Tanking help

[Siniroth]

Beside, can you even use righteous defense on a monsters that are farther than 30 yard with mouseOver (I never tested if it would let you). I know the skills will be used on its target, so it should work, but I'm wondering if the UI let you do it.

You can indeed, idiots in HoR have let me test this extensively, my god the idiots in HoR

[Kaylia]

Yeah, I went to check after my last post. As long the friendly target is within 40 yard, it works no matter what method you're using. I thought it was grayed from the menu when I was using months ago on target that were too far (before 80), which is why I was asking.

Anyway, that's another reason why taunting using your raid UI will never fail (out of range people are grayed), while taunting off the monster using mouseOver might result in a out of range error (since you dont know exactly how far its target is)

[Norellicus]

Well for starters I wouldn't have my camera in such a retarded spot >_>

Secondly, with nameplates on I can easily click on anything I want in about as much time as it would take you to go down and click the ui, so in that regard I suppose it makes precious little difference at all.

But that said, why are snobolds alive to be taunted at all in that scenario? Unless you're doing achievement, but even then it's gotta be more hassle than it's worth to try and keep taunting them all the time just to save a single stun here and there. Moreover, I prefer gallavanting on my druid so I don't really have the luxury of two 8 second taunts, so I'd probably want to keep mine off cd in that case anyway.

In any other scenario where you may need to taunt something that I can think of, you're either already targeting it or have no target at all so it doesn't really matter which approach you take.

Again, I'm not saying it's wrong* so much as I am wondering why you would do it differently when you can't do that with any other taunt. For me, when I'm tanking on my different toons I try to leave all my oh shit buttons in the same places on bars/keypad so I can just reach to the same spot for my dmg reduction/more hp/taunt/etc buttons no matter what toon I'm on.

I love mouseover/click macros. ToTT, Hysteria, Rebirth, you name it; if it needs surgical precision on one person in the raid, I have a mouse macro for it. Taunt just seems weird though.

*I was questioning your logic at first as I got the impression that you were saying you could only use RD by targeting players, and I was clarifying that it wasn't so; the game already takes care of a "target of target" logic for it so you can taunt the creature directly, but even if it didn't a simple target of target macro would suffice just the same. Needing to click the player was one of the dumbest things they could have done with that I swear

And you don't have to mouseover macro it either, not sure if you were catching my meaning there.

[Kaylia]

Well for starters I wouldn't have my camera in such a retarded spot >_>

You never had to tank back to a wall and couldnt see shit because the camera wouldn't zoom out? You never had your back turned away from action in the middle of a fight (ex: people fighting monsters around a corner, aggroing another pull behind you)? I wish I could answer yes, but sincerely, I'm sure it's happening to every tank.

Anyway, why bother with positioning and camera when you can simply get the information you need out of the UI. Less click to do the same is usually better. Obviously, you should always do your best to see everything on your screen (no reason not to) but I find grid more reliable than nameplate for this. In the end, I don't think I could go back to tanking without any of these addon since I use both a lot (grid for aggro overview+RD, and nameplate for the total numbers of adds+HoR+mouseover). My focus will shift from one to the other depending of the situations and fight, but for adds, its generally grid.

Secondly, with nameplates on I can easily click on anything I want in about as much time as it would take you to go down and click the ui, so in that regard I suppose it makes precious little difference at all.

Name plate range is smaller than RD effective range. You can assume distant mobs are "green", but if you're simply looking for green plate, you will probably miss it. I don't doubt it's possible to do it with nameplate alone, but I still dont think it's optimal to do all your taunting this way.

And like I said, a green name plate simply mean you're not targeted, it doesnt mean you have to tank it. If the other tanks is holding everything fine, I won't bother taunting. If I see 8 players with aggro, it means no one is doing their jobs, and I should get to work asap.


And to address the tiny text, I was under the impression you meant using it on people was stupid. "And who clicks on a person for Righteous Defense?" Since 90% of my RD are used this way, I was a little concerned. >_>


Honestly, if you're still playing prot paladin, I would give this macro a shot. The global cooldown triggered by RD give you plenty of time to react. It's not the solution to every problems, but it did feel like an improvement over mouseOver. The taunting alone has a few advantages, but the biggest improvement from focussing on my raid UI was the faster reaction time for skills like HoP, HoSac, HoSalv.

[Hosom]

The global cooldown triggered by RD give you plenty of time to react. It's not the solution to every problems, but it did feel like an improvement over mouseOver. The taunting alone has a few advantages, but the biggest improvement from focussing on my raid UI was the faster reaction time for skills like HoP, HoSac, HoSalv.

Righteous Defense is not on the GCD, and neither is Hand of Reckoning.

[Hosom]

Also, from a paladin's perspective UI wise!

Spoiler: show

http://img815.imageshack.us/img815/6998/pallyui.png

[Mugekuge]

I have problems to move around Omen on my UI, i can't have it as big as you do.

[Tajin]

You can configure it to be clickthru + transparencie and have ti go all the way to the bottom layer

[Lythesia]

just run the 3 ICC 5mans every day as dps and roll on the tank gear, won't be long to Decent stats with the badges too

[Mugekuge]

Eh when i was gearing my dk i always asked the tank if i could roll on gear, i guess we are all different.

[Toxictaru]

what he said.
Im always using frost in HCs and blood for raiding.
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-ta...dsinne&group=1 (dont mind the glyphs, I just noticed they are changed in some recent patch or w/e lol)

Frost is just generally more forgiving for tanking, especially when you're first starting. I raided Frost tank when that was the best overall DK tanking spec, so I'm somewhat biased. Frost can really be done with 2 buttons, as mentioned, Howling Blast and DnD. Barring that, RP dump and profit. You can't go wrong.

It has been a long long time since I tanked on DK (or even played it, to be honest), but Frost is fantastic at Heroic spam and AoE tanking, whereas Blood is going to shine a lot better on single targets in raid. That isn't to say either spec can't do either, but meh. Of course, it may also be a good idea to try blood out a bit in heroics to get a feel for tanking with it. Just gotta hope you end up in a group with a bunch of fresh 80s who can't kill everything in 5 seconds. (I stopped taking tanks to my heroics after ICC, just did a good ol' FFXI burn type of deal with a good healer).

[The Stig]

Didn't notice this thread on DK tanking, I'll throw in what I tried last night and to help other potential DK tanks reading this:

I spent my 300~ triumphs last night to buy T9 Tanking gear (4set) and some iLevel 245 hat, and accessories.

My RL friends then dragged me into a random as I was gemming up, but I was able to hit 538 Defense anyway, which apparently was sufficient (I had 540 in mind but they told me that's raid figures). I'm not fully enchanted yet either.

Violet Hold was the dungeon we landed in, nice and short. Unfortunately as a "tanking first time" scenario, we had a 5.6k GS warrior who went nuts on everything, so threat shifted back and forth between me and him but things died incredibly quick, but I had to spam taunt, Howling Blast and opened with DnD, which wasn't good enough to hold threat against him, but this was expected. My 2 RL friends whispered to me to not get disheartened as they noticed he had high GS.

oddly enough, before I picked up my tank gear, I got into a random heroic a few hours prior to this where our 3.3k GS tank rage logged for reasons unknown, and I offered to tank in my DPS gear since no tank was showing up after a few mins and the druid healer despite me being a sponge appeared to have unlimited MP, I was able to tank somewhat fine, but then again the other 2 DPS were hovering at 3.5k~4k GS.

(I use GS now as a gauge of how powerful the player is, and only relate that to skill partially)

I think I felt uncomfortable in Violet Hold as I was still in "DPS" mind, where aside from laying down DnD I was also trying to lay down my diseases, which I guess is a bit less of a priority now? I was also trying to spam Blood Boil when more than 1 mob was present, but as Toxictaru mentioned, if things die too quick it's hard to get an experience out of it.

I had not much of an opportunity to use Death Grip (probably because as DPS for a long time it's nailed into my head to not use it unless absolutely must) or Icebound Fortitude/Unbreakable Armor.

However, my 2 RL friends have 2 chars each, healer and DPS, so with my "completing" the trio as a tank, means we can insta-get into dungeons no prob now.

Currently to do now:

Tanking Trinkets, I have none
Enchantments, RL friend is enchanter, he will enchant my goods
Perma enchants from vendors, gotta hunt them down
Tanking Cape, I forgot to get one
Some gems, my other RL friends tells me to re-gem a few of my slots ... I wasted 500 or so gold

Misc notes:

I might try to respec a tiny bit so I can dual wield tank and DPS (a little) at the same time, for some reason I feel this will give me slightly better overall threat then to turtle up in my current spec that was linked to me from the complaint thread (http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat..._OED,wdp,12213)

Will experiment. Hope this helps the OP and/or anyone else, and if there's any helpful advice/info to share, please do, I wish to learn

[Meph]

The biggest reason why I keep using frost is simply because everything gets aoed down nowadays and it takes too long to pick everything up on blood.

Im extremely lazy and mostly only use HB -> BB with some FS when I want to RP-dump (Obli if mobs live long for some Rime-procs). if you go as blood you usually go IT+PS+Pest+BB which means half the mobs will be on the healer or ranged after you land PS.
DnD is close to a must, and it will get mobs to focus on you, but it wont make them stick to you when dps starts whacking away.

It happens that I swap specs when bosses comes up if I have some 6k GS dps in the group (I doubt they care but I feel Im not doing my job if I lose aggro on mobs when I tank)

[Norellicus]

Trinkets: Run ToC5 NORMAL MODE for The Black Heart, and get Glyph of Indomitability from badges.

Perma-enchants: you will need Argent Crusade, Ebon Blade, and Sons of Hodir exalted reputations to get these. The first two have tabards you can wear to get the reputation, Hodir you'll either have to do a series of daily quests (you'll have to do some quests anyway just to make the units friendly so you can GET the items, mind you) or spend badges on reputation tokens.

Cape: Buy a Durable Nerubhide Cape. Not much better until frost badge cape.


I wouldn't attempt dual wield tanking until you're comfortably in some raid gear, as a) dual wield requires a large amount of hit to work well and b) a pre raid tank is, for all intents and purposes, squishy; both of these things work against your favor when you would have to divert six talent points from otherwise potentially defense-boosting talents (you don't want to limit your offense since undergeared threat is also a problem) to support dual wield. People are lazy in heroics and/or grossly engorged on their gearscores, so avoiding any excuse to kick you out such as taking too much damage is ill-advised.

[The Stig]

Thanks for your info! I understand the dual wield concern and you're right, I'll be dropping a few things just for that... not too wise. Plus I don't feel like a brick wall yet (or at all) despite being in tank gear.

The Black Heart dropped the other day when I queued for Normal Mode dungeon (I like to do this when I'm lazy, but only once a day) but the tank needed it, so perhaps now I can queue as tank and get it easy.

Sons of Hodir I've not worked on yet, been too lazy after I hit 80. I read that it'll take 28 days of dailies to exhalt, but I think I rather not spam dailies (the Argent Crusade made me depressed after all that mount fighting and flying incredibly far distances), so I think I'll just use my left over badges (only thing left to buy is PVP gear but I don't PVP .... yet) to buy the recommendations (this means spamming dungeons which I would rather do, plus practice tanking outside of my comfortable zone of my 2 RL friends who are raid healers)

So when I get home later I can gem up a bit, get enchanted, buy the 2 item enchants, and then quest hodir and/or spam dailies for tokens!

[Norellicus]

The dailies for Hodir are not nearly as spread out. You basically do a little legwork in the front and back immediate area around their "fortress", and that's it. They're all pretty simple and it's good money if you need someplace to get stable income, though argent tournament quests are less running around to get all of them done (once you get past the noob ones that send you all over the map, at least).

[Tajin]

You can collect and buy relics of ulduar to make the grind easier now too.

[The Stig]

You can collect and buy relics of ulduar to make the grind easier now too.

Ooooo. googling, I got near 200 sitting in my inventory.

Norellicus: Oh I did earn some cash from the argent ones, you're right, might as well farm up what I can while I can lol, or get lazy and fall into a depression slump. I'll check it out.

[Diamicles]

good info in this thread, nice to see since I'm planning on tanking or dding on my DK (only lv 64, so good to know before hand)

[The Stig]

Diamicles: As a DK tank I personally believe you have to be slightly more aware of what is going on. I swear warrior, paladin or druid tanks can have it easier thanks to their (seemingly spammable, but not studied into it, I am making a general statement) AoE threat generating abilities , whereas as a DK if my DnD and Blood Boil is down I dunno what the hell to do.

Ok reporting back:

Only one of my RL friend was available early last night (raid healer/DPS shaman) and dragged me into a random. Got in, first fight, 2 mobs, 1 DPS died. I forgot to switch spec, so my Death and Decay wasn't doing much, nor was my confused rotations. The 3 DPS were Warrior, Hunter, Druid

Swapped spec. 2nd fight, 4 mobs, 2 DPS died.

I was feeling a little red at this point. I forgot to put Frost Presence on (changing spec puts you in neutral)

From the requirements above, I think I gained the Death Knoob achievement.

Otherwise, things flowed smoothly a bit after, but I was still struggling with threat as I was not too used to it yet. 2 of my other RL friends logged on after, and 1 of them suggested to get me a tanking cape from Halls of Relection (normal). So we dragged a guild member along, and tried.

Wave 1, not too bad. Wave 2, quite bad. Wave 3, bad. Wave 4, wipe.

Got back in, Wave 3, wipe again. The healer was doubting himself at this point.

Turned out the leader put it on heroic by accident, which apparently I was severely undergeared for (to my surprise to learn this too, I thought at 4.7k GS was sufficient, but then again that's only on warriors/paladins/druid tanks, I've seen some at 4.3k GS tank fine). On wave 4 the priest burned 30k MP to heal me.

Regardless, we disbanded to do our own stuff after. I queued up for some normal mode dungeons as tank. Things were a bit better at this point, I tanked OK in Pit of Saron and then Halls of Relection, and also ToC. During this time I also shifted my rotations to figure out what I'll be comfortable with. And rarely did I lose threat.


Today, at work I dug up some threat tables/values, it seems if I use Death Strike the healing done to me via the move will generate AoE aggro. So I think after doing DnD and setting up my diseases I will aim to do that a bit more often to try and establish aggro while DnD and Blood Boil are on cooldown. I switched spec from Frost to Blood after some peer pressure from the more experienced players in the guild, and to be honest I haven't noticed any significant difference, except losing a 2nd AoE move (Howling Blast). But I am holding threat a tiny bit better, but perhaps that's down to me getting comfortable.

I can ace single target threat somewhat, but gets slightly messy on multiple mobs. In single target you just spam your usual DPS rotation which seems sufficient