Death Knights
Blood
A dark guardian who manipulates and corrupts life energy to sustain himself in the face of an enemy onslaught.
Blood is now the dedicated tanking tree for Death Knights. This is ulimately an advantage to Death Knights that want to tank as it allows them to focus on one tree and pick up more of the tanking talents that are on offer. Blood tanking is very different from other other tanking classes in the game. The main focus and mechanics of Blood tanking rely more on healing (including self-healing) and slightly less on passive defence. This is why the Blood Death Knight have so many abilities to increase healing taken and the ability to heal himself. Though it should be noted, to be a viable tank you will still need to try to max out your defensive abilities; they will just be slightly less effective for you than they would be for other tanks (but this is compensated by taking extra healing).
Upon selecting the Blood tree, you will automatically receive the following:
Heart Strike ; this will be your core Blood rune, threat ability that will replace Blood Strike in your rotation. It hits for more than Blood Strike, and will cleave up to 2 additional targets (losing 25% on each additional jump, or 75% damage on the second target and 56.25% damage on the third).
Veteran of the 3rd War ; +9% Stamina and 6 Expertise rating is your passive buff in the Blood tree and will add nicely to your survivability.
Blood Rites ; the number of times you Heart Strike will go up considerably with this, allowing every second refresh of the Frost and Unholy runes to be Death runes and thus available for Heart Strike.
Vengeance ; though not directly related to tanking, it will be great for threat in the long run. As your stamina continues to shoot up dramatically as you gain better gear, this will allow your threat to scale to keep up with the well geared damage dealers you play with.
Mastery: Blood Shield ; Death Strike is a key part of your play style as a Blood tank and Blood Shield further enhances your ability to heal (with Death Strike) and to absorb damage (with Blood Shield).
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