly (probably?) be alright threat-wise using fast weapons, but you’re losing up to 50% threat from Rune Strike and all of your other weapon-damage based abilities.
Our DK tank actually uses Unholy for a few fights, like Sindragosa, LK and Halion, where threat isn’t as much of a concern and the extra magic damage mitigation helps.
Good to know. The sword happend to drop and I grabbed it since no one else needed it; looks like no dual wield for me, since I have no intention of farming the heroic ICC 5 mans with random pugs (and have only barely re-activated that character at all after leaving him fallow for months).
Our DK tank actually uses Unholy for a few fights, like Sindragosa, LK and Halion, where threat isn’t as much of a concern and the extra magic damage mitigation helps.
Edit: Actually now that I looked at our logs he uses unholy for everything except Saurfang, Festergut, Putricide, and Bloodqueen.
Brand new, awesome music video from The Guild:
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/season-4-music-video-game-on/y0da39gh
Go Bollywood!
Out of curiosity, what’s the mechanic on Rune Strike? IIRC it’s something like Revenge (procs off of avoided attacks), so having a slower* weapon would definitely help you there. (Versus a Warrior, who wants a faster weapon to increase the number of Cleaves/Heroic Strikes.)
*Really, the slower/faster distinction here is a bit of a red herring. Technically it’s not the weapon speed you care about, but the top-end damage; but of two weapons with identical DPS, the slower one will hit harder with each hit, which means that your instant abilities will do more damage, which equals more threat.
Really, if you’re tanking Rune Strike is pretty much always available (as long as you have the runic to power it); so that’s no nevermind. But with a faster weapon it will eat your runic faster. The bigger deal is that all your rune-using abilities are going to hit much less hard if you’re using a smaller/faster weapon.
Sorry, I seem to have phrased my question in a confusing way.
1.) What causes Runic Strike to proc?
2.) How does it work when activated (i.e., is it an instant ability, one with a cast time, or an “on next hit” ability)?
1 - when an attack is dodged or parried (so if you have 4 things beating on you, it’s pretty much always on)
2 - just like heroic strike, basically. on next hit.
I concur with the awesomeness of this video. Thanks for this link. I’m a former player lurking in this thread, checking out the screenshots and stuff.
Tackled RS instead of spending time throwing rocks at PP. We’re consistently getting into P2 then getting mass-gibbed at about 72%.
- Continuous AOE damage
- Trouble with raid positioning during the transition to P2
People were doing OK with the combustion/consumption from what I saw, and generally avoided most fire (thank you Ulduar and Marrowgar). However, if the meteor hits the melee/tank in P1, should the tank be repositioning Halion to gtfo fire?
I was reading tankspot, and I’m not sure why they recommend having the MT/heal stay out during P2 – they didn’t seem to explain that part well.