Stam issues?

[Desarra]

I'm asking this more for my husband's death knight than my own, since he's a tank and I'm not...but...He seems stuck at 31k HP unbuffed with his tanking gear.  He's a JC and a BS, so he's gemmed for stam in almost all slots, enchanted for stam and just seems stuck at 31k.  He's currently a DW Frost tank and both of us have been scouring the web for solutions, but I thought I'd ask the pros.  (Especially since I'm going to start building my tanking gear set after I get my DPS stuff all sorted out.)

I've seen DK tanks with 45k HP, which leaves us both wondering what the issue is.  Ideas/suggestions?

[Felstrider]

Look up Felstrider on Eonar for a clue on what gear to be shooting for.  Gem all stam except what's required to activate the meta, use rune of the stoneskin gargoyle as well on the weapons.

I'm a DW Frost Tank.

[Desarra]

Thank you Felstrider =)  I checked it out and it seems like he's on the right track.  It looks like the big difference is that your average ilvl is higher than his.  His DK is an alt, and one of 4 of his level 80 toons...seems to me if he ended up just focusing on his DK for a bit, he'd overcome this stam issue.  It was good to take a look at your build and gear for me as well, since I'm planning to pick up a tanking spec later on. 

Do you feel that DW tanking is better/worse/about even with 2h Dk tanking now?

[Felstrider]

Each build has different things, blood has a lot of self healing, unholy has some damage mitigation, but Frost has good aggro, 3% miss chance which is not dependent bone charges like the unholy talent which goes away, only reduces damage, and has a limited number of charges.  I have always felt that full on frost tanks held an advantage and the other trees were better for DPS.  I now play DW Tank and DW dps both frost and my dps gear is mostly naxx level junk, and on a ICC run I was in the top 10 dps.

[Desarra]

That's interesting to know, actually.  The only reason I'm Unholy at the moment is because my husband wanted to find out how unholy DPS worked and where the dps seemed to cap out.  His alternate spec is unholy dps, but since he's a tank and tanks are impossible to find on our server...he rarely gets to just dps.  I'm sort of trying to figure out Unholy dps and reporting what I learn back to him lol.

I haven't yet taken my DK into any raids.  Every time the guild does a raid, they either need a tank or a healer- so I end up taking my druid.  >.<  I'm working on grinding the badges for some tanking gear for my DK though.  Probably the only way I'll ever get her into any raid content, unfortunately.  Our guild is pretty small as far as active and geared raiding members...

[Ash]

Unholy DPS is currently the high end of the three specs. Frost DW is competitive in raids, but not quite as chart-topping as Unholy.

For tanking, the problem with DW frost is that you have two choices: using threat weapons and losing a lot of stamina, or using tank weapons and losing a lot of threat.

This is due to the noticeable lack of slow one-handed tank itemized weapons available. The Quel'Serrar is closest to an ideal balance of tank stats and threat, but still not preferable.

For comparison, I went from a frost DW tank build to a blood build, and gained something like 5k HP. The gear changes were two threat weapons -> one 2 hander (ICC10 level).

To sum up, there are some problems with frost DW tanking, but they are only an issue at the edge of progression content. At lower levels of content, there is no need to worry about the stam difference because you're already over-gearing it, and you are free to use threat weapons. (IE slow dps one-handers)

[Desarra]

That's good to know, too.  I'm still really new to the whole DK thing, so I'm fumbling along and learning as I go.  I still haven't started building a tank set yet, since I have a few blues left on my DPS set I'd like to get rid of.  When I start building it, I think I might start with a blood build, since it's the only build I've never tried out yet.  I started leveling as frost dps, and when they took away howling blast, switched over to Unholy. 

I'm not going to lie to you...the thought of picking out tanking weapons when I get to that point is daunting.

Edit:  I'm going to start building a tanking set- probably 2h Blood tank (still debating at this point)...What should I be looking for as far as weapons go?  Are there any good 2h tanking weapons I should be looking for?