Here’s the thing folks.
I have me a Death Knight, Diashan, that is at the moment specced for Blood Dps. I would like to get into a bit of tanking but my tanking knowledge is essentially non existant.
My first thought is to simply do the easier heroics as Dps until I have the badges to gear her up as a tank, giving me a leg up. All this will do though is end up with a badge geared DK tank that as far as the LFD is concerned can tank anything out there.
I would not even know which buttons to push.
So who can pass me some advice here?
Gear up as Dps?
Throw myself into normal instances as a freshly specced tank?
Reroll as a Mage?
Say the heck with it and just keep playing on my priest?
Any links, advice, specs, or anything else related would be helpful. Either leave it in the comments or drop me an E-mail at benameless AT gmail DOT com.
Ok, I am going back to hitting up Triumph badges like they are made of solid gold. After all, my priest is only 3/5 tier 9 so far.
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Dechion's Place 
Hola!
If I was going to attempt DK tanking, I would start here:
http://plaguedcandles.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/the-death-knight-tank-and-you-how-do-you-play/
Will it be the info you’re looking for? No clue! But it’s a start! Good luck!!!
First question is what level is the DK you wish to tank with? Second question is why do you want to tank?
If your DK is lower then 80 then I would highly recommend grabbing frost presence by the ear and just go at it. Find a DK tanking site or two and have a go.
If your DK is at 80 then I would quest/craft/buy whatever you needed to get Def capped. Then have a go at it.
Whatever you do make sure you are committed to that role, see pike’s blog.
Run the normal instances as a tank (if you can gear as dps, do your one heroic a day for badges also). It’s the best way to practice, and when you get more confident, the new instances give good rewards on normal mode.
There is nice crafted gear that can help you reach the defence cap (tempered saronite, tempered titansteel … or more expensive raid crafted goods if you have more gold to spend.)
@Chawa
Will be checking that out as soon as I am done answering comments, thanks much.
@Will
The DK in question is level 80 and has been for some time. I have a crafted/bought set of blues and purples that have me at the def cap.
As far as why I want to tank, and committing to the role, I have never tanked anything with any class (other than emergency pet tanking with my hunter) and want to give it a shot.
I won’t know whether I like it till I try it.
Also, as a side note, the only Pike I know of writes about Hunters.
@Spinks
I picked up a set of crafted/quested tanking gear. Perhaps a drop or two from normal ToC as well. I am sitting at the def cap, just not reall sure of where to go with it from there.
Yeh, the only Pike reference I could think of is hunter related.
I’m sure you’ve been here but this is up to date… http://www.wowwiki.com/Death_knights_as_tanks
More useful sites that I have been looking at recently:
http://plaguedcandles.wordpress.com/category/the-death-knight-tank-and-you/
Seems okay…
http://deathknightbuilds.com/
Re: the pike reference.
http://www.aspectofthehare.net/2009/12/tree-is-for-fight.html
People signing up as a tank, who have no desire to tank.
also. Tree is 4 fite!
My second main/first alt is a prot warrior, and I struggled with the same thing: how to go from solo leveling to tanking. I bought a starter set of tanking gear on the AH, then ran reg ToC until I got slightly better gear, then started trying heroics. You said you have enough gear, so you’re set as far as that goes.
My experience level as a tank has increased quite a bit with the introduction of the dungeon finder tool, but I still start off most runs by telling everybody that I’ve only tanked the instance once before unless I’m really comfortable with the instance. Most people will then cut you some slack and try to help the group succeed. You don’t want to hang out with the ones that don’t, incidentally.
Don’t forget you can queue up for specific dungeons to get your confidence level up. UK and NX are good ones to start with, and especially on regular you probably won’t have any trouble at all. Learn your rotation/priority and jump on in. It will be difficult at first, but keep stretching and it’ll get much better.
As an addon-a-holic, I’ll recommend an addon to help with aggro control. I use ThreatPlates [url]http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/tidy-plates-threat-plates.aspx[/url] myself, but there are other addons if there’s one you like better. This addon scales the mobs’ namesplates based on threat; if you start losing threat on a mob the nameplate gets real big and angry red so you know which one to click and hit your “hate me nao” buttons.
Good luck!
Tanking can be great fun.. and very scary at first.
Ofcourse it helps to read up on it, but the only way to really become a good tank is to just do it.
Sure things will go wrong, but no harm is done, just do it 🙂
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I would gear up as DPS and run instances when you get def capped. Start running lower instances with LFG but on specific easy dungeons. Know the strats if needed. Blood tanking is fun. I blood tanked for a long while then got T9 DPS for my Unholy dual Spec via badges. So your doing the reverse. Lotta go info on specs and gear out there for new DK tanks too. Elitist Jerks has good info IMHO.