What do dk tanks stack

Live PTR. Classic TBC. Report Links. Blood Death Common Questions - Shadowlands 9. Table of Contents Quick Facts. Comments Comment by Nander Error in the guide. As above, an encounter will call for an active mitigation check, which will be utilised by the player after applying Marrowrend and Death Strike some sources are including our mastery Blood Shield , and will persist for 3 seconds. As per the original question for the thread in what I assume is referring to general mitigation; maintenance of your Bone Shield through Marrowrend, Self Healing also to a much lesser degree Blood Shield with Death Strike, and Rune Tap if talented.

What is the "active mitigation" for DK tanks? Classes Death Knight. Bone Shield blocks a lot too. Does anyone know if Rune Strike counts as AM for boss mechanics? If RT could also satisfy the AM mechanics that would be another reason to choose it.

World in Ruin Optional. None of these passives are really vital for Tanking. Spiked Armor Optional This is your main source of Major Resolve to increase your resistances until you are able to get the Mages Guild ability Balance. Balance would be a better option but does require Mages Guild 9 to unlock, this will be fine as a placeholder until then. It works well in combination with Unrelenting Grip where you pull enemies to you then root with Talons making it easier for your allies to use area damage to kill grouped up enemies.

To get the most benefit from this you want to have as much Max Health as possible, generally you should have over 40k and then you need to use this skill when you are as low health as possible. This can also critical heal which will heal you from very low health to full in one cast. It also removes and makes you immune to snares and immobilisation which again is useful for certain situations.

Iron Skin Vital Very important passive for a Tank as it adds additional Block Mitigation so you can block more damage. Burning Heart Vital Another important passive for Tanking, healing received is vital for survivability and this makes healing intensive situations easier on a DK.

You will also get increased melee range on bosses which is really helpful for some content. There are some situations with a lot of damage and this basically makes you unkillable for 12 seconds.

For any group content you should attempt to maintain this as much as you physically can. The way this works is you have to cast this 3 times on a target at the start to reach the max of 3x Stagger stacks which lasts for 6 seconds. The first stomp is also an Area of Effect so you can hit multiple nearby targets with at least 1x stagger which would increase damage in add pulls with a lot of stacked targets even if you only cast it once.

Learn more about this skill in the video tutorial on our YouTube. It can also be used for top groups who use different potions such as Ultimate regeneration potions to unlock other benefits but still need a source of Major Sorcery. Some of your abilities have Rune costs, and whenever you use an ability that consumes one or more Runes, those Runes will immediately begin recharging.

The exact amount of time it takes a Rune to recharge depends on how much Haste you have. At most, 3 of your runes can be charging up at the same time. It is therefore optimal to keep at least 3 runes on cooldown in order to maximise the recharge rate over the course of the fight. Runic Power is a resource that resembles Rage, in the sense that it decays when out of combat, but does not decay during combat. As mentioned above, consuming Runes generates 10 Runic Power per Rune spent, and this is the primary means of generating Runic Power, although some abilities also help with this.

Anti-Magic Shell 's most powerful effect is its ability to prevent the application of debuffs. If a magical ability would apply a debuff, and any damage the ability causes is fully absorbed by Anti-Magic Shell , the debuff is not applied.

Timing the use of Anti-Magic Shell is critical, particularly when you are taking magical damage from sources other than the ability you intend to protect against. Heavy magic damage can easily eat through the shield before the intended attack, leaving you vulnerable to the debuff.

Effects that increase you maximum health, to include Vampiric Blood , will increase the value of your Anti-Magic Shell even after those abilities fade. Planning around this can make the difference in Anti-Magic Shell being able to completely absorb an attack, and therefore immune a debuff. Anti-Magic Barrier can allow for more effective use of Anti-Magic Shell in nearly every way, with a reduced cooldown, increased size, and increased duration.

Moreover, for the duration, there are several other benefits that you gain:. On encounters with burn phases where the boss takes additional damage, you should make sure you have Dancing Rune Weapon to line up with those phases, along with a potion of some sort.

Do not, however, sit on this cooldown for too long. Vampiric Blood is your most versatile cooldown. It can be used reactively; however, you will gain more benefit from using this proactively, and you should have a specific plan for what abilities you will mitigate with it.

It is worth noting that this increased healing can be used to game certain abilities or mechanics. Generally, you should use this when you are about to take high damage from pre-determined boss abilities, or when you are otherwise vulnerable because the healers cannot reach you or because your other cooldowns are unavailable.

Icebound Fortitude also clears stuns and makes you immune to stun effects for the duration of the buff. In encounters where stun effects are applied to the tank, you should consider whether you can incorporate Icebound Fortitude into your cooldown plan in a way that both mitigates threatening damage while leveraging the stun immunity. Blood Death Knights deal very poorly with abilities that take into account raw damage amounts before absorbs and self-heals given their low number of damage reduction abilities.

Abilities that mirror damage dealt to you onto other players, or otherwise determine their effect based on how much damage you take, can be particularly difficult for Blood Death Knights to manage; Icebound Fortitude should be saved for those abilities in those situations.

An additional benefit of it is the ability to use Death Coil on yourself to give yourself a poor man's AP-based heal, should nothing else be in range and should you be in immediate, lethal danger. This, overall, is worth using every now and then.

Dazar, in King's Rest, will be the ideal testing ground for this ability ahead of the Shadowlands. This talent row was shaken up a bit in Shadowlands — gone is Rune Tap , and instead of it, a modified Mark of Blood has shown up on this row. This change, however, is net zero. You will still be using Will of the Necropolis , unless you happen to be in one of the niche situations where Anti-Magic Barrier has real value.

Death Strike is your most important self-healing ability. It is also part of your regular ability rotation during combat. The most immediately apparent effect of Death Strike is that it heals you, so it is always well used after you have taken damage to heal yourself back up a bit and help the healers.

Be smart about when you are using Death Strike. As it depends on your damage taken in the previous 5 seconds, it should be used after taking high damage.

Of course, capping your Runic Power while not using Death Strike should also be avoided. While not actively tanking, you will work to rebuild resources — to include Blood Shield — for your next period of active tanking. Blood Shield has a second duration; it can fall off between uses of Death Strike if you are not actively using your rotation during off-tanking periods.

Note that Mastery: Blood Shield only absorbs physical damage; do not rely on it to mitigate a large magical attack. Your Marrowrend ability applies 3 stacks of Bone Shield each time you use it, up to a maximum of 10 stacks. Each successful melee attack made against you consumes a Bone Shield charge. Bone Shield has a duration of 30 seconds, after which the stacks simply drop off you.

This is unlikely to occur while actively tanking in a normal boss encounter, but you should take care to watch the duration of your Bone Shield buff on encounters with no melee attacks, or with long periods of downtime.

Keeping Bone Shield up is pivotal to playing Blood properly. The Haste increase is essential for Rune regeneration and the damage reduction is essential for survivability. Moreover, if you are above level 58 and have Ossuary , then with 5 or more stacks of Bone Shield, the cost of Death Strike is reduced by 5 Runic Power, which allows you to use it more frequently.

Effectively, you will always want to prioritize maintaining high amounts of Bone Shield stacks; you should use Marrowrend when you have 7 or fewer stacks of Bone Shield, unless you need the additional Runic Power from using Heart Strike. Even then, you should immediately try to re-stack Bone Shield.

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