A slight derail, but try checking out Quigon's 'The Protection Warrior' thread in the Class Mechanics forum for some opinion on how Avoidance is actually pretty hot right now. Also check out the 100% avoidance thread for more interesting discussion.

DKs are also being injected into melee where group buffs and group stacking can cause huge differences in dps. Given the changes to ret paladins I would assume it reasonable for DKs scale off "normal plate" melee stats (str, AP, windfury) and making them compete for a slot in already packed melee dps groups.

With a new expansion blizzard might decide to "reset" the ratio of tanks:healers:dps. The addition of a new tank/dps class and the expectation that current healers might reroll to DK could make blizzard seriously rethink how much healing you need to bring. New talents and abilities might unlock viable "offhealing" ability from current hybrids.

While all this speculation is fun... it's just that... SPECULATION!

I think that we all need to just step back and look at it realistically. From a PvE perspective it's easy to postulate some decent theories based on what we already know.
1) There is VERY little chance that the Trinity will be broken (tank, healer, DPS). It all boils down to min/max'ing. If class A is 2% better as a healer... they will be the healer class.
2) Boss encounters are becoming progressively less forgiving. This means that each class in the Trinity is being forced to maximize their role in raids. Hybrids are a luxury and are still not viable for many classes.
3) Ruling out a MASSIVE re-tooling of current classes, the DK will have to fit into one of the current roles or it may become the next Ret Pally.

So what can I draw from all this.... Personally I feel that this will be another class more like a Warrior or Pally that will have to choose a tree to focus on, and thus dictating their role. The whole "hybrid" tank idea is a farce. Only ferals have managed to pull this off and it's only because they have one tree for both roles. Since DK won't have a healing tree, I fully expect a Defensive and Offensive tree. The only deciding factor on how many a raid will need will be how strong is their DPS and what synergy will they provide.

In the end there is only so many raid slots available... I too fully expect this class to be horribly overpowered to start with. I'm very interested to see what mechanic they will create to allow a 2H weilding tank.

My raid group usually brings 1 melee group, 1 caster group, 1 tank group, 1 healer group and 1 hybrid group (LOL hunters and spare healers go here). Blizzard MIGHT have to up the raid cap with SO many viable raid specs now. Right now our melee group can choose from 2 sword rogues, a fury warrior, an Imp slam warrior, an enhancement shammy and 2 feral druids. All these classes bring valuable DPS, Debuffs and group buffs to the table, but where do you put them all? Not to mention I would love to squeeze a good ret pally in, but where? now try and add a DPS specced DK intot the mix and we're running 2 Melee groups now? not likely when none of them have CC for Raid trash or AoE.

I think Deathknights will have to prove themselves before allowed into the standard Rogue/Rogue/Feral/Warrior/Enh Shaman group that can pump out some serious DPS. (see 8000+ at times with some half decent WF procs and 5% crit, not to mention some healing from ImpLotP.)

Raid cap to 30 wouldn't be all that bad, would it?

I've wondered about this myself. Threat generation is easy; they should do a lot of damage without a shield. They have a few options:

1. DK boss debuffs that help with mitigation. Problem is, they could apply the debuff while not tanking. Unless it was a talent at the end of the tanking tree...but even then, a DK off tank could apply it to help the main tank. So I think unlikely.
2. Avoidance tanking. DKs get a massive boost to parry/dodge through talents and active abilities in the tanking tree. Still has problems with mitigation (no shield), leading to damage spikes which could be hard on the healers.
3. Tanking tree talents near the end of the tree that give a huge armor boost and the ability to "block" with a 2-hander. Essentially, they get a virtual shield, and tank like a warrior. Armor and block provided depend on DPS of your weapon maybe? An easy, if very lame, fix.
4. Or, perhaps, they just tank like a druid. Massive armor buffs from talents at the end of the tanking tree. Good parry/dodge...maybe they get good returns from agility as far as parry/dodge goes....perhaps even getting 1 AP per agility and 1 AP per str (like rogues). High agility tank?

One thing is I remember Bliz being quoted sometime as looking into changing/removing crushing blows. If they do that, you just need to be uncrittable, so you don't have to worry about block to become uncrushable. With no crits and crushing blows to worry about, maybe they will be avoidance tanks...with low cooldown avoidance abilities they can use to last through damage spikes or something. Of course, if they get too much avoidance too easily they could become unhittable...there's a thread on that topic somewhere talking about warriors and rogues getting 100% avoidance now.

Yeah, the raid cap could turn out to be very limiting when we get more and more classes added (1 per expansion from now on would be likely).
I doubt they will change the cap though. We will just have to suffer

For DK, I expect they really want to add them as a new main tank beside Warriors, maybe pushing paladins further away into the very specific aoe tank role.
Seems likely they will have some sort of stances too, like warrs, with one adding a bunch of tanking stats with the 2hander (armor, blocking with the 2hander or whatever), the other adding dmg and less tankabality.

What could be interesting as I see it, would be some synergy between Warr and DK tank, at the same time. Like the warr being the actual tank, with the DK standing beside him, as second on aggro, resulting in buffs for both of them that reduced the dmg taken on the Warr or similar. Unfounded speculation, but it would be a somewhat new role to fill.

Do you really think that the DKs will challenge Warriors as tanks? I have pretty much been operating under the premise that the Prot Warrior will be the best raid progression tank forever. Nothing really persuades me otherwise in Blizzard's design. Druids and Paladins have found some roles, and Druids are certainly strong and capable of main tanking most bosses, but Warriors are still the best tanks if you had to choose a single main tank. I'm curious why you think this would change with the addition of the Death Knight. I see the Death Knight as a tank for the masses, a 2H dps class which can pop over to "defensive Posture" and 2H tank his way through an instance or heroic. Capable in raids, but not as optimal as a warrior. Raid tanks aren't generally in the short supply that pug instance tanks are, and that is the hole I imagine the DK filling, while maintaining an OT/niche role in raid content.

I had a discussion thread going for this for a little bit on the Wrath of the Lich King boards, but my main theories come into a few abilities. Yes, I'm expecting them to "steal" the Warlock Tank role; most Warlocks hate doing that anyways. Death Pact is a Death Knight ability (Warcraft III & Baron Rivendare), so for tanking purposes, I'd fully expect to be using your undead minions as snacks. Parry does funky things to hit timing on NPCs, so they may very well be big on a retaliation style tanking (much like Holy Shield only different in its own way) so if they're high Parry Tanks, that'll allow them to behave dramatically differently. I'm also fully expecting them to get to be dealing Magic threat (so they'll be a "High Threat Tank", much like the Paladin, due to their ability to ignore armor) - especially in the form of offensive auras (again, which all the Death Knights in game currently have).

And of course, Frostmourne will likely be "Classes: Deathknight".

I think Warrs would be the best still, but DK being a close second, better than druids at least.
So you would probably still prefer the warrior in most cases, although it could be a trade-off of, Warr is Y% better tank, but the DK got X% better dmg/threat while doing so So when you start to become overgeared for an encounter, the DK would end up as the better tank or something like that.

That said, bleeding edge raiding might not be what the class is supposed to fill a hole in, rather it might be more annoying tha beneficial to fit in yet another class for us.
But second tier raid guilds (or whatever you want to call them) are probably less concerned with perfect min-maxing, and if DK's can tank "good enough" to beat the encounters, even if its in theory a little bit worse than Warrs, it could fill a role in there.
A tank for the masses are still a tank. And I do expect DK will be a better tank in general than both druids and paladins are now.

Yep, definitely going to make one too for just this reason. I'd like to have an alt JC or enchanter, but can't bear the idea of leveling up another toon from 1.

As far as TBC being empty, if you wait for the masses to get to 80 (from what I've heard, that's when you can do the quests to unlock the DK), there will be a ton of new DKs running around TBC. So, about say a month or so after release I imagine the BC zones will be filled with DKs to quest with. Bring your bandages though...

LK Beastiary just got put online. It works fine in Firefox, but not in Safari 3.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath...iary/index.xml

The bestiary has some interesting blurb about the nerubian veziers. I expect a storyline out of that, probably an instance cluster and possibly a raid encounter. We might even see a nerubian reputation for raiding scourge instances.

Regarding DK tanking: The problem of an avoidance tank is still being one-shot. They need to either have armor on the order of shield-wearing classes, or HP to make it up for it, except that much HP would be a PvP upset (they could balance it with low damage output but that's antithetical to the class). Personally I'm expecting a "XXX Armor" class of self-buffs like mages and warlocks, one of which adds about as much AC as a shield, and possibly an on-hit or on-being-hit debuff to compete with demo shout or thunderclap. I wouldn't be surprised to see weapon imbues and auras in addition, with non-tank variants for all of those. In order to be raid-viable as an avoidance tank they also need extra tanking tools, like Last Stand or a mini-evasion, and they probably need to be more numerous or shorter-cooldown (though not necessarily as powerful) than the warrior ones. The alternative is that they specialize as ranged or caster-tanks, or simply don't tank in progression-level 25-man encounters (ie only tank 5-mans, 10-mans, and farm content).

I expect the actual gameplay of tanking is going to be whack-a-mole with the runes and cooldowns; the real skill, if any, is going to be managing avoidance versus agro, and knowing how to set up your runes beforehand. I hope that inscribing a different runeset outside of combat is macroable.

The text of the Nerubian Vizier just screams that there will be another Old God ala the "Forgotton One" that C'Thun resembles and that Arthas butted heads with in the past.

It's possible Blizzard is interested in emphasizing a multi-way war among the "bad guys" similar to the Ragnaros/Nefarian war in Blackrock Mountain. That raises interesting possibilities, like players working for one against the other knowingly or unknowingly, players getting quests form Nerubians or Scourge outriders to go trash the other guys, etc.

I'm waiting with somewhat baited breath to see if Lich King Arthas decides to settle matters with Kil'Jaeden in the Sunwell. There is substantial unfinished business, as it were, and there is already a model of Arthas complete (the one that was put in the "ideal" Molten Core at Blizzcon.)

Yea, the disappointing thing about the Vizier blurb is that it's beyond obvious that the "dark master" or whatever referenced in this instance will be an Old God or some servent thereof. Blizzard is already on record stating that there will be another old god to fight, iirc, now we know that at least some of the Nerubians will be allied with it.

Yer I'm in the same boat, unhappy with end game itemisation for Ferals, a lack of scaling and a general distaste of Blizzards attitude towards the class. As a result I'll be keeping a very close eye on the Deathknight during Beta as well as our new abilities and weigh up which I prefer. But as someone already mentioend many guilds are going to end up with 10 DKs as their new mains.


Those Plague Eruptors look awesome, Abominations on steroids! I'm glad to see we are getting new undead units as well as creeps rather than rehashed ghouls/aboms/gargs/skellies.

The undead missions of WC3:Frozen Throne has Arthas travel through Azjol-Nerub, and they encounter a being that looks remarkably like C'Thun and the thing that the arrakoa are summoning in SMV. It's described as being something like an ancient evil you don't want to awake, and Arthas and his crew barely manage to escape (or if you suck, they don't) - and this was all released well before WoW was around. Something related to C'thun (and thus an old God?) is in there, and we'll definitely "kill" it.

Old Gods - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

A nice detailed rundown of the old gods locales.

While itemization somewhat fails, ferals are in a much better shape than they ever were before I believe(there might have been a slight moment where they were more overpowered just after BC release, or was it before). They're viable tanks for many stuff, and while warriors are still favored for main tanking a lot of the encounters, paladins and ferals have a pretty decent spot. Arguably tho, contrary to prot warriors which you can somewhat stack, ferals and prot paladins are only good when you bring one of each, more somewhat lose its appeal(you only really want 1paladin for trash, and 1druid for offtank/mt melee heavy fights). I think it's not too bad, there could be a better balance, but at least people don't laugh at ferals like they did preTBC. With the addition of another tanking class, they might be able to reassign new specific roles for each tank and balance them some more.

As for many guilds ending up with 10DKs, that's not so true I think. They're not that many people who switched their mains to paladins/shamans at BC release, and they had the same kind of appeal as a brand new class back then. In most guilds I know, they still had to recruit new players for these classes, and other classes to replace the few that rerolled those. At least, after the first month, I gotta admit when BC hit, there were many people who just rolled a paladin to try it out or as soon as their main hit 70 because they couldn't find instances yet(fast levelers mostly). But most ended up as alts ^^.

This happens mainly because every class changed quite a bit with BC, by making every spec stronger(well not every, but most) and adding new spells/mechanics to every class. Considering their class posts on every board to prepare for wotlk, I guess blizzard has plans to do this again, aka fixing the not so recognized classes(ret paladins got a decent boost in the last patches, I'd expect moonkins to be next) and specializing people even a bit more. It'd be interesting to bring frost mages AND fire mages to raid because they offer different things, or have dagger rogues and combat sword rogues for different stuff.

Well, we do have the fact that Blizzard said the intend was to create a new tank class, since they were underrepresented.
They didnt exactly say, Oh we need to create a new dmg class, as they are underrepresented.
While it doesnt say DKs will be great tanks, at least it shows some intend toward that.

But of course anything is fruitless speculation right now, even if we had the talents and skills in front of us, its likely DK will be nerfed back and forth from oblivion a few times, both before and after the release of Wotlk.

I bet 5$ that 99% DK will spec/want to be dps and problem will not be solved at all. Real solution would be allowing 2 specs at once with short cooldown on switch (5 min OOC for example).

As for tanking Blizzard already said they want to do something with crushing blows, if they would remove it you would be left only with enough mitigation (hello +armor/hp runes?) and being crit immune.

We'd all be much better served by Blizzard fixing the tanking issues with the warrior and paladin classes than by introducing an additional tanking class. While druids may still be somewhat rarer than other classes, there's no shortage of warriors and paladins, and yet there remains a shortage of willing tanks. So why's that?

Arms warriors are hilariously poor tanks in most scenarios, as a result of virtually non-existent synergies and extreme rage starvation. Fury warriors are only slightly better, but I think much as a consequence of rage starvation even while DPS'ing, there's a strong motivation to take an optimal damage spec and skimp on a potentially useful 0/31/30 hybrid spec. Any spec that doesn't include Shield Specialization isn't going to be a successful raid tank, and for that matter, Shield Slam and Devastate are both core threat skills. Core enough that any warrior attempting to tank without them is going to be suffering without them. Especially in 5-mans, where, compounded with the lack of Focused Rage, there's almost no point trying to tank against semi-competent DPS classes who aren't in greens.

Now, I have to admit that the soloing experience of a Prot warrior is drastically better than in the past, with the various changes to Devastate that have made it do reasonable damage without first stacking five sunders. It's certainly lacking in PvP compared to Arms, and still even somewhat lacking compared to Fury, but it's not the complete joke that it once was, and that's good. No such luck for Prot paladins, who are poor healers and even poorer DPS. A Prot paladin who's not tanking is a waste of a group or raid spot in every conceivable way, and this drastically impacts the fun factor of that spec.

To some extent this is a consequence of the talent system, which is not scaling as well as other aspects of the game, and will only continue to force more specialization if Blizzard continues along the expected path. It's basically providing positive feedback loop for specialization, in that each additional talent point you spend towards a given specialization is multiplicatively increasing the benefits of equipment upgrades in that role. Moreover, there are persistent issues with skills being provided as talents that should more than likely be provided as core skills (where lacking these skills is unusually crippling to a given role), and instances of cross-specialization talents (i.e. translating additional healing also into additional spell damage) are too rare.

And this idea of making people sacrifice their PvE potential for more PvP power is simply flawed game design. Particularly to the extent that they attempt to make every hybrid spec have a role in PvE and PvP, but then being content to differentiate a "PvP spec" and "PvE spec" for pure classes. Ostensibly just because they can't figure out how else to distinguish rogues, warriors, mages, etc.

These aren't easy challenges to overcome, but I hope they make some serious progress in WotLK, or I just think that players who are already frustrated with the status quo are going to throw in the towel.

I dont completely agree with your point about 5 mans. The only real benefit deep Prot has there is Focused Rage, and that is already -in my opinion- a cover up for the basic Warrior tank flaw in 5 mans: extreme rage starvation, even when not outgearing the content. There is -again in my opinion of course- absolutely no need for Shield Slam or Devastate in a multi-mob environment. The lack of rage emphasizes that even more.

For raid tanking I agree. Arms and Fury threat generation is hilariously bad.

If Blizzard want to adress Warrior 5 man issues, that is where they'll have to start. Improve rage gain while tanking. Make it in Defensive Stance only if they are scared about PvP consequences.