PuGs -.-

Why God, why?

So, I was minding my own business yesterday, just questing in Icecrown keeping an eye in LFG when someone as looking for a tank for Heroic CoT.

There I was with other 4 players doing the boring killing of undead until Arthas announced the wave boss.

Me : Ok, lets get going, this is a boring instance, the soon we finish the better

Group agrees and we go kill stuff.

Death Grip the caster and Death & Decay the ground, all good, all perfect, good aggro holding.

And then, it happens

Me : Going down!

BOOM, I'm dead.

The second Death Knight pick the mobs and is doing a good job maintaining aggro, but hes crittable(?) so he goes down quick. Luckily the AoE fight was near the end, and the dps finish it from range using a few snares.

Ok, not a wipe, we made it, get up, get ready, get going.

More undead killing, those little undeads with less than 1k hp are a pain to be watching all the time, i just pass by and spam Ice Touch, I was trying to check where we went wrong for the 1st fight, but the combat log was getting full quick with the spam killing of the low mobs.

2nd wave boss appear, pull, Death & Decay, all good, aggro good.

And it happens again.

Me : GOING DOWN!!

BOOM, dead, this time i don't even look what is happening to the party anymore, I go straight to the combat log.

Me thinking "ok, wtf is that?"

Me : Oy, why do your greater heals only heal me for 2k, 3k max?
Priest : I don't know, but i can't keep spamming it on you, I'm going oom
Me : How can you be oom 20 seconds in with a 13k mana pool?

I'm a death knight tank, and during the tanking i get my parry chance over 35% going near 40% sometimes, so i don't take melee damage all the time, I can go a few swings without taking a scratch, so the spamming wasn't really a necessity.

But the heals where 2k-3k, spamming became a necessity.

Now, how can a greater heal which, max ranked, base healing is 3950-4590 be doing only 2k-3k? It wasn't, figured the priest was downranking, why? there is no point in downranking anymore, spells cost a percentage of the base mana now, not a fixed amount, so when you level, spells start costing more, all of them, the under rank 7 cost even more, 36% from base mana.

Me : Oy, why are you downraking

No answer from him.

Me : Look, you can't downrank, you go oom and dont heal much, use max rank!
Priest : I know how to heal, stfu
Other dk : lolol you dont know how to heal, you're a freaking ebay toon!

At this point the priest just says "F**k you!" and hearth.

Mage goes afk "brb gonna feed the dog". Lock leaves the group.

It's over.

I now understand why is so hard to find a tank when you're in a PuG.

Patch 3.0.8 and DK Tanking

From WoWInsider:

• All multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power.
• Anti-Magic Shell: The cooldown has been lowered to 45 sec from 60 sec.
• Blood Aura now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.
• Blood Presence now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.
• Bloody Strikes will receive extra bonus damage from Pestilence.
  
• Bone Shield: The mitigation has been reduced from 40% to 20%.
  
• Corpse Explosion: Damage increased substantially, added 5 sec. cooldown, and changed cost to 40 runic power.
  
• Dark Command: Range increased to 30 yards.
  
• Death Pact now grants 40% instead of 20% healing.
  
• Frost Presence: The bonus armor has been increased from 60 to 80% and magic damage reduction increased from 5 to 15%.
  
• Heart Strike no longer has a haste debuff but will now be able to strike two targets.
  
• Horn of Winter now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 20 second cooldown.
  
• Howling Blast: Cooldown removed.
  
• Icebound Fortitude now reduces damage by 20% instead of 50%. The amount of damage reduced increases with bonus Defense (to about 35% for 540 Defense, but can go higher).
  
• Night of the Dead now grants 40/70% passive area spell avoidance to your pet in addition to its current effects.
  
• Outbreak will no longer receive bonus damage from pestilence. The bonus from Plague Strike and Blood Boil has been increased slightly.
  
• Pestilence no longer has a 10 seconds cooldown.
  
• Raise Dead has now been split into two spells:
  
• o Raise Dead now raises a ghoul or pet ghoul (if talented). Requires corpse dust if no humanoid corpse is nearby.
  
• o Raise Ally now raises a fallen party member as a ghoul and has no reagent. Available at level 72. This should now last for 4 minutes.
  
• Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (two-handed only) now grants 25 Defense and 2% Stamina.
  
• Rune Strike: Damage decreased from 200% to 150% but threat increased to 150% from 100%.
  
• Shadow of Death: The duration has been changed from 45 seconds to 25 seconds.
  
• Unholy Blight had had its cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.
  
• Wandering Plague will now properly reset after being cast.
  
• Vampiric Blood: In addition to its current effects, also adds 20% health temporarily.
  
• Will of the Necropolis will now reduce the damage of any attack that takes the DK below 35% health by 5 /10/15% instead of boosting armor when wounded.
  

The Frost Presence change is great, more physical and magic damage mitigation, the reduction in Icebound Fortitude is not good, but is expected due Frost Presence going up.

Blizzard realized we were relaying too much in cooldowns to mitigate damage, which made some inconsistency incoming, healers don't like that, but we were also able to alleviate large portion of spike damage, even if for a short time, that could be considering OP, key word is could, low tanking-experience guy posting here, so now we're gonna get higher proactive mitigation with Frost Presence.

Unholy tanks got shafted here with the 40%->20% in Bone Shield, thats another example of blizzard's thoughts on cooldown mitigation.

Learning the new role

Well, DPS is "easy", all you have to do is face-smash the keyboard and you're set. OK, maybe a little more effort than that but its pretty much this: casting sequence, kill order, occasionally you'll have to think about AoE skill/spell in order to not break CC, but that is rare this days.

So whats the deal with tanking?

Well, you need to think ahead. At least to me that is the key, think, as DPS I used to only see what had a Skull > X and so on, now I'm the one setting those, PUGs sucks but you have to do it in order to improve even further (nothing test your tanking skills better as front load all out DPS PUGs).

What do I have to think ahead?

Casters! Thats right, casters. Either Death Grip, Strangulate or make use of LoS. Ranged mobs can also be dealt with Death Grip or LoS but not Strangulate.

But what about threat generation?

Death Knights threat is mostly generated through straight damage in Frost Presence, but you can, and should, make heavily use of Death & Decay which have an inner high threat, paired with Frost Presence its a good aggro boost.

Tanking build?

It is said that all 3 talent trees can tank, personally I like Frost, I'm just in love with Howling Blast, but a large amount of Death Knights Tanks I see, like to use an Unholy build, probably because of Bone Shield, 40%(20% after patch) damage reduction during 4 hits (5 if glyphed), it may sound little but it has a 2 seconds internal cooldown(if I'm not mistaken) and we parry a lot.

Currently, blood is the least favorite for tanking, not much mitigation is provided by blood saved for Blade Barrier, its a T1 talent, you should have it maximized in any tanking build, and Spell Deflection. You can also get Vampiric Blood to help those spike damage getting healed faster. The build is up to you, that is if your guild is comfortable with trying new things. Me, I'm Frost.

Introductions

So, recently I decided to become a Tank.

I'm a Death Knight with no previous knowledge in this area, tanking that is, my other characters are a Shadow Priest (parked at 74, got bored after a while, also my 1st character) and a 70 MM, went BM to try Gorilla tanking, hunter (2nd char).

My home is Ysondre, a medium-low pop (actually low and boring) realm and I'm currently in <Eye of Sin>.

Ok, so this is the scenario: I like to Dual Wield, yes thats right, I'm a DW tank, at least I'm trying to be. The reason I'm starting this blog is because i couldn't find any other related to DK Tanking, maybe I didn't look very deep into it but this is a good chance for self improvement with writing skills and English (not my native language).

The character name is Andarus, 80 DK blood elf.