About my DK Tank

[cellar123]

I'm leaning towards completely avoiding hit and expertise for the next hotfix due to the extra 200% increase in threat(from 300% to 500%) Also the brilliant thing about DK is that, unlike pally that have a cooldown if crusaders strike misses, the death strike is only delayed by less than 2 seconds. I've never heard of this being a really large issue. My alt DK is now running 365 gear 1.63 hit% and 16 expertise. Given these stats I can still manage getting 1.5~1.8 on healing + absorb on a 10 man rag.
Going back on the topic I guess.
Given the two piece T12, I don't even really use outbreak anymore. Sometimes I even get lazy and use DnD to pull and follow with Death Strike + Blood Tap + Death Strike + Heart Strike. At this point I really don't see getting the extra hit to be beneficial only because of an outbreak miss.
My gemming is basically blue and yellow I use mastery+stam and parry + mastery for reds. Full buff I'm at 14.02 Dodge, 18.42 Parry, 24.21 Mastery 1.63% hit and 16 expertise.
I hope this helps you !?

[Aßaddon]

Hmm i have a question regarding my dk tank , im fron 3rd realm guild on Stormreaver, basicly im having huge issues with the healers how im very hard to heal , http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormreaver/A ßaddon/simple , that is my char , and as u can see im fully fl normaly geared and had 0 problems with healing be4 alysrazor hc so id like a solution to this problem if possible. ty :)

[cellar123]

Personally...I avoid to use pure 40 mastery gems simply because of the base effect of death strike (minimum 7% of my total health) My healers generally tell me that I'm a lot easier to heal because I simply time my death strikes well enough to get maximum healing + absorb. By doing this i keep bone shield on me 99% of a fight. This means that during the entire fight I'm taking only 80% damage without even popping real cooldowns. For HC Alysrazor, the part you die is probably the hatchlings? Once the hungry status comes back on I simply tank the hatching literally at the edge of the bird needing to eat. Once enraged I pop Fortitude or Rune Weapon + Vamp Blood and I've never actually died. Also ask your healers to watch for the bleeding debuff that disappears at 50% health it's simply much harder to keep the tank alive with that debuff on. The only other time i think you might die is then the boss lands and recovers from being dazed. At this point since I've used fortitude, I only have fortitude on cooldown so I have other cooldowns to pop. I always summon ghoul here just in case and pop vam blood to cover for me tanking the first time and rune weapon on the second tank. Then AMS when the boss flies up again. I sure hope this helps you.
Also gear problems. I still really recommend 4% parry over stone gargoyle. I'm not sure but it's always worked out better for me. Also, my threat has never been a problem so I gave up on blood cake and went for Abomination's Might because 2% extra strength means extra dodge rating. I don't actually have combat data from you but I strongly recommend getting right of primary glyph death strike and use rune strike. 1. It provides more threat 2. You should be using rune strike for all your runic power 3. You should have enough runic power at any given point to make the extra couple % of damage mean anything. Remember more rune strike = more death strikes.

[Aßaddon]

Aye m8 , i did avoid 40 mastery gems but i just wanted to show my healers that having em wouldnt change a thing , but yea u were right i do die on tantrum , what i use during it is Vamp blood + Rune tap even after that it will reduce me under 35% hp so will of the forsaken will proc and il have another rune tap, As for Ignited phase (p4) i save Fortitude for that and i have my 57k shield from my trink aswell. But healers still say we will rather have a pala cuz they have a shield -.-

[cellar123]

Do you not use rune weapon? It's a great spell with only 90 sec cooldown.

[Aßaddon]

I use it on 1st and 3rd spawn of the hatchlings , on 3rd one especially cuz it needs to be downed quick.

[cellar123]

Well...Good luck!? I haven't actually had a problem yet with the bird.

[Aßaddon]

Ty for the advice m8 il try it out tonight , but tbh im not having problems with the bird aswell , its just that healers said i take alot of dmg .

[Muspel]

Ty for the advice m8 il try it out tonight , but tbh im not having problems with the bird aswell , its just that healers said i take alot of dmg .

This is just the nature of DK tanks, unfortunately. DKs take more damage than other tanks, but they heal it back.

The drawback is that if bosses hit hard enough to kill you before you can Death Strike, which happens a lot in 25-man heroics, then you'll be a lot squishier than other tanks.

There's actually a lot of discontent about this in the tanking community right now, because DKs have noticeable survivability problems in 25-man heroic raids. Check out the WoW tanking forums sometime, and you'll see what I mean.