Frost Tanking: your thoughts, experiance, opinions (updated june 2010)

Obsolete information as of oct 12, 2010

Important Note: for a while i've been blood tanking ICC and honestly the more and more i use blood spec, the more i see why it is much better then frost for raid bosses. the self healing is excellent and can nicely increase your survivability.
Blood tank = higher survival then frost and unholy spec tank.

looking at this now, there is a lot of stuff that i've added on over the weeks but dont be overwhelmed by all the info, you can pick and choose what to read.

for dk tanking, i use a 2H weapon frost spec tank build (despite what some people think, 2h frost does work quite nice like dw tanking does)
i like frost spec quite a bit for the extra aoe threat gained on trash mobs due to howling blast vs a blood tank build as well as for some fights the raw damage reduction working better then self heals or +hp/heal cooldown.

currently working with a 12/51/8 build updated for patch 3.3.3 to have talents in endless winter (+4% str, free mind freeze)
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#j0EMZhxx0AMIof0buzAo0xh:TwmMVm
i put talents into both bladed armor and two hand weapon specialization because more damage = more threat which is needed against agro magnet dps classes (especially when they way out gear you).
also should be noted that all abilities have rune strike macro'ed into them. this does mean that you will not have to push rune strike button but should also always have at least 20 runic power reserved for rune strikes. so if i'm doing a frost strike or death coil (both cost 40 runic power) then i make sure i have at least or almost 60 runic power.

Glyphs i prefer to use:
Howling Blast: "Howling Blast ability now infects your targets with Frost Fever". great for aoe tanking with out the need for plaguestrike/pestilence, or off tanking boss to avoid icy touch aggro.
Unbreakable Armor: ability grants 30% increased armor instead of 25%. results in an extra 1-2k armor when used (which also gives more attack power from bladed armor).
Dark Command: increased taunts chance to work by 8%. this is nice but not always needed. you can use a glyph for more threat like obliterate but if your getting taunt immune messages on bosses that's causing problem then i would highly recommend this. 8% may not sound like much, but neither does +8% chance from hit rating which does make a huge difference for dps'ers.

even after the new patch tanking groups of mobs has remained about the same. +4% str from endless winter may boost aoe threat a tiny bit.
death and decay, howling blast (with glyph of howling blast), and blood boil (in that order) generate enough initial threat to hold agro. then just do what ever attacks you can (like blood strike, obliterate, or frost strike) until howling blast or blood boil is available again.
i also prefer to just run into the group and drop death and decay vs death gripping one out a group, so that way i can immediately hit them all with howling blast and blood boil.
also good to note that the t10 2 piece set bonus which increase death and decay damage by 20% is also helpful for holding agro on trash mobs (but glyph of dnd is not something i would recommend getting for frost)

since patch 3.3.3 tanking bosses (or any single target) has indeed changed. in the past you had to be doing dnd at the start and sometimes during the fight for extra threat gain. now a single icy touch does more threat then dnd does over its 10 seconds. so pretty much dnd on single target is a waste as it uses 3 runes and does less threat then icy touch (1 rune). now on a boss or single target anymore and just doing 2 icy touches at the start followed by other melee abilities such as plague strike, obliterate, frost strike, blood strike (not specifically in that order) seems to be more then enough threat generated to out threat even nicely geared agro magnet classes (more specific roles listed below)

cooldowns such as icebound fortitude, unbreakable armor, anti-magic shell, and trinket cd's need to be used at your own discretion such as if you know you will be taking a lot of damage like pulling multiple groups at once or hard hit expected from boss like forceful smash on Tyrannus, or just simply rotating through them on a raid boss when your getting hit hard. proper use of cooldowns can make a big difference in tanking capability.

General boss threat building (updated june 2010)
- Heroic bosses or raid mini bosses.
for something simple that will die quickly, a double icy touch followed by plague strike and other melee abilities will hold enough threat to keep him on you. of course go ahead and do another icy touch when ever you feel like or when diseases need to be reapplied but these targets generally don't live very long.
- Off tanking a raid boss (or during tank swap boss when you don't want to have aggro)
at this point icy touch is a bad idea unless you are much lower on current threat generated then the other tank because it could very well pull aggro (especially on a boss where tanks are taunting off of each other frequently). what you should do in this case is use howling blast to apply frost fever (2nd reason why glyph of howling blast owns) and go on with your normal tanking attacks.
if its a tank swap boss and your turn to take aggro then feel free to go all out with icy touch after you taunt as well as using unbreakable armor when you taunt makes the tank transition a little smoother if its a decently hitting melee boss. just make sure you don't accidentally icy touch right as the other tank taunts.
- Main tanking raid boss or starter tank on boss (my favorite way to do it)
in this case you want to push out as much threat as possible to not only keep dps low on threat meter but also allow the off tank to not have to hold back on his attacks.
right before the pull, use blood tap, run in with unbreakable armor up (the increased str will pull more threat and the increased armor will help healers if they have to reposition them selfs at the start (also use the 6400 absorb trinket cd if that's the case), taunt the boss, icy touch, pop deathchill, icy touch, double plague strike, blood strike (or you can do blood strike right after the icy touches to active blade barrier quicker), use empowered rune weapon cooldown, spam about 4 icy touches, then resume to normal abilities such as obliterate, frost strike, blood strike while doing icy touch and plague strike as needed to keep the diseases up.
one optional thing is raising ghoul at the start for little extra damage on the boss, however this has a 3min cooldown so if there is a moment when you need to raise ghoul and death pact then you may not be able to


i will be updating this over time. feel free to post your opinions, questions, or experience.

in the last few weeks (mostly after main tanking lich king), and with my experience in messing with both specs i would honestly go with both frost and blood tank builds if your not worried about a dps of pvp off spec. then just swap in and out of blood or frost tank when you see fit.
update: blood tank is superior to all other dk tank specs. highly recommend it for tank spec, if your struggling real bad with aoe threat then have a frost off spec.

Frost tanking benefits
- 2% reduced damage taken
- 3% increased chance attacks will miss you (meaning 3% extra avoidance)
- 6 extra sec on icebound fortitude ability (18 sec vs 12)
- unbreakable armor (+20% str, +30% (25% if not glyphed) armor for 20 sec)
- simple and easy high aoe threat tanking capability.

Blood tanking benefits
- 3% extra stam over frost
- rune tap (10%/20% self heal, 60/30 sec cooldown if you spec into it)
- death strike (15% heal) is part of your rotation
- Mark of blood can be useful to use right before raid wide aoe damage (optional talent)
- Vampiric Blood (+15% hp, +35% healing received for 15 sec)
- Will of the Necropolis (reduced damage taken at low hp)

for trash mobs i usually go frost spec for the extra aoe dps and easier threat.
For raid bosses, Blood is usually always a better choice due to its much higher survivability from all the self healing. i've personally tanked heroic festergut with soso heals and died in frost spec (other tank hardly surviving to) while i was able to survive tanking in blood spec (armor potions and cooldowns used of course). i've seen up to 1.4k self hps on a actual boss kill and while that may not sound like much compared to other healers, its huge when you consider that healing is all on you.

on a future note, in cata blood tanking will be the only choice. there will be no such thing as frost tanking (unless you like getting critted, losing damage absorb, damage reduction and cooldowns, ect...). i've gone over the new talents and its looks quite interesting

My current 53/8/10 blood tank spec.
pretty standard for 3.3. talents with room for variation depending on your needs could be spell deflect, mark of blood, hysteria. the glyph of death and decay can also be swapped out for rune strike or dark command glyph if you need that more.