Death Knight Frost Tanking

As promised a while ago, I wanted to put something in writing about DK frost tanking. Muertedehoof did a very nice post on unholy but I thought I could add my two cents on a very nice tanking spec.

First, a few general ideas:

1) You are a tank, you are not dps. Never, ever, ever, ever, under any cirumstances forget this. When gearing, gemming, enchanting and fighting, always ask yourself "How will this help me tank better?" Obviously, it's nice to do decent dps in an instance. But I would much rather be in a group with a tank that does 1000 dps and never loses aggro than a group with a tank that does 1600 dps but loses aggro at times because of it.

2) With great responibility comes great reward and people will love you if you do a good job. You might also get blamed a lot too if the group goes bad. Just be ready for the challenge.

3) You are extremely important to your group. 2 people that the group cannot function without are the tank and healer. If your healer continues to heal dps that is not doing what they should (not following kill order and drawing aggro, not getting away from AoE, etc.), kindly suggest the dps change their actions and, if they do not, inform the healer to not heal them since it is jeaopradizing the group. (I know it sounds harsh, but I had this happen one time...the dps will fall in line, believe me.)

On to the good stuff. This of course is subject to change. You can find my build here. My basic rotations are as follows:

Multiple mobs - Death and Decay, Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence, Howling Blast, Blood Boil, Obliterate...you start over again from this point with the exception of DnD (you will have created enough aggro by this time that it is not necessary a 2nd time. You can also throw in some Frost Strikes as rune-power dump attacks whenever everything else is on cooldown.
Single Mob - just the same as your multi-mob rotation but without DnD or Pestilence

Right now I have 3 macros. I have Deathchill bound to Howling Blast. I've also created 2 mitigation macros. I've bound Unbreakable Armor and Icebound Fortitude and use this on some of the harder pulls. I've also bound Lichborne and Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight to use primarily in sticky boss situations as a panic button.

This brings me to another point. You always want to strive to have precisely 540 defense. This makes you uncrittable. Having less means you risk putting a great strain on your healer and therefore your group. Having more means you probably have gems or enchants that are being wasted on unnecessary defense (having more than 540 does not really help you). However, if you have Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight, you only need to have 530 defense. The proc rate on this is 100% and counts for 10 defense.

I'll continue to try out some things so feel free to check back for updates.