Once you start playing World of Warcraft you may find yourself attracted to the death knight class. These once heroes started off working for the Lich King Arthas, but they freed themselves to return to their races respective faction with many new powers. Te focus of the class was to be a mix of both DPS and tanking properties, if you decided to take up the tanking aspect of this class you need learn a few things.
Death knights are no popular tanks, so keep in mind that when it comes to a raid situation, the paladins and the warriors are likely going to be more popular than you are. This is generally due to the fact that you do not have a shield, and a perception that death knights tend to lack experience with tanking. Getting over this prejudice is tough, but it can definitely be done, so just keep going. Getting the experience is only a matter of time, after all!
When you are looking at getting the attention of the mobs that you need to destroy, you have four abilities for doing so. Blood Boil and Army of the Dead are likely going to be the ones that you choose for the purpose, and you will discover that different ones will be beneficial for different situations. Unless you want to make sure that you want the attention of everything in the area, choose Blood Boil over Army of the dead.
You can use a trio of different spells to maintain the aggro you’ve made once you’re in that situation. You can do this through proper use of Frost Presence, Pestilence, and Death and Decay.
If you are a Death knight tank you will be using Frost Presence, not only does this increase your health by 10% and your armor by 60%, you generate as much as 45% extra threat. This skill will be the most valuable when protecting your group. Because of this boost you will no longer have a need for a shield and are able to use two handed skilled weapons.
Pestilence can also help you in tough scrapes, because if you use it on an enemy with a disease, that disease will carry on to its immediate neighbors. There’s no more shadow damage with this, but it doesn’t cost very much, so you can cast it very quickly in rapid succession, which can disorient your foes. If you combine Blood Boil with Pestilence, you can garner a lot of attention depending on the confrontation.
Death and Decay, while great for threat generation, is also an expensive cast. Save it for fights with more than 4 mobs, and the other two first.
Take some time to learn more about what it takes to tank as a death knight. The death knight class is surprisingly versatile when you know what you are doing, so make sure that you also check out what a death knight guide can tell you!
Level your Death Knight character in no time with the help of Nubun’s 1-80 WOW leveling guide. More death knight help can also be read at the death knight guide page.