Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Northrend and Death Knight tanking impressions

Northrend

As I briefly mentioned yesterday, my Death Knight is having fun killing things all over Northrend. I cleared up the Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord, and am now starting on Dragonblight. I have to say I'm really enjoying most of the new content. The quests, the environments, the stories - all very well done. I suppose I could do with a few less quests involving manuer, but it isn't that bad.

I also got to run Utgarde Keep as DPS once and tank Nexus one and a half times. First time through Nexus, our tank left after the second boss, so we reset and started over with me tanking and made it through 3 bosses. Second run we couldn't even get past the first boss*.

Finally, after all that running around I dinged 77, so I hopped over to Dalaran to learn Cold Weather Flying. Now that I can fly in Northrend, I'm also considering getting an epic flying mount. I have enough gold to buy it, and since I don't actually use my money to buy gear on the AH I don't see any reason not to. I might even get a dead chicken to ride while I'm at it.

Tanking

First of all, I should mention that I've never tanked with a DK before these 2 runs and that I'm not specced for it. Still, I think I did a pretty good job - I had no problem holding aggro, and I think I used my skills and CDs whenever appropriate.

For single mob pulls, I pretty much used my usual solo rotation and, according to Omen, no one even got close to the threat I was generating.

For multi-mob, I'd load skull up with diseases, hit Pestilence and Blood Boil whenever I could, and once I had enough rune power I'd hit Unholy Blight for some extra AoE threat. Again, hardly any problem holding aggro, except for the few cases where the Shaman was a bit overzealous with her Chain Lightning too early in the fight.

All in all, I'd have to say tanking was pretty easy and quite enjoyable. My only complaint is that Pestilence seems to ignore CC, which was a nasty surprise first time I tried it. Still, it just meant a little adjustment, letting the mage sheep pull and grabbing aggro from him instead of me pulling and having the mage sheep afterwards. So, yeah, I'm definitely considering switching to a tanking spec once I hit 80 (or at least, after I'm done questing through Northrend).



* Mostly due to some people being a little low for the run and me and the healers not being specced for our perspective jobs.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Everyone loves the DK.

I think if i ever roll one ill go tank with it and probably frost.

Have always hankered for a tank of some sort so it may happen as i have a dps and healer.

Tal said...

I think it's a great class to try out tanking, or even melee DPS. Not having to start from all the way at level 1 really helps, and with the leveling getting faster in Outlands, you can get to instances in Northrend really fast...

Anonymous said...

Glad you're enjoying your new role. If you decide to play as a tank consider respeccing for it. It might make your healer’s job a lot easier. :-) I'm speaking from experience here. I've healed all types of DK tanks one that I run with often I believe is Unholy the other is Frost, they're properly specced and do very well. Good tanks are always needed.

That being said I'm making myself a tank, not a DK for some reason they really don't appeal to me. No, I'm making a druid tank. I've run two lowbie instances already and am having a blast. I love tanking as much as I love healing. It looks as though I'll have two mains. ;-)