Blood Death Knight Tank Mythic+ Tips — The War Within (11.0.5)

Mind Freeze is your kick; it is a talented ability, has a 15-yard range and is on a standard melee cooldown. You can choose to spec into Coldthirst to reduce this to 12 seconds if you manage to successfully interrupt a spec, but we generally recommend against it; in Season 1, no notable enemy has a 12-second recast time on a dangerous ability.

You should use a macro similar to the one below in order to be able to easily transition between kicking your focus or your current target if you do not have a focus target set. This generally allows you to pre-identify what you will kick, even if it is not your current target:

• /cast [@focus,exists,nodead] [] Mind Freeze

Make sure that your UI shows your Focus Target's casts clearly so that you are always able to kick it on cooldown or in coordination with the rest of your group.

Asphyxiate is available on the class tree; it is a relatively long cooldown (45s), ranged stun, and costs an entire GCD to cast. When used, your target is stunned for 4 seconds.

Blinding Sleet disorients all targets in front of you until they take a small amount of damage, or for 5 seconds. When the disorient breaks, they are slowed by 50% for 6 seconds.

Death Grip's primary utility is as a soft stop on casts; with two charges on a rolling 15-second recharge timer with Death's Echo, and only costing 1/3 of a GCD, it is very useful to force certain enemies to restart their cast. Unfortunately for us, in The War Within, the default behavior of most spells is to just attempt to recast if stopped, and as a result, this only buys you a short amount of time.

Abomination Limb can technically be considered a stop, as it will reliably pull the furthest target further than 8 yards from you to your position, and this check + grip can occur up to once per second and up to once every 4 seconds per mob.

Finally, Gorefiend's Grasp can be picked on the spec tree; it functions as a targeted AoE displacement tool. It requires a target to cast, and when used, all hostile targets within 15 yards of the target are pulled to the center of that target's hitbox. This is incredibly dangerous to cast on yourself; you should always cast on somebody (or something) else. It is also worth noting that the target you cast it on is not moved, and thus, no cast is stopped if they were casting.

You can augment Gorefiend's Grasp with a 3-second silence on anything it gripped, including its main target, by talenting into Tightening Grasp.

Death and Decay, when paired with the Grip of the Dead talent becomes a highly effective tool for starting to kite as you head to the next pack. As with Bone Shield, be sure that Death and Decay is available to use when you are ready to move on to the next pack.

Raise Ally is the Death Knight combat resurrection spell. While in a raid environment, you would not normally want to rely on the tank for combat resurrection, in a Mythic+ dungeon, you may be the only player to bring this utility. Additionally, the instant-cast nature of Raise Ally will make it preferable to other combat resurrections in some circumstances, even considering its steep Runic Power cost. If you need to resurrect an ally, be sure to consider both timing and positioning — avoid placing the newly resurrected player in the path of a dangerous boss cleave or immediately before a dungeon-wide damage event.

Anti-Magic Zone provides Death Knights with a way to help the group survive large bursts of magic damage. Its range and duration are limited, but mostly sufficient in Mythic+. Its cooldown can be brought down to 90 seconds with Assimilation, but much like Coldthirst, we recommend evaluating whether this is a concrete gain for you instead of just blindly picking it and never leveraging it.

Grip of the Dead, Death Grip and Chains of Ice (as a last resort) allow you to control and snare Starved Crawlers fixating the rest of your team. Make a neat pile with them and help them burn them down; be careful not to put melee DPS players while doing so.

You can use Anti-Magic Shell to cross Vile Webbing without being affected by the stacking debuff it applies. As long as Anti-Magic Shell is up before you enter the zone, even after it fades, as long as you do not exit then re-enter Vile Webbing, you will not gain stacks.

Avanoxx's tankbuster is physical, deals a relatively low amount of damage in three consecutive hits with the third dealing more damage. Wait for two hits, then hit Death Strike; in high keys, cycle a cooldown on top of it (it occurs every 15 seconds).

Ceaseless Swarm can be crossed with Anti-Magic Shell without causing any interaction with it. This also applies to the intermission (Eye of the Swarm), so if you see your team is struggling for space, press Anti-Magic Shell and step out for a bit.

Adds on this fight can be gripped; while this does not cause them to stop casting Silken Restraints, it does allow your team to gain time, and brings them in melee to DPS them easily.

There are no tank-specific mechanics on this fight.

There are once again no tank-specific mechanics on this boss.

You can use Death's Advance to completely negate Cosmic Singularity. On low keys, you can also face-tank it with Vampiric Blood and Anti-Magic Shell, but we do not recommend doing this as it buys very little additional value, and fosters bad habits (it quickly becomes deadly).

You can pre-immune every single voidzone present on the floor (webs and blood) with Anti-Magic Shell. However, if you walk through a Black Blood puddle this way, you will still spawn a blood (but you will not be rooted).

There is honestly not much to speak of in Ara-kara in terms of Death Knight-only trick that can make the fight significantly easier until things go wrong. Your route matters, and the limiter on the key is your group's ability to keep enemies from casting.

The overwhelming majority of enemies in this dungeon are casters that possess random, no-cooldown spammable nukes that target random players. Keep an eye out for Web Bolt, Revolting Volley and Venom Volley. If Revolting Volley goes through (or is about to go through), you can immune its Fear effect with Anti-Magic Shell or Lichborne.

The timer on this dungeon is very lenient even on the highest of keys. We recommend following a route that takes very little risk and limits the number of accidental death-by-caster accidents for members of your group.

Note that it is early days and that this section will be far more fleshed out as the Season progresses and cool tricks and tips are found.

Proposed cooldown plan for Subjugate (+12):

Time	Cooldowns
0:05	Vampiric Blood
0:22	Anti-Magic Shell
0:35	Vampiric Blood
0:53	Lichborne
01:05	Anti-Magic Shell
01:23	Vampiric Blood
01:37	Icebound Fortitude
01:55	Anti-Magic Shell
02:08	Vampiric Blood
02:26	Anti-Magic Zone
Repeat from 0:22 ( Anti-Magic Shell)

You can pass over shadow voidzones by pre-casting Anti-Magic Shell, but since it is part of a strict cooldown rotation on this boss, we recommend avoiding this. Similarly, while Anti-Magic Shell and Lichborne can be used to immune Terrorize if you manage to get hit by it (if you do, congratulations, not an easy feat), but as they are both somewhat strictly assigned to a cooldown plan, you are left with just having to dodge that one mechanic.

The only noteworthy interaction on this boss consists in being able to immune all of the stack applications from Rime Dagger with Anti-Magic Shell. Pay close attention to its cooldown (use Bigwigs or an equivalent weakaura pack) and press Anti-Magic Shell before it applies to you.

Help your teammates with the blobs.

You can pre-immune the mortal strike effect from Oozing Smash if Anti-Magic Shell is up at the time of the hit, even if it does not fully absorb the tankbuster. You cannot do this every time, and can instead only get ~50% of the casts.

Oozing Smash only reduces direct healing received, not absorbs. This means that while the immediate healing from Death Strike and other sources will be reduced, absorbs such as Blood Shield, Anti-Magic Shell and Tombstone will still be 100% effective.

You can pre-immune Umbral Weave and Splice with Anti-Magic Shell. Additionally, if somebody fails the scarab check and casts Gutburst, you can pre-immune the stun and DoT with Anti-Magic Shell or Icebound Fortitude.

The three Shifting Anomalies' pushback can be negated with Death's Advance and their harmful effects immuned with Anti-Magic Shell. You need both up at the same time to safely cross an orb.

After the first boss, the spy mini-game has fixed positions. They are as follows:

You should memorize these positions and eliminate them in order; the fastest way to clear them is to work from left to right.

This dungeon is very similar to Ara-kara in terms of trash type: a significant amount of packs that are lethal to your group and not to you. The deal and recommendation is the same: pull conservatively, take your time, and collect your winnings.

You can pre-immune the healing absorption effect from the healer dispelling Burning Shadows on anybody else with Anti-Magic Shell. Unfortunately, this is pretty much the only tip for this boss; do the mechanics, fly away when you need to ( Anti-Magic Shell does not immune that), and brace for the brutal spectacle that is the second area of trash.

You can immune the knockback from Terrifying Slam with Death's Advance, and unless you waste a charge unnecessarily, you can immune 2/3 of them. Using Anti-Magic Shell only reduces the damage and does not prevent the knockback.

Your cooldown plan on this boss revolves solely around Terrifying Slam but is made more difficult as you will need to account for two variables:

1. Which Terrifying Slams you cannot cover with Death's Advance, as these will send you away from the boss and lead to taking an additional auto-attack before you can Death Strike if your team is not smart enough to give you space to be close to the boss when it happens (they can be at max range, and this allows you to Death Strike the boss mid flight. Do not make the mistake of going out of melee for it).
2. Which Terrifying Slam will sync up with the detonation of the Dark Orb from DPS players. When it fades, it deals proximity damage to the entire group - and while on its own, this is not enough to kill you, being surprised by a bonus 4-5M damage just as Terrifying Slam lands definitely will.

Do not leave melee range! It is your group's issue to do anything but the closest Arathi Bombs.

There are no mechanics you can particularly help with, unfortunately, and nothing specifically dangerous.

Beyond the usual caster spam (be particularly careful when planning your route after Speaker Shadowcrown; the town is crammed full of dangerous ennemies), there is a particularly point of note regarding Nightfall Tacticians, which are by far the most dangerous mobs in the instance due to their surprising auto-attack damage and their periodic enrage. Roughly every 20 seconds (after their frontal), they will melee for 100% more damage for 9 seconds. Do not disrespect this - cycle cooldowns and handle them properly.

Your routing choice includes one unusual tank-decides-the-value pull around the miniboss by the house. You can opt to pull two Nightfall Tacticians along with the miniboss, or pull five Tacticians along with the miniboss and send all party cooldowns in order to get some relatively free (for the group) count. We do not recommend this, but if you do decide to do this, stagger pulling them in - pull the miniboss + her two sidekicks, then two more 5 seconds later, and then the last one. This guarantees that enrages will never be synced (their cast is based on when you pulled them).

• No fancy tips yet. Please check back next week!

• No fancy tips yet. Please check back next week!

You can pre-immune the silence voidzones (the green goo on the floor stemming from his AoE or when maggots pop) with Anti-Magic Shell. As this is the only magic ability in the entire fight, you can use this liberally.

That's it. There is nothing really important. You can grip the maggots into a neat stack and drop Death and Decay for a 90% slow below them and to help cleave them down, but be aware that melees that are fixated may be surprised by this.

Bring Control Undead. Every wave of adds, control one of the Risen Mages to drastically reduce the chance for Frostbolt Volley to go through; when Amarth causes all adds to detonate, wait for the detonation to happen, then release and kill your mage.

The pulsing damage from abominations stacks and ramps up the longer they are alive, and your team may not be inclined to kill them early, particularly if Stitchflesh is on the floor. You may end up sweating a lot; save Icebound Fortitude for if you end up having to tank two abominations simultaneously.

Your ghoul can accidentally get hit by the hook; be aware of this when the hook actually matters.

Everything on this fight that matters is Physical damage!

Icy Shard, despite its name, is physical damage; mitigate as you would normally (i.e. Death Strike, liberal use of Vampiric Blood and Tombstone).

Anti-Magic Shell is best sent when the shield is up as there is no other real magic damage. It is impossible to be targeted by the root as a tank unless only three players (or less) are on the platform at a time.

Bring Control Undead; this will massively reduce the difficulty of some pulls:

1. On the very first pull, you should Control Undead the Stitched Vanguard as it is the only dangerous mob in the pull; its stacking attack speed increase and the fact that it is the lowest priority kill target in the pull for your group means that, if it does not regularly get soothed, you will eventually die to ludicrously fast auto-attacks. You control it to remove this factor from the pull entirely.
2. On the way to Amarth, you can Control Undead the risen mages in order to completely remove the need for kicks on those pulls.
3. Finally, in the necropolis, you can control one of the Loyal Creations to remove their AoE stun from the pull and use it on the enemies instead.

It is worth noting that there is a single Flesh Crafter on the right side of the area, and a couple of Flesh crafters in the necropolis. Their Throw Cleaver ability throws a cleaver that can also damage enemies if it collides with them, making it a quick way to gain additional damage should you decide to pull it. This works against all enemies and bosses, and is the primary way to make Zolramus Gatekeepers efficient to pull: take the Flesh Crafter with them, and use Throw Cleaver to delete it.

Positioning is everything on this boss, and unfortunately the only real thing you can help with. You should aim to make your melees' lives easier by making sure there is ample free space around the boss, while also making sure that the radial fear from Ingra Maloch always has a somewhat safe space for people.

You can immune the fear with Lichborne and Anti-Magic Shell.

Be particularly aware of the fox when using Abomination Limb, as it will grip it in melee (and freeze everybody nearby) if it strays too close.

You are the only player capable of kicking Patty Cake. Be sure to not miss it.

You can pre-immune the Mind Link with Anti-Magic Shell. It cannot directly target you, but it can tie you to somebody else if they are targeted while being close to you.

Before you go any further, instruct somebody in your team to grab the Maze Navigator weakaura to trivialize the maze. Whilst not strictly necessary, it will save you a lot of running if somebody screws it up.

The Drust mobs appear to be very simple at first; however, there is a lot of subtlety to the way you handle them, as they have both the potential to deal ludicrous damage to you and your team, and also to heal while doing so, complicating the run and adding to the timer in more ways than one.

Drust Soulcleavers are the mobs you will likely care the most about as a Blood Death Knight. They show up in every pack up to Ingra Maloch, and have two devastating abilities:

• Hand of Thros is a self-buff on them that cannot be purged, and which has two effects: it causes them to attack 30% faster, and every time they successfully melee you, they will self-heal for 3% of their max HP, making it a 15-20% total heal if they melee you for the entire duration. This is the indication to kite, not because you could weather the damage, but because it is not cost-effective to do so due to the self-heal.
• Soul Split is a stacking magical debuff on you that increases your damage taken by 20% for 8 seconds, stacking. Get dispelled - you should also use Anti-Magic Shell to prevent its application (it is very predictable).

The key to these mobs is to use the 10-12 seconds prior to every Hand of Thros to generate enough threat to kite the debuff entirely if Dancing Rune Weapon is not available. You should make sure you have enough space to do so, evidently; for the last pack before Ingra Maloch, get a Night Fae to open the alcove with the mushroom buffs to have ample kiting space!

Drust Harvesters mobs pose two threats to your group: they cast Spirit Bolt randomly at targets, and periodically cast Harvest Essence, a very potent channeled life drain on all of your party. Both of those should be kicked as often as possible; if you do not have enough kicks, use Asphyxiate or Death Grip to cancel this channel.

When kiting the soulcleavers, make sure the kicks are being taken care of. It is all too easy to forget one of these mobs and get sent straight to the instance portal by Spirit Bolt from the other side of the area.

Tirnen Villagers — Be warned: these hit hard. Fortunately, they spend 50% of their time casting either a frontal (which you should move out of), or a channeled spell on a nearby party member (which you are not a valid target for and cannot aid in any way). Use the breaks in melees to your advantage!

Finally, the first two packs you will pull are Drust Spiteclaws. They have a peculiar on-death ability, assuming nobody in your group dispels the buff they have: Dying Breath applies to anybody within 8 yards, players and mobs alike, and causes them to take 10% extra damage, stacking.

There are five of them. That is 50% extra damage to the entire pack, making it an extremely efficient use of time if you can survive the pull — just remember to Anti-Magic Shell before they die!

The maze of mists has six "regular" enemy types and three minibosses; during a run, you can expect to have to fight anywhere between 5-7 rooms featuring up to one miniboss. We've detailed the ones you can do something about below.

Assign priority DPS in the following order:

1. Mistveil Stalkers
2. Mistveil Stingers
3. Mistveil Shapers / Tenders
4. Anything else

Below, you will find tips for each type of mobs.

• Mistveil Guardian
  • Anima Slash deals a very large amount of upfront Nature damage and stacks a short-duration DoT. You should use Anti-Magic Shell just before the second stack is applied to you in order to immune it, prevent the stack from refreshing and causing the stacks to fall off entirely. A single Guardian cannot stack this up, but there are pulls with two; there is also the opportunity to pull three at the same time by getting a pet class to pull through the walls using their pet.
  • These mobs are also empowered by other nearby enemies' presence, causing them to deal more damage the bigger the pull is.
• Mistveil Tender / Mistveil Shaper
  • These mobs act as healers in the packs they are in. Tenders cast Nourish the Forest whenever one of their allies drop below 50%, which works as a periodic, dispellable HoT; Shapers cast Bramblethorn Coat instead, which acts as a shield.
  • Whenever you engage a pack with one of either, assign a melee (15s) kick to them.
• Mistveil Defender
  • These mobs auto-attack. That's it.
• Mistveil Stalker
  • These mobs have an instant cast ( Mistveil Tear) that causes them to leap to a target and apply a brutal bleed on them for 12 seconds. If you stun it with Asphyxiate before it casts, it goes on cooldown, making it a significant chunk of damage your healer does not have to deal with, and a much smaller mortality rate for whoever was targeted.
• Mistveil Stinger
  • The last of the mobs in the gauntlet is, fortunately, a mob with no real mechanics as a tank. They keep darting to party members and applying a dispellable magical debuff called Anima Injection. Just be aware that they move around a lot, and that your healer absolutely needs to dispel this before it runs its course.

You are limited in what you pull here by two separate mechanics:

• Spinemaw Staghorns stack a 20% damage amplification debuff on the group while in combat, making multiples of them impossible to pull; they would already be dangerous thanks to Stimulate Regeneration and Stimulate Resistance.
• Spinemaw Reavers frequently dart to a nearby target and cast Debilitating Poison on them, stacking a nasty poison DoT. The more of them you pull, the faster the stacks will ramp on everybody else, and this often leads to a death if they are not killed quickly.

This expansion, everybody gets to discover, relish and enjoy the Alliance version of Siege of Boralus, arguably the more difficult of the two former variants.

Adds on this fight spawn periodically from predictable spawn points; they need to be picked up and burned down. The ranged spawned mobs can be gripped in to ease with this.

Do not get caught by the hook, do not walk in the bombs, and DPS things down; assuming the fight goes correctly, there is surprisingly little tanking to do on this.

If your group is feeling frisky, the adds can be CCed at their spawn point, allowing you more uptime on the boss.

Her frontal is currently bugged and does not lock the direction in which she faces; to solve this problem, move out of melee in order to not get hit.

Position the boss near the statue at all times; you and your team can bait the splash zones from Break Water; you should be pointing the giant outwards so that Crashing Tide does not leave puddles in the wrong place. This also will allow you and your team to very easily rotate around the statue when Tidal Surge is cast.

No particular trick here, you are not a valid target for Putrid Waters unless two DPS players are dead, so you do not even get to have fun immuning it with Anti-Magic Shell. Just tank the demolisher tentacle on every platform, do the mechanics, and collect your loot.

You can use Path of Frost to walk over the water when going between platforms as long as you are not taking damage from any source during it.

The biggest danger on this fight is Seismic Smash, a very hard hitting Physical tankbuster cast roughly every 30 seconds (the timing alternates depending on whether E.D.N.A is breaking pillars). This debuffs you for 30 seconds, and when this DoT is dispelled, it applies Stone Shield to you, reducing all damage taken by 50% for 6 seconds - right on time when the next Seismic Smash is about to happen.

You have two scenarios to consider here:

• If you know your healer is capable of dispelling at the right time, tell them how to do so (dispel just before the next Seismic Smash starts casting), and collect your free 50% damage reduction on every Seismic Smash except the first.
• If you do not know, or your healer is an unknown quantity, you should assume that they do not know. On keys up to +10, this just means pressing Vampiric Blood and either Lichborne, Icebound Fortitude or Tombstone for every Seismic Smash.

If you are feeling adventurous, you can line of sight Seismic Smash here:

There is nothing particularly unique to do on this boss, unfortunately. Do not die, do not get one-shot by the box, and be aware that the box is always followed by a Molten Metal cast which needs to be kicked. As Mind Freeze has a ludicrously long range, you are one of the best targets to do this.

The main tankbuster on this fight is Igneous Hammer, which just deals a moderate amount of Fire damage every 12-14 seconds. Cycle CDs, weave in Anti-Magic Shell when Brokk is not pulsing damage simultaneously; on up to +12, you can take this with nothing up as long as you are at full health, though we recommend getting into the habit of just cycling cooldowns.

The tankbuster on this fight, Crystalline Smash, is Physical damage and is cast twice in short succession (12-13s apart), then again after the boss comes back to being active. Cycle cooldowns accordingly

Position your voidzones so they do not affect much of the group, and position the boss so his frontal is easy to dodge.

You can pre- Anti-Magic Shell Entropic Reckoning, preventing a zone of Entropy from forming.

There is no real noteworthy tech in Stonevault beyond a few nifty uses of Anti-Magic Shell:

• You can immune Ground Pound from Earth Infused Golems
• You can immune Shadow Claw from Void Bound Despoilers in the Skarmorak wing
• When Void Bound Despoilers pulse group damage with Void Outburst, help your group with Anti-Magic Zone
• In the Master Machinist wing, if you are targeted by Censoring Gear, you can immune the silence with Anti-Magic Shell
• In the final corridor, you can Anti-Magic Shell Smash Rock from Rock smashers

Our default builds already include Blinding Sleet and Mind Freeze. Be aware of the orb spawn timer, and position yourself so you can stop multiple with sleet!

You should practice strafing around enemies without them repositioning around you in order to be able to assist your group on this affix without accidentally causing enemies to eat orbs. When you are able to do this, use Death's Advance to rapidly strafe around enemies and soak up all the orbs - or just let your DPS deal with it, as the penalty for screwing it up is significantly worse.

Voidbound emissaries are a straightforward DPS check. If you are playing Deathbringer, we recommend trying to save either an Exterminate stack or two to assist in dealing with it.

They have 1% health and a large shield, making them ideal targets for Soul Reaper.

You can pre-emptively Anti-Magic Shell this affix, but this costs your entire team damage. Instead, you should simply Death Strike it away!