Comments on: Keeping your Healers Happy: a Death Knight Tank’s Perspective

By: Icebound

Icebound — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:21:54 +0000

I have always been a healer…I have an 80 Priest and Druid. I enjoy healing and have healed every possible tank out there. I find when it comes to healing, Warriors require the least, followed by Paladins. Druids and Dks can either be really easy to heal, or a bear(no pun intended). So when I pug and get a DK or Druid, I think, oh boy, I sure hope this one knows how to play his class. I think a lot of this is due to DPS speced DKs and Druids, who que as tanks to get in faster. Just my observations.
I am currently playing my DK(which rolled back when WOLK cam out). I, like most every player that had a lvl 60 char already, rolled one the day the game was installed. But after reaching lvl 58 or so, not really knowing much about the DK, gave it up. But I recently resurrected my DK and decided to take him down the tank road, knowing that they are a bit tougher to heal. Hopefully, I won’t be as difficult on healers as most DKs are. I actually stumbled on this forum reading up on DK tanking.

By: Amagihr

Amagihr — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:02:02 +0000

That’s one wonderfully informative article with lots of good information I’ll have to keep in mind. I aspire to turn my DK into a tank after having run an instance where our tank blew a fuse and left (because they ran out of range of our healer) and I was able to pop on frost pres, Icebound Fort, and pull aggro decently enough…I don’t pretend to know anything about tanking, but that time turned out to be pretty fun!
But there’s so much to keep in mind, I’ll have to practice alot before I dare to tank in an actual heroic! XD Thank you so much for the article, I’m glad there’s people who want to help new tanks learn rather than tell them how terrible they are….we’re all nubcakes sometime!!

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:21:05 +0000

As a player with 3 level 80 healers (Pally, Druid, Priest), I want tosay that when it comes to healing a DK tank, I get squeemish. It seems these days I don’t know what to expect. I’ve seen a 5.4K GS DK in DPS gear try to tank the heroic ICC instances and calling me an idiot because I refuse to continue healing him after the first couple pulls. Sometimes, I get well geared DK tanks, that just don’t know how or when to use cooldowns and it’s frustrating for the both of us. I’ve also came across a poorly geared, yet very eager DK tank that apparently had a resource to follow and did VERY VERY well… much better than I expected considering he was barely geared for the encounter.

With all that being said… I want to thank you.

Thank you for helping infom other DKs out there that may be looking to pick up tanking or for current tanks that may be checking to see what others are saying or doing.

You have a hard job, and are playing a class that is rarely respected because numerous play, many fail, and very few shine.

P.S.

I love tanks.

By: shalur

shalur — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:47:43 +0000

i first started wow with a hunter..loved it..still do and its my main. im part of a small guild so getting a tank was next to impossible and we had 2 healers who were decent. when wrath came out i rolled my frost DK to tank. recently i also lvl’ed a resto druid. some of the HP spikes ive noticed while healing are due to (and im sure not intentional) are from the tank letting 1 or 2 of the mob behind them. i once healed this grp in FoS. tried to tell the tank…(dk by the way)..about this. she simply said..”i know, i hate that, but watcha gonna do lol”….OK..no concept of naked from behind. Ron was right…u just cant fix stupid.

By: Justin

Justin — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:46:36 +0000

As an aspiring Death Knight tank, this article in particular was very informative for me. I read this just before my first legitimate tanking experience and tried to keep my healer in mind, making good use of Icebound Fortitude and Unbreakable Armor when they were up.

Thanks much for this.

By: Melinar

Melinar — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:37:02 +0000

Nice post!

I’m kind of new to healing (mainly soloed all the way to 70 and only started pugging with wrath), and the first time I pugged with a DK tanking, I thought *I* was doing something wrong. Everything would go smoothly then BAM, tank is almost dead (he dropped to 75hp once when fighting the dragon at the end of Nexus)!

After a few more runs, I figured that it wasn’t (only) me (always room for improvment), but was in fact part of the mecanics of DK tanking. This confirmed what I suspected.

Thanks!

By: Dae

Dae — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:46:30 +0000

I wish more Death Knights would try to keep me happy instead of crying when I can’t keep their non-defense capped, horribly specced, clueless asses alive.
/whine

By: Zusterke

Zusterke — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:10:06 +0000

Nice post. It revealed some characteristics of the DK I had trouble identifying hehe. I do use my shields more often on a DK but other than that I love watching them in action. I admitt that jumpy healthbars aren’t fun if they drop faster than you can heal them. But then again, I love having more work/healing to do.

What I care most about a tank is their threat buildup. I’ve healder a newly 80-dinged Druid tank through VH HC in his greenies: I loved that healing challenge! His threat buildup on the other hand wasn’t fun and gave a stressy run for the DPS.
Yesterday, I healed a newly 80-dinged DK tank through Nexus HC yesteday. The healing was a bit tricky but we managed. His threat generation was sufficient and that’s what made it a fun run: everyone got to do their part properly.

What I classify as the best tanks are guys that can pull an entire room at once, or chainpull the entire instance, and generate enough threat to make the mobs stick. If that requires more effort from my part, I’ll accept the challenge with a big smile. Just keep the mobs away from me!

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:59:58 +0000

Thanks for the post. It’s certainly good for tanks to know their own abilities and when they should use them, but it’s also good for us healers to have a better idea of what to expect, when. I don’t believe I’ve healed a DK tank yet; our tanks for guild runs so far have been warriors or bears, and I haven’t come across a DK tank in a PUG.

By: Lodur

Lodur — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:45:30 +0000

That was a great article. Our main tank is a DK (frost) and I can tell you, it's an absolute pleasure healing a good DK tank. DK is a very active class and when played right, can definitely keep the healers very happy =) Lodurs last blog post.."A plague o' both your houses!Ã¢â‚¬Â