At this level, how should I play my DK tank?

[:1](skip to the third paragraph for the Death Knight info)

I'm pretty new to WoW, in fact I just started about three months ago. I've tried almost every class now (only up until twenty though, I know it's better at high levels, but I don't have the patience to stick out the low levels if they're not fun; just one reason why I can't play a Mage) and I've found that my preference is Melee. To be exact, I like to be able to take part in Melee combat mostly and have the option of casting spells. That's why I like the Paladin, Death Knight, and Shaman classes the most.

Leveling a Paladin is what made me fell in love with tanking. Before that I mainly played a Warlock and I thought DPS was fun. Avoided healing (at least on my Shaman) because I was terrible at conserving my mana; which would lead wipes. But when I started tanking on my Paladin, DPS began to feel like a drag in comparison. It feels great to be the center of attention during dungeons, while my Warlock just looks like another random party member in comparison.

Anyways, I created a Death Knight last night just to try out the starting zone, but I'm having too much fun with this character now. However I'm nervous about tanking. I've heard of the prejudice against bad DK tanks in the Outland dungeons and I don't want to contribute to that stereotype. But I've also missed out on 54 levels to gradually learn my class so I'm pretty clueless as on how to tank with this guy. Like I mentioned before, my previous tanking experience is with my Paladin, and I'm assuming that the approach is the same?

What I think is that I would pull a group with one of my ranged attacks (I think Icy Touch would be the tool for this at my level and when I've got the Runic Power going it would be Death Coil) and try to put any diseases I can on one enemy. Then I spread the diseases with Pestilence (would this cause extra threat?) and AoE with Blood Boil. Now I would want to use Heart Strike next, but by this time I've already used up my two blood runes. Would probably Death Strike for the self-healing after this and Death Coil stuff. Finally, if the Healer or DPS aggros, I Death Grip the target.

Also, how do you guys manage your resource? I have no problem with Runic Power, in fact it almost feels like I have an unlimited supply of it. But I'll often need to use an ability and it's stuck on a cooldown. (most of the time this is with the blood runes) And are my talents optimal for tanking, or is there anything I should invest in that I haven't yet?
Please don't attempt to tank until you get death and decay, its your single best ever threat talent.

I usually open up pulls with bone shield. CC whatever irritating mobs, then death grip a caster, open up with outbreak, drop a death strike, and blood boil when everything comes into range. Pestilence, followed by heartstrike.

After that its your own discretion since you don't have rune strike, or runic empowerment yet, it'll get a little tedious. Just dnd on cooldown and you'll be pretty much fine though, blood threat generation is generally superb...no, actually threat is kinda a joke, you'll look at the threat meter and laugh as the highest dps is 1/5th your threat or less

Rune strike does make alot of dfference though, you'll have...death coil, lol, as a runic dump until you have it...at that level i couldn't be bothered :P and just let rp pool

But generally for blood its faceroll until cata, when stuff actually hit hard ;3
If you want to try it, go for it. At low levels you don't need to worry about applying things like scarlet fever as things don't hit hard enough however you lack many important tools are are now integral to blood tanks due to the rune system changes and also mitigation changes. They cut our armor bonus from blood presence to 30% a long while back (tooltip probably still says 60%), our mastery makes up for it, but mastery at 80 not in the 60s. You don't even get a real taunt until 65, you can use death grip but its long cooldown makes it painful to be your only taunt.

At the very least, wait until you get dark command (65). I personally would wait until 68 so you have rune strike which becomes our defacto runic power dump due to the fact that we can use it at any time while in blood presence with the deep blood talent that affects it, and you will have runic empowerment which is integral to our resource regeneration, if a little unreliable at times.

If you still decide to do so, just hit things as hard as you can really. Until you get rune strike you can dump your runic power with death coil but unless it hits harder than death strike or heart strike don't waste GCDs on it until you have no runes left to swing with.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jcGr0sMruo:0

Go with this at level 61, next into imp death strike and then dancing rune weapon which is now a survivability cooldown with that 20% parry while active, you can also glyph it to give you more tps during the duration but with a 60 RP cost, it's rather clunky to use it when you need that tps boost most, the beginning of the fight.

After that my personal recommendation is to go into frost and get down to Lichborne. The fear break is nice but the main benefit is it turns you undead, allowing you to heal yourself with death coil. Glyph of Death's Embrace refunds 20 RP per death coil you heal with, allowing you to spam it a ton more and Glyph of Death Coil can increase this healing by 15%, so it's also a decent choice. In 4.0.6 they are changing the death's embrace glyph to not refund when you heal yourself with it, so you might not want to get used to it, or take advantage of it while you can, whatever is best for you.

Until you get to 80 for maximum tps you should keep disesases up and heart strike as much as possible, 2x heart strikes does more damage than 1 death strike, especially with diseases up and when glyphed it blows it away (155*2=310 vs 217ish assuming no death strike glyph or zero runic power with the glyph, you can look into the glyph later but it is not as strong as you think, you dump your RP very quickly with rune strike so you shouldn't have it pooled too high too often). You can also opt diseaseless and still do more damage with 2x glyphed heart strikes than death strike so I would still do that over using the 2x death runes for another death strike until you can get the mastery at 80.

However, aoe is typically where it gets messy yes? So perhaps a little information for that is in order.



First, I recommend the tidy plates:threat plates addon, this will help with tanking considerably as it gives a visual indicator if you don't have threat over the head of a mob as well as having very clean unobtrusive health bars, vital for tanking really.

Second, the best way to open for aoe is dropping death and decay where you are going but do NOT drop it right on top of the mobs unless there are casters that won't move, typically you drop it so they are in the front edge of death and decay and as they run towards you and you meet them they end up in the middle of it with you, that way you are doing threat while still running to them since dps are impatient. After that, I would open with icy touch on one target, then spread it with pestilence, do not bother with plague strike, or you will have one frost rune left over since you used an unholy for death and decay. Use your death strike and then start heart striking. Do not stay on one target the entire time, heart strike damage reduces every jump to the next target it does, it's not a true cleave but more like chain lightning, so switch it up. When you have 5-6 target you should forgo heart strike for blood boil spam.

Sadly with the new unmodifiable 30 second cooldown on death and decay you will likely not have it every pull, so on three or less targets I would open with a heart strike spam right away, alternating targets for death strikes and later rune strikes, also use your death coil (and at 67, rune strike) on alternating targets. Don't bother with diseases on small groups, not worth it. Dps will likely pull off you while you are setting up, takes 2 GCDs to just get frost fever up and spread it, three with blood plague in there, dps typically just go while before you've even fired off your first ability. So heart strike right away.

On bigger groups unfortunately you will need to spread your diseases, blood boil damage without one disease up is weak and pathetic, it only needs one disease up to do maximum damage (use frost fever, so icy touch) so don't bother with two, disease damage is weak, and pest spread diseases without the unholy talent are only 50% damage so it's even weaker. Then spam blood boil, hit targets directly that are going to pull off you with something like death strike, rune strike or death coil if you don't have rune strike, in that order of priority.

Use other abilities intelligently, like strangulate and death grip to bring casters close to you so you can smack them. Do NOT pull with death grip and DO not pull by dropping death and decay on top of you and then hitting them with a range ability and wait for them to come to you. I see this kind of idiocy constantly while leveling a fresh alt, this is wasteful and ineffective. Go to them, much more uptime on the now precious resource that is death and decay.

At 80 things change, read this. I would personally read it now, as it contains valuable information.

http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t110102-blood_dk_endgame_tanking_4_x/

Sorry for the long post all, there is a lot to know.
I must say, I'm kind of in the same boat as you, except I have been playing since 2006. This is my first Death Knight ever. I decided to make one since I was bored one day after work and said what the heck.

I have an 85 pally which is the MT for my guild's 2nd raid group so I know what I am doing in tanking. I absolutely love my pally and would suggest it as your 2nd character to 85 if you fall in love with the Death Knight. But I have absolutely no idea how to tank as a DK and want to thank everyone in this thread for the amazing amount of information that they have put out there. I started this character thinking that I would use him for PvP/dps, but after reading this I am strongly thinking about trying to start tanking with him.

Thanks again for the wealth of information.
This is how I'm doing it on my Dk Ally alt: get your diseases up on the target and BB somewhere in between PS and IT for Scarlet fever and extra aoe threat. Proceed to Pest, and HS. If Its a big group drop D&D early on, I wouldn't say it is the ZOMFGABSOLUTEBESTTALENTLOLOLOL as someone pointed out, but it sure does help LOADS for aoe threat, specially with bad dps that don't follow marks. After that initial threat you're on to your single target rotation which is explained in the sticky.
At that level dont forget your 1 min cooldowns, they are there to save you, if you need to use bone shield during combat, use blood tap (level 62 i believe) to give you the rune without using an UH rune, you should be using FU runes strictly for death strike, unless you need to put up frost fever.

Use rune tap whenever you get below 75-80% health, and use it often. You can also glyph rune tap to help out the party a little bit. Death strike is your bread and butter, even in the low levels without your mastery. I suggest getting Blood Shield Tracker addon to let you know the best time to use deathstrike, to get the optimal heal. If you dont want to use that addon, Use death strike immediatly after you take a big spike of damage, thats when it will heal you the most.