Korph's blood tanking thread.

Ok, I decided to make guides on specs I KNOW how to play, this is my play style, and I have gone to websites like EJ and MMO-Champion to look to see what new mathematics and reasoning there is to how/why a class should play how they do, combined with the simple thought of what is actually useful (therefore negating some of the jargon those guides come up with). PS. This paragraph is in all of my class guides.
Blood Death Knight.


Spec&Glyphs:

Right, this is where you have basically 2 options (if you have the 10% attack power covered)

Single target (Main-tanking bosses):

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jchrcsMruszG0oZ0h:R0s0zRMm


Multi target (Off-tanking adds):

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#jfhR0sMrusdG0oZ0h:z0ssmRMm

If you do not have the 10% covered, then take points out of Epidemic on both specs to fill out the buff.

In both specs, I have chosen to skip improved blood tap, primarily since I forget to use it, but mainly because I can use it in correlation with Bone Shield, as they both have a 1 minute cooldown, I use a macro to use both at once (look at macro section), shame I have to press it twice…

Each set of glyphs is my preference, as both give a more focused-orientation to its role; the third minor glyph is your choice, seeing as the death coil glyph now only refunds RP if you use it on an allied ghoul, which is a waste of RP for you, seriously.
In both cases I chose to take either butchery or scent of blood, as these generate runic power, and in turn giving you more rune strikes which does more damage and threat, plus it lets us quickly generate for a lichborne CD, and extend the amount of RP you have to spend while lichborne is up.


Stats:

Now again, there are 2 ways you can choose to gem, but NEVER do both, it gimps* your performance if you go mitigation and avoidance.

Mitigation tank:
Stat priority - Mastery>=Stam>Dodge>=Parry>Armour>Expertise=Hit>Strength>Haste>Crit
Gems:
• Red Socket - 40 Parry (Flashing Inferno Ruby)
• Blue Socket – 20 Mastery/30 Stamina (Puissant Dream Emerald)
• Yellow Socket – 40 Mastery (Fractured Amberjewel)
Now mastery increases the amount our blood shield amounts to, which our blood shield comes up from our death strike heals, note that your death strike’s heal heals you compared to the amount of damage taken within a short period of time, this is however capped at 20% of the damage you have received, minimum being 7% of your own health.
Because of the fact that we have a minimum heal based on our health, stamina becomes the second best stat, also in turn giving you more vengeance by increasing your hp. This just helps in case you ‘waste’ a death strike heal, which will be explained soon.

Avoidance tank:
Stat Priority – Dodge>=Parry>Mastery>Stamina>Armour>Expertise=Hit>Strength>Haste>Crit
Gems:
• Red Socket - 40 Parry (Flashing Inferno Ruby)
• Blue Socket – 20 Dodge/30 Stamina (Puissant Dream Emerald)
• Yellow Socket – 40 Dodge (Subtle Amberjewel)

Dodge is more commonly better than Parry on gear, because we also get parry from strength. Now the reason it is better to get both is because of diminishing returns, which means when you parry with 10% dodge (example number, it would be appalling if you had 10% and no parry), the next time the game calculates if you will dodge another attack, it reduces the amount of dodge you have, while making it go up to your actual amount when you get hit. This diminishing return is unfortunately shared with parry, so for example if you had 50% parry, and 10% dodge, your diminishing returns would make huge cycles to make you get hit, in this example, you parry the 1st attack, this may reduce your parry to 25% and dodge to 5%, this is a drastic difference, and as you see, dodge is reduced less than the parry is. Long winded explanation, I know.

Now the reason the first 5 stats are more important than hit and expertise is because the first five are the stats that make up what a tank is, a person to take a beating. Hit and expertise are threat/damage stats, which are un-needed on a role which requires you to be a walking punching bag, usually walking at least. If you get hit/expertise on gear without another avoidance stat, reforge out of it, some people argue it is essential for threat, but its untrue, since vengeance gives us our threat for being hit, plus the fact we get our runes refunded if your attack doesn’t land.

The reason why haste is actually better than crit is because if speeds up our rune regen, which in turn lets us death strike more (only usually take pieces of haste on gear if the item is better than your current, and has mastery, hit or expertise on)
The reason why strength isn’t on bottom is because it still gives us free parry, which is nice.


Rotation:
I hate this part, because frankly, we don’t have a rotation. (Ok, at the opening of fights we do, but after that it changes to a priority system, which pisses me off).
Basically here’s the ‘priority’:

1. Diseases on boss
2. Bone shield is on cooldown (use when possible)
3. Threat on the boss/adds
4. Death strike after hit
5. Heart strike
6. Rune Strike runic power dump
7. Rune tap on cooldown, use when the raid is taking damage (on chimearon this is essential)
8. If runic empowerment gives you an death rune, priority is Bone Shield>Rune Tap>Death and Decay>Heart Strike=Blood Boil(blood boil if more than 3 targets are up)
9. If runic empowerment gives you an unholy rune, priority is Bone Shield>Death and Decay
10. If runic empowerment gives you a frost rune, wait until an unholy or death run comes off of cd, then death strike to convert it to a death rune.
11. If runic empowerment gives you a blood rune, priority is Rune Tap>Heart Strike=Blood boil (if more than 3 adds are up)
12. Death strike before hit

Beware of using all of your runic power, unless you have decided against my specs, your mind freeze will cost 20 runic power, so try to hover above at least that, and if you know you are supposed to interrupt something soon, keep a blood rune up so you can cast strangulate *NOTE* that strangulate doesn’t actually use up the rune, for some reason.

Because this part is actually about abilities, I’ll explain death strike. Death strike heals you, making it a core mechanic of the spec, it uses smart heals with how much it actually heals, which isn’t very smart when you think about it *COUGH* CHIMAERON *COUGH*, basically you get healed for a small amount if you take no damage, but can take up to 20% of damage taken, because of this mechanic, to make it so we aren’t op, we take more damage than other classes, which is annoying. But you have to look past the fact that our health drops, and notice WHEN it drops, when we are taking a lot of damage, it heals for more, and makes a bigger blood shield.

Adding onto the whole ‘ability’ section, remember we have 11 useful cooldowns to make note of, each having their own use in different areas, this is excluding trinkets and/or profession skills. I’ll list each ability with its effect:

• Icebound fortitude – 50% decreased damage taken from all sources, 3 minute cooldown.
• Empower Rune Weapon – Refreshes all runes and gives you 25 runic power, 5 minute cooldown.
• Anti-Magic Shell – Absorbs 75% of all magic damage taken, up to 50% of your total health (amazing for mitigation tanks), also prevents harmful magical effects from being cast on you, but does not remove any, lasts 5 seconds, 45 second cooldown.
• Lichborne – Makes us immune to fear, charm and sleep effects (can be used while feared, charmed or asleep), also makes us undead, meaning we can use death coil to heal ourselves (use a macro to cast death coil, or else you will death coil your enemy/friendly undead target) (also note the race undead is counted as humanoid), 2 minute cooldown
• Dancing Rune Weapon – Costs 60 runic power – a weapon identical to the one you’re holding appears behind the target you cast it on, dealing 50% of your damage and giving you 20% parry for 12 seconds, 1.5 minute cooldown.
• Bone Shield – Costs 1 Unholy Rune – 4 bones surround you, reducing your damage taken from all sources by 20%, also increasing your damage by 2%, with glyph increases your run speed by 15%, when you take DIRECT damage (a single target attack cast on you) you have 1 stack removed, lasting 5 minutes, but stays up varying on how fast the boss swings, 1 minute cooldown.
• Outbreak – places both diseases on your target, note this is affected by the spell hit table, so it may miss, 30 yard range, 1 minute cooldown (note if used in conjunction with DRW, you get 2 sets of diseases up, but the DRW’s blood plague doesn’t apply scarlet fever)
• Horn of Winter – gives you 10 RP and buffs the raid within 45 yards with 549 str and agi for 3 minutes, 20 second cooldown
• Vampiric blood – Gives you 15% extra health, and increases healing received by 25%, note that the glyph is useless because the amount of healing you get from death strike is has far larger scaling with your hp, and is focused on you, whereas the healers may not.
• Rune Tap – costs 1 blood rune – Heals you for 10% of your hp, with glyph also heals the raid for 5% of their hp, 30 second cooldown.
• Summon ghoul/Death Pact – costs 40 runic power – When using these 2, it heals you for 25% of your max hp summon ghoul on 3 minute cooldown, death pact on 2 minute cooldown, but these are completely separate from each other (note that the ghoul only lasts for 1 minute)

That’s a lot of cooldowns! Make sure they’re on cd when you need them. Remember that in ANY bossfight, there is no RNG, and everything is predictable, to an extent, meaning you SHOULD be able to know when to use a cooldown, but just because you should, dousnt mean you will, i know i forget alot or do it too late.

Macro’s:

Bone Shield –

#showtooltip
/cast Blood Tap
/cast Bone Shield

Note that this macro you need to press twice, and that it shows blood tap’s tooltip, not bone shield, but I’ve told you what it does in the last section, so pay attention.


Lichborne –

#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast Lichborne;
/cast [@player] Death Coil

Note that you have to SPAM this button till your RP is gone, and only use it when you have 130 RP, when it’s gone, quickly try to regen, as when you’ve done spamming it, more than likely some runes have refreshed.


Far distance (VERY useful on open areas, like TotFW) –

/console cameradistancemaxfactor 4


Strangulate on a specific mob –

/cast [target=Anthar Forgemender] Strangulate

Of course replace Anthar Forgemender with whatever you’re trying to interrupt


This is basically the end to the guide, as i know what i'm doing naturally, but ive had to spend some time thinking about what i actually do when i do what i do (dawg), so i might of missed quite alot out. If there is anything specific you want to know, ask me and i'll add it here, with one question will probobly expand a whole lot more on a basis of me missing a section out.
I will NOT be adding a BiS gear for hc's/raids/heroic raids, because you can search for that using askmrrobot.com (thanks crocy) or using unofficial wow forums, and with all of this wall of text being my own writing, i care not for copy-ing and pasting crap across.

* is a reference to our omnipotent leader, whatever omnipotent means, because gimping stuff is bad.